dandelion wine | Thespunmonkey's Blog

Then came the day on which I picked ALL THE DANDELIONS. It only happens once a year, if that, because it’s quite a tedium, de-petaling the darlings. Usually, I just make biscuits or some such, but this year I got a bee in my wool hat (still wicked cold ’round here for bonnets), and decided to make a batch of dandelion wine.

I’ll send you here for the recipe, as I’m following it to the letter. I trust Sandor Katz with all my soul, and I’m not going to experiment with my first batch. I’m in the stirring-it-whenever-I-think-of-it-for-the-next-three-days stage of the proceedings. It’s an awful lot of work plucking a gallon’s worth of petals and I admit I was a little shy of the mark, and it seems a big to-do for just one gallon of finished product, but there is loveliness potential in a year’s time and the joy is in the process (especially for me, since I don’t metabolize alcohol very well and won’t be partaking, anyway).

For immediate consumption, these are fun:

I tweaked the only dandelion flower cookie recipe I could find so that I could use coconut flour and therefore triple the quantity of eggs. We have an abundance of the latter.

Dandy Cookies

1/2 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup honey
6 eggs
splash vanilla
scant 1/2 cup coconut flour
1 cup rolled oats
1/2 to 3/4 cup dandelion petals

Preheat oven to 375º. If coconut oil is not liquid (it was too cold in our house), melt it with the honey and let cool a bit. Add the eggs and beat them in. Stir in the rest of the ingredients and mix until well blended. Let the mixture sit for a few minutes. The coconut flour will absorb the liquid and thicken the dough. Drop by tablespoons onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet and bake for about 10 minutes. Keep an eye on it because liquid sugars tend to burn quickly. You could also double up your baking sheet to prevent the bottoms from getting too brown.

Protein-packed and gluten-free, yo. Enjoy.

the 52 project.
Portraits of my main squeezes, every week.

I do believe they are plotting against me.
And, um, O…dude, I can see your cards.

I planned the usual sort of post, but long days outdoors, preparing for potential frosts the last two nights (meaning the gooseberries are covered in Felix the Cat sheets, and pillowcases are staked over the blueberries), and then a bizarro power outage for several hours yesterday afternoon/evening meant I didn’t get a whole lot done involving the glowing box.

There were moments squeezed in for dandelion-picking. These petals are destined for a batch of dandelion wine. We are using this recipe, but I had begun to follow another at first and already have the flower petals steeping without any of the other ingredients. I’ll just heat it up a little today to dissolve the sugar, and continue with the Katz recipe as written. More on this process to come!

Oh, and the duck eggs? I found those in our neighbor’s yard. We had noticed the girls weren’t laying in the coop anymore…it seems they are just dropping them whenever and wherever they get the urge. I also found one on the driveway.

Oh, and the goats? They were reunited with their mamas and cousins to pasture out on a neighbor’s land. A great escape was made at midnight and now they are all back up here on the hill.

I am surrounded by silly, exasperating creatures.