Dandelion tea

  • Look­ing at the weeds com­ing up every­where, I’m aware of the same incli­na­tion I had sev­eral years ago when I wrote this post. Wouldn’t I rather har­vest the sim­ple things God gives than pick up new dain­ties at the store?

    Our over­cast day turned stormy, so it’s a good thing I pulled dan­de­lions yes­ter­day. The neigh­bors might’ve thought I was just being an over­anx­ious gar­dener, but in truth I was try­ing to har­vest enough of the roots to get me through the week.

    Inspired by a book called “Heal­ing Teas,” I’ve been try­ing to have a cup of dan­de­lion tea every morn­ing and evening. It’s not that I nec­es­sar­ily buy the author’s claims that dan­de­lions will help your blood pres­sure and diges­tion. It’s just that I’ve just noticed that sim­ple, home­grown things make me feel bet­ter than mass-produced things with 300 ingre­di­ents. So this is just some­thing I’m try­ing for a month.

    I’ve never been the kind of per­son who har­vests dan­de­lion roots, and Greg is look­ing askance at this whole project. I see the way he eyes the floppy bunches of pulled dan­de­lions on the counter and know he’s won­der­ing if I’ll start wear­ing earth shoes and say­ing “far out” next.

    I could put his mind at ease if I could say exactly why I’m both­er­ing with this, but I don’t quite know. I actu­ally think it’s tied in with the need more and more peo­ple have felt to get into survivalism.

    Accord­ing to the New York Times (via Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Con­ser­v­a­tive blog HERE), more peo­ple are show­ing an inter­est in doing whatever’s nec­es­sary to be able to get along if soci­ety no longer pro­vides abun­dant food, shel­ter and protection:

    Faced with a con­flu­ence of diverse threats — a tank­ing econ­omy, a hous­ing cri­sis, loom­ing envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ters, and a sharp spike in oil prices — peo­ple who do not con­sider them­selves extrem­ists are start­ing to dis­cuss dooms­day mea­sures once asso­ci­ated with the social fringes.

    They stock­pile or grow food in case of a sup­ply break­down, or buy pre­cious met­als in case of eco­nomic col­lapse. Some try to take their houses off the elec­tric­ity grid, or plan safe houses far away. The point is not to drop out of soci­ety, but to be pre­pared in case the future turns out like some­thing out of “An Incon­ve­nient Truth,” if not “Mad Max.”

    That sounds a lit­tle extreme. Per­son­ally, I’m not that scared about our future. What­ever comes along, I don’t envi­sion us all sud­denly turn­ing into rav­aging thugs. But I don’t nec­es­sar­ily think things can stay the way they’ve been, either. Rod Dreher put it like this:

    Seri­ously. I think it is, or should be, becom­ing more appar­ent to sen­si­ble peo­ple that the high-wire act we’ve been act­ing out is com­ing to an end. That doesn’t mean Apoc­a­lypse Pretty Soon, but it does mean that we should be think­ing about new and more sus­tain­able ways of liv­ing at every level.

    Bingo and hooray! I hated to be the only per­son out there think­ing this. I’m not start­ing to get in touch with my inner gar­dener out of a sense of impend­ing chaos any more than I’m doing it out of the sec­u­lar ecologist’s sense of Gaia wor­ship. But when I look at what Amer­i­can soci­ety has become, I see a lot of bro­ken­ness that is held in place with the incred­i­ble wealth this coun­try has enjoyed. For all I know, we can all go on for many more gen­er­a­tions just liv­ing off the moral and finan­cial cap­i­tal of our fore­fa­thers (and, for that mat­ter, our fathers and moth­ers) who really knew how to get by with less, how to coax a liv­ing out of the earth and how to take only what they could use. We might all be able to live off their largesse for some time.

    But that’s not really the point, and I sup­pose it’s the rea­son I’m mak­ing my mod­est attempt to con­sume what God has pro­vided in my front yard in such abun­dance. The life of the 21st cen­tury Amer­i­can is expen­sive, busy and unre­lent­ingly inter­ac­tive. Vir­tu­ally none of us make our own food, cloth­ing or shel­ter. We don’t pro­vide our own enter­tain­ment or tell our own sto­ries. (One of the many rea­sons I love the Ortho­dox Church is because it shows peo­ple that they don’t need trained singers and a lot of stu­dio musi­cians to hear beau­ti­ful music.) If the finan­cial priv­i­lege we’ve all enjoyed were to change dras­ti­cally, would we be at all equipped to make do with less? Do we have the slight­est idea how to go to God’s cre­ation for our food, drink and even for our med­i­cine? It might never come to that, but then again, it might.

    Even if it doesn’t, isn’t it time I back away from being a mass con­sumer? There doesn’t seem like any joy in it, or any future, other than guar­an­tee­ing that I stay in the rat race.

    That’s a lot to have in mind while I sip on a cup of slightly nasty tea. I don’t want to make a lot out of it. It’s just some­thing I’ve been think­ing about.

    What the heck. It couldn’t hurt and at the very least, I’ll have worked off some calo­ries and weeded the garden.


    Related posts:

    1. Fri­day tea report
    2. Bush tea and the snif­fles with Mma Ramotswe
    3. The morn­ing after — ahhh.
    4. How will it be with us in the future life?
    5. “See­ing the evil of a tech­no­log­i­cal society”

    April 17th, 2008 | Grace | 5 Comments |

5 Responses and Counting...

  • DebD 04.17.2008

    I think its a great idea. For many years (before Crunchy Con was even a book or word) I along with many of my fel­low home­school­ers were try­ing to find way to eat closer to the source (or make myself). I didn’t really do it for health rea­sons or because I thought the world was com­ing to an end, but because it seemed like the right thing to do — even if I couldn’t quite put it into words. But, for all that I’m rather incon­sis­tent because I still love a trip to KFC’s on occasion.

    I thought it was funny that you brought up dan­de­lion tea as I was just talk­ing yes­ter­day to a friend about my grandmother’s Dan­de­lion Wine recipe that I thought would be fun to give a try.

  • Grace

    I like Rod’s phrase “new and more sus­tain­able ways of liv­ing at every level.” That sort of evens out all the unknow­able vari­ables. But yes, like you’re say­ing, it just seems like a good idea.

    Per­son­ally, I don’t imag­ine that I’ll make it some 100% solu­tion (wher­ever he is in the house right now, Greg breathes a sigh of relief). So those KFC trips are still in my future. (10 days to Pascha! :-) )

  • Mimi

    Yes, I very much agree, our yearn­ing for liv­ing and eat­ing close to the land is very much tied up in the fact that I believe that all of cre­ation rejoices in the Lord, and that he has cared for us.

    When I was expect­ing, my iron lev­els were low, and I drank net­tle tea. Which was yummy at the time, but I’ve had it since and didn’t like it. I think you crave what you need.

  • DebD

    Mimi — that was lovely.

    Grace — I must apol­o­gize for the ter­ri­ble gram­mar in my com­ment — ugh. And I home­skool too.

  • Grace

    Bad gram­mar: I didn’t even notice. But then, I went to *pub­lic school.* :-)

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