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corndog-44
10-15-2007, 03:00 PM
Do you know any trees than can be used as survival foods? Here's some to get started with:

American Elm= Leaves can be eaten raw or cooked. The red inner bark for a coffee-like drink.

Cottonwood= Catkins, raw or cooked. Eaten as a snack. The young green seedpods chewed as a gum. Inner bark, dried and ground into a powder used as a thickener in soups or added to cerals when making bread.

American Basswood= Young leaves, raw or cooked. Sap, obtained from next to the bark for a drink or made into a syrup. Flowers, raw. May also be used as a tea substitute. Chocolate substitute made from a paste of ground fruit and flowers.

Sycamore= Leaves wrapped around food such as buns when baking them will impart a sweet flavor. Seedpods has a sweet exudation and can be sucked on. Sap can be used as a drink or made into syrup.

HOP
10-16-2007, 06:41 AM
For syrup Black walnut, shag bark hicory and black birch

explodingearth
11-03-2007, 01:26 AM
how good of a food source are acorns from NON poison oak oak trees? what about pine nuts? the pine cone seeds?

RobertRogers
11-03-2007, 09:15 AM
Well, cinnamon comes from bark! Also, the Indians used trees as a cure for scurvy (http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/a-native-american-cure-for-scurvy/), believe it or not - and you can too.

jose lobo
11-03-2007, 09:30 AM
the tropics is full of eatable trees, and plant, the list is so big, and yummy, and year round. but when i lived in the cold, i love to eat pine nuts, lots of pine nuts.

Sarge47
11-03-2007, 10:37 AM
how good of a food source are acorns from NON poison oak oak trees? what about pine nuts? the pine cone seeds?

We did a whole thread on acorns as food, EE, Try & see if you can find it as their is a wealth of information there.

FVR
11-03-2007, 10:49 AM
Acorns, in short; collect, shell, put in a pot of water, boil till water turns brown, change water, boil again till they turn brown, change water, keep doing this until the water no longer turns brown.

Then let dry. At that point you can eat them whole as little treats or pound them into a powder and make johny cakes.

I have read "here" that the white oaks are tastier than the red oaks. Ahh, it's a snack.

The water that comes off the acorns, don't throw away. Put to the side and you can use it for tanning hides, thus tanning.

The tannin is what makes the acorns taste nasty.

I was hoping for a good crop of acorns this year, not gonna happen. My trees that usually drop a ton, hardly dropped any.

explodingearth
11-03-2007, 02:00 PM
well you guys are talking about snacks thats all good and well but does anyone know about their actual nutritional content? how are they for actual life sustainment? are they fatty? they have a little protein? anyone know? also for the pine nuts

FVR
11-03-2007, 03:46 PM
They contain carbs, fats, proteins and a variety of vitamins. Animals digestive systems can tolerate the tanins where humans can't. Once pulverized, you use it like flour and acorn flour has got to be alot healthier than the crap you purchase in the store.

I would assume that throughout history, acorns were very popular and an everyday food.

That's just my buck two fifty.

MCBushbaby
11-03-2007, 03:49 PM
You can eat the inner bark of nearly every tree in N. America except sumac and some others. Just make sure you don't "girdle" the tree as that will kill it. You can also use birch sap and maple sap for a sugary drink. You can eat acorns if you boil the tannic acid out of them. You can also eat the "helicopters" from maples (the seeds) if you roast them... eat them like shucked sunflower seeds. You can make pine needle tea from spruce tips or pine. Although not edible, per sey, the sap from a pine can be used as a glue or waterproofing on canoes, shoes, house thatching, etc.

FVR
11-03-2007, 04:00 PM
Pine pitch, you make it by getting a mess and I mean it's messy, of sap in an old pot, heat it and it will thicken. When it gets like tar, you're done.

You can also do this with strips of animal skin, rabbit, deer, etc. or hooves off critters. Add water in a pot and get it boiling, then add the critter parts. As the parts disolve, just keep adding and you will get hide glue.

The Native Americans out west would have one arrow shaft that had a cup attached at the bottom of it, the other arrowheads would rest in this cup. When they needed to re attach an arrowhead, they would pull out the cup, and heat. It already had dried hide glue in it. Dip and then reset the arrowhead, then dip some sinew and wrap.

jose lobo
11-04-2007, 12:49 AM
nice one FVR,, thanks

texasboy
11-06-2007, 09:19 AM
Where can you get pine nuts in nature. Are they at the center of pine cones or what.

Stealth
11-06-2007, 09:32 AM
its not a tree, but milkweed leaves and stalks can be boiled, change the water and boiled again and it tastes a lot like spinach. you can also collect the sap from birch or maple trees for a lot of carbs. ive heard you can eat the birch bark too, but ive never tried that

pine nuts come from the inside of the cone, just get them before the squirrels do