what to do with dandelions....

I had an interesting conversation with a Publix customer over the weekend. It was someone I actually know, not quite a friend, but have known of for years in a casual, haphazard way. Her family owns a nearby campground that she has diligently improved, developed and turned into a really nice venue she rents out for weddings, receptions, parties, corporate events, fund-raisers.

When I saw her at work, she was looking for an ingredient to make jelly. The easy way. Which involves adding a commercially available ingredient that assures your efforts will 'jell', called 'sure-jel'. She volunteered the information she was going to make a batch of dandelion jelly. I said, 'You have got to be kidding!' and then said it again, with a question mark instead of an exclamation point at the end. She assured me she had done it before, and it was really good. So good, in fact that her husband has requested more. But it takes a LOT of dandelion blooms and sounds much to labor intensive for mass production, unless you have a lot of children you can recruit for cheap.

She said you add a bit of lemon juice and a dollop of honey, and it is wonderful on toast and biscuits. Which sort of makes your mouth water, until you hear the part about having to go out and pick three quarts of dandelion blooms and boil them, then strain and cook down the flavored water. I've heard several people recently, repeatedly say how ' you can find anything on the internet', and how amazing it is to be able to just 'google it' to find the answers to any questions you could possibly imagine - which is how she found the recipe for Dandelion Jelly.

I haven't looked for it, as I have no intention of going out to harvest the raw product or putting the effort into making jelly. But now, every time I drive down Macon Road, and see prolific weeds of bright yellow, blooming for miles along the right-of-way, I want to call C. to urge her to get her bucket and get to work. So... all those things that you have been so diligently trying to eliminate from your lawn: you could have been spreading on your toast! I have a reaaaallly good biscuit recipe I will have to credit to Paula Deen that only has three ingredients if you want it - call me when they are done?