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Winter Survival Series Part 11: Seasonal Saviours, Cattail

~ Submitted by: Cheyenne Caza, AHA Student Member

·  Cattail -- Typha latifolia/angustifolia: For good reason, this plant is commonly referred to as the supermarket of the wild. You can get fire, food, medicine, shelter, and tools all year round from this single plant. It is quite remarkable how far it can go and almost the entire plant is edible, all year round. The roots (if you can get at them through whatever ice and snow might be present) are about 80% carbohydrate, 30% starch, and 6% protein;  They can be dug up, peeled, and eaten raw or cooked much like potatoes (boil, roast, fry, etc.). A palate improving, morale boosting, and energy giving syrup can be obtained from the roots by macerating them and then boiling to yield sweet syrup. The roots can also be dried and ground into a powder, and combined with other flours to make bannock and bread. This powder is very carbohydrate and protein rich, making it an excellent addition to soups and stews, helping to diversify the nutrients and thicken the liquid, allowing you to feel fuller than with a thin broth. The plant is at its starchiest in late autumn to early spring, making it an ideal winter survival food, though it is bitterer than in warmer months. In late winter/early spring, new shoots come up at the base of the plants. These young asparagus-like shoots can be eaten raw or cooked, simply peel the outer layers and eat the tender core. Mature shoots taste more like cucumber and can be harvested in the same way, though by this stage they will require cooking.  The stems of cattails are edible; just simply peel away the outer layers to get to the tender core, much like how you handle the shoots. Cattail down/seed fluff makes for outstanding flash tinder for fire starting. It is also invaluable for anything requiring insulation, with people throughout time using to insulate jackets, stuff pillows and mattresses, and to line shelter walls. The fluff can also be used alongside regular flour to make bannock, substituting some of the flour required by the recipe for cattail down. When prepared ahead of time, cattail pollen is a protein rich must-have for all wild meals. Adding the powder to your meals does wonders for diversifying the nutritional profile. If harvested correctly, cattail pollen can be shelf stable for a whole year, easily contributing to balanced health all year round. Cattail is wonderful for healing a wide spectrum of wounds by pounding the roots into a jelly-like poultice and applying directly onto the wound. This is good for burns, scalds, boils, cuts, inflammations, and bruising. The fluff has also been used for burn and wound dressing, a diaper rash treatment, as well as padding for menstrual bleeding. The strong leaves are great for weaving (shelter walls, mats, chairs, baskets, bags, etc.) and making thatching. The rigid stalks make for excellent arrow shafts and all manners of other tools. 

 CAUTIONS: Cattails are so proficient at filtering out environmental toxins, that they are commonly used in bioremediation. If the plant tastes overly bitter or spicy - stop eating it immediately, as it is likely contaminated. You are still free to use it for shelters, fires, and anything else you will not be ingesting. 

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Winter Survival Series Part 5: Seasonal Saviours, Balsam Fir

~ Submitted by: Cheyenne Caza, AHA Student Member

 · Subapline/Balsam Fir -- Abies lasiocarpa/balsamea:  Even in the dead of winter, Mother Nature finds a way to provide, and subalpine firs are no exception. Their needles provide relatively large doses of vitamin C at just the right time. Young and tender needle shoots are great to eat fresh, though the mature and tough needles would need to be cooked. Fir needles also make a great deodorant for your shoes or your space, and helps deter pests like moths. A fir tree delicacy can be made by mixing finely ground cones with fat for a nutritionally rich treat, which also aids in digestion. The inner bark can be eaten fresh in an emergency, added to soups/stews for nutritional diversification, or dried, ground, and combined with other cereal flours to make bread and bannock. The seeds, though being very small and tedious to harvest, can be eaten raw or cooked. (TIP: hardened resin found on the outer bark can be chewed like gum and will help clean your teeth, get rid of bad breath, boost morale, and stave off infection in your nose, mouth and throat.) Fir trees are the only tree to produce resin blisters all over their outer bark. These blisters are designed to open around the wound of an injured tree, and ooze the resin into the wound to clean, disinfect, and seal it. That ooze, can be a god-send to those in survival situations (or anywhere really). Quite literally, you can think of them like blister packed antiseptic for your wounds. To harvest, press a clean container right up underneath a blister and carefully pop a hole in it with your clean knife blade, and milk the resin into the container, or milk straight onto a wound. Do not take too much from a single tree! That is the tree's medicine, first and foremost. The resin works beautifully for our wounds as well as the tree's. You would need to use it fresh or by softening it (can be soaked in water to soften the gummy resin) enough to apply to the entire wound. The steam of fir resin in a hot cup of tea is not only uplifting for both our body and spirit, but also wonderful for your lungs and bronchial passage. The simple aromatherapy benefits of fir tree scent is enough to raise morale in any survival situation, and good for anyone feeling fatigued.  

 CAUTIONS: Fir tea should be consumed in moderation because it can sometimes cause skin reactions and vomiting. 

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WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT JUNK FOOD?  

What’s so bad about junk (aka processed) food? We all know the answer. The bad part of junk food is excess sugar, fat, salt, and chemical preservatives – all the things that invite fat, clog arteries, interfere with metabolism, and keep us sluggish, irritable and constipated. Not to mention all that plastic, foil and cardboard packaging … but that’s a subject for another post.

So we know junk food is bad for us. We’ve heard all about it from our parents, health experts and well-meaning friends . . . blah blah blah

But do you really know why junk food is so bad?

Here’s my take on it.

Junk foods are freeloaders in the body. They are the unwelcome house guests that eat all the food and leave a mess in the bathroom. They make you feel good by promising to help pay the bills. They even promise to clean up when they are finished watching the game. But they never do, and you are left feeling frustrated, empty and tired.

You see, Nature, in her infinite wisdom, builds into each food she manufacturers the enzymes, vitamins and minerals necessary for that particular foods processing and digestion within the body. When you eat foods in their whole state, its like invited guests arriving on your door step with their own supply of food and bedding or buying a new electronic gadget with the batteries included. But as soon as whole food is processed and denatured, the enzymes, vitamins and minerals required to process and digest that un-whole food must be pulled out of the body’s stores … in other words, your guests arrive unannounced, empty handed and hungry … the batteries are not included.

Let’s take an example of one tiny little teaspoon of sugar. Did you know that it takes approximately sixteen feet of sugar cane to produce one teaspoon of refined white sugar? If you sat down and chewed on sixteen feet of sugar cane, you would be ingesting all the enzymes, vitamins and minerals your body requires to digest that teaspoon of sugar … no problem.

But when you ingest a teaspoon of refined sugar in the form of soda pop or candy, your body must remove the equivalent of the enzymes, vitamins and minerals found in 16 feet of sugar cane from storage places within the body. How many enzymes, vitamins and minerals do you think are in sixteen feet of sugar cane? I don’t know either, but I bet it’s a lot. So its no wonder that 30 minutes after consuming refined sugar, your immune system is compromised by as much as 50% as your body scrambles to deal with the freeloaders digging into your enzyme, vitamin and mineral stores.

There are thousands of specific examples like this illustrating how the ingestion of highly processed foods force the body to supply the enzymes, vitamins and minerals required just to deal with the junk, in the same way that free-loading house guests happily sit down for meals you’ve prepared, but never offer to buy the groceries or do the cleaning up.

In addition to using up the body’s supply of enzymes, vitamins and minerals, eating junk food is kind of like that freeloading houseguest throwing a party for all their belligerent friends, while refusing to invite your friends.

For example, in order to make delicate and fluffy pastries and breads, the outer portion of the wheat kernel is removed, and the leftover inner portion of the grain is refined into white flour, which in turn is processed into delicate pastries.

Whole grains contain zinc in their outer portion and cadmium in their inner kernel. During digestion zinc competes with cadmium for absorption into the cells. But if the outer portion of the grain (the part that contains the zinc) has been removed, the cadmium from the inner kernel has no competition and can freely absorb into the body. Excess absorption of this non-essential element is still being studied, but preliminary results suggest that, among other things, cadmium may be a factor in kidney disease.

And to make matters worse, by not consuming the outer portion of the wheat kernel, the body’s zinc stores are quickly depleted. Zinc is a critical requirement of over two dozen digestive and metabolic processes as well as being very important in the development of the reproductive organs and for normal functioning of the prostrate gland. Zinc also supports the immune system and protects the body from free radicals.

So the next time you are eating donuts, potato chips or candy bars, think about the enzymes, vitamins and minerals found in whole grain, whole potatoes, cocoa beans and sugar cane. And then think about where those enzymes, vitamins and minerals will be pulled from and what repair process, tissue re-growth, or bone strengthening that will not happen because your body has to deal with unwelcome, freeloading house-guests.

   ~Submitted by Jeananne Laing M. & CL. H, RH

     President, Alberta Herbalists Association

     Co-Founder and Instructor, Lodgepole School of Wholistic Studies

#AlbertaHerbalistsAssociation, #MemberPosts, #AHA, #HerbalMedicine, #Herbalists, #AHA #foodforthought

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Winter Survival Series Part 12: The End

Herb~ Submitted by: Cheyenne Caza, AHA Student Member

 There you have it! All 8 Seasonal Saviours - Winter 2017.

 Each plant that made the list was chosen with care and deliberate intent, to highlight plants common to many parts of the world, not solely for my area. Though I chose this particular list because of my personal experience with each of them, there are countless other applicable plants that could've made the cut. Please do explore beyond the limits of this article, but always use caution. Plants are complex organisms and should be handled with care. There are plants I know inside and out (literally!) and I still double check before consuming.

On a final note, always pay special respect to those that you harvest, they are giving their life so you can survive. Honour that. Ask for permission to harvest and always give thanks verbally, energetically, and/or with an offering. If possible, help the plant live on by spreading its seeds and cultivating new life for each one that you've taken.  Thanks for reading, now get out there and explore! 

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Winter Survival Series Part 3: Staying Healthy

~ Submitted by: Cheyenne Caza, AHA Student Member

Now, there are common health conditions that can occur this time of the year more so than others, like scurvy for instance. Scurvy used to be a rampant winter blight in Northern countries, a deficit of vitamin C in the body, often diminishing the immune system (our body's immune function relies on heavy hitters such as vitamin C) and making wound healing seemingly impossible-- certainly something to avoid when in a survival situation. With winter being the time of year with the seemingly smallest selection of foods containing vitamin C, it's quite a beautiful thought to think that it is also the same time of year that Mother Nature gives us one of the most powerful sources of vitamin C-- rosehips! (Also known as the itchy bum berry, so be sure to read on for handling instruction.) Approximately 3 single rosehips, gives you the equivalent vitamin C content of a whole orange. Not too bad for backwoods foods. When adding vitamin C rich foods to anything you are cooking (soups, stews, teas), make sure you are adding it at the very end, to previously boiled and allowed to cool slightly water (or soup or stews) and consuming it right away. Vitamin C is a highly sensitive vitamin, especially to things like heat and processing. This is especially crucial during the winter, when you need every ounce of nutrients you manage to find.  Keep your eyes and mind open to all possibilities within nature. There is no such thing as certainty out there. If it's mid-January and you come across still-green Alfalfa, for instance, securely tucked away under a spruce tree, don't dismiss the gift because it shouldn't technically be there. Instead consider it an honour, give thanks to the plant's gift, and utilize the blessing. There is no black and white, written in stone rules within nature, no matter who says otherwise.

Stay tuned for Winter Survival Series Part 4: Seasonal Saviours, Alfalfa!

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Winter Survival Series Part 2: The Basics

~ Submitted by: Cheyenne Caza, AHA Student Member

 Taking a page from the book of primitive living, with enough preparation your winter eating can be a breeze, even in survival situations. Gathering nuts throughout the summer and fall (TIP: watching where squirrels bring their nuts, could award you with finding their cache, which is often a higher pay off than simply hunting the singular squirrel), drying seeds, leaves, roots, and fruits for winter use, drying or curing meat/fish, and if you have the resources, canning, and preparing flours; will all help your chances at surviving the winter with relative ease. Simple things can be done to prolong the life of such food, like root cellar set-ups, salts and sugars (preparation would be key here), dehydration, adding dried herbs like Labrador Tea (Ledum latifolium) to your flour supply to deter pests and rodents, and more. You also need to know how to harvest tree barks, and that is to simply mimic nature. Animals eat barks regularly and they do so by digging their teeth in and tearing a strip of bark down the tree. So do that, except maybe with a knife and not your teeth. Never take a strip from around the tree trunk – that will kill the tree; only strip the bark down the trunk, in small sections, and take very little from a singular tree. Better yet, strip the larger branches, and leave the trunk alone completely.

Stay tuned for Winter Survival Series Part 3: Staying Healthy!