Dandelion Coffee

First you have to move to the country. If you are still in the city you have to visit me in the country, or if you cannot visit me, do your best to go somewhere with no chemicals.

The dandelion has deep roots, and it holds on tight in packed soil. What you want is turned soil: last year's garden, the front pasture, something like that. Some people wait until they are pulling the potatoes to do this but this is the first month without snow so some people really need something right from the ground right away.

While you are looking around for a dandelion patch, you can check for new sweet leaves, the ones without a big bitter vein. Those ones are good for salad or chopped into your soup.

The best is if you walk around after the harrower, the same wet morning the sod is turned. Dandelion roots are stronger than the folding mat of pressed grass, they will point skyward inches above the bared soil. Take them now when they are firm, when the soil can be wiped from their thin skins, when you can twist their crown from them and stain your fingers bitter and browner.

Throw the crown filled with drying mud back into the soil. Every root will look precious your first day on the land after the snow is gone, like the first day after sickness walking thigh-deep in glistening, irridescent snow. But it is worth it when the excitement wears off to look for the largest roots, they are easier to clean.

A nylon scrub brush, like used for surgery or physiotherapy, is the best way to clean the roots. Cover them with water, let some mud settle naturally, and drain through a colander. This could happen ten times or two. There are pieces of the root, though, that will stay richly brown, a thin covering of the parsnip root that is not dirt. This is the flavour, keep it.

Here you can chop up the roots or you can dry them and break them up later. I do not like to bath my kitchen in the bitter juices, so I dry the roots as I gather them day after day. As they dry in the field they will blend in with the soil, become less remarkable, and harder to pull when the crown fights death and grasps tighter. You can gather them in an apron pocket, and leave another apron pocket for the Heiniken or the herbal tea or the corn chips.

Next time you need to roast something in the oven, put a tray of these dry, clean roots in there too. This is when either you will be glad to live alone or your housemates will wish you lived alone: the smell of roasting dandelion root is tonic, pervasive, and persists for three days. It is an important smell, though: you will know you are done when your nostrils flare, when the roots are crisp and dark brown along the length.

When cool, grind the roots. They are lighter and dryer than coffee beans, and cleaner too, unimbued with slavery, servitude, and the emptyness of labouring hands that grow cash instead of food. The powder will hang in the air after the grinding, released in a suspension from the cycle of yearly rebirth. In a blender you can make two trays of roots into a quart jar to be used spoon for spoon like coffee from beans and land far away.

The bitterness is different in dandelion coffee. It is familiar and creamy and it does not make the tongue shrink against astringent thin brew. The smell in winter will be of bare feet caked in dew and sod.