T2K Cuisine - Food in the aftermath

[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.

[Mock26]

Originally Posted by jester

Yes, there are several ways. One can use a "dutch over" or similiar cast iron vessels, this is also done with hot coals. Some scout masters with a troop i work with can even bake with this method.

A person can also use crockery for cooking.

And of course using tin foil which is common, wet burlap or banana leaves.

And then of course you calso use flat stones to cook on as well.

I have had pig, fish, clams, oysters, chicken, potatoes, onions, carrots and corn cooked in this manner.

My grandfather also had a method of cooking birds, wrap them in mud/clay and cook until it drys and wait then serve. I think he picked it up durring his travels in China in the 30s.

Really alot of it is like cooking in a slow cooker, long slow low heat.

When I was a Scout Master I did a lot of cooking of various items packed in clay. There really is not much that you cannot cook in this way. It is especially great for baked potatoes.

[WallShadow]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I was wondering if anyone on the boards had tried to cookin a pit - a hole lined with stones that you fire with wood for a few hours ,and then place a parcel of meat etc in and cover with dirt to cook on the residual heat .

I hear some also place pots with lids secured inside and dig over with dirt .

Other ways of cooking outdoors or with archaic methods are also of interest.

Any information would be useful to me - I actually want to try it out for fun .

Look for a book called "Jack-knife Cookery" by James Austin Wilder, written by a "white kanaka" who grew up in Hawaii, was a Sea Scout, travelled the world on merchant ships, learned umpteen different ways to cook with little or no cookware--often just a knife, the food and whatever else nature had provided--leaves, sticks, seaweed, hot stones, tree bark, whatever.

My wife and I used several of the concepts cooking during various time periods of reenactments we've attended. Our favorite method was a "keyhole firepit". This is a rectangular shallow trench for the crossbar/spit, with an extension of the pit from one end where a cylindrical hole, just a bit larger than the diameter of our 6-quart cast iron 3-legged kettle. Make a good bed of coals while you're cooking on the spit or hanging pots from the bar, then scrape some coals into the hole, insert the covered kettle (filled with whatever you were going to cook), scrape some more coals on top, reinsert sod plug over the kettle. My wife made some killer potatoes (with onions and turmeric) overnight that were perfect for breakfast the next morning. You'll always find new "friends" on hand when your food starts perfuming the campsite.

We've cooked bread on sticks, baked potatoes in hot ashes, made apple cobbler out of dry stores and dehydrated apples. I've made impromptu cookpots out of coffee cans and heavy iron wire for bails. I love cooking over a campfire! It's a great way to teach kids about responsibility and economy--when you're hauling and cutting your own firewood that has to last for your entire stay, you learn not to waste it with huge conflagrations, and you learn that the fire gets taken care of before anyone goes off to play.

[Targan]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I was wondering if anyone on the boards had tried to cookin a pit - a hole lined with stones that you fire with wood for a few hours ,and then place a parcel of meat etc in and cover with dirt to cook on the residual heat.

Absolutely I have! I'm a New Zealander. The Maori people of New Zealand cook using a method known as the Hangi. Rather than try to describe how it is done I'll direct you to this site: http://www.wikihow.com/Put-Down-a-Hangi . It has a pretty good description of how it is done. Take it from me, food cooked this way tastes great!

[headquarters]

thanks guys - I am going to try some of these out when we go up north in September for our "week of manly living outdoors and acting like we dont sit in front of computers for a living -week".

Cant wait to go .

[HorseSoldier]

You could check the various Bushcrafting web sites and web forums. Most of them have information about various forms of low tech/low equipment demand sorts of cooking.

[Mock26]

Originally Posted by headquarters

thanks guys - I am going to try some of these out when we go up north in September for our "week of manly living outdoors and acting like we dont sit in front of computers for a living -week".

Cant wait to go .

Check out Wood Gasification Stoves. They are wood burning backpacking stoves. You can buy commercial ones like the Bush Buddy or make your own. I have the Bush Buddy and it is an absolutely fantastic little stove, and at 6 oz. in weight it is certainly something I can see a Twilight 2000 soldier carrying around in their pack.

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by headquarters

rat...

I guess it would be a staple meat in some cases.

Actually 'field rats' are not any worse than squirrel or rabbit. Hey, once the meat is in the stew pot and falls off the bone, well.........

Have had the rat on several occassions.

[jturfitt]

When I was in the Philippines in 1977-78, they used to have rat drives in the fields. They would line up on all four sides of a field with sticks and clubs. One side would walk through the field making noise and drive the rats toward the edged of the field where the other people would club them. Field rat was considered a delicacy.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Mock26

Check out Wood Gasification Stoves. They are wood burning backpacking stoves. You can buy commercial ones like the Bush Buddy or make your own. I have the Bush Buddy and it is an absolutely fantastic little stove, and at 6 oz. in weight it is certainly something I can see a Twilight 2000 soldier carrying around in their pack.

Love the look and tech of this one - I have like 7 stoves already , but not one that runs on plain wood .

Come pay day I am going to get one I think .

I have also ben considering a " Kelly Kettle"

http://www.kellykettle.com/

But my budget is already blown on boots,ventile smocks etc etc ( bit of a gear head ).

Cheers for the god tip.

[headquarters]

Originally Posted by Graebarde

Actually 'field rats' are not any worse than squirrel or rabbit. Hey, once the meat is in the stew pot and falls off the bone, well.........

Have had the rat on several occassions.

should be untried I say - I would no doubt try it if I could get it .And I do not believe that a little garbage in their diet is such a bad thing -look at hogs - some get the peelings,leftovers and whatnot every day before they grace our platters as bacon.

How did it taste ? ( like its seasoning maybe - but I gotta ask -is it like chicken ? )

[pmulcahy11b]

So, how long do you think it would take in T2K before some people resorted to the Soylent Green option?

[HorseSoldier]

I'd guess cases of cannibalism start turning up during the winter of 97-98 after the nukes fly and tractor trailer loads of food stop turning up to replenish the local grocery store.

Probably more commonly its an issue of poorly armed, poorly equipped (both in terms of hardware as well as know how) civilians preying on other civilians in the Twilight game universe, where food is not wildly scarce and the population isn't falling down to the 90%+ death toll. People in military units, and even larger marauder bands, would be able to shake down somebody else for enough food to not have to resort to cannibalism.

Of course, there'd always be room for cannibal cult/armies like in Pournelle/Niven's Lucifer's Hammer as a possibly extra ugly opponent for PCs. Might not work that well in Poland/Germany, where surviving troop densities would make pretty short work of a big pack of ghouls, but back CONUS, or the uncontrolled parts of the UK, etc., they'd work.

[Targan]

I know not everyone here has access to the Challenge Magazine T2K mini modules but I consider them to be canon and the Rifle River mini module in Challenge issue #39 deals with events surrounding a death cult cannibal army fighting its way up the Connecticut River in October 2001 in an attempt to reach pre-war small arms factories including the Colt plant at Hartford. An excellent module IMO.

[Webstral]

For obvious reasons, I've taken the liberty of modifying the Rifle River cannibals. My ideas for a horde in northern New England turned out to be so close to the Rifle River villains that I've pretty much incorporated them into the Blood Cross horde. Off-canon? Yes. Terribly off-canon? Probably not. I think it's entirely possible to play the mini-module as listed with a few fairly modest variations. I don't deal New England quite the hammer blow that GDW did back in the day, but more than half of the population is dead. By early 2001, marauders are finding that the surviving Yankees have fortified their towns and that almost everyone left alive who isn't a marauder has retreated inside walls somewhere. Small bands of marauders are either combining forces or being eaten up by the larger bands--in some cases, quite literally. The horde of the Blood Cross has survived the winter of 2000-2001 by eating everything left in northern Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine--including the locals. Very ugly, but at least the surviving cantonments of New England have no illusions about the price of failing to deal with these guys.

Webstral

[headquarters]

I have seen in movies and read about people that have human flesh in their diet :
they may develop some sort of neural problem leading to shaking hands,jitters etc .

can anyone confirm this ?

( See book of Eli where this is what Denzel Washington notices about the elderly cannibal couple who have them over for tea)

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by headquarters

I have seen in movies and read about people that have human flesh in their diet :
they may develop some sort of neural problem leading to shaking hands,jitters etc .

Two things came to mind when I read that:

1) Mad Cow Disease -- the human flesh may be transmitting some sort of disease, enzymes, or prions that are incompatible with human digestion or metabolism.

2) Kuru, also called the Laughing Disease. In the Western Pacific (in Indonesia?) there are a group of people called the Fore. They regularly practiced cannibalism, and when the brain was eaten, there was a chance you could get Kuru, which screws up your nerve impulses and causes muscular spasms. At its worst (usually right before death), Kuru causes spasms in the diaphragm that make the person kind of sound like they're laughing.

Here's a Wiki link for Kuru
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuru_%28disease%29

It turns out that both are a form of spongiform encephalopathy, and are caused by prions -- which is just a fancy way of saying that nasty proteins are eating your brain.

[headquarters]

a rump steak or filet of breast is OK , but once you start getting into brains and marrow you can get the tell tale shaking hands ?

My players might ask themselves - "why is he harping on about this all of a sudden ??"

No particular reason ,guys

[Ironside]

Originally Posted by Webstral

For obvious reasons, I've taken the liberty of modifying the Rifle River cannibals. My ideas for a horde in northern New England turned out to be so close to the Rifle River villains that I've pretty much incorporated them into the Blood Cross horde. <snip> Loads of good stuff </snip>
Webstral

Care to expand?

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by headquarters

a rump steak or filet of breast is OK , but once you start getting into brains and marrow you can get the tell tale shaking hands ?

It's possible to get spongiform encephalopathy from the meat of an infected creature, but in a human, most prions appear to be concentrated in the brain. I did some further Googling, and it appears that if they're your own prions, you don't get spongiform encephalopathy, but prions from somewhere else can cause spongiform encephalopathy. It is hypothesized that prions from somewhere else cause an immune system reaction, causing the proteins already in your brain to fold into a shape that kills cells and neurons. But scientists don't really know for sure what the mechanism is that causes spongiform encephalopathy.

(My previous psychiatrist, Dr Aneta Schunemeyer, told me once that scientists and doctors understand less than 20% of how the brain actually works -- and most of that understanding is rough and sketchy. She told me that psychiatry and neurology are more like arts than sciences.)

[Webstral]

Originally Posted by Ironside

Care to expand?

I never did add the rest of the New England to my guide, did I? Fatherhood and grad school have taken a real bite out of my creative writing time.

In a nutshell, by Winter 2000 New England largely has transitioned to a new modus operendi. The Last Submarine serves as my starting point. I'm sure everyone's read enough about Poseidon's Rifles for now, so I won't repeat myself here other than to remark on the fact that the Coast Guard controls the coast of New Hampshire and southern Maine. Throughout the 1998-1999 timeframe, New England makes a painful transition to self-sufficiency in food. During these two years, almost two-thirds of the population dies--principally from exposure and disease brought on by poor sanitation and vulnerability as a result of malnutrition. Violence is also a leading cause of death.

Throughout 1998, law and order is fading but recognizable. Although describing the events of every locale is beyond the scope of this thumbnail sketch, in general the flight from the big cities imposes a huge burden on New England. However, winter solves a lot of the problems. Legions of urbanites die of exposure, along with countless locals who live within easy walking distance of the highways.

Come spring, communities everywhere attempt to make the transition to partial self-sufficiency at least. Some areas are far more successful than others. Where food runs short, chaos spreads. Small-scale banditry becomes more organized. Throughout New England, citizens attempt to respond by forming neighborhood watches that are the precursors of militias. Many bandits organize even further and move to secret or defensible locations.

Initially, military forces in the region are able to deal with the new bandit gangs. What the police can’t handle gets turned over the military, who are able to use numbers and firepower to overcome outlaw resistance. A classic example of this is the fighting between forces of the New Hampshire Army National Guard and megapunks in southern New Hampshire in early 1998. Unfortunately for the New Englanders, the start of the Second Mexican-American War changes everything. Army and Air Force National Guard and Reserve units are drawn out of New England to reinforce Fifth and Sixth US Armies in the Southwest and Ninth US Army in the Pacific Northwest. Law and order take a body blow.

As the power of marauders grows, surviving New Englanders move into fortified towns or neighborhoods. Tracts of nearly uninhabited land between towns and urban neighborhoods grow. Communities increasingly resemble medieval towns and cities. The dying continues, but the pace begins to slow.

By the end of the harvest in 2000, the transition is nearly complete. New England has become a patchwork of city-states with varying degrees of defensibility and self-sufficiency. With somewhat less than a third of its pre-war population surviving (around four million), New England has reached a rough equilibrium.

The new danger comes from super-gangs of marauders. Unable to tackle the defenses of the new city-states (the smallest of which have been exterminated or taken over in 2000), the marauders adapt. While some prey on each other, others join together. Under the leadership of the charismatic and messianic Archbishop Smite, a great horde has assembled in northern New England. Wintering over in towns like Berlin, NH, the horde has survived throughout the winter by eating everything—including the locals.

Smite has succeeded by addressing the needs of the marauders. They are desperate people who have done terrible things. He tells them that the archangel Gabriel has given him a message that the nuclear exchange was intended to be Armageddon; however, the job was not completed. All of the marauders have received God’s silent message to cleanse and purify the world in anticipation of Judgment Day. Therefore, they are not to be blamed for their acts. In fact, the marauders are holy warriors carrying out the will of God Almighty. Under the leadership of the Archbishop Smite, the horde has been charged with purifying the land and converting those who can be saved during a great southward crusade. The final goal? The last great cathedral—the Washington Cathedral. There, all of God’s servants will be taken up to glory for executing His will.

Smite uses very Nazi-esque tactics to control and direct his converts. Torchlight religious ceremonies, combined with stark imagery and sermons, have welded together disparate and fractious groups. Cannibalism by necessity has become cannibalism as holy sacrament. The sinful flesh of non-believers is purified by ritual and consumed, used thereby to fuel the crusade of the righteous.

It’s going to be a tough planting season in New England.


Webstral

[headquarters]

Web - that is some scary imagery you conjure .

I like it a lot !



The bleakness and the terrible depths inhuman nature are another part of the T2K universe that the discussions on TOE and OOB discussions cant fully convey.

[Ironside]

That's grotesque, disgusting and very believeable

Thanks a lot!

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by headquarters

a rump steak or filet of breast is OK , but once you start getting into brains and marrow you can get the tell tale shaking hands ?

My players might ask themselves - "why is he harping on about this all of a sudden ??"

No particular reason ,guys

It's unlikely unless you're dealing with a population where Kuru is endemic, such as the aforementioned folks in New Guineau. I don't think it's been identified elsewhere (one of my cohort-mates in Grad School did a pretty involved paper and subsequent presentation on it), but I suppose that's possibly because no one has looked for it.

And, of course, in an RPG there's nothing to say it hasn't turned up unexpectedly in a way that would make surviving scientists scratch their heads in confusion.

[HorseSoldier]

Originally Posted by Ironside

That's grotesque, disgusting and very believeable

Thanks a lot!

Does sound like a great setting -- plausible, nasty, lots of potential scenarios and adventure hooks.

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by HorseSoldier

It's unlikely unless you're dealing with a population where Kuru is endemic, such as the aforementioned folks in New Guineau. I don't think it's been identified elsewhere (one of my cohort-mates in Grad School did a pretty involved paper and subsequent presentation on it), but I suppose that's possibly because no one has looked for it.

And, of course, in an RPG there's nothing to say it hasn't turned up unexpectedly in a way that would make surviving scientists scratch their heads in confusion.

Boy, that'd make an interesting and gruesome civilization-ending pandemic -- maybe it started out in the food supply, then mutated into an airborne version...

[Mock26]

Originally Posted by headquarters

a rump steak or filet of breast is OK , but once you start getting into brains and marrow you can get the tell tale shaking hands ?

My players might ask themselves - "why is he harping on about this all of a sudden ??"

No particular reason ,guys

I cannot speak of human marrow (and I do not wish to), but slow roasted veal bones produces some incredibly tasty marrow!

[Webstral]

On a more benign note, the coastal population of New England eats a lot of fish and other seafood. The list of Canadian targets indicates that the Atlantic Canadians really got punished in the nuclear exchange. (Sorry, eh) A lot of the population, a lot of the fishing boats, and a lot of the Canadian Navy and Coast Guard have been destroyed. First District has led the way in exploiting the fishing opportunities that have "opened up" at George's Bank.

There have been some unhappy incidents between Canadians and Americans over fishing at George's Bank. While the USCG and the fleet under its protection seldom have instigated the problems, the American Guardians haven't set high standards for intervening unless things appear to be going against the UBF, the Gloucestermen, or other American fishermen. One might even go so far as to say that some of the First District raids against pirates along the coasts of the Atlantic Provinces have been based on flimsy definitions of piracy and even weaker evidence. This is going to be a problem later during Reconstruction, as the Canadians aren't likely to forget that ships and marines flying the Stars and Stripes made some very questionable incursions into the Canadian littoral.

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't condone combat between Americans and Canadians in any way, shape, or form. This is simply my read on how things would evolve based on published materials, the nature of Twilight: 2000, and the natural consequences of some of my own creations. Also, the idea that the naval firepower of First District has been focused on securing fishing privileges and other actions for MilGov helps explain why the Coast Guard hasn't dealt with John Carlucci and the UBF.

In many parts of New England, wild produce of the woods plays an important part of the diet. Obviously, small game and fowl are important. Other foods, including mushrooms and tubers that grow throughout the New England forests, supplement diets of domesticated foods. People gathering these foods, as well as people salvaging useful goods from abandoned tracts of housing and industry, are at great risk to the bands of marauders that roam the areas outside the towns. Good scouts are worth their weight in gold to everyone.

Webstral

[jester]

Kuru aka Mad Cow Disease aka Jacob Krutchfelds Disease is all the same.

It comes not from bone marrow, but the nerve tissue of infected creatures. Most associate it with the brain, which is the biggest nerve of course, but other nerves also are infected and their injestion causes the disease.

On a note, a person can have it but it is dormant like any other disease, and well if they end up on the platter the people who eat the infected tissues have a chance of getting it, but it developing well that is part of the question how it affects some and not others.

They also have the theory that if the meat is cooked to a specific temperature then the disease is killed, much like cooking pork or chicken.

So, if you ever find yourself in New Guinea or the South Seas and are the guest of honor....not that guest of honor Make sure you ask for your WELL DONE!

[Graebarde]

Originally Posted by headquarters

should be untried I say - I would no doubt try it if I could get it .And I do not believe that a little garbage in their diet is such a bad thing -look at hogs - some get the peelings,leftovers and whatnot every day before they grace our platters as bacon.

How did it taste ? ( like its seasoning maybe - but I gotta ask -is it like chicken ? )

ROTFLMAO.. nope not like chicken. Best I can describe it is like wild rabbit or squirrel (other rodents I've eaten) in texture at least. It was cooked/brazed over wood fire, so was smokey.. and a bit of salt added. Not really bad..

Most of what people do not want to eat or even try is all psychological.. mind over matter.. get it out of the mind it don't matter.