Monthly Archives: April 2012

It is that time of year again – even the best kept lawns are sporting hundreds of sunny little spots, much to the great annoyance of the Type-A lawn perfectionists.  Fortunately, I’m not one of them:  I love dandelions.  Well, maybe “love” is a bit of a strong word.  More accurately, I’ve realized that I will never win the dandelion war in our lawn, so instead I’ve decided to enjoy them.

Ten Reasons to Love Dandelions

1.  Dandelions greens are great additions to a salad.  Pick dandelion greens when they are small and tender and add a few to your salad. Their slightly bitter taste adds a lot of depth to a standard iceberg lettuce salad, and the benefits of dandelion greens are hard to overstate: rich in vitamins, plus they are a natural diuretic.  Just be careful where you decide to harvest:  you don’t want to pick your dandelions anywhere that pesticides may have been applied.  If you don’t use any chemicals on your lawn, that’s your best bet.

2.  They will keep a toddler busy for a long, long time.  Hand him a bowl and tell him to pick dandelions.  It doesn’t get old – they love the sunny little yellow puffs, they enjoy pulling and tearing the greens, and they adore anything that involves putting stuff into containers.

3.  Dandelion honey is a nice, summery way to sweeten iced tea.  Pick a nice big bunch of dandelion flowers (12 cups is a good number) and boil for about an hour in six cups of water.  Add a whole, chopped lemon for extra flavor.  Let the mixture sit overnight, and then strain out the dandelion and lemon using cheesecloth.  Simmer the remaining liquid with enough sugar to make a simple syrup.  Allow it to bubble nicely, but take care not to burn it as it will carmelize easily.  When cooled, it takes on a honeylike consistency.  Eat some on toast, use it to sweeten some sun tea, or add it to granola for a tasty treat.

4.  Dandelion necklaces.  Another fun kid-craft:  remove the flower from a dandelion stem and you’ll notice that the stem is a hollow tube with one end narrower than the other.  Insert the narrow end into the larger end to form a link.

5.  Dandelion wine.  I’ll let you Google your own recipes for this, but it is a wine easily made in small batches without any of the usual winemaking equipment (I made mine in mason jars).  Sweet and smooth, it is one of my favorite wines.

6.  Fried dandelion greens.  I’ll admit, I haven’t tried this yet but I think it would work.  One of my family’s favorite side dishes is fried spinach, but I think dandelion greens would be a fine substitute:  cut up and fry up two or three pieces of turkey bacon.  Add a generous handful of greens and fry until tender.  Add a tiny sprinkling of sea salt and some coarse ground pepper to season.

7.  The butter test.  ”Do you like butter?”  Tell your little one that if they like butter, their chin will turn yellow if you rub a dandelion on it.  My chin always turned yellow, so I must love butter.  Silly, but sweet.

8.  Dandelion coffee/dandelion tea.  This is another one on my to-do list.  Dry, chop and then roast dandelion roots.  Grind them, and they are said to be nearly identical in appearance to coffee.  Here are some instructions that I plan on following when I try making dandelion coffee.

9.  Wish making, of course.  When the dandelion heads turn white, make a wish and try to blow all of the seeds from the dandelion.  If you blow all of them off, your wish will come true.

10.  They are nature’s way of telling you when to mow your lawn.  When your lawn has more dandelions than the house on either side of you, it is time to mow.  At least, that’s how it works in our house.

Dandelions – love them, or hate them?  Do you have any useful or fun ideas for dandelions?

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Welcome to the Earth Day Blog Carnival
This post is part of the 2012 Earth Day Blog Carnival hosted by Child of the Nature Isle and Monkey Butt Junction. Each participant has shared their practices and insights of earth friendly, environmentally conscious, eco-living. This carnival is our way to share positive information and inspiration that can create healing for our planet. Please read to the end of this post to find a list of links to the other carnival participants. Happy Earth Day!

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For the 2011 Earth Day Blog Carnival I wrote about the “green sheen” – corporations adopting green language not out of a love of the environment or a respect for our resources but rather as a marketing angle by using meaningless labels to make their products or services appear to be eco-conscious.

It looks like corporations aren’t alone – some studies have shown that individuals also engage in a little eco-dishonesty: people tend to make more eco-friendly decisions when they believe that they can be seen making eco-friendly decisions.

Researchers Steven Sexton and Alison Sexton have written about what they have termed “conspicuous conservationism:”  the act of engaging in ecologically conscious behavior to gain esteem or social status.   One particularly illustrative example of conspicuous conservationism is installing solar panels on the street-facing side of one’s house, even if that side is more shaded. Obviously the solar panels will better serve the home on the sunnier side of the street, but then who would know about them?

The Sextons’ study also accounts for the popularity of the Prius hybrid car.  Honda, Nissan and Ford all sell hybrids, but none of theirs reach the popularity of the Prius even though they offer comparable benefits in terms of gas mileage and carbon footprint.  So why is the Prius the big winner?  The Sextons theorize that the Prius’ distinctive design is to blame:  visually, the hybrid Civic, for example, looks like a regular Civic.  The casual onlooker probably won’t notice that the driver is driving a hybrid unless he looks very closely.  The Prius is far more obvious – the driver is making a statement by his vehicle choice. People want others to notice their eco-conscious choices.

I know I’m guilty of conspicuous conservationism myself.  Here’s my own crunchy confession:  when I forget my reusable grocery bags at Trader Joe’s, I’ll buy a new one.  It isn’t that I need yet another reusable bag.  I just feel better walking out of Trader Joe’s with a reusable bag, particularly if there are other people in line with reusable bags.  Vain?  Maybe a little. But is it such a bad thing?

I would say no:  regardless of people’s motives, conservation is conservation.  Every eco-friendly decision is a step in the right direction.  While the term “peer pressure” typically has negative connotations, positive peer pressure can go a long way towards pushing people towards good decisions.  So if part of your reason for buying local is so that you can sport that cute organic cotton T-shirt that says “I Buy Local,” go for it.  Conspicuous conservationism is an interesting concept, and one that I’m noticing more and more in my own actions.

Further reading:

Freakonomics - Conspicuous Conservation and the Prius Effect

Steven and Amanda Sexton’s Paper

Thank you for stopping by the 2012 Earth Day Blog Carnival! Please relax and take time to read these other great eco-living posts:

• You are a Child of the Earth – Using the Earth as their classroom, Patti from Canadian Unschool teaches her 4 children their spiritual connection to the Earth and she accepts that loving the Earth can get really, really messy.
• Cutting Out Paper – Jorje of Momma Jorje shares how she went from curiosity and concern to actually cutting out the use of paper towels in her household. She is proud to be “greener” as each Earth Day passes.
• The World is Brown – Debra Ann Elliot of Words are Timeless believes in keeping the Earth green, but because so many people inhabit the Earth it is turning brown because people aren’t doing their part by reducing, reusing, and recycling.
• 7 Child And Eco Friendly Activities To Honor The Earth (Plus Some Environmental Books For Kids) – Jennifer at Hybrid Rasta Mama shares her favorite books that help children become more aware of the importance of respecting and caring for Mother Earth. In addition, she hosts a guest post outlining seven child and eco friendly activities to honor the earth.
• 5 Ways We Teach Our Children To Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle – Valarie at Momma In Progress shares a few tips for encouraging young children to care for the earth.
• Little Changes – Big Results – Meegs at A New Day talks about how sometimes it’s the little decisions and changes that can lead us to find big results, and how she’s baby-stepping her way to a more environmentally conscious lifestyle.
• Inspiring the Next Generation – aNonyMous at at Radical Ramblings hopes to inspire her daughter to live a green and sustainable lifestyle, in the same way she was inspired by her high-school science teacher, and talks about the changes her family are making towards this vision.
• Eco-Friendly Cleansers: Safe For the Environment, Healthy For Every Body – Rebekah at Liberated Family writes about safe and natural alternatives to toxic, household cleaning products..
• Lightening My Footprint with Cloth Nappies (Diapers) – Christine at African Babies Don’t Cry shares the biggest eco-choice she has made so far, and why she is so passionate about it.
• Clutter Free for a Cause – At Living Peacefully with Children Mandy’s penchant for decluttering and simple living cuts down on consumerism, taking less of a tole on the Earth.
• Eco-Parenting: Homemade Bug Spray – Kerry at City Kids Homeschooling shares a homemade bug spray recipe that helps her family to enjoy the natural world while taking precautions against bug bites.
• Let the Scales Fall From My Eyes…Just Not Too Quickly – Kelly at Becoming Crunchy talks about the discomfort of no longer being able to live in denial over how her choices affect the world around her.
• Fostering Love of Earth – Justine at The Lone Home Ranger instills a love of nature in her daughters by embarking on their first backyard vegetable garden together.
• Being in Nature – Carrie at Love Notes Mama knows that just being in nature is more than enough.
• 5 Ways to Pass Down Environmental Values to Your Children – Charise at I Thought I Knew Mama shares how easy it can be to instill environmental values in your children.
• Viva Portlandia – Amy at Anktangle writes about the place she lives and loves in: Portland. She describes the ways this green city makes it easy for her family to take care of our earth, and also the steps she’s taking to further lessen her family’s environmental impact.
• Conspicuous Conservationism – Jenn at Monkey Butt Junction examines the phenomenon of eco-conscious behavior as a status symbol.
• Time for Radical Sustainability – Terri at Child of the Nature Isle ponders how she can model a truly sustainable lifestyle for her children and raise them in a way their environmental consciousness is as natural as breathing!

A big thank you to all of the 2012 Earth Day Blog Carnival participants!


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