Dilicious food / no supplies. Is it possible?

[Demonwolf444]

Okay so hypothetical situation.

Me and a friend or a couple of friends might bush out for a day or two on some permission of ours, and this got me to thinking. I am a good cook, and from the most uninspiring ingredients can generally come up with things that are pretty good eats! While this is well and good when in the comfort of a well equipped kitchen where i can easily just grab some salt and pepper and anything else from an endless list of cupboard lurking condiments i think i would be hard pressed to create a bushcraft meal that was genuinely tasty without packing in ingredients.

Time frame would be this time of year, and we have permission to shoot and forage to our hearts extent on the land.
Things i would be packing anyway would be, flour, baking soda, dried fruits, nuts, oatmeal, salt, sugar,bacon. This is mainly to practice making jonnycakes and bannocks and such like, just for fun. But my question is does the forest provide enough to not only for food, but for delicious food.

My thought is the best chance of getting decent flavor in the woods is going to be a slow cooked stew of rabbit or pigeon or both. I trust my identification skills and pocket books enough to collect some wild mushrooms and some wild garlic, but aside from filling the pot with mushrooms and meat, what else could be added for flavour. In a kitchen i would be throwing in every vegetable in sight, carrots, potato, tomato, onion, garlic, left over stock, beer, into the pot. But i would be interested to know from those more experienced woodsmen if they think they could source alternatives from the land.

I know i couldn't and likely i will pack in a load of stuff to cook because its only a short stay and I'm in good shape!

What do you guys think you could do?

 

[GGTBod]

This time of year you've got wild

Morels, nettles, st george mushrooms, hop shoots and young hawthorn leaves and dandelion flowers, fairy ring champignon, wild parsnips grow everywhere in britain and as you have permission you can dig up plants by the roots so they can go in the pot, add that to rabbit and bacon and i wanna come with you

 

[Demonwolf444]

That's interesting to me and it gives me a basis to form some ID research, thank you for the response. In some peoples mind bushcraft is a "survival" skill, but to me with my upbringing, survival is not particularly the challenge, i know and trust my ability to hunt and start fires, thus for a short period of time surviving does not appear to be a challenge. But survival in comfort relative to what we consider comfort nowadays is the challenge and one of those things is good food.

While i know i can catch fish, and shoot and set traps with a decent rate of success, at the end of the day i go home and cook it in my well provisioned kitchen. What i am doubtful off is an ability to use natural resources as my larder. So its interesting to hear someone with a much greater knowledge of edible plant life address this same issue. Its immediately clear that my knowledge of wild food is lacking, and i think it would be interesting and beneficial for me to learn more, i will start by researching the things you have listed above. Thanks for your response!

 

[GGTBod]

I love to learn about this stuff too and the info is always better shared, i wouldn't say i have a better knowledge than yourself just different aspects of the same game and goals, i also don't ever want to be in a survival situation if it can be avoided, our ancestors who hunted and gathered were never at risk of losing their lives as they provided for themselves fully with hard work and local knowledge living season to season and using every resource they could gain access to.

i plan to eventually return to that life completely, once fully confident and totally capable physically and mentally i plan to pack in my call centre job, sell all my possessions that own me that i am not taking with me and give up my apartment and return to a nomadic way of life living by the seasons, i just got back this afternoon from spending the week living in the forest and i really did not want to come back to my battery human cage in the city, i was meant to be a free range animal and the quicker i get back to that the more of my sanity i will take with me.

Currently after 5 days of it i am totally exhausted, our ancestors were hardcore mofo's for sure, next friday i will go back to the forest and see how long i can last, like yourself i take things foodwise to enhance what i may acquire from nature, just cos we are wild does not mean i am sitting there chewing on raw meat like rabid dog, i want to eat like a king, just a free range king not a spoon fed incipient zombie who pushes buttons and flicks switches of convenience in exchange for currency that i work to acquire in a soulless job i despise being a character in someone elses dream.

If you are near a coastline the bounty quadruples with several clams from the regular to the razor variety and muscles, whelks, scallops, cockles, lobster and crabs and even limpets if you are in a tight spot (rubbery as hell unless cooked for hours in liquid) and several seaweeds add the coastline plants you can make a 5 course banquet with a few of those things you've brought from home and whatever you catch on land and you got some serious surf and turf action.

If i could move properly i'd go back out there now as each time i come back the city seems louder and more in my face than before and the people seem that bit more shallow and hollow sorry i mean trendy (what is going on with the big hair and fake eyelashes and eyebrows that look like they are balancing caterpillars?***? lol), i don't own a tv is it coming from the idiots lantern? I dunno.

It is gonna take me at least a week to recover from the week i have just done, firework has a whole different meaning when it comes to outdoor living in luxury, if my land hunting fails me i find the nearest farmer and if i have currency i ask to buy goods and if i haven't i offer to trade labour for provisions, both are readily accepted by nearly every farmer i've ever met, couple of hours graft for a couple of big steaks and a few other bits and bobs is worth every bead of sweat.

Over this week just gone i found the best sausages i have ever eaten in my life from a local farmer, pure beef from free range cows that i nearly got stampeded by getting across their free range field, they were amazing, my mouth is watering just remembering let alone looking at the picture, if your theoretical scenario goes ahead let me know how it goes, we all learn from each other as hunters and gatherers



btw that is a 12 inch skillet

 

[northumbrian]

be carefull when collecting wild parsnips - http://www.hortweek.com/news/1206987/Wild-parsnip-poses-new-threat/ _ http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/atoz/pastinaca_sativa.htm - don't let this put you off as the roots are nice to eat ! lol.

cheers Andrew.

 

[xylaria]

Thanks for the links, but the first article from horticulture magazine is an awful bit of journalism that is more fear with erroneous facts. Parsnip is more of problem in the summer, the burns need strong sunlight to develop.

Making meals with just wild food you soon find out why salt and spices where so valued in the past. Quite a few brassica seeds a d flowers are spicy, dried powdered bladderwrack is closest to salt and some throughly identified umbellifers can pass off cumin seed. But our palettes are used to quite a bit of added seasoning.

 

[British Red]

Making meals with just wild food you soon find out why salt and spices where so valued in the past.

Just that! There are some good wild spices - around here horseradish is the thing - but there are not may in any one place and season

 

[GGTBod]

I always have a few airtight tubs of seasoning as part of my essential kit, just cos we are wild eating doesn't mean we need to eat like animals a little salt now and then really brings out other flavours in wild meats just as much as it does in supermarket drugged meats, can't beat a small box of couscous on hand either, my main goal cooking outdoors is to fill the belly with food i can turn into good useful energy and it helps me and anyone with me to eat a belly full if it is delicious and nutritious and more than just meat is essential for proper energy.

With things like wild parsnips/nettles i never worry about the burn sap or stings, i'm always wearing gloves when gathering and the tops are cut away and discarded after flagging my attention before i dig up the roots, not exactly got the sun to complete the problem very often up here either, i'm sure if i found a wild honeybee hive i'd not stop a few stings from me having some honey. Some wild food has a few obstacles between you and the pot.

I read a great thing years ago that made me go ahhhhhh

"Every single herb and vegetable we see in the supermarket derived from a wild foraged plant"

I was brought up in city life depended on the convenience of society and that was one of the phrases that sat in my brain kicking doors down.

 

[Goatboy]

be carefull when collecting wild parsnips - http://www.hortweek.com/news/1206987/Wild-parsnip-poses-new-threat/ _ http://www.thepoisongarden.co.uk/atoz/pastinaca_sativa.htm - don't let this put you off as the roots are nice to eat ! lol.

cheers Andrew.

In his book Fire Making Apparatus, Walter Hough talks of the Inuit peoples using the fibre threads from dried wild parsnips as a form of tinder in their fire lighting kits. Must say until I read it I hadn't thought of trying it. As I've eaten all my parsnips just now I'll have to wait to get some more to try it. I imagine the gnarled wild ones will be more fibrous.

 

[xylaria]

Just that! There are some good wild spices - around here horseradish is the thing - but there are not may in any one place and season

Ladies smock is plentiful around here. The flavour fades though if added to early, same with the hot and spicy root of jack-by-the-hedge. The seeds of jack by the hedge have more staying power. Hogweed seed sort tastes like cardimon but the texture is vile and if there too much it starts to taste wrong in way I cant really discribe. Most brassica seeds are more than passible with range of flavours from wasabi through mustard to pepper. Brassicas are safer experiments than carrot family.

 

[Toddy]

Smell is a good way of sussing out what's growing, where.

Just now there's a faint oniony tang to some woodlands, and that's the first of the ransom's and three cornered leeks coming up. There's another variety that comes up quickly with tiny wee oniony bulbils....those are good to eat and good flavouring.

Liquorice/aniseed smell (later than now though) and you have sweet cicely

Hedge garlic's not really up yet, but it's starting to show in some areas.

Bittercress, the tiny wee green plant is a tasty addition to greenery, and it grows all year around.

Lesser celandines are in flower; the tubers cook like peanut sized potatoes.

There's always something to find might not make much of a meal out of only that, but it's a good addition.

cheers,
Toddy

 

[northumbrian]

I know where there is some lovely rosemary growing in the toon centre !

 

[GGTBod]

It is a local habitat i try not to find myself stranded in too often especially on weekends, talk about a survival situation

 

[northumbrian]

same here mate . I was just passing through on one of my very rare visits into the land of the orange faced caterpillar eyebrow dwellers.lol

 

[GGTBod]

What gets me is every time i have been off in the sticks i come back smelling a little funky and showing signs of the outdoors and carrying my kit and they all look at me like i am the one who looks stupid, i really don't understand how they look in the mirror and then leave the house thinking "Yes that is how i want to look today" they actually chose to apply all that crap deliberately and got to a point where they were satisfied with the result and then went out to show the world, you couldn't make it up (no pun intended)

 

[northumbrian]

aye I know what you mean. when I used to go fishing in leazes park when I was a teenager and on the way home on the bus you should have seen the looks ! lol.

 

[Haggis]

Here, at most times of the year, fisherman have "shore lunches". Shore lunches are an excuse to stop for a boil-up and to eat some of the fish they've been catching. Wild game is generally off limits until fall and winter, but there are green things, berries, and mushrooms coming along in their various seasons. It is quite satisfying to add fish and something in season to what ever has been brought from home to make a meal.

 

[GGTBod]

aye I know what you mean. when I used to go fishing in leazes park when I was a teenager and on the way home on the bus you should have seen the looks ! lol.

Imagine the looks i get when i get off the bus in the city centre after living in the woods all week with a bivvi and a sleeping bag and a tarp

 

[northumbrian]

sit yerself down in Northumberland street and make some easy money ! lol

 

[GGTBod]

getting off the bus in the toon centre after an adventure I make those fake street people look like upmarket chavs