Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
lithub.com
Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
1–10 of 28 posts
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#2> The animals thrived on the swampy peninsula, gorging themselves on a root called tuckahoe that, as one historian wrote, “burns the mouth of a human being like fire.”
I'm always curious about native foods so I looked this up. The plant is probably Peltandra virginica, which was supposedly eaten by indigenous people.
> The plant is rich in calcium oxylate, this is toxic and if consumed makes the mouth and digestive tract feel as though hundreds of tiny needles are being stuck into it. However, calcium oxylate is easily destroyed by thoroughly cooking or drying the plant https://practicalplants.org/wiki/Peltandra_virginica
I assume they mean calcium oxalate, which is also present in many food crops that must be cooked (e.g. taro root and the fruit of the peach palm).
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#3Ughh...
I exited after 15s of watching the embedded, auto-loading video at the top of the article. Around then, I realized this video was irrelevant.
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#4> The animals thrived on the swampy peninsula, gorging themselves on a root called tuckahoe that, as one historian wrote, “burns the mouth of a human being like fire.” I'm always curious about native foods so I looked this up. The plant is probably Peltandra virginica, which was supposedly eaten by indigenous people. > The plant is rich in calcium oxylate, this is toxic and if consumed makes the mouth and digestive t…
Interestingly, P. virginica is in the Araceae family which also contains taro (as well as the arum lily, breadfruit, elephant foot yam, and many more)
Can I ask more about your curiosity about native foods? It's been a big interest of mine as well ever since I found out about NUS[0] and the general realization that edible plants exist everywhere if you have enough knowledge about your environment
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neglected_and_underutilized_cr...
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#5> The animals thrived on the swampy peninsula, gorging themselves on a root called tuckahoe that, as one historian wrote, “burns the mouth of a human being like fire.” I'm always curious about native foods so I looked this up. The plant is probably Peltandra virginica, which was supposedly eaten by indigenous people. > The plant is rich in calcium oxylate, this is toxic and if consumed makes the mouth and digestive t…
Interestingly, P. virginica is in the Araceae family which also contains taro (as well as the arum lily, breadfruit, elephant foot yam, and many more) Can I ask more about your curiosity about native foods? It's been a big interest of mine as well ever since I found out about NUS[0] and the general realization that edible plants exist everywhere if you have enough knowledge about your environment [0] https://en.wikip…
Thanks for that article, that's an entry point I hadn't seen before! It reminds me of this database of famine foods from Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/famine-foods/
I got into it by wandering around the SF Bay Area and looking up plants with fruits on them to see if they were edible. That was how I ended up cracking open hollyleaf cherry pits and leaching the cyanide out of them, and roasting and grinding bay nuts to add them to chocolate cake.
There are indeed a lot of interesting native and introduced edible plants. It causes me to pay a lot more attention to the nature around me and to learn a lot of new things. I've thankfully avoided a visit to the hospital so far :)
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#6What an awful website. Auto-play videos, numerous pop-ups. Ick.
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#7> The animals thrived on the swampy peninsula, gorging themselves on a root called tuckahoe that, as one historian wrote, “burns the mouth of a human being like fire.” I'm always curious about native foods so I looked this up. The plant is probably Peltandra virginica, which was supposedly eaten by indigenous people. > The plant is rich in calcium oxylate, this is toxic and if consumed makes the mouth and digestive t…
Interestingly, P. virginica is in the Araceae family which also contains taro (as well as the arum lily, breadfruit, elephant foot yam, and many more) Can I ask more about your curiosity about native foods? It's been a big interest of mine as well ever since I found out about NUS[0] and the general realization that edible plants exist everywhere if you have enough knowledge about your environment [0] https://en.wikip…
Neat. A friend of mine heard that skunk cabbage, in the same family and also bearing calcium oxalate, was an indigenous staple and foolishly tried a mature leaf and ended up in the hospital. It's great that people are into learning about edible plants, but it's just as important to learn how they were prepared...
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#8There's a reason we all don't all raise hogs now.
A lot of my family in the Philippines have pigs in their back yard. It's not a set-and-forget affair. You like cleaning up kitty litter? Times the cleanup job by about a million, with a hose, and gumboots.
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, P. virginica is in the Araceae family which also contains taro (as well as the arum lily, breadfruit, elephant foot yam, and many more) Can I ask more about your curiosity about native foods? It's been a big interest of mine as well ever since I found out about NUS[0] and the general realization that edible plants exist everywhere if you have enough knowledge about your environment [0] https://en.wikip…
Thanks for that article, that's an entry point I hadn't seen before! It reminds me of this database of famine foods from Purdue University: https://www.purdue.edu/hla/sites/famine-foods/ I got into it by wandering around the SF Bay Area and looking up plants with fruits on them to see if they were edible. That was how I ended up cracking open hollyleaf cherry pits and leaching the cyanide out of them, and roasting an…
This database looks really promising, thanks for sharing! I'll definitely try to get ahold of it
Our stories are not actually all that different haha. I started the same way, mostly from getting into iNaturalist. I'm in SoCal right now and the landscapers seem obsessed with planting Natal Plums everywhere. I get some weird looks by people seeing me pick these big bright red juicy fruit next to their parking lots but they've become one of my favorite fruits, haha
If you're interested in this type of data, I've also been collecting resources like this. One of my favorites is the FAO's EcoPort[0] which has some of the most bizarre web design I've come across, but has really rich data. There's also the NAEB DB[1] which is the most complete collection of documented edible, medicinal, and other plant uses by Native American groups that I've come across. And since you linked PracticalPlants I'm guessing you're already aware of PFAF and related projects haha
[0] http://ecoport.org/ep?SearchType=displayMenu&menu=Basic_Sear... [1] http://naeb.brit.org/
Re: Everyone used to raise hogs (2016)
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interestingly, P. virginica is in the Araceae family which also contains taro (as well as the arum lily, breadfruit, elephant foot yam, and many more) Can I ask more about your curiosity about native foods? It's been a big interest of mine as well ever since I found out about NUS[0] and the general realization that edible plants exist everywhere if you have enough knowledge about your environment [0] https://en.wikip…
Neat. A friend of mine heard that skunk cabbage, in the same family and also bearing calcium oxalate, was an indigenous staple and foolishly tried a mature leaf and ended up in the hospital. It's great that people are into learning about edible plants, but it's just as important to learn how they were prepared...
Yeah exactly. Cycads for example are a very poisonous plant. Yet there's an entire island in Japan where people use cycads for everything from flour to alcoholic beverages
Maize is another good example of this. When white people took corn with them and forced parts of Africa to grow it from them, they didn't take along with them the knowledge of the complex process of nixtamalization. That's the way native peoples prepared corn to make it edible. It removes aflotoxins and makes nutrients in the maize more accessible.
In areas in Africa where maize replaced what they'd been growing, famines skyrocketed because they didn't know how to eat/process the corn