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Many of you may not know this but I LOVE coffee. I mean REALLY LOVE COFFEE. It’s a sickness.

So of course I was very sad to learn that coffee is not good for the adrenal glands. And adrenal gland function is critical for healthy pregnancies, healthy thyroid function, healthy people.

Sigh. So, I’ve successfully cut down my coffee consumption to 1 cup per day. Hoorah! Pretty good, eh? I was doing anywhere from 2-4 cups per day.

But now I think I may have found a way to cut my coffee consumption down to ZERO.

It’s called Dandy Blend. And get this — it’s made from dandelion root! Yes, dandelion — one of the most nutritious weeds you will find. Heck, one of the most nutritious foods you will find.

I’m very curious about this. I just planted a slew of dandelion. To think that I could grow my own coffee!

I was also wondering — how does one live truly sustainably if one has to import coffee from Costa Rica?

Well, one does not have to import coffee from Costa Rica. One can drink Dandy Blend. Or better yet — make one’s one Dandy Blend. (I’ll start with the Dandy Blend — then get around to making my own one day.)

Can you imagine — drinking coffee in the morning that is chock full of minerals and has none of the bad stuff that screws up your adrenal glands? Chicory is another weed that people have used to make a coffee drink. You may have heard of chicory coffee? This is something people have been doing for centuries.

It turns out that the common weeds you find in your back yard and in vacant lots are actually some of the most nutritious foods in the world. I was listening to a speech by Peter Gail, PhD, botanist, weed enthusiast, and owner of Dandy Blend. He named some weeds that have ten times the nutrients of spinach and broccoli (I’ll have to listen again to get the actual names and numbers). He said that three of the plant foods listed on the USDA’s most nutritious are WEEDS.

Dandelion leaves provide vitamins A and C, as well as the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory luteolin. They have more iron and calcium than spinach, and can pretty much be substituted in any cooked spinach dish. Source

There are edible weeds growing all around us — stinging nettle, lamb’s quarters, milkweed, dandelion, pokeweed, purslane, ramps — just to name a few. Instead of spending a lot of money buying expensive organic vegetables, you can just go out in your yard and pick some weeds!

Michael Pollan, in his recent book called “In Defense of Food,” states “Two of the most nutritious plants in the world are weeds — lamb’s quarters and purslane — and some of the healthiest traditional diets, such as the Mediterranean, make frequent use of wild greens.” He goes on to point out that many of the wild greens have “higher levels of various phytochemicals than their domesticated cousins. Why? Because these plants have to defend themselves against pests and disease without any help from us.” Source

According to Dr. Gail, 80% of the weeds in America came from immigrants. They brought these plants and seeds to the new world, for food and medicine. This is fascinating to me. These are the plants we can’t seem to kill. The plants that keep coming back, no matter what we do.

What does that tell you? These plants are hearty and healthy. Harvey Ussery of the Modern Homestead said that the weeds actually come up to heal damaged soil. If they heal the soil, what could they do for us if we ate them? We shouldn’t be killing them — we should be eating them.

I’m so excited about this I can’t even begin to tell you. I’m growing lots of dandelion this season, as well as stinging nettle. Now I want to get some purslane and lamb’s quarters. I can’t wait to incorporate these into my soups and salads and into sausages and meatloaf… think of how much more nutritious the food will be.

I think I’m going to start looking around the neighborhood for weeds. I can do my neighbors a favor and pull their weeds — and bring them back to my garden!

Oh sure, there is the issue of pesticides and herbicides… but Dr. Gail says you can wash 80% of that stuff off — just wash it a few times before you eat it. And don’t eat the roots from plants that have been sprayed. You have to wait three years to eat the roots.

Dr. Gail said that his family lost their father when he was only 9. His mother was beside herself, didn’t know how she would earn a living or feed her family. A friend told her that they could live on lamb’s quarters. And they did! Until she could get a job and earn money to support them. Every morning she’d send the kids out into the yard and they’d harvest what they needed.

Dr. Gail told a lot of other interesting stories. He said that when he was watching the footage of the floods in New Orleans, he thought it was so ironic that these people were waiting for the government to bring them food, and they were standing on food — edible weeds! He also told the story of a concentration camp survivor. Every day when they let him out into the yard, he would bend down and eat some dandelion. Others laughed at him for doing this — but he survived. The nutrition in the weeds helped to supplement the thin gruel he was fed.

Here’s a page with bunch of recipes for edible weeds.

Dr. Gail also has lots of recipes in his cookbooks. You can buy them on his website, along with the Dandy Blend. I’m going to go order the Dandy Blend and the cookbooks today!

If you want to listen to the lecture, you can download the mp3 on the WAPF site. Comment and I’ll direct you to it. It’s $13 to download.