Wild Edibles

[RangerChris]

Boiled stingin nettles and grilled salmon is one of my favourite meals. I once had dandelion jelly which was almost like a cross between marmalade and jam, pretty tasty. Forgot all about sorrel and rose hips, I used to munch em when I was young too.

[areguzanda]

Love looking for mushrooms, and black berries. Although with mushrooms you have to be SO careful, but when you find the rares its worth it. unfortunately in WI everything is seasonal so it has to be a planned forage.

[madnomad]

[quote:6d350c44a5="Wanderlost"]Especially in the colder environments, I can certainly see the absolute need for the meat and fat. I've only based my statement on what I've read in anthropological texts. However, I do know that one can survive in my climate, at least during the spring through fall on wild plants alone. I was forced to do so for about a month and a half after my last employment, and noticed no lost weight or health problems. [/quote:6d350c44a5]

A month and a half is one thing...but living exclusively on wild plant foods regularly every day without store-bought food or animal foods from spring to fall is quite another...I'm not saying it can't be done, I just wouldn't want to do it as I consider such a diet nutritionally deficient, especially in a wilderness living situation. Yea lots of vegans and vegetarians live year round on plants, nuts and so on but it doesn't mean I consider that diet a healthy one. Also when you are living out bush and working outside all the time, hunting and exerting a lot of energy, you need lots of energy-rich food which just isn't found in [b:6d350c44a5]locally available[/b:6d350c44a5] plant foods. Lots of vegans have their plant food shipped in from China or a tropical country. Only meat and animal fat can meet your energy requirements when you are working outside all the time and [b:6d350c44a5]relying on the surrounding natural resources to feed you.[/b:6d350c44a5]

Also another thing to consider is location. In the desert there are some good plant foods that have a lot of vitamins and nutrients, they are awesome and I always get as much as I can in season but they remain seasonal and only available at certain times of the year. You can't survive on them alone due to the lack of year-round availability and lack of protein and fat which is the most significant source of body-sustaining energy in any foods available to mankind. Wild meat is around in every season although fat content can vary between seasons and local conditions. In other places there are more year-round plant foods and your diet can contain more of it but I still see the need for animal protein and energy-rich animal fat.

I am also not referring to cold climates. I live most of my time in the sub-tropics and tropics and I can tell you that fat and meat is just as important here as in the subarctic where I lived for 20 years. Yea you can get by on less but if you are eating mostly wild meat with little plant food you still need lots and lots of meat and fat to meet your energy requirements when living out bush. I have personally seen tropical Aboriginals consume more meat and fat than any North American and they rely on it year-round as their main staple. For someone, an anthropologist or otherwise, to say that all tropical people rely on mostly plant foods for their sustenance because more plant foods grow in the tropics and it is so warm that they don't need to eat meat and fat is just plain false. I've seen it for myself.

I've read a lot of nonsense in anthropological texts, some of it appears to be true, other stuff is probably just plain lies. I see a difference between intellectual information and applied knowledge. IMO until you apply that intellectual information that you have read to your daily life it remains essentially intellectual garbage, and only becomes true knowledge when you apply it in your own life and personal experience.

[KaBar]

Living in the South, and on the Gulf Coast, there are lots of edible plants, but other than dandelion, stinging nettles and cattail root, I never tried many. What we have done is steal a few beans or ears of corn or watermelons from some farmer's field. It's not truly living off the land, but if you're hungry and stuck on some sidetrack for hours, and right across the fence is 100 acres of sweet corn, well . . .

The biggest thing along this Gulf Coast would be fishing and crabbing. I just love boiling crabs. You can just catch them practically everywhere along Galveston Bay.
We caught a lot of crawdads, too, but mud bugs taste nasty until they have had a purge. We used to catch some freshwater crawdads and then drop them into a bucket of salt water. It doesn't kill them right off, but they clear out their alimentary canal. Keep them in a bucket of fresh water for a couple of days and they taste a lot less like river mud. I think that's why the cajuns season them so heavily is to cut that mud taste.

Fishing in the Gulf is definately the way to go for possum living down here. The last time we went fishing in Galveston off the East Beach jetty we got a 44 pound drum and several sea bass. Mmmm! Fried sea bass!

You can buy rice and beans down here for next to nothing. I think twenty-five pounds of rice and ten pounds of beans will go a long way towards keeping body and soul together.

[walkfootman]

Glad I found this thread.

I'm going to opt entirely out of the nutrition debate, but I will encourage each and every person to do some learnin' on the subject of nutrition for themselves if they haven't done so already.

"Let food be thy medicine, and medicine thy food." -Hippocrates

[Roaddog]

Not only can you forage for yourself, but you can actually make a small penny harvesting medicinal herbs. Many years ago I knew where to get started on that, but now you can probably google search it to find out more.

I'm with madnomad though, one needs meat if they're going to be living off the land. I've been off red meat for 20 years, but if I was out in the bush that long, I would have trapped an animal by now. In society, one has much more choices than out in the wilderness.

Just an additional piece of info- rabbit is so low fat that you can starve eating just rabbit- you do need fat if you're going to be living out in the bush for a long while.