Euell Gibbons—How to eat well from nature herself
“Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible!”
Wild Asparagus
That opening quote about the pine tree, launched me into natural eating. Sure, I was only a kid when that was said, but that quote never left me. I mean, what could possibly be edible on a pine tree?
I had to know, so I took the nearest public transportation (which even then I was thinking green) to one of the huge University of Milwaukee off campus bookstores, and found the first book that Euell Gibbons had authored. It was called Stalking The Wild Asparagus
and this cover blurb sold me.
A delightful book on the recognition, gathering, preparation and use of the natural health foods that grow wild all about us. The lore here can turn every field, forest, swamp, vacant lot and roadside into a health-food market with free merchandise.
When I got home that day, I devoured that book from cover to cover, in a figurative sense, of course. Then I was off to the field across the road from where I lived and began hunting for good things to eat, right out of nature herself.
That first time foraging out in the field, I gathered up young dandelion leaves ( the older and mature leaves are too bitter), cattails, and a sack full of acorns to bring home. On my travels, I found wild strawberries and ate as many as I could find, smiling gleefully the entire time and never tasting anything as sweet as those. My parents had long been finding wild asparagus in old orchards and such, so when I brought home my booty, my mother was nearly as excited as I was.
Dandelion leaves were easy to prepare, just rinse and boil and add a little olive oil and salt, or crunch on them raw. Cattail shoots were a little more labor intensive, but once peeled, they were mild tasting and delicious. The acorns, on the other hand, are what school projects were made of.
The nuts from an oak tree needed to be dried and ground up into a type of flour. Then they needed to be leached to get rid of their tannins, which taste bitter and can lead to an upset stomach, and then dried once again. After this, my mother mixed them with some H2O, then plopped them into boiling water and made acorn dumplings! I captured this entire process on an 8mm movie camera, and I literally did turn it into a school project. I even brought some finished acorn dumplings to school along with some honey, and everyone got a taste. Needless to say, I got an A+ for the project, and it was all thanks to Euell Bibbons.
He authored more books like, ‘Stalking the healthful herbs’ and ‘Stalking the good life’ among others. They are all wonderful, and if you are into the vegan lifestyle or for any naturalist out there interested in wild and edible foods, you can’t get any greener than this. Even to this day, I still go out and search fields near and far for 100% natural goodies from natures own pantry. All on account of Euell Gibbons and still, each and every book of his are must reads.
Humans usually decides the said ‘eating material’ or food by first visual confirmation. Then we smell it. If it is recognized as ‘edible’ by our brain, we eat, else we throw it like the grass.
The fact to be noted is that brain of different people may differently recognize the things as ‘edible’ or ‘non-edible’. Somebody may like sweet potatoes, while my friend Joe hates them!.
For example, for a pure-vegetarian, salami-eating is like inviting millions of bacterias and hence, diseases to his body; non-vegetarian like them most, however.
Object/thing recognize by your brain as ‘edible’ may not be same recognized by others! However, pine tree may have carbohydrates and proteins–I guess!
But I’ll try eating the parts of the pine tree anyway!!!
Thanks for the comment, and I agree with you in many ways. The first time I looked at a dandelion leaf, although supposedly edible, my brain just kept saying ‘unsavory, weed, non-edible, yuk’. But of course, I tasted it anyway, and then said out loud, “unsavory, weed, non-edible, yuk!”
Of course, I had tasted an old wrinkled up leaf that was bitter and none too good. Although I was not very aware then, I fortunately realized soon enough that the younger leaves were the ticket here, and upon tasting one of those, I have been good to go ever since!
Even today my brain still recognizes dandelions as ‘unsavory weeds’ but I pay it no mind now, because my tummy knows better.
Euell Gibbons certainly wrote some fun books, but he did not advocate eating wild foods because he was a vegan or a vegetarian. He was neither. Gibbons enjoyed wild foods as a gourmet and an outdoorsman. Many of his recipes call for adding eggs or meat (usually crisp crumpled bacon) for flavor, or using wild foods to compliment meat. In one of his books he even includes recipes for small game (rabbits, muskrats, squirrels.) He was also a fisherman who liked crawdads and brook trout. And he wrote an entire book — “Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop” — that’s chock full of recipes for ocean shellfish.