A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum Vegetable Gardening Suggest a menu for daughter, with dandelion salad.. see post

My daughter Courtney who is 11 has decided she wants us to have a meal like people living off the wilderness would have. This all came about when I told her that people actually eat the dandelion greens and the flowers in salads. *sigh* Me and my big mouth.. LOL I don't know what else we can have to be honest, and it might just have to be 'pretend' food from the wilderness. Such as potatoes we could pretend we grew ourselves, etc. I would really LOVE any and all suggestions some of you might have for this.

What about meat? I thought about doing chicken and telling her it is rabbit. lol

Our fourth graders in our local school have a 'wild feast' every year. They go out and, under supervision, collect buckwheat from our local fields. They harvest the grain and then make pancakes from it (along with store bought eggs and flour). They also collect Jerusalem artichokes and roast those. They harvest yorba santa, a local herb, and make a wonderful tea. They make butter from store bought cream. The parents chip in with main dishes of home-grown rabbit or whatever is going. We do live in a semi-rural area. The year my daughter was in the class we provided some roasted rattlesnake.
It can be done. Most of that type of thing can be done from a supermarket, too.
Try duck eggs.
If rabbit isn't a regular item on your menu, it might be available at a store near you. Or venison. Do you fish?
You could try a local health food store for ideas. Or if you have any Asian markets nearby, you might find something weird and wonderful.

Oh Tina how fun that your school does that every year!! So cool! You mentioned some things that I have never heard of and probably do not have in our area as you are in Cali and I am in Ohio..

The roasted rattlesnake sounds awesome!! I have never had it, but I will try anything once. =) What does it taste like? Anything you can compare it to??

We don't fish, but Courtney doesn't really like fish anyway, so that is ok.

The rattlesnake does not taste like chicken. I use a lot of garlic butter to cook it so it really just tastes like garlic to me. But the meat is most of the time kind of rubbery like calimari (squid). It is like eating chicken necks though; not worth the trouble. But we've done snake and steak dinners for a few people, just for fun.
I was pretty sure that you don't have the yorba santa growing there but I was trying to give you ideas of the type of thing you can look for. There are other shrubs whose leaves make good teas. Or use rose hips. Those I think should be available at health food stores.
Buckwheat grows wild countrywide. Wild rice is available everywhere, if it is not already a part of your regular menu.
If I think of something else, I will add it here. Someone else should come along with ideas, too.

Ok, the rattlesnake sounds intriguing but I think we will skip it. She wouldn't like it. I think rabbit might be a good choice.. if I can find it. Though I have never eaten it either. lol Wild rice is a good idea.. What all could we use the Buckwheat for? Other than pancakes.. I think she is wanting more of a dinner type meal. And what about the dandelion.. have you, or anyone ever tried it?

Thanks for the info! This might just end up being fun!!!

I have tried dandelion greens. They are a little bitter and I don't go for bitter too much. There are a lot of edible flowers that you could make a salad from. As long as they haven't been sprayed or had a systemic insecticide used on them (bayer advance is one of those).

I tried dandelion as well...too bitter.

I'm wondering if you have a M&M meat shop nearby...they can order in anything.

alligator is very good, but i wouldn't know where to suggust you could get some. hubby went on a gator hunt several years back and came back with a nice one. I like it ground up like hamburger meat. very fluffy and tasty. the steaks are good too, but they have to come from a young gator or they will be tough.

for where you live, duck, pheasant, bear, deer, rabbit, quail, dove, 'coon, squirrel, beaver. those are the game meats i can think of. here in the south i would add 'gator, rattle snake, 'possum.

for fruit/veggies, i'd put in any kind of nut, wild grapes, blue berries, rhubarb, sassafras tea to drink.

You could make Hard Tack. It's what a lot of people ate years ago because it was cheap to make and it's all they could afford.

Here's a recipe I found.

Alternative Hardtack Recipe by Mike Bilbo



Mike got this from an original Indian Wars source, but modified for a contemporary oven:



Wash your hands before starting. Dust how many ever cookie sheets will fit in your oven and place them next to a table where you'll do the work. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.



With hands mix flour and water in a large bowl until the gooey mass doesn't

stick to your hands (have a separate bowl of flour handy to add for this

purpose). Do not coat your hands with Crisco to prevent sticking as this

causes problems with the final product. Just deal with it.



Dust flour on a table surface and take the dough and knead it there until

leathery stiff (and your wrists begin to ache). Do the next parts steadily and without letup to prevent rising. Form dough into a rounded shape.



With rolling pin roll it out to 1/2-inch thick. Cut into 3-inch squares and place on the cookie sheets. With 3-tined fork, make hole patterns on one side. (I use a hard tack cutter with nails already in pattern - some tin sutlers

sell these - ask around the membership because maybe someone has one)



Place sheets in oven and bake each side of hard tack for 30 minutes at 350

degrees. Stack finished tack into a box and let set up for one day at which time they will gain the consistency of a brick.



Some people add a little salt to the dough but there is no historical

evidence for this. The salt makes it even harder but also attracts

moisture which will eventually ruin tack stored for a few months (and a lot

of mine is stored for a year).



You are going to get hot, sweaty and tired but that's historically correct.

Historically, soldiers assigned bakery detail at all the posts, like Ft.

Laramie where the oven is still in use, didn't wash hands and allowed sweat

to drip into the dough bins where it was mixed in large masses.

Ok, I read over that recipe Loz.. but what IS it? Just water and flour?

Ok, I looked it up and it is pretty much like Saltine crackers. Interesting.