T2K Cuisine - Food in the aftermath

[.45cultist]

Independence,MO still has it's "Victory Garden" laws allowing poultry in all neighborhoods, not just those designated "Rural-Agricultural" hence there are those who keep chickens, ducks in their yard. Rabbits are a quieter option, but depending on one's timeline, meat and garden fertilizer sources might be closer than one thinks in urban areas.

[jester]

Glad I live in a semi rural area....with a former duck hunting club long closed but we still have the ponds and flights plus local fauna....as for here, its plenty of horse people and cattle and even the odd llama and camel...even a two humper down the road.

[Olefin]

When I was in the Boy Scouts we did one camping trip where the goal was to see how much food we could gather ourselves from the woods - always amazes me how much you can find if you know what you are looking for - in the space of a few hours we found cattails, edible mushrooms, wild berries and other edibles - we didnt eat like kings but we ate - and on the second day using our campers 20 gauge single shot shotgun we added a rabbit to the pot as well

[raketenjagdpanzer]

One of my favorite guilty pleasures from the 1980s is a movie called Band of the Hand - basically a police social worker takes a bunch of fuck-ups and runs them through his own Outward Bound combined with Muscogee Indian training with a dash of SFOR training mixed in. He drags them out into the Everglades and teaches them Indian survival skills. The first meal he serves them is a soup of snails, wild greens and herbs, mushrooms and so on. A couple of the kids enjoy it, one throws up, and another (a cocaine dealer) wryly observes that "A bowl of soup like this would cost you $200 a plate at Coconut Grove in Miami."

Then later they (armed only with knives and spears) are walking in heavy woods and have an encounter with a wild boar; their "benefactor" says "We'll go around. Only wild men and Indians eat wild boar."

They all share a knowing look, then we jump cut to them feasting on wild boar around the campfire later that night.

Similarly, Bear Grylls (yeah, I know, his stuff is mostly set up) spent a couple of nights in the 'glades and had a pretty fine meal out there of tortoise and grapefruit (citrus is essentially a weed here in FL anymore).

I live on the outskirts of Orlando near a green belt and have seen bear (fatty, but good eating I'm told), innumerable gators (gamey but tasty!), deer (mmm venison) and too many members of phyla rodentia to mention, like rabbits, squirrels, and so forth...

[jester]

There are a couple problems with foraging and the rules cover it pretty well.

After a while they get harder and harder to find. Add the fact that more and more people are foraging for wild edibles and game that an area would be picked clean, and in some cases to the point it would have a hard time recovering.

Another factor, foraging is seasonal. This strikes home often in that show with Les Stroud, Dual Survival and Dude You're Screwed.

Then, there is the knowledge of edible items in an area. Some things in one area (or season for that matter) can go from edible to poison. Or just look alike items. A prime example is mushrooms.

[Olefin]

I forgot but is there anything in any of the various editions about combinining foraging with medical knowledge to specifically forage for medicinal herbs and the like? its one thing to know how to find food but another to find medical herbs and to know how to use them

[swaghauler]

During our foraging, let us not forget the official US Army food purification kit; Black Pepper and Frank's Red Hot Sauce. Because everyone knows that you can make virtually anything edible if you put enough black Pepper and Frank's Red Hot Sauce on it....