by Jenab6 » Sun 16 Mar 2008, 00:36:20
If there's no bread on the shelves, buy a 100 pound bag of wheat at the animal feed store, winnow it in the breeze to shake out chaff and dust, pack in plastic trash bag and set bag inside plastic tub.
To prepare a very large meal, or a part of three meals, scoop out a cup of wheat and soak it in water for 24 hours. Then strain off the water, rinse the wheat grains, and soak them in fresh water. After another 24 hours, they should be sprouted 1/16 to 1/8 inch and are ready for eating. You can eat straight for a salad-like dish, or mix with soup or stew.
For bread, don't soak. Grind the dry grains into flour and use just as you would store-bought whole wheat flour.
There are other ways to get flour. Some wild plants, such as certain grasses, and goldenrod, have seeds that can be ground into an edible flour.
You can also get starchy tubers (e.g. potato, arrowhead). Parsnip grows wild (YELLOW flowers, NOT white!). You can make teas from coltsfoot, violet, clover, comfrey, wild strawberry, mint, sassafras root... lots of things. You can make coffee substitute by roasting the roots of dandelion, chicory, and other stuff I don't remember off the top of my head. Lambs quarter, wild lettuce, nettles, young poke shoots, and lots of other plants can be eaten as greens.
I've got some "eat a forest for dinner" books and this year I'm going to see how many of those edible plants I can find in my yard and in the woods around it. I've got lots of Staghorn sumac shrubs around me, and I recently learned how to use them to make pink faux lemonade.
Jerry Abbott
Last edited by
Jenab6 on Thu 03 Apr 2008, 19:59:04, edited 1 time in total.