Wilderness Survival: Part One

So, I am helping out with a week long kid's camp: a wilderness survival course through Academic Adventures (look it up; the director, Andrew Rice, does all sorts of camps and excursions for all ages). The kids are nice, although like most 10-year olds, tend to split into factions and get bored very easily.
However, Andrew does make it a point to teach everyone one big survival skill every day of the camp. The first day was spent building shelters, the second weaving cattail mats/baskets, the third making cedar rope, and so on.
We also point out (and use) edible plants and herbs. One great one is the cattail. After scrambling through brush into a marsh at the end of the lake, all the kids and myself proceeded to get good and mucky while trying to pull up cattail stalks and carry them back to our "base" at the forest's edge. Since many of the plants are bigger than the children themselves, it was an interesting experience for everyone.

The cattail is an amazing plant in general. Not only can you use the leaves to weave mats and baskets (using the basic over/under technique we learned in elementary school), but you can eat almost every part of the plant both raw and cooked...and they actually taste good.

If anyone of you pulled up grass and ate the sweet end bit inside as a child, you can do the exact same thing with the cattails. When you grasp the bottom of the plant inside the two main, tough outer leaves, the entire stalk simply pulls out of the root system. Depending on the size of the plant, there is a soft and white end that can extend over a foot at the base of the stalk. We ate this, as well as the small white rhizomes protruding from the root ball, raw; oddly, they taste like mild cucumber. These are rather starchy, as well...think of it as a delicious potato.

Since it is late summer, we didn't have the opportunity to do this, but you can also eat the young "tail" of the plant before it turns brown. When the spikes are young and green, you can eat them like baby corn (again, both raw and cooked); later, when covered in pollen, you can apparently eat the pollen off like corn-on-the-cob. The pollen is also a good substitute for flour (one spike usually yields around a tablespoon of pollen).

The old spikes can also be used as kindling or bedding/insulation; with enough time, you could weave two mats and tie them together, stuffing the space between them with the fluff and making a passable quilt! In a pinch, you can also eat the seeds; burning the fluff parches the seeds that are attached (in the manner of a dandelion) and you can nibble on those. They are extremely tiny, however, with little nutritional value.

So, in the end, a great plant. Tomorrow (or whenever I next post), I'll try focusing on another useful Northwest plant, just in case any of you ever get lost in the forest.

So much for good intentions...

As for posting every week, that idea went down the drain, much less every day. At least now, with my new laptop (a 17" beast, if I do say so myself), it might be a bit easier to keep this baby updated.
The discussion of the week is book trading sites. Do they work, are they really free, etc. I have been using paperbackswap.com recently, and it seems completely legit so far. The basic idea is, for free, you create a membership, post books, and get credits when you send a book off to a requester which you can then use to order books from someone else. Upside: books are in good condition, and the people send the books off promptly. Also, the $2-3 shipping is definitely cheaper than buying the book even used. Downside: the books you have posted might not be books people want, and then you get no credits. Sad. Also you do pay postage, and the process of ordering/sending a book is a multi-step process; if one of the people slacks on their updating, the sender won't get their credit. However, this hasn't happened to me so far, so I give this site a thumbs up.
One I just found was Textbook Revolt (textbookrevolt.com). This is a book trading site that works on the same principle as PBS, except only for students and textbooks. You need to be a student (i.e. have a .edu email address.), but I'll give thumbs-up to anything that will help me save the $100+ per textbook, even if I have to pay a postage to send off a book. But, because of media mail, it only costs $3 or $4 dollars. Hallelujah, a respite for all us poor college kids!
And, although this isn't a book trading site, per say, I must give a shout-out to Better World Books (www.betterworldbooks.com). They sell new and used books of every shape, size, and subject for REALLY cheap, and also buy back books. They donate most of their proceeds to literacy in Africa programs, and you can donate a percent of your buy-back money to the funds as well. BWB is the group that sets up the "Donate your Textbooks" boxes during buyback season.

In the Beginning

So, my blog is now open. This is the first time I have tried something like this, so I think it will be random maunderings (manderings and wanderings, according to some) about this and that. Maybe rants, maybe things that are happening in my life or the world, fun things I have discovered, or reviews...of anything I think is interesting.
Since I have never really participated in those "challenges" that you see everywhere, I thought that this would be a good time to try. My challenge is to post coherent messages/reviews/comments on this blog at least twice a week. Not the most aspiring of goals, I know, but it is a good one for me. I tend to get obsessed with something, and leave it halfway done. Plus, I can't do the "read a certain number of books in x time" challenge because I already read an average of 1 book a day. Literally. And we're talking 200, 300 page novels here. I grew up reading; I would definitely recommend it. Not only does it make you smarter (and able to spell) but it is just plain fun!
In conclusion, welcome! And apologies for any confusion or odd writing on my part; my sister is the amazing writer, not me.

Lots of love,
Kess