A mouthful of lion teeth

I love walks this time of year, when I can enjoy the less-manicured lawns speckled with bright yellow freckles. Those flecks inspired me to post about something I haven't featured often. (Just this once!) That's right: It's dandelion day!

If you don't like freckles (and you haven't poisoned yours), there's a range of old-timey options (aside from the dandelion fritters above). A lot of them are kind of similar to hot spinach salad recipes, taming the bitterness with unctuous and salty bacon, like this other specialty from the National Grange Bicentennial Year Cookbook (1975):

I'm skeptical because I've seen a lot of stroganoff recipes that are overly emphatic about not boiling the sour cream. (If you boil the sour cream, it will curdle and your firstborn son, disgusted by your lack of cooking skills, will grow up to become a drifter who only calls when he needs bail money!) Maybe in this recipe the flour stabilizes the dressing so the boiling doesn't matter, but the other cookbooks make me feel like this method is so risky it might be the '70s housewife equivalent of skydiving. 

Favorite Recipes of America: Vegetables Including Fruits (1968) offers a much simpler and more sedate hot dandelion dish:

Or there's Scalloped Dandelions, in case you'd prefer dandelion greens in a bacon-dripping-and-vinegar sauce with hard-boiled eggs to, say, layers of cheesy potatoes in a more traditional scallop...

If you prefer dandelions in a sweeter form, Cook Book: Favorite Recipes from Our Best Cooks (Ladies Prayer Band, Bonds Chapel Church, ca. 1976) offers this toast topper from the flowers rather than the greens:

Of course, I couldn't write this post without the reason dandelions were a prized commodity 40-some years before this next cookbook was written. Poorer Prohibition-era families might have gone for this simple recipe from Going Wild in the Kitchen (Gertrude Parke, 1965):

Families with extra money for some oranges and raisins might have gone for this more elaborate recipe:

Either way, they would have a bit of liquid sunshine to enjoy all year... It might come in especially handy on nights when they were getting called for bail money again. 

Life could have been so different if mom hadn't boiled the damn sour cream, but at least dandelion wine might make it all bearable.