20 Zi'da 721
Continues from here
When the youngsters finally made their way back to him, Dan started a lesson on food. "I realise that you ever hungry youngsters may not agree with me, but food isn't the highest priotity for surival. It comes behind water, fire, and shelter, but if you end up stranded for more than a few days, you'll need to consider finding some. It may not be what you would like to eat, either, but if you're hungry enough, it will go down well enough." He grinned at them, an easy parallel to the teasing slant of his hands. "The first thing to remember is not to spend more energy getting your food than you get back from eating it. If you don't do this then you would be better off not searching for food at all. The sea is generous, but you can't live on just meat unless you want to get ill. You need some form of fat or plant food in there as well, and eating will often make you thirstier, so sort out your water supply first. A fire can make food safer to eat, or better to eat in a lot of cases. With plants look for starchy parts first rather than leaves. You can live a lot longer on starch than on green leaves."
Asha nodded as she listened, clearly focused on his words and remembering them right. Dan went on, "Starch is mostly found in roots and rhizomes, although sometimes you get a starchy fruit like plantains or grains like wheat and rice. Grain takes a lot of time to gather and isn't often found by beaches so you shouldn't spend a lot of time and energy looking for it. Rhizomes are a little like underground or underwater stems. This means you may well have to dig for your dinner, in which case it is worth looking at the kind of ground you have to dig in. It is often better to gather several smaller roots from ground that is easy to dig than to spend a lot of time and effort digging in hard ground to extract a single larger root. Remember, you have to watch how much energy you spend."
Dan paused and looked round to make sure everyone was paying attention, then went on, "Underwater rhizomes mean that you need to wade out into the water and use your hands to feel for them. Cattails and bullrushes are particularly good for this. On land, you are looking for cassava, burdock, thistles, dandelions and the like. Some of these can be very bitter, and you need to boil them to reduce that. Cassava and cattails can just be broken into sections and tossed in the fire. Once they are black, pull them out, break them open and suck the starch off the fibres.
"If you can't find starch, look for sweet things like fruits and berries. Don't eat too many at once because if you do, they may run straight through you and out the other end, but if that's what you find first, don't turn your nose up at them. They can keep you going long enough to find other sources of food. Carrying on with the theme of plants, because they don't run away when you try to catch them, and some of them can substitute for meat if you can't manage to catch anything. Most seaweed is edible, although some of it tastes foul, and if you've just washed ashore it may be your nearest, easiest food source."
Asha glanced sideways at the high tide line stewn with green and brown strands and clumps of the stuff and nodded to herself, as did quite a few of the other children. Dan clapped his hands, and the noise snapped Asha's attention back to him.
"You can look later," Dan told them. "Let me finish first, so that you know what to look for, all right?" Asha nodded hastily along with the others and did a very good pose of looking attentive.
Dan went on, "The other easy to find type of food that can substitute for meat and fish is nuts. You can look for them when you look for fruit. Most of you know at least a few of them, from big coconuts to tiny hazelnuts and acorns. Nuts need to be cracked open to reach the edible part, although some, like beechnuts, will open up by themselves if you warm them by the fire. Nuts are more portable than berries because they don't squash in your pocket or pack, and don't go off as easily as meat and fish. They make a good travel food if you have to move away from where you started, and can be eaten raw or roasted in your fire."
"If you don't have much in the way of tools," Dan told them, waving a hand at the beach they were all on, "then shellfish are often a better bet than other kinds of fish. You can find them on the rocks or in the sand. They may not run away very well, but they can and do fight back by burying themselves deeper into the sand or by clamping themselves down on a rock so that you can't prise them off. Crabs do run, however, and it may not be worth the effort to chase them down. Cooking shellfish by boiling them is safer in the long run, but you can eat most shellfish raw if you need to. Just take a good look at the water before you do - because of the way that shellfish feed, they can concentrate nasty things from the water in their body, and then if you eat it raw, you get sick.
"Now, I know you've all caught fish off the side of a ship, so I won't go into detail about how to catch them with hook and line. It's also possible to catch fish with a trap, a net, or your bare hands. You can smoke fish over a fire to make it last longer. You can also cook it directly on the coals of your fire in order to eat it safely. Oily fish will also give you some of that fat I mentioned earlier that stops you getting sick from a diet that's nothing but meat. Fish goes well with seaweed, since they are both from the sea, and you can wrap fish in leaves to bake it or just throw it in a pot with your roots."
Asha's stomach growled softly and she winced and looked down, digging a toe into the beach sand. She sighed, and scuffed her toe sideways, tracing lines on the ground as she listened.
"Hunting," Dan said, coming to the last part of his lecture, "is what a lot of people glamourise as catching their own food, but it's slow, inefficient, and involves putting in a lot of energy that you may not get back. Animal are very good at running away and escaping. None of you are experienced hunters to counter that. I'd advise sticking to traps instead, because at least those will do the waiting and pouncing for you, instead of you having to wait silently for hours in hiding. A trap most commonly consists of a looped snare, a pit, or a heavy weight. You set it up so that an animal interacting with it gets caught or hit or both. If you have traps out, you need to check them at least every day, so that any animal caught doesn't just rot and go to waste. It's an insult to the gods to waste what you have been given, whether that's food or skills. Don't do it.
"Now, we are going to make the rest of this lesson a practical one. I want you all to go out and see what food you can find, remembering what I've told you. Bring it back here, and we'll have a lesson on fires. You can cook your finds for your dinner tonight. Off you go!" Dan made a shooing gesture and the children scattered, most making for the trees. Asha hesitated, then moved up the beach towards the seaweed instead.
It was quite smart of the kid, Dan thought, to go for something with less competition to deal with. He stood up, brushed himself down, and picked his way along the beach in the other direction, to where a fire pit and a cooking station had appeared. He had things to do and meals to eat
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