Holy crap you have led an interesting life! I use watercolor pencils as my main medium and I want to try and recycle the black walnut husk I get this year to try and make a water soluble medium i can try to incorporate into my work
That's definitely way better than my jankey setup! I hear if you roast the roots they make for a good substitute to coffee but I haven't tried it yet. But I know the tea is amazing
You tried it in more forms than I have. It's actually my next goal to make Mead from it. Hey to each their own. You tried it, you understand it, and it's not for you. Sorry for assuming you didn't.
Have you ever used black walnut husk to create dye before? Because if you have I might need some advice for when they start falling up here
No need to apologize. People often underestimate the power of dandelions. If you wanna try it yourself it's not too difficult.
Separate the roots flowers, and greens (stems and leafs) and chop the roots into poker chip thick slices
Place everything onto baking trays and pop them in the oven at 225 degrees Fahrenheit.
Prop the oven slightly open with something for more airflow. The idea is to dry them without using so much heat you accidentally cook them
Leave them in there and check on them hourly. Different things will dry at different times. You will know they are done when there is zero moisture and they crumble and snap easily in your hands
Grind everything down and mix it all together
You will understand what I mean about dandelions before you even try the tea because your kitchen is going to smell like heaven for the entire day.
Eldritch?! Dried properly prepared tea tastes absolutely nothing like the raw steeped plant. It has an extremely floral, sweet, almost toasted smell to it. I've had a ton of friends try it and they always ask for seconds. It's got a complex almost licorice note to it that you cannot get from a store.
I would not be spending an entire day drying and grinding down a tea if it wasn't so good it was worth it.
It's not a mash. The trick is to dry the plant first. I use my oven at a very low temperature over the course of the day to dehydrate the plant fully then grind it into a powder.
The resulting product is nothing like a normal undried dandelion tea. Most of the people who taste it say it tastes like toasty honey. It's some of the best tea I've ever had.
Check the roots specifically. It's good to check them for a solid id anyway to be safe, they should be pale and slightly s curved. I always check the roots and do the crush and sniff test, just to be safe.
But check the roots. If they're extremely woody and stringy the plant is in its first year phase.
Garlic Mustard has a 2 year cycle so you might be getting it when it's in the stage of its life where it's putting all of it energy into the taproot.
The next time you pull one, check the root. If it's not super woody and stringy, it's probably in that part of the 2 year cycle.
If it is you can still eat it. Toss the greens entirely, just keep the stem. You can grind it into a fresh wasabi-like paste and make something very similar to horseradish sauce with it
I don't know what grows over there but we're most likely from dramatically different biomes