tonyhibbett
Landlord.
There are so many nearby and of such good quality that it would be a shame to give this a miss. Also a good way of preventing the bloody things from going to seed and taking over the lawn and veg plots even more.
With the help of my little Albanian visitor, I collected a gallon of the finest blooms and stripped most of the green, leaving just over half a gallon of the yellow peril. I now appreciate why saffron is so expensive. It was a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine and I treated it as a Zen meditation, laboriously stripping the flowers in the bucket and thinking of nothing else.
I will use Berry's recipe 1 as a basis rather than number 2, but with modifications. I boiled filtered tap water pint by pint and added it to the stripped dandelions. As for aroma, it may have just been grass cuttings. Yet another case of stone soup, I suspect, although, judging from my experience with birch sap, the stone may actually contribute something. The recipe is very similar. I will make a gallon. There are more dandelions, but not enough to make 2 gallons, yet.
They will steep in the water for 2 days, as directed, while I gather oranges, lemons and sultanas, rather than raisins. By this time, more flowers will appear, so a second gallon could be made. Once again, the 3 pounds of sugar in the recipe for a gallon will be reduced to a kilo to produce a dry wine.
Meanwhile the rhubarb is offering itself up.
With the help of my little Albanian visitor, I collected a gallon of the finest blooms and stripped most of the green, leaving just over half a gallon of the yellow peril. I now appreciate why saffron is so expensive. It was a pleasant afternoon in the sunshine and I treated it as a Zen meditation, laboriously stripping the flowers in the bucket and thinking of nothing else.
I will use Berry's recipe 1 as a basis rather than number 2, but with modifications. I boiled filtered tap water pint by pint and added it to the stripped dandelions. As for aroma, it may have just been grass cuttings. Yet another case of stone soup, I suspect, although, judging from my experience with birch sap, the stone may actually contribute something. The recipe is very similar. I will make a gallon. There are more dandelions, but not enough to make 2 gallons, yet.
They will steep in the water for 2 days, as directed, while I gather oranges, lemons and sultanas, rather than raisins. By this time, more flowers will appear, so a second gallon could be made. Once again, the 3 pounds of sugar in the recipe for a gallon will be reduced to a kilo to produce a dry wine.
Meanwhile the rhubarb is offering itself up.