Food Without Farming
(Page 4 of 6)
July/August 1972
By James E. Churchill
When the flower of the bulrush is mature, usually in June or July, pollen hangs thickly on the blossoms and—as with that of the cattail, which it somewhat resembles in taste—is very edible. I employ the same method of gathering pollen from the bulrush that I use with the cattail . . . after taking a pail with a handle on it and taping its opening half shut with newspaper, I go out into a bulrush thicket on a windless day, bend the stalks of the plant into the bucket and tap the pollen loose. This can be done from a boat or while wading among the plants which almost always grow in water that's six or more inches deep.
RELATED CONTENT
When I have a quart or so of pollen I proceed to cook it into something nourishing and good-tasting . . . like flapjacks.
Rush-pollen flapjacks are made by first mixing together half pollen and half finely ground whole grain wheat. When you're on the trail, or short of supplies, you can just add water to this mixture and come up with a pretty-good-tasting cake by cooking both sides quickly on a lightly greased griddle.
For a real flapjack treat, however, add three tablespoons of maple sugar or brown sugar, three teaspoons of baking powder, one teaspoon of salt, two eggs well-beaten, 1-1/2 cups of sweet milk and five tablespoons of melted shortening to the pollen. Beat the ingredients together and drop a spoonful on a smoking-hot griddle. Top it off, once you've got the flapjack on your plate, by pouring maple syrup over the masterpiece.
Down in the sand, underneath the bulrush plant, you'll find weaving, twisting roots something like those of the cattail. Bulrush roots are fairly thick, almost pure starch and I've made flour from them by first scraping away their scaly bark and drying them very well. Later, when they'd reached the dried appearance of a twig, I ground them into flour with a handoperated food grinder. Mixed half and half with wheat flour they made a passable biscuit but nothing to get very enthusiastic about. I'm sure they contain a good many minerals and at least their quota of vitamins, however, so I wouldn't hesitate to use them if I needed the food.
While we're on the subject of common plants that can be used for food, let's not forget grass. I guess grass could be considered the backbone of all life . . . grazing animals live on it and provide food for the rest of the animals and man. It quickly covers all uncultivated land, healing whatever scars may be found in the earth and is so common that almost everybody knows what it looks like. In fact there's a common expression when speaking of a distasteful occupation, "I'd rather eat grass than do that." Why not eat grass? It's plumb full of the essential vitamins and minerals, can be dried, easily stored and is completely free for the taking.
Dr. F. Shanbel is generally credited with introducing the virtues of grass to human beings. During the great depression, when he lost his job as a food chemist, he actually fed his family little more than grass. Dr. Shanbel space-plotted—at two-week intervals—a two-acre patch at the edge of the little town in which he lived . . . so there would always be a supply of grass at just the right stage for eating. He cut it each morning and quick-dried it with the hot air of his furnace at home. When the grass was dried thoroughly he put it through a food grinder and mixed it wrath the milk and other food that his family ate.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
Next >>
