World markets continue to take dramatic hits and the Dow has fallen below 10,000 for the first time in four years. Seems a lot of banks and other players are unhappy with the trillion dollar bailout package passed last Friday because it limits their personal golden parachutes and stock option scams. Awwww. Should we call the waaaaambulance for these whiners? Nope. If they didn’t need our money they shouldn’t have begged for a handout in the first place. In the meantime, regular people are having a much harder time putting food on the table as prices rise dramatically and more and more find themselves out of work. This post is a beginner’s primer on how to get food if you can’t afford it.

Before I get to the list of good links readers may find helpful depending on their particular situations, readers should know that many states, such as the one where I live (NC) have budgetary caps on how much relief in the form of food stamps they are able to provide. This can mean that even as increasing numbers of people find themselves going hungry, fewer people will have access to the standard governmental relief. Thus more people must turn to other providers. A good overview of those providers supported by the USDA commodity program is provided at Amber Waves. If your family is in danger of ‘food insecurity’ be sure to familiarize yourself with emergency providers in your area. Cities generally have soup kitchens, places where you can go for a hot meal. Most smaller cities and many towns or counties also have food banks, check into what you will need to provide to qualify.

For those with few to no reasonable alternatives, or who may find themselves in a chronic situation (or are just stubbornly self-sufficient), here are some fine hints about foraging. Foraging the nearly lost art of getting your food from places other than the neighborhood supermarket or soup kitchen. Food prices are projected to continue rising and stay high for at least the next three years. Part of this is our newfound dependence on imported foods with huge ‘carbon footprints’ due to transportation and energy-intensive mechanistic agriculture. If you’re trying to keep your family alive and healthy, you honestly don’t need mangos in January or expensive processed foodstuffs at any time.

Of course, as with all matters of saving real money on food, you’ll have to learn (or remember) how to cook for yourself. Eating out and buying pre-prepared meals is the most expensive way to eat, not to mention the most unhealthy. Since health care is a growing desperate concern for everyone, staying healthy should be paramount in all our planning.

From the great DailyKos “Frugal Fridays” series, Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land we get several good ideas. Of course living close to water allows foragers with a little skill the luxury of catching crabs, crayfish, regular fish, baby clams, etc., and seaweed can be a fine addition to the pot to lend nutrients and salt (plus ample amounts of iodine). Living inland can offer lots of fine opportunities to forage for edible fungi, berries, tubers and pot herbs as well. it’s puff ball season in my neck of the woods, which are spendid stuffed with chopped acorns, cabbage, herbs and onions, baked in clarified butter in a covered dish. Hickory nuts are falling, and the wild sunflowers are blazing – these are otherwise known as Jerusalem artichokes, and eat like small potatoes.

Of course there’s Cossack Asparagus in marshlands almost everywhere. These are your basic cattails, and all parts of the plants are edible all times of year. The new green shoots are better than bamboo shoots (which also may be found here and there), but I best like the set-cob’s fuzz which can be ground into a very light, fine flour for baking and thickening broths. As things nutritional become rarer, families will likely have to learn how to like basic stew meals that can be made in large pots and eaten over a period of two or three days (refrigerated in between, of course).

If you don’t mind killing and cleaning, there’s a reason they call possom the “other other white meat.” People have traditionally made fine meals of squirrel, turkey, various ground birds, snakes and the standard larger game. Just be sure you’ve got whatever permit is required, both for hunting and fishing, in your area for the game you’re seeking. I’ve known families who could eat meat twice a week (all anybody needs) for an entire winter from a single deer. Best advice is to stay away from carnivores and scavengers (like ravens and buzzards, bears and racoons).

People in the country or with ample back yards could consider a fresh goat for milk and some few chickens (easily kept but noisy if you’ve a rooster) for eggs and occasional Sunday dinner. Check your local paper’s “livestock” want ads, chickens are very cheap and goats aren’t anywhere near as expensive to buy or feed as a cow. Or make friends with a farmer who has livestock. Around here I can get cheap (or for straight barter) milk, honey, free range eggs, grass-fed meat if I ate it, and all the composted fertilizer my garden can handle.

Of course learning how to garden will help a lot. Tomatoes and peppers and salad stuff can easily be grown in pots and flats on the patio or deck, herbs in the kitchen window, and many other things if you’ve the room, a shovel to turn ground and a metal rake to break it up. Know what grows in what seasons in your area – some crops like cabbage, collards, kale, lettuce, spinach, radishes, broccoli, brussles sprouts and cauliflower need cold weather to develop. Kale will keep on growing right through the snow! Others need lots of heat and sun. If you plant extras you can preserve for the future, or barter for trades with those who have foods you didn’t grow. Specializing can be better than trying to grow it all. Barter will become increasingly important as the food shortages and high prices continue.

Many wild flowers and weeds are edible, and some of those are more nutritious than anything you can buy in the store. Violets, dandelions (greens and flowers), day lilies, wood sorrel, purslane, etc. Don’t forget kudzu – its greens are very high in protein and its flowers make lovely jelly or colorful additions to salads.

Out in the woods there are acorns, elderberries, fox grapes, sloe plums, wild cherries, blueberries, hickory nuts, walnuts, ground nuts and other goodies in addition to the edible ferns and fungi. Be sure you know what you’re doing with those fungi – many local extension agencies offer print material and courses to let you know what’s edible and what’s not.

And don’t be shy – if you live in a farming/gardening region, keep track of who’s been harvesting, go ahead and ask permission to glean from those fields. Modern mechanical machinery leaves quite a lot of edible food behind, and farmers usually just plow it under. Many or most farmers in your area may be entirely willing to have you gather what you can of their already harvested crops.

Foraging is a lot like work, but more fun. Since millions will be out of work (and many of those one out of a two-income household), there should be time if you’ve got the energy and desire. Do check out some of the links in this article and below, get yourself psyched about the possibilities right now. In really hard times all we really have to do is survive, and learning to do for ourselves instead of waiting for a handout that may never come is very empowering. Kids love this stuff, so be sure to include them on your weekend foraging trips!

Links:

Emergency Providers Help Put Food On the Table
Foraging: Living Off the Fat of the Land
BHM: You can become a hardcore forager
Wild Food Foragers of America
Edible Wild Things: “Cossack Asparagus”
Wild Herbs/Foods Archive
Staples Archive
Harvesting Wild: The Mast Crop
Modern Forager

Posts to This Series:

Part 1: Roadblocks and Interference
Part 2: Food: Eating What You Can Get

People trying to make do on less and less money in the modern world already know that food is a greater expense for a family than most economists like to admit. Most of us have scanned various ‘official’ guess-timates of how much of a family’s income goes toward groceries – not eating out in restaurants or fast food joints – and have smirked at the discrepancies between what government thinks we can live on and the constantly rising prices at the grocery store.

Fortunately for those who live near a copse of woods or a real forest, nature does provide a bounty of foods that can be had for no more than the price of a healthy hike, some prep time and effort, and the energy it takes to process the harvest.

The production of acorns by oak trees every fall is called the “mast crop” here in the southern Appalachians. Some trees will produce bushels of acorns one year, practically nothing the next. We know that squirrels, bears, deer and other wildlife depend on the mast crop to put on weight for the coming winter, but did you know that the nuts of wild hickory, walnut, chestnut and oak trees were a large part of the staple diet of Native Americans long before white guys came?

Acorns of oak require more processing than the other nuts do, but provide a heavy staple flour rich in nutrients, complex carbohydrates, minerals and rich oil. The tribes depended on acorn flour in the Americas to supplement the meat-heavy winter diet with acorn flatbreads and stew thickener, or a hot combo mush with acorn meal and wild grass seeds.

Acorns tend to be much more bitter than sweet hickory nuts or black walnuts due to their tannin content. This tannin must be leached out of the acorns before they become the nutty-tasting sweet meal that makes such tasty breads, cooking and cakes that serve as a nutritious staple food for the winter. And it takes a lot of acorns to produce a significant amount of meal, so enlist the kids to help harvest and process.

Red oak acorns have a lot of tannin, white oaks less, and some oaks (burr oak, swamp oak) produce acorns that hardly need any leaching at all. If you find a variety of acorn types in a park or copse, keep them separate in your baskets or bags so as not to mix them for leaching purposes. There’s really no efficient way to get to the nutmeat other than to use a nutcracker, but acorn shells are thin and easily split. The meat usually comes apart in halves easily. It should be a creamy yellow-white without holes or black spots. I personally look for acorns after a rainy period that are barely sprouted, as these tend to be sweeter and contain less tannin that needs to be leached.

Take a little taste of your acorns to judge how bitter they are, and label them for bitterness as they are cracked and split and put into containers. When you’ve a good bowlful, put the nut halves into a soup pot and cover with twice as much water, boil for 5-10 minutes. After it sits for another 10-15 minutes, pour into a colander to discard the dark, tannin-tinted water and spray rinse. Then repeat the process until the water no longer turns dark. Some acorns need only one or two boilings, others need 5 or more. You can taste an acorn after each process. It should have a sharp bitterness when you first bite, then a rich sweetness.

Once the nut halves have been sufficiently leached of their tannin content, put them in a food processor or blender and chop them into a chunky meal. Spread this meal thinly on oven trays and dry on a low temperature (225º), turning occasionally, until well dried. A dehydrator also works, the Indians put their meal out in the full sun to dry.

Once the meal is well dried and warm brown, you can put it into quart Ball jars or ziplock freezer bags and put it in the freezer. It will keep in the refrigerator for about a week if you are planning to grind in that time, but the oil will go rancid if it’s not kept refrigerated or frozen.

To make the final ground meal you’ve several options. You can do it like the Indians and pound it with stones, you can use the food processor’s fine-ground setting, or you can use a hand-mill grinder. Due to oil content the flour is going to be grainier than regular wheat or bean flours, like cornmeal. You can grind flour as you need it, or grind up a few pounds and freeze it along with the other flours you keep in the freezer (all flours should be frozen for storage).

Check out some of the great acorn recipes and links below, consider how much high quality staple food you could provide for your family without having to spend a near fortune at the health food store (the only place you can get pre-processed acorn meal, and it’s expensive!

Acorn Recipes

• Use acorn meal to thicken stews and soups, instead of masa, flour or cream.

• Add 1/4 cup acorn meal to any single-loaf multigrain bread recipe, adjusting other flours to compensate. It adds a sweet, nutty taste. Other sweeteners should be adjusted, as acorn meal is itself a sweetener.

Apache Acorn Cakes

1 cup acorn meal, ground fine
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup raw honey
pinch of salt

Mix ingredients with enough warm water to make a moist but not sticky dough. Divide into 12 balls. Let these rest covered for 10-15 minutes. Shape into thick, tortilla-shaped breads and cook on an ungreased cast iron skillet over medium heat. When slightly brown, turn and finish cooking the other side.

Cornmeal and Acorn Mush

4 cups water
1 tsp. salt
1/2 cup acorn meal, ground
about 1 cup cornmeal

Bring salted water to a boil and sprinkle the acorn meal into the boiling water while stirring briskly with a whisk. Then add the cornmeal to make a thick, bubbling batch about the consistency of cream of wheat. Place the saucepan over boiling water (double boiler) and simmer until the mush is quite thick, about 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Satisfying hot cereal with a little milk and a bit of fruit jam or compote. As a main dish it can be topped with salsa, grated cheese or bacon bits. Or put the mush into a greased bread pan and refrigerate overnight. Then cut 1/2 inch slices, dip in flour and fry in hot vegetable oil.

Links:

Backwoods Home: Harvesting the wild

Prodigal Gardens: September

Acorn Recipes: Pancakes, Bread, Cookies, Gingerbread, Muffins,Acorn Burgers, Chile Con Acorn, Acorn ‘Meat’ Loaf