Every spring I make a resolution to work on my edible & medicinal plant identification and actually eat it or try it. I had always read you could eat dandelion leaves. A couple decades ago, while backpacking in Colorado, we ran low on food. I decided to try eating dandelion leaves. I boiled them and found them too bitter to eat. Today, locating some well established patches I took a digging stick and harvested some. I read in a new book, "The Unofficial Hunger Games Wilderness Survival Guide", by Creek Stewart, about boiling & eating the roots. In the past the only references I saw with the roots were as use as a coffee substitute. I washed and scraped them, and tried one raw. It was a little bitter, but not overly. I tried a raw leaf also and it was not overly bitter...yet. I'm sure that later in the season this would change. I boiled the roots in a couple changes of water, till it no longer was green. They were tender, still with a hint of green taste, but not bad. They reminded of some vegetable I've had before. I could eat a quantity of it, if I had something else to eat with it. A little salt or butter would probably be good. The roots were a little small but a large quantity could be harvested in a reasonable period of time.
One principle Mr. Stewart puts forth in his book I like is to concentrate on the 20 % of the plants that you see 80% of the time. There are hundreds of edible plants, but it is better to focus on the ones you see all the time - not the ones that require effort to locate or have poisonous look-alikes.
