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You don't need all that fat to make greens taste good. Try marinated Kale salad using half and half lemon juice and good olive oil with a bunch of minced or chopped garlic and salt and pepper. Maybe add in some herbs too. Let the dressing sit on the kale or other dark greens for 30 minutes or so. I think it tastes yummy and the greens are a lot easier to chew. They taste great because the flavor from the dressing has absorbed into them. You could even throw in some orange slices, a peach or a mango for a lot more flavor.
Also protein is WAY over-rated. Too much protein harms your kidneys. You need your kidneys to filter out cellular waste. You can get all the protein you need in a day from about six raw almonds.
If you are a waif...And the RDA is a minimum. And I am one that does not eat meat at every meal or even every day, but some of us need to grow antlers and rut ya know.
You don't need all that fat to make greens taste good. Try marinated Kale salad using half and half lemon juice and good olive oil with a bunch of minced or chopped garlic and salt and pepper. Maybe add in some herbs too. Let the dressing sit on the kale or other dark greens for 30 minutes or so. I think it tastes yummy and the greens are a lot easier to chew. They taste great because the flavor from the dressing has absorbed into them. You could even throw in some orange slices, a peach or a mango for a lot more flavor.
I think you missed the point. I was addressing the other poster's comments about wild edibles in hardship or emergency situations, and making wild edibles more palatable to our modern palates (or to someone like me who prefers meat and potatoes). Butter neither enhances nor complements flavor in all wilds, and neither does olive oil, lard, etc. For me it's about finding palatable combinations using what I grow and raise, and in survival situations you may not have any choice but to use what you produce yourself.
I'm most interested in sustainable food and native wilds are the only truly sustainable food, IMO, but I have to find ways of making them more palatable to me, and to find new uses for them so that I want to eat them and they become a part of daily life, not exclusive to emergency situations. Conventional recipes are too few and not very good, or not good enough. Any native edibles that we don't have already are slated to be added so that we'll have [mostly] maintenance-free native edibles on our land year round. Otherwise, I would not consider myself self-sufficient. We cultivate the typical fruits and vegetables too but they require a lot of maintenance which we may not always be able to do.
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Originally Posted by emilybh
You can get all the protein you need in a day from about six raw almonds.
Maybe you can but I could not. That wouldn't be enough protein to sustain me. I would lose muscle and I can't afford to lose any flesh.
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Originally Posted by emilybh
I have since posting contacted the Clemson Extension office and emailed in pictures of weeds I was wondering about.
Do you do anything with them besides eat them fresh? Other than fresh, in salads, etc., I have used paw paws in bread (a lot like banana bread), and dehydrated sliced persimmon. I've never had enough at one time to do more than that. My plan is to add the local native paw paw and persimmon varieties on my land.
It wouldn't hurt you to plant a few flowers. Your soul needs feeding, too, and a bit of beauty can be a spirit-lifter.
Advice from someone who grows fruit: the bees must be fed for most of the year, not just when the fruit trees are blooming. If you want your fruit and veg pollinated, you will do better if you provide something for the bees to eat during the times that your food plants have finsihed blooming.
If there is lots for them to eat most of the year, the bees will stick around your place and be there when you need them.
Your local native plants provide habitat for native pollinators. Adding native habitat will keep pollinators around.
I do get a bit frustrated with so many "gardening" sites and forums dedicated to ornamental gardening instead of edibles and beneficials. I have several "flowers" in my food garden; but they are either edible in themselves or have some other utlilitarian benefit they're not there just to be pretty.
Same here. I just finished making essential oil with Gardenia blossoms a couple of weeks ago for homeopathic purposes.
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Originally Posted by MissingAll4Seasons
Food & cover crops are pretty to me --- nothing says that utility can't be beautiful
I think you missed the point. I was addressing the other poster's comments about wild edibles in hardship or emergency situations, and making wild edibles more palatable to our modern palates (or to someone like me who prefers meat and potatoes). Butter neither enhances nor complements flavor in all wilds, and neither does olive oil, lard, etc. For me it's about finding palatable combinations using what I grow and raise, and in survival situations you may not have any choice but to use what you produce yourself.
I'm most interested in sustainable food and native wilds are the only truly sustainable food, IMO, but I have to find ways of making them more palatable to me, and to find new uses for them so that I want to eat them and they become a part of daily life, not exclusive to emergency situations. Conventional recipes are too few and not very good, or not good enough. Any native edibles that we don't have already are slated to be added so that we'll have [mostly] maintenance-free native edibles on our land year round. Otherwise, I would not consider myself self-sufficient. We cultivate the typical fruits and vegetables too but they require a lot of maintenance which we may not always be able to do.
Maybe you can but I could not. That wouldn't be enough protein to sustain me. I would lose muscle and I can't afford to lose any flesh.
Making wild food palatable is often pretty easy. Making cultivated food is sometimes difficult. For example I once served bark of Malus to my guests and was surprised they hated it since they said they like things made with apple. OK that's a joke but that is most of the problem. We take for granted when and which part with cultivated food forgetting that the when and which part was already done for us.
Take dandelions for example. Compare the bitter green for salad in the summer. It will be bitter. I am used to it and can chew on a leave with my tolerance for it, but I know its no ice cream sundae. Most of the time I use it as a pot herb if they are shade grown in the summer.
Now consider another way. Take a plot of dandelion in the early spring before they emerge . Pile on 3 inches of leaf litter. Since its not exposed to light, just like potatoes, the plant's defenses are not bred to activate, which in this case is bitterness. The white crown that develops will be as mild as brockley in any cooked dish., or very close to it. Is that as difficult as beans or peas? I think not since you really only have a 48 hour ideal window before those start to have fiber problems.
One thing I do with dandelion crown is to shred them to precipitate grit. The shredded dandelion floats and I generally get around the worst aspect of dandelion crowns in this way. However the bitterness is water soluble and this makes it even more mild.
On the other hand you can just eat A. redbud blossom, locust blossoms, or young basewood right off the tree for example.
As far as adapting recipes its no big deal for anyone who cooks from scratch. I use acorn starch like corn starch, burdoc stalk and sow thistle for "spinach artichoke dip", goose berries for lemon juice, mulberry raisins, and nightshade berry pie in lieu of ground cherries. I will be having a Touraine region inspired stew made with service berries this evening. Or maybe it was the Native Americans that inspired it.....
Oh and you lettuce growers, ever have lettuce bolt? Cut the immature stalk and peel it. Get to it before it seeds. Blanch in boiling water about 5 minutes and try it with a little butter. You might even start letting that lettuce bolt. So as with lettuce you also have a timing issue and a bad mind set issue that its not a vegetable suitable for cooking....au contraire, its a gourmet cooked vegetable.The meristem is your friend.
Making wild food palatable is often pretty easy. Making cultivated food is sometimes difficult. For example I once served bark of Malus to my guests and was surprised they hated it since they said they like things made with apple. OK that's a joke but that is most of the problem. We take for granted when and which part with cultivated food forgetting that the when and which part was already done for us.
Take dandelions for example. Compare the bitter green for salad in the summer. It will be bitter. I am used to it and can chew on a leave with my tolerance for it, but I know its no ice cream sundae. Most of the time I use it as a pot herb if they are shade grown in the summer.
Now consider another way. Take a plot of dandelion in the early spring before they emerge . Pile on 3 inches of leaf litter. Since its not exposed to light, just like potatoes, the plant's defenses are not bred to activate, which in this case is bitterness. The white crown that develops will be as mild as brockley in any cooked dish., or very close to it. Is that as difficult as beans or peas? I think not since you really only have a 48 hour ideal window before those start to have fiber problems.
One thing I do with dandelion crown is to shred them to precipitate grit. The shredded dandelion floats and I generally get around the worst aspect of dandelion crowns in this way. However the bitterness is water soluble and this makes it even more mild.
On the other hand you can just eat A. redbud blossom, locust blossoms, or young basewood right off the tree for example.
As far as adapting recipes its no big deal for anyone who cooks from scratch. I use acorn starch like corn starch, burdoc stalk and sow thistle for "spinach artichoke dip", goose berries for lemon juice, mulberry raisins, and nightshade berry pie in lieu of ground cherries.
Depends on how you define palatable. If you mean acceptable, then yes it doesn't take much for me to be able to eat something I don't have an acquired taste for. I should have used the word 'delicious' rather than palatable. Some things I will never find delicious using conventional wisdom; creativity is required. I have always cooked everything from scratch so I agree that it's not difficult to make anything acceptable. It's more difficult though to make it delicious especially if using only ingredients that I produce myself, on my land, which is what I have been working on.
I don't grow dandelions. They are highly invasive and destructive. There are too many negatives associated with it - honey bees, for example, prefer dandelions to many fruit tree blossoms. I'd rather have them working my orchards.
I have been taking note of your excellent information (and photos!) on eating wild edibles. Fascinating, really. However, some of those you mentioned are not native North American wild edibles, but rather foreign noxious invasive edibles, and don't grow in my area anyway - definitely not on my property. They aren't my thing and I don't want them on my property so I have no need to experiment with destructive weed cuisine. It's not a viable long term self-sufficient strategy *for me*. I don't forage other properties, public or private, because that's an unreliable food source over which I have zero control - the same as relying on the grocery store, imo. There is no need; we've been growing and raising most of our food for several years (which is why we can't risk allowing foreign invasives to invade), and also making use of the native wild edibles that were here already and slowly introducing those that weren't here. But I appreciate the info on the foreign invasives and do retain it because one never knows...I might need it someday.
Recipes for many of the U.S. *native* (not foreign) wild edibles are 19th century and older, when dumping lots of sugar and fat on everything was common just to make them acceptable. I can do better than that. Our culture has more information on preparing foreign destructive invasive edibles than we do about our own native wild edibles -- native edibles which fell out of favor over a hundred years ago because they weren't fashionable so native wild edible cuisine has not evolved.
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Originally Posted by gwynedd1
I will be having a Touraine region inspired stew made with service berries this evening. Or maybe it was the Native Americans that inspired it.....
Fruit is certainly typical of the hearty peasant-style small game stews of Touraine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by gwynedd1
Oh and you lettuce growers, ever have lettuce bolt? Cut the immature stalk and peel it. Get to it before it seeds. Blanch in boiling water about 5 minutes and try it with a little butter. You might even start letting that lettuce bolt. So as with lettuce you also have a timing issue and a bad mind set issue that its not a vegetable suitable for cooking....au contraire, its a gourmet cooked vegetable.The meristem is your friend.
Absolutely. I just eat it fresh since I harvest it before it gets tough and bitter with age.
Depends on how you define palatable. If you mean acceptable, then yes it doesn't take much for me to be able to eat something I don't have an acquired taste for.
I am talking about gourmet quality food.
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I should have used the word 'delicious' rather than palatable. Some things I will never find delicious using conventional wisdom; creativity is required. I have always cooked everything from scratch so I agree that it's not difficult to make anything acceptable. It's more difficult though to make it delicious especially if using only ingredients that I produce myself, on my land, which is what I have been working on.
You'd have to define the species, item harvested, and the method of preparation. There are famine foods, but these are not the same as "wild food", "feral food", "not cultivated", "naturalized" and so on. A lot of "wild food" like parsnip, garlic mustard and sow thistle are escaped possibly ancient food crops. Others were "wild" but clearly under selective pressure like Paw Paw.
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I don't grow dandelions. They are highly invasive and destructive. There are too many negatives associated with it - honey bees, for example, prefer dandelions to many fruit tree blossoms. I'd rather have them working my orchards.
They are invasive with an asterix * . I rarely see them in forests or tall grass prairies. I actually have trouble finding them in quantity because they only appear in routinely mowed lawns without broad leaf herbacides. Those seem quite rare these days.
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I have been taking note of your excellent information (and photos!) on eating wild edibles. Fascinating, really. However, some of those you mentioned are not native North American wild edibles, but rather foreign noxious invasive edibles, and don't grow in my area anyway - definitely not on my property.
Milkweed and lambs quarters are certainly native as are service berries, basewoods, choke cherry, and wild lettuce. I don't mention some natives like solomon's seal, false solomon's seal, trout lily, jack-in the pulpit, because those are under some stress as is usual for slow growing perennials . I eat the invasive more for that reason. I do take small amounts on rare occasions on any know colonies that I have in the past encouraged to grow.
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They aren't my thing and I don't want them on my property so I have no need to experiment with destructive weed cuisine.
I have removed thousands of garlic mustard plants by eating them. I am what you would call one of the few native pests that eats it.
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It's not a viable long term self-sufficient strategy *for me*.
The issue was over the oft misconception that wild food lacks palatability. Pole beans are not even commercially grown because they don't all produce at once for convenient mechanization. Zinfandels was a case of good luck, rather than rubber strawberries. In the case of Zinfindel, the thick skin makes for a jammy red. However the reason was that during prohibition, personal wine making meant shipping grapes. That is why one finds old vine Zinfindel as opposed to thin skinned Pinot Nior. What wild food lacks is slow maturing, slow ripening, shipping ability, mechanized harvest potential and so on.
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I don't forage other properties, public or private, because that's an unreliable food source over which I have zero control -
You have zero control now. Surely you are aware of blight? You think you can out do an a 100 biological systems determined to survive? They try to kill Amaranths and still can't do it. On the other hand I could make a grain out of it, if I were desperate. I don't even include water plants that I tend not to use due to them being the recipients of run off. However cattails is life....if that is what you are looking for. The subject is however on palatability as I recall. Now cattail pollen is delicious as are the hearts in water I trust. Never made the flour but I am told its of the highest quality. Its just labor intensive.
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the same as relying on the grocery store, imo. There is no need; we've been growing and raising most of our food for several years (which is why we can't risk allowing foreign invasives to invade), and also making use of the native wild edibles that were here already and slowly introducing those that weren't here. But I appreciate the info on the foreign invasives and do retain it because one never knows...I might need it someday.
Its only a tool in the shed. I do not eat all wild food. Its a supplement. However it really only lacks for calorie density. All you need is one high calories staple and wild food will sustain all other nutrient requirements. If you had to make do with a crop of just potato or parsnip. Wild food can if needed do the rest rather easily. In some cases with acorn, cattails and wild parsnip, you can even have a calories surplus.
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Recipes for many of the U.S. *native* (not foreign) wild edibles are 19th century and older, when dumping lots of sugar and fat on everything was common just to make them acceptable. I can do better than that. Our culture has more information on preparing foreign destructive invasive edibles than we do about our own native wild edibles -- native edibles which fell out of favor over a hundred years ago because they weren't fashionable so native wild edible cuisine has not evolved.
You need to source contemporary wild food authors or know how to adapt them. When I was 11 time zones away they didn't have corn starch for thickener. Being well aware that rice flour was used for that purpose, I ground up grains of rice. And again I eat nanny berries, black raspberries, choke cherry, aronia, hazelnut, black walnut and a whole host of native plants. I eat the invasive's because they are what we should be eating most of all. I only help propagate the natives.
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Fruit is certainly typical of the hearty peasant-style small game stews of Touraine.
That is why I like peasant food. What is for dinner is already answered by what is at hand. With a forest full of garlic mustard, I made lots of room with pesto and horseradish sauce.
So in short rather than believe your own initial impressions, or even argue with me, I'd suggest you look into people who actually utilize wild plants. It will fit differently with different people. Some are survivalists, others are herbalists more or less in pharmacology as opposed edibles.
As for me I don't really view native or non native for the sake of purity. I use Mullein for tea but don't see it out of balance with a plant here and there without the sense I need to eradicate it. With garlic mustard I eat liberally and removed much of it from my property. I also simply remove buck thorn as much as time allows.
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Absolutely. I just eat it fresh since I harvest it before it gets tough and bitter with age.
See that is just may point. Its not too tough, its just a pot herb and a cooked vegetable. I even make lettuce soup, mostly from wild lettuce, but its actually a recipe designed for domesticated.
I have removed thousands of garlic mustard plants by eating them. I am what you would call one of the few native pests that eats it.
Don't let the government catch wind of that... they'll be out at your place with either government trappers or clever geneticists who can disguise water hemlock as garlic mustard.
Don't let the government catch wind of that... they'll be out at your place with either government trappers or clever geneticists who can disguise water hemlock as garlic mustard.
No need. They have already encouraged people to plant pretty, toxic ornamentals . Thus they have already started a selective breeding program to eliminate or punish children with this potential. It has already dropped to the 9th most common poisoning of children from 4th. The successful alienation of nature and the association of plants with food is going in the right direction. Settle for lawn, or PCB industrial fill growing lily of the valley and yew. Big Ag is there for you.
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