I recently came across this delicious and healing recipe for dandelion syrup. I have made dandelion wine before so I know how many dandelions you need to pick for such a recipe. It is best to have a lovely field with no dogs or pesticides anywhere near it. It is a lovely way to spend a spring day, picking lovely bright yellow dandelion blossoms, and preparing them to make syrup or jelly. I found this recipe on Ewa In the Garden’s website, she gives a good description of the wonderful properties of dandelion for detox, plus lots of lovely photos showing the various steps for preparing the syrup. I have changed her recipe slightly to use honey instead of sugar. Please follow this link to the original recipe.

• 2 c dandelion petals
• 1 orange
• freshly pressed juice of 1 lemon
• 4 c water
• 1 c honey

Method:
Pick flowers and let sit for an hour so any bugs can run away. Rinse lightly in cold water and remove petals from the green stem. Pour the water over the petals, add the orange, including peel and boil for 15 to 20 minutes, let stand for 24 hours and then strain. You can boil the liquid more to make a thicker syrup if you like. (Oranges and lemons are optional.)

Most of the people consider dandelion as humble or persistent weed and not many know that Taraxacum officinale is one of the oldest and safest medicinal herbs.

Syrup or jelly made of dandelion is very delicate and surprisingly tasty as well.

One of the function is Dandelion is helping in home herbal detox. Spring is the best time to clean the body from toxins, so, go out and pick them from your garden – if you don’t use pesticides. Another choice could be remote meadow in environmentally clean area. Pick the flowers in the sunny mid-day, when they are fully open.

This is how you start to make your own Taraxacum officinale syrup called Pissenlit (literally “wet the bed” in French). It is used because of its duretic effiect – it contains high level of potassium salts, which is replacing the lost potassium from the body. Note that if you use other diuretics, you loose potassium, which has to be supplemented in another ways.

Dandelion is rich in minerals: calcium, iron, magnesium, manganese, phosphorous, potassium, selenium, zinc, vitamins B1, B2, B3, C. It contains more carotene than carrots. –Ewa in the Garden