A week on foraged wild food.
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Well that's three good platefuls 
Nutritious too
I think a pressure cooker is another much under-rated bit of kit; especially for cheugh stuff like cheaper cuts of meat, or reducing bones and bits, to stock and jelly. It's very efficient
Thank you for the update
cheers,
M
Nutritious too
I think a pressure cooker is another much under-rated bit of kit; especially for cheugh stuff like cheaper cuts of meat, or reducing bones and bits, to stock and jelly. It's very efficient
Thank you for the update
cheers,
M
you can always replace the mussles and squirrel and hazelnuts and chestnuts or acorn flour dumplings. It it possible to be a foraged veggie, you just have to be very industrious in the autumn. Massive middens of hazelnut shells have been found in britian.
evening Fi, those dishes look the best so far, they could even temp me.
are there many ways to cook mussels ?
are there many ways to cook mussels ?
I just boiled them, shelled the meat out and added them to whatever. I just tried vary the whatever the best I can. I was going to do sorrel sauce tonight if I had to eat them yet again. They can be smoked or pickled to change the flavour. It is january, beggers cant be choosers. To be truthful I have ate more comfortably as the week as gone on. I think I could probably do alright in better weather without the shellfish now, but never know until you try eh!
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as always Fi, awesome work, some really good looking foraged foods, wish i knew as meany plants as you do....
regards.
chris.
regards.
chris.
Heh Fiona, brilliant thread, really enjoying your journey, I guess the parsnips will quell your craving for sweet , but what's your thoughts on vitamins and minerals ? obviously long term.
Stephen
, but what's your thoughts on vitamins and minerals ? obviously long term.Stephen
Heh Fiona, brilliant thread, really enjoying your journey, I guess the parsnips will quell your craving for sweet
Stephen
I don't know. I thought it should be too low in fat soluble vitamins to maintain long term bone health, but according this mushrooms are a good scource of vitamin D. Nuts are very rich in vitamin E, and I presume there is carotenes in parnsips and gorse flowers. I am sure if I kept eating the bladderwrack i could of got a overdose of iodine. apart form the hazel nuts and the 150gms of butter I ate for the whole week there is vertually no fat in the diet. Worms are 10% fatty acids, and mussles are 3%, i dont think there is enough sterols to maintain health. To get a better balance i should been eating more seeds, but most plants have dropped their seeds by this time of year. I am not a nutritionalist.
I'm an old fashioned vegetarian; i.e. pre soya in my dietary balance. The old method was to combine foods together......so nuts and grains, or legumes and grains, though both deficient, together create a whole, kind of thing. This doesn't just work for protein, it works for vitamins and for trace minerals and the like too; one food alone might not provide enough for contniued good health, but added togther they do.
I think it might be surprising how well you're actually doing That you're using pre agricultural produces in the main doesn't detract from the inherant value of the food
I asked about teeth because there's a debate about the corelation between the beginnings of agriculture and the appearance of caries and abcesses. The suggestion is that a lot more people survived because of more, energy rich, food, but that the food stuck to the teeth and helped the formation of plaque which became tartar which allowed gum disease and decay. Just curious
It's baltic here today, -7degC this morning, stay warm
atb,
M
I think it might be surprising how well you're actually doing
That you're using pre agricultural produces in the main doesn't detract from the inherant value of the food I asked about teeth because there's a debate about the corelation between the beginnings of agriculture and the appearance of caries and abcesses. The suggestion is that a lot more people survived because of more, energy rich, food, but that the food stuck to the teeth and helped the formation of plaque which became tartar which allowed gum disease and decay. Just curious
It's baltic here today, -7degC this morning, stay warm
atb,
M
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Toddy, don't you ever get the craving for a rack of lamb or a dish of pigs trotters and mushy peas?
What a great thread, well done to you Xylaria. I have really enjoyed reading about your experiences.
most things I have got from 1 square mile from house, now I know where stuff is i can get a wide selection of food within an hour. The nearest supermarket Aldi is 1.6 miles away, it is 3 and half mile cycle ride there and back. That takes and hour or so to get food from there. I favoured parnsip over bulrush because it is easier to stick your hands in frosty ground and get a root that just needs scrubing than put them a foot under freezing water and get a root that is really quite fiddly to eat. Humans are lazy. there is good reason why we cultivated some plants like parnsips and rasdish and not thistle and bulrush. Greens are very easy to come by, nettles and bittercress grow as weeds in most peoples gardens, hogweed is common on path edges.
I have lost 4lb/ 2kg in wieght. I am not very fit or as slim as i should be. I honestly now think that being fat is not as good as being fit when food is short. When people do selection for special forces they have to endure long periods doing severe amounts of exercise on little or no food, they can go a week without eating, because they are very fit. We could all go a week with eating, it wouldnt kill us it would just make us wish we were dead. fittness is what gives a person the strenght to get out of where they are, or go longer distance to look for food. Fat is just extra weight nobody needs to carry.
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great thread you have inspired me to go foraging a lot more.
I think people tend to miss the point when it comes to living in the woods "properly", and get narky and criticize people for taking shortcuts or having hot chocolates. Humans never sprouted out of the ground and had to adapt to live purely off the land and make all their own tools and clothes before they died of exposure, every tribe in history would have had knowledge of hunting grounds and foraging spots handed down to them as children. When they where young their parents would give them clothes and make them tools when they where old enough to use them, this notion some people have of wandering off into the woods with nothing and living is really crazy!
I know that humans are amazing at surviving in situations when they have nothing but their wits but i really wouldn't wish that on anyone as would be like hell!
I think people tend to miss the point when it comes to living in the woods "properly", and get narky and criticize people for taking shortcuts or having hot chocolates. Humans never sprouted out of the ground and had to adapt to live purely off the land and make all their own tools and clothes before they died of exposure, every tribe in history would have had knowledge of hunting grounds and foraging spots handed down to them as children. When they where young their parents would give them clothes and make them tools when they where old enough to use them, this notion some people have of wandering off into the woods with nothing and living is really crazy!
I know that humans are amazing at surviving in situations when they have nothing but their wits but i really wouldn't wish that on anyone as would be like hell!
I had the hot choclate because I wasnt fit enough/lean enough to do a cycle journey I found pretty easy in middle of summer. Trying to cycle against a bitter wind and forage by paddling in rockpools in january not suprisingly uses up calories. I know now that fittness is better than fatness. fittness is easly excessable energy stores in mussles, fat when it is breaking down makes you feel rubbish.
I only moved here 10 months ago so my knowledge of locale was a bit limited. In wales most of the popultion live close to to the coast. i have done simmerlar before but in the midlands, I was suprised i didnt need to add salt this time as I did in the midlands. Shellfish contained enough. I couldn't find any snails at all in my garden here, but in the midlands I found plenty this time of year, nor woodlice. Finding enough food got easier as the week went on and got to be more efficient with my time.
There people do things like this to learn. I learned i wasn't fit enough, I also had snow capped mountains looming in the distance. I know up there is barren and unforgiving. Knowing you can eat thistle roots and how to prep worms might make a dire sitution, passable someday, but it wont make up for stuffing up in the first place. I also learned shellfish is a reasonable food scource, but bladderwrack isnt, that wild mushrooms contain a useful amount of vitD, squirrels are hard to skin, and that eating the same thing everyday really aint that bad if it is nutritious.
I only moved here 10 months ago so my knowledge of locale was a bit limited. In wales most of the popultion live close to to the coast. i have done simmerlar before but in the midlands, I was suprised i didnt need to add salt this time as I did in the midlands. Shellfish contained enough. I couldn't find any snails at all in my garden here, but in the midlands I found plenty this time of year, nor woodlice. Finding enough food got easier as the week went on and got to be more efficient with my time.
There people do things like this to learn. I learned i wasn't fit enough, I also had snow capped mountains looming in the distance. I know up there is barren and unforgiving. Knowing you can eat thistle roots and how to prep worms might make a dire sitution, passable someday, but it wont make up for stuffing up in the first place. I also learned shellfish is a reasonable food scource, but bladderwrack isnt, that wild mushrooms contain a useful amount of vitD, squirrels are hard to skin, and that eating the same thing everyday really aint that bad if it is nutritious.
very good thread, i really don't know how i missed it until now?!?
regarding the lack of salt&condiments... do you find the food to be bland and unpalatable? or can you enjoy the natural taste of food?
regarding the lack of salt&condiments... do you find the food to be bland and unpalatable? or can you enjoy the natural taste of food?
Salt is more of a dietary requirement, we dont need anywhere near what is eaten in modern foods, but I find if I eat diet of just wild foods the total lack of salt can make me feel quite light headed and queesy. This was the first time I tried this with access to coastal foods, so I didnt lack salt. Wild greens have quite strong flavours they just arent what we are used to. There was the odd day a bit of pepper wouldnt of gone as miss, I used wintercress instead. I did use a teaspoon of chilli oil one day, because it was getting a little dull. The radish roots were quite spicy. On the thursday when I had finshed, I had a chicken curry. Normal parnsips and beet tops are tasteless compared to thier wilder counterparts.
That was a fascinating read, thank you for sharing.
Would love to hear more of your reflections on how you think you could have improved the experience. Say for example, if you knew that you would have to do this again next year, what other preparations and foraged food source preservations would you do in the seasons leading up to it?
Would love to hear more of your reflections on how you think you could have improved the experience. Say for example, if you knew that you would have to do this again next year, what other preparations and foraged food source preservations would you do in the seasons leading up to it?
