Milk,
bread, and potatoes during the summer became our chief, and often
for months, our only fare. As to tea and sugar, they were luxuries
we could not think of, although I missed the tea very much; we rang
the changes upon peppermint and sage, taking the one herb at our
breakfast, the other at our tea, until I found an excellent
substitute for both in the root of the dandelion.
The first year we came to this country, I met with an account of
dandelion coffee, published in the New York Albion, given by a Dr.
Harrison, of Edinburgh, who earnestly recommended it as an article
of general use.
"It possesses," he says, "all the fine flavour and exhilarating
properties of coffee, without any of its deleterious effects. The
plant being of a soporific nature, the coffee made from it when
drank at night produces a tendency to sleep, instead of exciting
wakefulness, and may be safely used as a cheap and wholesome
substitute for the Arabian berry, being equal in substance and
flavour to the best Mocha coffee."
I was much struck with this paragraph at the time, and for several
years felt a great inclination to try the Doctor's coffee; but
something or other always came in the way, and it was put off till
another opportunity. During the fall of '35, I was assisting my
husband in taking up a crop of potatoes in the field, and observing
a vast number of fine dandelion roots among the potatoes, it brought
the dandelion coffee back to my memory, and I determined to try some
for our supper. Without saying anything to my husband, I threw aside
some of the roots, and when we left work, collecting a sufficient
quantity for the experiment, I carefully washed the roots quite
clean, without depriving them of the fine brown skin which covers
them, and which contains the aromatic flavour, which so nearly
resembles coffee that it is difficult to distinguish it from it
while roasting.
I cut my roots into small pieces, the size of a kidney-bean, and
roasted them on an iron baking-pan in the stove-oven, until they
were as brown and crisp as coffee. I then ground and transferred
a small cupful of the powder to the coffee-pot, pouring upon it
scalding water, and boiling it for a few minutes briskly over the
fire. The result was beyond my expectations. The coffee proved
excellent - far superior to the common coffee we procured at the
stores.
To persons residing in the bush, and to whom tea and coffee are
very expensive articles of luxury, the knowledge of this valuable
property of a plant scattered so abundantly through their fields,
would prove highly beneficial. For years we used no other article;
and my Indian friends who frequented the house gladly adopted the
root, and made me show them the whole process of manufacturing it
into coffee.
