Food

   Many plants are edible, but you must be able to absolutely identify a plant. The difference between an edible and poisonous plant can be very minor. Also, some parts of some plants are edible, while other parts are poisonous. Almost all bladed grasses are edible, but since they are very difficult to digest, just chew them for a long time, swallowing the juice, and spit out the pulp. You can also steep them to make tea. Cattails are edible all year round, in all phases of growth. Pine needles can be boiled into a tea, and it is very high in vitamin C.

   The seeds from mature cones are also edible. Acorns are a good food, and high in protein.

   Now for the movable feast. Many insects are edible, but they are so small it would be better to seek other prey, unless you stumble upon a nest where you can collect many insects. Edible insects include: grasshoppers (don't eat the spiny back legs), crickets, katydids, cicadas, ants, and the eggs and larvae of bees and termites, maggots, earthworms and slugs. It just makes your mouth water, doesn't it? Other edibles include: most freshwater and marine fish, bullfrogs (nonpoisonous ones), snakes, lizards, birds, mammals. Be sure you can positivly identify something before you eat it, and never eat a sick or diseased anything. Animals can be tracked by their tracks, droppings, trails where brush is pressed down, and regular sleeping spots. To kill an animal you can: wait for it to come by, attract it with bait, set a trap (including snares and rigging a rock or heavy piece of wood to fall on it, a throwing stick, which is a boomerang that doesn't return, spear, slingshot and bow and arrow). Fish can be caught with your bare hands, spears, nets and hooks.

   ◘ The nobility ate mainly pastries and meat, including: Deer, sheep, pigs, oxen, larks, chicken, cow, rabbits, goose, swan and wild birds. A townsmen would eat whatever meat he could afford, along with herring, bread and cheese.

   A peasant would eat mainly black bread and cheese. He may also have eggs, leeks, parsnips, cabbage, beans and bacon once in a while.

   ◘ Spices were often used to disguise the taste and smell of eating rotting food. The nobility ate mainly pastries and meat, including: starlings, vultures, swans, peacocks, chickens, porpoises, dolphins, seals, whales, cod, salmon, sardines, lamprey, eels, deer, sheep, and pigs. Merchants ate meat and vegetables, including: onions, peas, beans, cabbage and shallots. Cucumbers and leaks were considered unhealthy, and not eaten. The poor ate mainly vegetables and dark breads. Raw fruits were considered unhealthy, and seldom eaten. The fruits most often eaten were: apples, plums, pears and peaches. Nuts were also eaten. My favorite course, dessert, was most often cheeses, cakes, spiced wine, cookies, waffles and jellies.

   ◘ What a horse is fed depends on its breed and the type of work it does. A saddle horse that weighs 544 kilograms (1,200 pounds), and is given about six hours of rigorous exercise every day, should get three daily meals. Each meal should have 134 to 202 cubic inches (2 to 3 dry quarts) of sweet feed or grain mixed with a little corn and linseed meal. The horse should also get some bran mash once a week, on the day before its day of rest.

   See Wilderness Survival, Middle Ages Life and Renaissance Life.