On Friday, April 12 the West Lawn Dining Hall featured four dishes with dandelions for the first time. This lunch included dandelion stir fry, dandy muffins and bread, and cookies.
Senior Jon Mark, an environmental science and peace, justice and conflict studies double major, organized this event for a class project. The college’s student club EcoPAX harvested dandelion greens on April 10-11 from campus prairies that have had no pesticides sprayed for the last 2 years (so they are safe for consumption) and AVI Fresh Dining Hall chef Jeremy Corson prepared them for the lunch.
This project is an attempt to “make peace with dandelions.” These dark leafy greens are full of vitamin A, C and K, making them very nutritious. The plant was once known as a cure-all and there are many health effects of eating this plant, if they haven’t been sprayed with pesticides. You can read Goshen College Sustainability Coordinator Glenn Gilbert’s 2012 opinion piece about dandelions here.
Want to learn more about this event? Read more from The Elkhart Truth and on Goshen Commons.