Jeff Rollings, Food Box Challenge Participant
Day 2
For
some people, surviving on eight dollars and a box of food for a week just isn’t
hard enough. My Food Box Challenge colleague Karen Hutchinson had to take it a
step further. As executive director of Eat Local and a Caledon
farmer, she has made sure that all her edibles are Ontario
grown.
While
I admire the effort involved in that, I began to feel that she was maybe taking
the whole local lunch thing just a tad too far when, at our Monday launch
event, she said “Can we forage? It’s dandelion season. They’re young and fresh
right now. We should be taking advantage of that.” I’m all for supporting the
cause, and call me a food snob if you will, but somehow I’m just not ready to
go there. Who knows, though? Maybe by the end of a week without fresh greens
I’ll be thinking those little yellow rascals on the front lawn are starting to
look pretty tasty.
Hey Jeff,
ReplyDeleteFirst you need to harvest them before they flower or they will be bitter - or maybe more bitter since they are designed to be a bitter lettuce in the mix. BTW - I will be harvesting from the same field as the ones Michael Potter at Hockley Resort used for the April 23rd Food Summit. He was fairly excited to get them. Maybe you just aren't a local food snob!!!
As for Dandelions, you should know that the settlers brought them to North America as an important seed in their limited supply - or so the legend goes. As part of our Dandelion Festival a few years ago, I wrote 101 Uses for Dandelions. Maybe I should send you a copy! :)
Karen