DANDELION SALAD

Dinner salad made with dandelions and cheese

The U.S. Department of Agriculture once had a big presence in the life of the average American. Their publications on home canning, gardening, and cooking found their way into almost every household in the country.

The USDA Food and Nutrition Service still exists, and they still produce books and pamphlets on every topic having to do with growing, eating, and analyzing food. In this era of frozen food, microwave ovens, and iceberg lettuce, there's much less demand for their books than there once was.

In time for the Bicentennial, the USDA produced a book called Favorite American Recipes, which is a non-copyrighted collection of traditional American rural and farm recipes. All are simple and nutritious; most are also a little dull. Here's one that I like.

Ingredients

(serves 4)

1/2 lb tender, fresh dandelion greens
1/2 cup thinly sliced red onions
2 tomatoes, cut in fourths.
1/4 lb sharp cheddar cheese, grated
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/4 cup salad oil
3 Tbsp vinegar
1 tsp dill

Procedure

Wash the dandelion greens carefully. Drain well and cut into pieces.
Add the onions, tomatoes, and cheese. Toss to mix.
Make a salad dressing by mixing the pepper, salad oil, vinegar, and dill. Dress the salad, toss, and serve.

Notes

Make sure that you take the dandelion greens from a lawn that has not been treated with pesticides or anti-growth hormones recently. (Many lawn fertilizers also contain weed-control hormones).

You can substitute a commercial salad dressing for the oil, vinegar, pepper, and dill.

Rating

Difficulty: easy.
Time: 5 minutes.
Precision: no need to measure.

Contributor

 
Brian Reid 
DEC Western Research Lab, Palo Alto CA 
reid@decwrl.DEC.COM -or- {decvax,ihnp4,ucbvax,sun}!decwrl!reid

Recipe last modified: 13 May 86

Original header

Path: decwrl!recipes
From: reid@decwrl.UUCP (Brian Reid)
Newsgroups: alt.gourmand
Subject: RECIPE: Dandelion salad
Message-ID: <11699@decwrl.DEC.COM>
Date: 25 Sep 87 03:11:47 GMT
Sender: recipes@decwrl.DEC.COM
Organization: DEC Western Research Lab, Palo Alto CA
Lines: 61
Approved: reid@decwrl.UUCP

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