My dear friend, Michelle, posted photos yesterday on Instagram of her delicious Mother’s Day breakfast… dandelion fritters. It turns out that dandelion fritters, cooked by her gorgeous daughter, is her family’s new Mother’s Day tradition. I LOVE this idea (look how yummy they look!) and so I have decided to actively work on making dandelion fritters (cooked by my lil’ chickens) my family’s new Mother’s Day tradition too. “Tell us how you make them, Michelle?” I asked and she (the do-it-now person that she is) immediately sent through a sweet post, written by her and her daughter, for me to share with y’all here.
What I especially love about this little story is how traditions can naturally unfurl. I imagine Michelle picking dandelions with her daughter when she was still a little girl and the experience they shared of making dandelion fritters over a camp fire together… dandelions became a magic that connected them and now, all these years later, they connect them still. The mother gifting a magical experience to the child and then, years later, the grown child gifting that same magical experience to the mother. Childhood magic giving way to adult magic and showing us that everything we do (or did) with our little ones can have a lasting depth of meaning as we journey with them into the newness ahead.
Thank you, my sweet friend.
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Dandelion Fritters
Here is how your child may describe it – or at least how mine did.
“I always love eating from the land. It feels so special to eat something that you’ve worked hard to create, with the help of Mother Earth, of course.
We made them together once before, many years ago at an overnight campout with our Full Moon Girls wilderness group, we made dandelion fritters over the camp fire. We harvested the blossoms, mixed up the batter, and fried them in a cast iron pan over a carefully made cooking fire. They were fun to eat and tasted bitter and sweet all at once.
Here’s how you can make these wild-crafted treats:
Harvest open dandelion blossoms leaving long stems on so it will be easier to handle them later.
Make up your favorite pancake batter. 4 drops of Wild Orange essential oil, some cinnamon, and a nice “glug” of almond extract makes it extra yummy.
Heat a cast iron pan with a generous amount of butter (best!) or oil. Aim for about 1/8 inch oil in the pan.
Hold the flower by its stem and dip it into the batter. Wiggle it around to make sure the flower head gets coated with the batter. An important tip is NOT to get much batter on the part of the flower head that is on the stem side, the part that will not touch the pan, or else you will have raw batter on the tops of your fritters.
Continuing to hold the dandelion by the stem, put the coated flower petals down into the oiled or buttered pan with the stems sticking up. Add more until the pan is full but leave room between them so they are not touching and not oozing into each other.
Cook until bottoms are golden brown and crispy.
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What a beautiful Mother’s Day tradition!
Blessings and magic,
Donni
