Herbaceous Cookies, Dude

Our family food-foraging experiments took an interesting turn today when my friend Meg sent me a recipe for Dandelion Flower cookies. It seemed the perfect family activity for a gorgeous Mother's Day.

Unlike other neighborhoods from my past, I don't have to worry about whether the yards here have been sprayed. I now live in a poor area of Des Moines, just a few blocks away from inner city revitalization. The move here was a calculated gamble. Our hope is that revitalization will migrate 1/2 mile further east. The immediate gratification was restoring a 1904 house and a much lower mortgage. We left an upper middle class (dare I say, upper class?) area of Des Moines, with its share of huge houses, pristine lawns and alarm systems, to a neighborhood with its fair share of boarded up houses, multi-family living and neglected yards. No one here can afford expensive lawn care.

Anyway, my kids, my dh and myself trooped around the neighborhood, the younger kids dashing to pick every yellow head in their path. I only needed 1/2 cup of dandelion flower petals, so our gathering didn't take long; as it is I ended up with three times as many flowers as needed.

In case you've always wondered, the dandelion is so named because of its long, pointy root. It's name in old French is "Dent-de-lion," or lion tooth. The dandelion is now spread worldwide, though it was first introduced to the Midwest by Europeans to provide food for their imported honeybees.

Anyway, we squeezed and pulled out the requisite number of flower petals and my youngest dd helped me whip up the cookies. An easy recipe. The cookies tasted kind of blah to us, with the most prominent flavor being the honey. I didn't want to waste our cookies, so we made dandelion cookie and peanut butter sandwiches.

The verdict: delicious!

Dandelion Cookies

1/2 cup oil
1/2 cup honey
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup unbleached flour
1 cup oats
1/2 cup dandelion flowers

Preheat oven to 375. Blend oil and honey and beat in the eggs and vanilla. Stir in flour, oatmeal and dandelion flowers. Drop batter by teaspoonfuls onto lightly oiled cookied sheet and bake for 10 minutes.

(Before using dandelion flowers, wash them thoroughly. To remove petals, squeeze the green part of the flower and pull yellow petals out)