Duckweed recipe!

[Billy-o]

There's a treat ahead for you, Janne ... Uncle Ray did do a series on wild foods ... nice sections on leaching tannins from acorns etc. He had a lovely old sidekick along with him for this one - Gordon Hillman - who sadly passed on recently

They are all on you tube

Here's the first one:

 

[Janne]

I missed those.
2007.
I had just relocated to Grand Cayman..

Thank you, I will watch and enjoy them!

 

[Geoff Dann]

These floating water weeds prefer a nutrient rich water.
I think it would be safest to have the pond water analyzed.
If you plan to eat more of it and regularly, of course...

Once in a while should be fine...


Ps I am writing is so that people with less experience than you in foraging remember some basic rules, one of them to know that the environment the foraged food stuff is safe and not contaminated with something for us harmful.

​

There's nowhere for it to be polluted from. It is at the top of a slope surrounded by thick scrub in a field that is usually empty but sometimes has sheep in it. It also has a small stream which runs out of it, though no stream runs into it. It is fed by a spring, of which there are lots in the local area.

 

[Geoff Dann]

A pond is a pond because that is where the water has stopped flowing and is in stagnation.
Whatever is the run-off from the land that makes the pond?

Sigh. As I already explained, it is fed from a spring. The pond is on top of a spring. All the local ponds which are not fed from springs are the lowest I've ever seen them, after a very hot summer and not enough autumn rain.

The best indicator of crappy (!!!) water is the long, green filamentous, hairy-looking green alga called Spirogyra.
I would not ever drink that water, even filtered and boiled until next week.

Is Lemna sp. a good site indicator of nutrient-rich water or not? No speculation allowed.

The water was absolutely clear, with no odour, and I cooked the duckweed! This was the opposite of crappy water.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Of course you can eat or not eat whatever you want, but as the Internet is a such powerful educator and gives people good / (sometimes bad) ideas, safe practices should be taught too.

Many people here are town people without what we from outside the towns would call ‘common sense’.
It is common sense for us, but not for them.

Know your upstream.

There is no upstream. The pond is at the top of a steep hill, but with a plateau beyond. The water is rainwater that has filtered through arable (not grazing) land.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Frog's legs are tasty, albeit not much meaty.
Those cooked with some wild garlic, pond weed.......

Maybe Ray M should do a cookery show next?

Illegal to harm any native amphibians in the UK.

 

[Woody girl]

I wish I'd known that in the 1960s. My dreadful little brother used to catch live froglets just past the tadpole stage and swallow them whole. He said he liked to feel them wiggling and tickling in his tummy! ( He's not much nicer as an adult.) He never got sick tho.

 

[Janne]

I had a large pond created on my property in East Sussex, I planted fish there. Became a haven for frogs too. Had salamanders there during breeding times.

 

[Billy-o]

Is it true there's crocs on Grand Cayman? Big newts they are

 

[Janne]

Three or maybe four sightnings the last 12 years. Two caught.
They think they came over ( current) from either Cuba or Central/ South America.
One Cayman, one Alligator are still living in captivity here.

But we do have the indigenous, rare Blue Iguana and the invasive Green Iguana here.

A major cull is starting soon of the Greens.
Cooked, they are delicious. The eggs too. Much, much nicer than a chicken. Nicer than an alligator too.

I loved watching the newts ( salamanders?). The males are very beautiful.

 

[Geoff Dann]

I had a large pond created on my property in East Sussex, I planted fish there. Became a haven for frogs too. Had salamanders there during breeding times.

I think you mean newts.

 

[Janne]

Could be. Same animal?

The famili is Salamandridae.
The males have an orange red underside and get a sift skin crest on the back.

I am a little bit fuzzy with names, I am a Foreign Devil....

 

[Billy-o]

Three or maybe four sightnings the last 12 years. Two caught.
They think they came over ( current) from either Cuba or Central/ South America.
One Cayman, one Alligator are still living in captivity here.

I have a bit of an architecture background nad have always wanted to see the town Celebration that Disney built ... and has since sold. Anyway, I was down around Orlando with relatives and took the chance to detour and go look. There's a small lake there. Didn't take me long to realize that the log floating in the middle of it was an Alligator and that there were a ton of them around.

Personally, I worry about the number of squirrels and raccoons we get. Not sure how I'd feel about 15' gators just wandering around and wrastling in my back yard

 

[Robson Valley]

Lemna as a site indicator = I cannot see such things as sugar or bacteria or arsenic dissolved in water.
Water need not appear foul to be toxic with dissolved minerals.

Yesterday, I was hunting above 3,500' and there are no known grazing leases above my location.
I don't count the number of creeks and small rivers we passed, I bring my own water.

 

[Geoff Dann]

Lemna as a site indicator = I cannot see such things as sugar or bacteria or arsenic dissolved in water.
Water need not appear foul to be toxic with dissolved minerals.

Yesterday, I was hunting above 3,500' and there are no known grazing leases above my location.
I don't count the number of creeks and small rivers we passed, I bring my own water.

Fine. You know your area. I live on a different continent to you, and I know mine. Inside out.

"No known grazing leases"? This is less than 10 miles from the site of the Battle of Hastings (1066), the winner of which claimed ownership and mapped the usage of every square mile of England. The land usage in this area has been "known" for 4 times longer than the USA has existed.

 

[Janne]

1066 was an interesting year in the history of Britain.
Three guys with Scandi roots fought it out.

The result was the same for the people, the taxation got properly organized.
You Brits got the ‘best of Scandihooligania’ by tradition. Some good oldfashioned pillaging and DNA influx from 790 all the way to todays dentists and au pairs! No pillaging these days, but a healthy dose of fresh 1:st class DNA!

What more ‘eatables’ live in the pond? Any fish?

 

[Billy-o]

Geoff Dann, you have entirely missed the point here. Conversations like this often crop up ... (just the other day, we had one about the advisability of wearing cotton clothing in the cold and wet) ... where specific instances of something, which are fine in themselves, run counter to more generally accepted wisdoms.

Sometimes wearing cotton in the cold and wet is fine, but usually one advises against it, right? And, if someone posts about wearing cotton in the cold and wet, one would want to see someone mention the potential pitfalls of that. It is the same here. Members are just putting into this thread some reasonable and responsible cautions about pond flora and water sources so that, having read your informed and informative article, other people don't then just go blithely down to the canal and scrape whatever greenery they find sitting on top of it to stir into their fried eggs.

 

[Geoff Dann]

The result was the same for the people, the taxation got properly organized.

The result was a catastrophe for the ango-saxon inhabitants, the consequences of which are still felt today. All the land was taken, and much of it remains in the hands of the descendents of William's closest allies. And his own, of course.

What more ‘eatables’ live in the pond? Any fish?

https://www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/reedmace

FYI: My surname means "Danish invader."

 

[Janne]

Well, the Anglo Saxons originally came from an area which today is southern Denmark and that bit of Germany close to it. Angles from the southern Denmark (today’s) and the Saxons from the area south of it, on the German (today) North sea coast.
So very closely related, culturally, linguistically ( germanic languages) and DNA.
They migrated to todays England around 500 AD, during the Migration period.

No doubt there was a close connection between Scandinavia and England even before the first Norse trading / raiding ventures.

Dann, I would say it is a modification of ‘Dane’ possibly.

I am lucky to speak and/or understand the Scandinavian languages,
(Swedish all dialects, Danish some dialects, Norwegian most dialects)

So reed mace too. Tasty roots, seed head fun for kids to fight with!
No fish?

 

[Geoff Dann]

Well, the Anglo Saxons originally came from an area which today is southern Denmark and that bit of Germany close to it. Angles from the southern Denmark (today’s) and the Saxons from the area south of it, on the German (today) North sea coast.
So very closely related, culturally, linguistically ( germanic languages) and DNA.
They migrated to todays England around 500 AD, during the Migration period.

No doubt there was a close connection between Scandinavia and England even before the first Norse trading / raiding ventures.

You don't understand English history. The fact that the Normans were of genetically the same stock as the Anglo-saxons is irrelevant. Before the Norman conquest of England, there was a lot of common land and ownership of non-common land was relatively widespread (lots of people owned different bits). William took every square metre as his own personal estate, and then dished out huge sections of it to his closest allies. The resulting inequality, based on the ownership of vast tracts of the English countryside by a tiny minority of people, remains to this day, nearly 1000 years later. The richest landowner in London is the direct male-line descendent of William's best mate.