Entry #12: Dandelion Greens

If I had the resources to become incredibly educated on one single family or group of fruits or vegetables, I would love to learn about all commonly sold greens. Greens are a great group of vegetables, and are usually good sources of minerals like iron and calcium that people usually employ in arguments against vegetarianism/veganism by claiming they're hard to come by without meat and dairy products. I never gave dandelion greens a thought until an old Italian woman came in my work asking about "straight endive" and was apparently mistaking dandelion for a variation of endive. Again, like I said in a previous entry - European ladies always rule. Since it was a relatively slow day, I curiously asked how she uses her greens. Her recommendation was cooking them with olive oil and putting them underneath pasta or serving them as a side dish. Hell, I'm a huge fan of kales, spinach, arugula, and turnip greens - so I wasn't very apprehensive about trying a new and unfamiliar green.

Once I got off work I bought two pounds of vine tomatoes, a white onion, basil, and a bunch of dandelion greens. I figured I'd make a second attempt at making pasta sauce from scratch (my last attempt resulted in really thick and seedy sauce that tasted way too "earthy" and bland). Of course my fucking workplace gave my pockets a wallet-raping, and the total bill was $12.34. The greens were surprisingly the least expensive item, ringing up at around $2.03.

Everybody I ask, including that Italian woman, tells me that I need to buy crushed or diced tomatoes in a can to make pasta sauce. This kind of pisses me off, because I don't want my shit coming from a can full of preservatives and all tons of other fuck. I was stubborn and again tried putting my tomatoes in a blender and just slow cooking out all the moisture.
I made a base with my garlic basil olive oil and the onion; meanwhile, I put the tomatoes (this time I gutted most of them so I wouldn't have as much excess water and seeds), basil, seasalt, black pepper, fresh garlic, a single mint leaf, and a sprinkle of sugar in the blender. After the base was finished and the onions were a little browned, I poured the contents of the blender in with the base. I cut up a carrot and put it in the mixture, figuring it would add a little bit of nutritional value. After about 2 hours of cooking it was at where I'd consider it finished, and I started cooking the pasta and the greens (separately, of course).

Apparently I'm a shitty fucking chef, and I just throw tons of shit together like I'm tossing paint on a canvass and expecting results. My sauce tasted like fish dick, and was even more bland than last time. The greens were very bitter, and the olive oil was too heavy. On a whole, the entire experience was a failure, even if I made a relatively nutritious meal and I kept myself productive.

For random scientific information, I looked up a few bits of nutritional information from credible online sources. I feel like I'm fucking Alton Brown and I need to impart some sort of "scientific" information unknown to the audience at large.
I searched the CSPI (Center for Science in the Public Interest) database, and I got links to http://www.nutritiondata.com/ and http://www.allnatural.net/.

The former states that 1 cup of chopped dandelion only has 24.7 calories and 41.8 mgs of sodium (compare that to the 1,000mgs+ that you'll find in bullshit processed foods like ramen), but also has 8% of your daily recommended fiber, 112% vitamin A, 535% vitamin K, and has good amounts of plenty of vitamins and minerals across the board including 10% of your daily recommended calcium and 9% of your recommended iron. Dandelion greens certainly aren't any sort of superfood like spirulina, but they have a little of a lot, kind of like sprouts.

For the latter link, dandelion greens have been used as a diuretic and as an appetite stimulant. Their French name is pissenlit, meaning "wet the bed," and their high potassium content compensates for the frequent urination they induce. They're also used as a mild laxative. I may have to brush myself up on the topic, but I'm pretty sure dandelion is used in plenty of Naturopathic remedies.


In conclusion, even though the food I made tasted like a bitter asshole, dandelion greens are definitely something worth checking out. I'm going to try and incorporate them in more recipes, and try and learn to use them properly. I also want to start foraging my own greens.