Food that grows itself

[Tortoise]

Hi, first post here.

I pick rocky samphire that grows on the coast where I am, but it probably uses more energy to pick than you get from it.

[Skean Dhude]

Tortoise,

Welcome. There are several foods like that. I suspect that when you look at total energy spent and collected most fof the ood we grow ourselves must be close. Not heard of that one before though.

[Tortoise]

(4 October 2011, 19:41)Skean Dhude Wrote: Tortoise,

Welcome. There are several foods like that. I suspect that when you look at total energy spent and collected most fof the ood we grow ourselves must be close. Not heard of that one before though.

It tastes a bit like asparagus, grows on the rocks on a salt marsh.

[Skean Dhude]

Ok. thanks for that. We need to look for odds and sods like that in each eco system.

[Kenneth Eames]

Excellent tasting food much more pleasant to eat than most wild food. I haven't eaten it for years. Most wild greens are very bitter. This is because our taste buds have been ruined by eating cultivated vegetables and far too much sugar in our diets. People, a hundred or so years ago would have suplemented their diet with wild plants. Most would not have enough cash to buy sweet foods. They might on a special occassion had a sweetmeat of some sort. There wouldn't have been the sugary sweet drinks that we have today. Kenneth Eames.

[mikebratcher69]

Skean, I like that saying about seeing nature in all its glory then eating it!
Bit like the Army one "travel the world, meet lots of interesting people, then shoot them"....

[Ukprepper88]

I know I'm reserecting an old post here but I wondered if you'd thouhht of beech nuts as they haven't heen mentioned here and are quite good too and you can also make a flour substitute from beech bark as well... Going back to acorns apparently the more bitter they are the more essential fats they contain... And then you have all the wild berries not just blackberries but also hawthorn, rosehips, bilberries (also called whortleberries in some places in the uk) rowen, sloes etc

[IB1]

Beech Nuts are also very good for making cooking oil. Google has lots of info on it and it is also mentioned in Food for Free.

[IB1]

Just to add to the above, the reason I mentioned it is because if you are struggling to find meat then cooking whatever greens you forage in beech oil will be a way of adding fat etc to the greens. You use the oil like you would Olive Oil.

This link here takes you to a page explaining uses for various nuts.

http://www.fao.org/docrep/005/Y4351E/y4351e0c.htm

They are handy to know about because as was mentioned earlier in the thread, a lot of the wild veg you find is used more as a supplement to the main portion of food like rabbit or pigeon and would be hard to live off on their own. Nuts can add fats/protein/carbohydrates to the greens. I'm not sure how long the nuts themselves can be stored and still maintain their nutrients but once made into an oil and stored correctly it can last 5 - 10 years

[bigpaul]

i see Burdock mentioned in one of the posts, be very careful of this plant if you have a dog especially a long haired one, the burdock "burrs" will attach themselves to your dogs coat as it brushes past...and its a hell of a job to get them off...sometimes the only way to get them off is to cut the coat of the dog where the burr is attached!