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Disgusting
Sounding Recipes
that could save your life
There may come a time when
it becomes necessary to eat some pretty unpalatable stuff just to
stay alive. Let's hope that these times are the exception rather
than the rule.
Here are some unusual eatables:
Winged
Mammals & Bats
Small winged mammals can be treated like squirrels. Fruit bats or flying foxes,
which live on bananas and tropical fruits, can be large and good to eat.
Baked bat is made by singeing off the fur or by skinning, then cleaning and
quartering the bodies before baking them in a ground oven.
Rats & Mice
Bush rats, cane rats, rice rats, wood rats, all types of rats which live in
clean vegetable matter provide good meat. Don't eat town rats which have high
levels of toxins in them (they have developed immunity, but you haven't).
The easiest way
to prepare a rat is to put it into the fire whole, turning it to singe off the
fur and whiskers.
The singed fur can be scraped off with a knife. Gut and wash the body. Cut off
and discard the feet and tail. Cut the rat into chunks and soak in water for
half an hour before cooking. The head is sometimes cooked whole, or crushed with
stones to release juices to thicken soup. Add salt and seasoning.
Recommended by the chef: The rats found in the wine cellars in France are
best, they are all alcoholic and come ready marinaded.:-)
Mice
Field mice of many species can be eaten. A simple method is to skin and clean
the mice and skewer them like kebabs. The chef recommends sautéed mice served in
a creamy sauce on a bed of rice.
Grubs and
Insects
Grubs and insects which feed on pure vegetable matter are wholesome and
nourishing to eat. It is curious that we love shrimps and crabs, scavengers of
the sea bed, yet are repelled by the creepy-crawlies of the land.
Tree Maggots
Boil the maggots in salted water, then fry or bake them. To eat, pull off their
heads and squeeze out their innards.
Woodlice
The common European Woodlouse (found under the bark of rotting trees), tastes a
bit like shrimp (to which it is related). Kill the woodlice by dropping them
into a cup of boiling water. Mix a little milk and butter with a teaspoon of
flour and some seasoning in a pan of water on the fire. When the mixture
thickens, add the woodlice. The sauce makes an excellent accompaniment to fish.
If you get
hungry enough, you WILL look to the above as a source of food. They can all become quite tasty if disguised enough and you don't think about
exactly what you are eating. One way of easily disguising disgusting sounding
food is to slap on some curry powder. Try carrying a 35mm plastic film
container of Hot Madras curry powder in your E & E Kit.
Make sure you
cook the curry powder though as part of the cooking process. If you just
sprinkle it on your food like seasoning, there's a good chance that you will go
through a few rolls of toilet tissue in rapid succession before your system
adjusts.
This site is owned by Bushcraft Educational Society © 2005
Email:
info@bushcraft-educational-society.co.uk
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