What can I eat in the wild?

No matter where you are in the world – except Antarctica – someone has lived there before you -- probably for thousands of years.  Wherever you live, wherever you move in the future, it makes sense to head for the library, or get on the internet, and find out how people lived there, long ago.

Around here, the first locals were Native Americans of the Chumash tribe.  Some of the foods in this guide are ancient parts of the Chumash diet;  others were brought by the Spanish but soon became part of the Chumash diet and the local ecosystem.

Of course ancient people everywhere hunted wild animals, and fished.   You will learn those skills from later courses, or directly from your own Dads.  But tonight we’re going to talk about edible plants.   Not quite as interesting or as much fun to catch – but certainly easier.

In any given environment there are probably hundreds of plants that are “edible” in the sense that you could eat them without dying or getting sick.  But many of them are either not nutritious enough, or too rare, to be worth the effort of looking for them.   Only a true specialist can take the time to learn thousands of plants but anyone can learn a dozen or so of the most common and easiest to recognize.

I have made every effort to avoid using images for which copyright is claimed.   However since things get reposted around the net, I might have unintentionally used something proprietary.   If you believe I shouldn’t be using some of these images, please let me know at once.  In any case, I derive neither profit nor political gain from their use.  PB

Prickly Pear Cactus – Opuntia (several species)

The young tender pads are a nutritous vegetable, called “nopalitos” in Mexican cuisine.  Scrape off the spines before eating!  Even the domesticated “spineless” type has some small spines.

The fruits are called “prickly pears”or “cactus pears” in English, “tunas” in Spanish.  Knock fruit off the plant, then sweep them back and forth on the ground many times with a leafy branch.  The spines will go into the leaves, and then you can handle the fruit.  Skin, eat, and spit out the seeds where new cactus might grow.

The whole plant is a storehouse of the most important nutrient of all – WATER.  Even the old, fibrous pads, which are too tough to eat, can be mashed up between rocks, and the water can be sopped up into a towel or t-shirt and then squeegied into your mouth!

Oaks – Quercus  (coast live oak above, valley oak below)

Oak seeds – acorns – mostly are too bitter to eat when raw.  Chumash, other California natives, and also some ancient Mediterranean cultures, would dry them out, remove them from their shells, grind them into flour, and then soak in several changes of water to leach out the bitterness.  Soaking can be done in a pot, a sand basin, or in a shirt or other piece of cloth used as a filter.  It produces food but it’s very laborious; the Chumash reportedly gladly switched to beef as soon as the Spanish introduced longhorns.

If you’re short of water, acorns are not a good idea.  The process uses a lot of water.  Unless you can distill the water and re-use it (that’s another class, another day.)

Grinding acorns, the hard way….

Almost ready to soak…

Southern California black walnut (Juglans calfornica)

Related to the domestic walnut and sometimes used as a grafting rootstock for it.  So-Cal black walnuts are tasty, but too hard for a nutcracker.  You’ll need a hammer or a sturdy rock.  Also, the green hulls will stain your hands dark brown – be careful, it lasts for weeks.

Holly leaf cherry (Prunus ilicifolia)

The seed is larger, and the fruit coating is thinner than domestic cherries, but they are very definitely edible.  You’ll see the pits in coyote scat, as they eat cherries.

The hard pits can be cracked open to reveal a seed that looks like a small almond but – like regular cherry pits – is POISONOUS.  Chumash and other tribes used to grind and leach away the bitter poison in th