T2K Cuisine - Food in the aftermath

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Targan

Anyone who uses a mirror to take a look inside their mouth can clearly see that we humans are omnivores.

It's true that we can eat meat. That doesn't mean we should--at least not the way Western nations have come to eat meat. Our digestive tracts have a great deal more in common with the digestive tracts of rabbits (sans the cecum) than with wolves or cats. We don't handle cholesterol very well. Diseases brought on by over-consumption of animal products are the leading causes of death in the US. We can eat meat, but we're optimized for vegetable consumption. For everyone who equates meat consumption with being at the top of the food chain and thence with self-esteem, remember that lions and wolves don't have opposable thumbs.

That much said, no one is going to give a damn about such long-term niceties like cholesterol build-up after the Thanksgiving Day Massacre.

Webstral

[jester]

Mo;

Pineneedles, the small pointy leaves of evergreen pinetrees.

When green these can be boiled into a tea and are high in vitimin C.

Further, bark from many trees also contains vitimins and fiber.

I agree thistles and snails are easily produced as well.

I was thinking guinea pigs too but I chose to include them with rats and other rodents, I really hate the things! Although they were a staple in the precolumbian diet in South and Central America.

Oh, the minitature potbellied pigs could be something we may find in peoples yards as they raise this small pigs and chickens in home backyards as well.

In many areas of the US blackberries are very common to the point of being an invasion species that overgrows regular plants.

And in portions of the US South West cactus, the flat broadleaved type that produces the cactus or prickly pear. For both the leaf and the pear one must be carefull when removing them to avoid the cactus barbs and then peal them of their skin and any barbs remaining. The pear can be eaten or mashed into a jelly, the thick leaves cut into peices and eaten after cooking.


I remember reading a menu of a restraunt that specialized in "AZTEC" cuisine, and the most normal food on the menu was venison, everything else was ants, grubs, wasps, worns, snakes, lizards and beetles. And of course chocolate.

[Mohoender]

Jest

I just didn't know you could eat pine needles. In fact, I couldn't even imagine it and that's why I asked. I thought it was something else. Thanks.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by Mohoender

Jest

I just didn't know you could eat pine needles. In fact, I couldn't even imagine it and that's why I asked. I thought it was something else. Thanks.

They're best brewed as a tea, according to my survival instructors. Still tastes like something I left behind in the toilet.

[Mohoender]

Originally Posted by Webstral

Our digestive tracts have a great deal more in common with the digestive tracts of rabbits (sans the cecum) than with wolves or cats.
Webstral

We have more in common with Pigs than with rabbits. Not only in the matter of food by the way.

[Mock26]

Another way to cook is to make a hobo stove out of a #10 or similar size can.

http://blog.outdoorzy.com/wp-content...hobo-stove.jpg

The hobo stove is the can on the bottom. Campfires are great as they provide heat and you can cook over them, but they are a big waste of fuel. Small homemade stoves like this are much more efficient for cooking. Of course, in a fantasy world lack of firewood might not be a problem, but depending on where your game takes place, it could be.

[Silent Hunter UK]

In my part of the UK, the most common thing to find would be a squirrel.

[.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...