What do you do when you see an abundance of all this gold? You get greedy. You grab as much as you can and bottle it up! xD Simples.
I already did the dandelion honey a few years back, but it has always been at the back of my head that I had to eventually make a dandelion wine too. Because reasons, and Bradbury!
The dormant thought resurfaced this Sunday seeing dandelions in peak bloom - it was obvious - this is it - this is the time!
So I grabbed a huge bucket and got down to it. I'm kind of joking about the greed, but I'm also kind of not.. you see I did allow that feeling of greediness to bubble up as I was picking up the flowerheads. What an odd thing to do, you might think. But I found it therapeutic. I found my greed being met with the kind of abundance that fed it without a flinch and then some. Nature had more for me than I could ever take or need.
Two birds with one stone if you ask me. I got to feed my greed monster inside and the process of picking up the dandelions was far from boring or monotonous.
It says so in the recipe - you got to document everything you're doing in case something goes wrong.. ..or right for that matter. So this is me - trying my hand at making dandelion wine for the first time ever.
My supervisor.
Once the greed is satiated then the FUN part starts!
Because you actually want the wine to be drinkable, you only need the flower petals for this. Otherwise, it would get insufferably bitter, and that's not what we're going for here.
So.. some coffee and a good audiobook to a rescue - "Maps of Meaning" by Jordan B. Peterson, if you must ask - and voila! Easy peasy lemon squeezy! Talking about lemons.. no, wait, they come into the picture much later.. we're not there just yet.
So for 20L you need 5kg of sugar. Boil the sugar water and let it cool. Mix in the petals and leave for 3 days. Several recipes had contradicting info in them, but that is what I went for.
Come the crypto shakeout day and it's time to remove petals. Well, as much as possible of them at least.
Add lemons (sources differ on how many .. from 2 to 8!! I had 2 before I read about 8 so, I had to make do with what I had) and pack 1 (yeast) and pack 5 (citric acid). Apparently, if it is not acidy enough it can go into vinegar.. and we'd like to avoid that scenario.
Fingers crossed mine ended up acidy enough. No promises though. This can go south at any stage of the process so if I fail miserably I'll have at least some basis of info for the next time I dare to venture into this madness. The packages 2-4 will come into play later on after roughly 5-10 days..
So all of this goes into the 20L bottle and under the bubble..
Already realized my first mistake here. Now the wine is trying to climb out. That's for future reference.
Honestly it looks a bit wild to me, so I'm scared we're heading for the vinegar territory, but, oh well, fingers crossed..
Well, SOMETHING is most definitely happening.. xD Quite intensely so. Wish me luck!
~Josie~
Thanks for posting this, it was a great story I enjoyed reading.
I love that nature is so able to satisfy our 'greed monsters', and that you indulged yours in what seems to be a 'healthy' (and delicious) way!
I've had dandelion honey but haven't even heard of dandelion wine (until now). I believe I'd like to try it!
That said, if there's too much conflicting info about a recipe turning up when I google, I usually just skip the dish entirely, but I guess since I cook only a handful of times a year, I feel like a bit more certainty is nice, lol. Props to you for navigating the recipe-chaos out there.
OMG... cliffhanger! So psyched to find out what happens! Thanks for sharing :) 🙏
P.S. Interesting timing/sync as my post on How To Be Smarter yesterday talked quite a bit about Jordan Peterson.
I believe in creative license when it comes to recipes. That's when my witchy side kicks in. :D Sure it might spell disaster, but you don't know until you try. :D
I see you hustling the 'correct' way. I see you. Mad respect.
I guess I'm still naively waiting for something.. something to be different on the 'outside', even though I know better.
I scrolled through and see it is a long read.. as the best ones are.. I promise I'll read it, but for now, my upvote will have to suffice. :D
~Josie~
I totally agree, and in fact, encourage creative license. So far I've tended to spend more time on other artforms rather than cooking though.
I heard this quote somewhere and it always stuck with me. I imagine your 'creative spells' turn out quite well!
And thanks for the kind words. I think we've all had one (or many) 'wait for something external' phase(s), lol. Some people make it sound like they're "not good" phases, but often they're a necessary part of the journey. I believe anyone who has awareness about them is quite well-equipped to navigate. 😉
All good, everything in it's right time, and I greatly appreciate your upvote. Much appreciated and wishing you a joyful day! 🙏
Wait what, dandelion wine, that’s wild! I get a bitter taste in my mouth and dandelion juice stains onto my summer dress just from reading this 😂 Hurry up with the update on how this actually tastes!