Dandelion Jelly

Sometime this spring, I stumbled across the idea of dandelion jelly. I think it was a Facebook post from Mother Earth News, but I can’t be sure. When I looked out the front door yesterday morning, and saw all the dandelions in our yard, I decided to make some.

Just a few of the dandelions in our front yard.

I grabbed a big ol’ plastic bowl, and headed out around 9:30 in the morning. It had rained overnight, but the lawn was drying out, and the dandelions were perking up for the day. One interesting thing about foraging like this is that I wasn’t the only one after the little yellow blossoms. After I grabbed my first black slug (and apologized to the little thing profusely), I became more aware of my competition. Quite a few tiny green leafhoppers were hanging out on the dandelion heads, and the honeybees were out working busily. Part of me was concerned that I was taking food away from these creatures that we share the world with, but every time I stood up, stretched my back, and gazed over the yard, I saw there were plenty for all.

My buzzing competition.

My squishy competition.

I have to say, I am glad I am in fairly good health and physical condition. There was a lot of squatting involved in picking dandelions. It took about an hour to fill my bowl, and when I brought my haul back into the house, our cat was duly impressed.

He does seem impressed, right?

Okay, so now I had a giant bowl of dandelion heads, an impressed cat, and very sticky, orange hands. The next step was to pull all the yellow bits of the blossom off the green parts. (Can you tell I’m a historian, not a botanist?) I did this by twisting the base of the flower, and plucking the petals out in clumps. In a way, it felt like plucking a chicken, but I’ve never done that before either, so I’m just guessing.

After a little over an hour of blossom plucking, my husband joined in the efforts. Maybe another hour later, we finally had four lightly packed cups of dandelion bits with which I was to make a tea.

We stopped plucking when I had just enough done, and I actually returned maybe a quarter of the dandelion heads I had picked to nature.

Before starting all of this, I asked Mr. Google for a dandelion jelly recipe. I found quite a few, and ended up choosing one from Lonely Pines Farm. So, as guided by this recipe and all of the others I found online (there really is very little difference in the recipes out there), I poured four cups of boiling water over my pluckings, and let it steep 24 hours. The tea smelled a bit like steamed asparagus to me.

Dandelion tea just beginning to steep.

And dandelion tea after 24 hours.

 After straining the tea through cheesecloth to pull out all the flowery bits, I added the tea, two tablespoons of lemon juice, and one box of Sure Jell to a pot and brought it to a boil. I added four cups of sugar, brought it to a boil again, and let it boil for about two minutes. Then I ladled it into waiting jars. I filled seven small jelly jars and three half-pint jars. The jars then went into a hot water bath for ten minutes. I had gotten the water bath going before I even strained the tea so it had time to get up to a boil.

Jars of dandelion jelly straight out of the bath.

Some people online wrote that dandelion jelly tastes like honey, others that it tastes like sunshine, or joy. It certainly has a honey quality to it. I just tried a little off a spoon, and now I want waffles.  

He actually wasn’t that impressed.

End of August Accounting

It’s been a good gardening season. Things have gone so well, in fact, that we plugged in the extra freezer in the basement to keep the surplus produce. 

One evening's produce gathering

 The zucchini and yellow squash produced very well. That shouldn’t be a surprise. The over-abundance of zucchini has become a well-worn cliché but we haven’t really had much luck with summer squash over the last couple of years. Last year the yellow squash did not produce at all and we only got a few zucchinis. This year, so far, we’ve picked 14 yellow squash and 21 zucchinis.

Squash plants in early July

Yellow squash and zucchini

 A couple weeks ago I realized the squash had a pretty bad infestation of squash vine borers. The poor plants looked terrible but they were and are still producing fruit.

Squash vine borer damage

We have eaten a lot of squash so far and given some away but we had way more than could be eaten fresh. So, into the freezer they went. I diced up the squashes, blanched them in boiling water for 3 minutes, dunked them in ice water, drained them, and then spread them out on towel-lined cookie sheets. After giving the squash pieces some time to dry, I removed the towels and put the sheets in the freezer. The next day, I broke up the pieces of frozen squash with a wooden spoon and put them in quart size zipper-top freezer bags. There are now six full bags in the freezer and a half dozen squash still in the fridge.

Frozen zucchini ready to be bagged

I made a double batch of zucchini muffins for the freezer too.

The green beans are not doing as well as they did last year but I’ve still manage to put away a quart size freezer bag full of them. The chard, on the other hand, has been doing very well since I managed to head off the leaf borers. I’ve put three full quart bags away in the freezer so far.

So much lovely, leafy goodness!

The cucumbers have also been very productive. They are sneaky, however. I’ll look at a cucumber and decide it’s slightly on the small size and decide to wait a day or two before picking it. A day or two later, it’s gotten huge! Fortunately, these cucumbers, no matter what the size, make great pickles. I will admit that I’m a lazy pickler. I’m a fan of making small batches whenever it is convenient. I don’t want to heat up the house with the canner or risk getting limp pickles if I screw up the process. So, I make freezer pickles. They are so simple and are delicious. So far this season we’ve picked 37 cucumbers and made 11 ½-pint jars of dill pickles, 7 of sweet pickles, and 5 of bread and butter pickles. I’ll probably be making some more this week as the collection of cucumbers in the fridge are starting to add up again.

Cool as a cucumber and ready to be pickles

Six 1/2-pink jars of dill freezer pickles

We’ve done a little fridge pickling as well. The beets and watermelon radishes are doing fairly well this year. We didn’t plant that many of either. The radishes are great on sandwiches but we worried we wouldn’t go through them quickly enough in their raw form. The solution was fridge pickles. Since we were doing the radishes, I figured we could pickle a few beets as well. We picked just enough for two ½-pint jars of radishes and one of beets. The radishes are crunch and taste good but I will say that they leave a definite funk in the air.

Just a few beets and radishes

Quick fridge pickled beets and radishes

We did do one bit of unplanned preserving as well. Early on when we first moved into this house, my husband built a trellis for wild grapes that were growing behind the garage. Last year, they didn’t do much but this year they produced enough that I thought I’d see if I could make a little jelly. Well, it did turn out to be a little jelly – just a ½-pint jar and a smaller jelly jar – but it turned out really tasty. The tartness of the wild grapes is really wonderful; not at all like the standard store-bought grape jelly. I only had one cup of juice so it took a little mathing to get the pectin measurement right but I’m calling this experiment a success.

Lots of grapevines on the trellis

Bunches of wild grapes

Draining the juice from the cooked grapes

Mmm...jelly!