Overcoming food aversions

MacHete

MacHete

Hair Cropper & Chipmunk Wrangler
Joined
Apr 7, 2000
Messages
2,559
Taking my inspiration from EDGE!'s "rabbit-cooking" thread; I wondered how everyone dressed up or toned down their survival fare.

What WILD seasonings (nothing packed in) would you use to make which 'main course' foods more agreeable? In other words, what plants would you cook with which critters? Feel free to be exotic.

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Be Worthy
 
Usually you can find wild onion or leeks around (don't pick the death camas
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). Their pretty good for flavoring. If you know cutleaf toothwort, you can have a peppery horseradish flavor. I like it raw in salads of wild greens. The seed pods of pepper grass will add some spice. There are literally tons more but these are common.

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Hoodoo

And so, to all outdoor folks, the knife is the most important item of equipment.

Ellsworth Jaeger - Wildwood Wisdom
 
In my humble opinion, certain physical attributes of the food make it repulsive. Therefore, we can either change that attribute or just wait to get more hungry.
The repulsive physical attribute is usually associated with some previous negative experience ("it smells like dead fish", "looks like damaged brain tissue", "tastes like mold" or any combination of these). It is a natural survival instinct mechanism that one might try to overcome by self-control.
Less disciplinary is changing the disturbing property:
bad consistency-make it into a soup or dry it into a solid mess
bad color-roast it into uniformal dark brown or cover it with herbs
bad shape-grind or roast and then grind
bad smell-smoke, roast, spice heavily
bad taste-cover it with herbs or heavy roasting or smoking
Or, alternatively, use it as a bait to get something more appetizing.
More seriously, L. D. Olsen suggests -if I remember correctly- to roast grubs and then grind them and make into a soup to make it more palatable. Many roots and acorns are better when cooked and then roasted.
For home practice, one should be able to obtain sufficient amount of grubs from pet food stores.
Hope it helps,

HM

 
HM- I've done the "bug-broth" thing, but it was still a pinch-nose-and-swallow-fast entree. Although that may have been due to the chlorophyll-rich greens that we put in to hide the bugs.

Has anyone tried grubs in bread? I wonder if it would work to mash them up with acorn and oatgrass flour? Grubs are supposed to have a subtle, sweet, nutty flavor that might mix well with the bitter acorn flour. Whaddya think?

I've noticed several mentions of porcupine. I once heard that they tasted like turpentine. Considering their diet, that sounded reasonable to me. Are they really palatable? How would you dress and season it?

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Be Worthy
 
Yeah, porcupine does have a bit of an odd taste - they eat spruce bark - but if the meat is boiled awhile and pan-fried it's not bad at all. Stew would probably work well too. The godsend in a survival situation is they are easy to kill.
 
I shot a porcupine a few years back that was around 20lb. Kind of on the old side. I tried boiling it and fring it, it had both the taste and consisaty of an old tire. I have heard that a young one taste like pork if you trim off all the fat.
 
I've only eaten them out of Hardwood trees, specificly aspen and sugar maple. Tasted fine.
 
I've eaten porky' from Upstate NY, and although it tasted unlike any other meat I've eaten, I found it more than edible.
I've read references to it like "First meat" and "Lost mans meat", refering to the ease of kill (I think).
 
I had groundhog once and it tasted like roast beef to me. Quite decent. I feel somewhat guilty that I don't cook more of them. Don't hunt them as much as I used to and then only at the request of neighbors and relatives where they are either eating the soybeans or digging out the foundation of a barn or shed. I just enjoy seeing them in the woods and usually let 'em alone. But I think they would be pretty good survival eatin's.

Never tried porky, which is the "classic" survival food. Backpacking in the woods, I've had to chase them away from my tent as they want to chew on the guylines to get any salt that may be there from my hands. They will also gnaw on canoe paddles.

How about coon? I've heard they are good eating. I have one in my freezer right now. He got too partial to the suet I put out for the birds and started tearing up my suet cages. Coon can be fairly easy to trap and therefore is a likely candidate of survival food. More appealing to me than grubs...
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Hoodoo

And so, to all outdoor folks, the knife is the most important item of equipment.

Ellsworth Jaeger - Wildwood Wisdom
 
How would a possum fit into the the menu? Any experience?
"Lot a'times, when I was a kid, th'possum head was my favorite, an' my mother would always pay me to do things. And she'd say, 'Now, if you do so and so, then I'll leave th' posuum head on.' And when th' possum would get done, she'd cut that head off and give it to me."
"You eat th'tongue, brains, everything in th'head except th'eyes."
(The Foxfire Book: hog dressing, log cabin, mountain crafts and foods...., pp. 268.)
BTW, it has a whole chapter on cooking all forest creatures.
More to come,

HM

 
Originally posted by HM:
How would a possum fit into the the menu? Any experience?
"Lot a'times, when I was a kid, th'possum head was my favorite, an' my mother would always pay me to do things. And she'd say, 'Now, if you do so and so, then I'll leave th' posuum head on.' And when th' possum would get done, she'd cut that head off and give it to me."
"You eat th'tongue, brains, everything in th'head except th'eyes."
(The Foxfire Book: hog dressing, log cabin, mountain crafts and foods...., pp. 268.)
BTW, it has a whole chapter on cooking all forest creatures.
More to come,

HM
Click to expand...

How DO you dress a hog? Seems like it would be hard to find clothes that would fit. We used to let ours run around nekkid.
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Hoodoo

And so, to all outdoor folks, the knife is the most important item of equipment.

Ellsworth Jaeger - Wildwood Wisdom
 
Interesting, Hoodoo. When our hogs were undressed they stayed chastely in the sty
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HM
 
To dress a hawg in high liberal-socialist style ask Rosie O'Donnell for her old clothes.

You can take them up in the waist to fit your hawg.
 
Possum is good! Put it in a dutch oven with a bunch of onions or swet potatoes. High in fat and calories- useful in a survival situation.

Porkies taste like what they been eating- so get one out of a maple or an aspen.

Try Muskrat as well- the meat is very dark, almost purple. However, it taste mild, and is very tender.
 
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