Bush Tucker

[Cervus elaphus]

There's not a lot of NZ flora and fauna that I haven't eaten at some stage, and living in the bush of both islands, I got to know how to supplement my tucker box with local stuff. My Maori friends helped me a lot in the gathering of bush tucker.
One of the most useful plants I had was the coastal kawakawa leaf, used for medicine and emergency tea when the good stuff ran out. I mixed this with the inner bark of the manuka or ti tree.
The native fuchsia tree (konini) with it's berries is a great tucker but you have to beat the possums to the fruit and they take the young shoots as well. On the south island's west coast you can see the dead fuchsia trees sticking out of the bush like skeletons.
Still in the lowland forests there is the supplejack vine, a curse most of the time, but a great food source with its berries and young shoots.
I confess I never took a cabbage tree palm heart, although it's a great food source, but when you take the heart you kill the tree.
In the many creeks rivers and streams of the bush I found freshwater crayfish (koura) and these are easy to catch and a great source of protein. Up in Nelson we used to catch them using a small bike wheel with a cloth cover and bits of meat. This was left in a pool for an hour and then carefully brought back up with the crayfish attached. A fire was lit on the beach and the catch cooked on hot stones. Eels were plentiful and easy to catch although I prefer them smoked.
Huhu grubs (Witchetty in Australia) I've eaten plenty of, but you need dead pine trees for them. Yep, they taste like sawdust, even when cooked, but a great source of protein. One of the most prolific lowland bush tuckers is the humble bracken or pig fern, the roots are high in starch and easy to cook up. Last and not least is the puha or sow thistle that grows on ground after a fire. The young leaves are the best and these are rubbed to break up the fibre (takes out the bitterness) before cooking and tastes like spinach. Puha is almost a necessity of Maori cooking.
There are poisonous plants out there too, like the tutu bush. A story I heard about this plant was when a circus was travelling through the back country of the north island and there were elephants in an open top transporter. The convoy stopped for some reason near a steep bank and the elephants grabbed a snack. Some of that snack contained tutu and several elephants died.
Australia has a lot of bush tucker but I'm not familiar with it apart from the huhu grub, I'm sure the hunter-gatherer Aboriginal community could teach us a lot.

 

[BourbonTrail]

Nice post, Cervus. I always enjoy learning how to forage for the local wild foods.
As a kid, my grandfather and his friends taught me the most about recognizing flora and fauna and their many uses. They were all Appalachians, a group who, up until recently, had lived off the land for hundreds of years passing generational knowledge down. My grandfather was also a game warden who recognized the importance of education in conservation.
Some of our “bush tucker” included the usual game food but also squirrels, crayfish, snakes, turtles, and frogs. We also foraged for ginseng, yellow root (a cold remedy), and various nuts. He taught me the various uses for cattails and other plants. We hunted for morel mushrooms in the spring and trapped for furs in the winter (extra income as a game warden’s salary in KY was barely above the poverty line). I learned a lot from that period in my life.
When I moved out west to Arizona in the Sonoran Desert, everything was pretty much thrown out the window. I had to learn about a whole host of new “bush tucker”. It was a great deal from books, but I made friends with an Apache from school and he offered what knowledge had been taught to him by his grandmother. Learned all the uses for prickly pear and other cacti, how to find water, and how to forage for what turned out to be a vast number of plants.
Some bush tucker I have had-
Kentucky Coffee Tree Coffee - not related to coffee at all, but seeds can be roasted to make a crude coffee.
Dandelions- Roots roasted for coffee substitute, leaves are great in salads, flowers are often used to make wine or jelly
Acorn Nuts - Boil in water (blanch) to remove copious amounts of tannin (use to tan skins), bake and grind to make flour
Barrel cactus fruit- flesh is edible, but the seeds are what you really want (they are similar to chia seeds)
Mesquite beans - grind into flour
Bittercress- grows in early spring and is a member of the cabbage family, but looks like a common garden weed. Really good flavor, slightly bitter with a peppery bite

 

[Cervus elaphus]

Nice post, Cervus. I always enjoy learning how to forage for the local wild foods.
As a kid, my grandfather and his friends taught me the most about recognizing flora and fauna and their many uses. They were all Appalachians, a group who, up until recently, had lived off the land for hundreds of years passing generational knowledge down. My grandfather was also a game warden who recognized the importance of education in conservation.
Some of our “bush tucker” included the usual game food but also squirrels, crayfish, snakes, turtles, and frogs. We also foraged for ginseng, yellow root (a cold remedy), and various nuts. He taught me the various uses for cattails and other plants. We hunted for morel mushrooms in the spring and trapped for furs in the winter (extra income as a game warden’s salary in KY was barely above the poverty line). I learned a lot from that period in my life.
When I moved out west to Arizona in the Sonoran Desert, everything was pretty much thrown out the window. I had to learn about a whole host of new “bush tucker”. It was a great deal from books, but I made friends with an Apache from school and he offered what knowledge had been taught to him by his grandmother. Learned all the uses for prickly pear and other cacti, how to find water, and how to forage for what turned out to be a vast number of plants.
Some bush tucker I have had-
Kentucky Coffee Tree Coffee - not related to coffee at all, but seeds can be roasted to make a crude coffee.
Dandelions- Roots roasted for coffee substitute, leaves are great in salads, flowers are often used to make wine or jelly
Acorn Nuts - Boil in water (blanch) to remove copious amounts of tannin (use to tan skins), bake and grind to make flour
Barrel cactus fruit- flesh is edible, but the seeds are what you really want (they are similar to chia seeds)
Mesquite beans - grind into flour
Bittercress- grows in early spring and is a member of the cabbage family, but looks like a common garden weed. Really good flavor, slightly bitter with a peppery bite

Thanks for that. One other important food source I forgot to add is watercress. Living in our watercress are shrimps which can be harvested with a small net - takes a lot of work but worth it in the long run. There is prickly pear cactus here in Australia but I don't know anyone who utilizes it as it's regarded as a pest. One place where I hunted had banana passionfruit growing wild in the bush and I used to fill up my shirt with the fruit, possums absolutely loved them as well. No snakes or turtles in NZ (quite glad about that). Cheers

 

[Bob Nelson 35Whelen]

There's not a lot of NZ flora and fauna that I haven't eaten at some stage, and living in the bush of both islands, I got to know how to supplement my tucker box with local stuff. My Maori friends helped me a lot in the gathering of bush tucker.
One of the most useful plants I had was the coastal kawakawa leaf, used for medicine and emergency tea when the good stuff ran out. I mixed this with the inner bark of the manuka or ti tree.
The native fuchsia tree (konini) with it's berries is a great tucker but you have to beat the possums to the fruit and they take the young shoots as well. On the south island's west coast you can see the dead fuchsia trees sticking out of the bush like skeletons.
Still in the lowland forests there is the supplejack vine, a curse most of the time, but a great food source with its berries and young shoots.
I confess I never took a cabbage tree palm heart, although it's a great food source, but when you take the heart you kill the tree.
In the many creeks rivers and streams of the bush I found freshwater crayfish (koura) and these are easy to catch and a great source of protein. Up in Nelson we used to catch them using a small bike wheel with a cloth cover and bits of meat. This was left in a pool for an hour and then carefully brought back up with the crayfish attached. A fire was lit on the beach and the catch cooked on hot stones. Eels were plentiful and easy to catch although I prefer them smoked.
Huhu grubs (Witchetty in Australia) I've eaten plenty of, but you need dead pine trees for them. Yep, they taste like sawdust, even when cooked, but a great source of protein. One of the most prolific lowland bush tuckers is the humble bracken or pig fern, the roots are high in starch and easy to cook up. Last and not least is the puha or sow thistle that grows on ground after a fire. The young leaves are the best and these are rubbed to break up the fibre (takes out the bitterness) before cooking and tastes like spinach. Puha is almost a necessity of Maori cooking.
There are poisonous plants out there too, like the tutu bush. A story I heard about this plant was when a circus was travelling through the back country of the north island and there were elephants in an open top transporter. The convoy stopped for some reason near a steep bank and the elephants grabbed a snack. Some of that snack contained tutu and several elephants died.
Australia has a lot of bush tucker but I'm not familiar with it apart from the huhu grub, I'm sure the hunter-gatherer Aboriginal community could teach us a lot.

@Cervus Elaphas
May be you should be called Bear Grills. I know some of the bush tucker in my home area but it varies along from region to region and is a hell of a lot to learn.
Bob

 

[Bob Nelson 35Whelen]

Thanks for that. One other important food source I forgot to add is watercress. Living in our watercress are shrimps which can be harvested with a small net - takes a lot of work but worth it in the long run. There is prickly pear cactus here in Australia but I don't know anyone who utilizes it as it's regarded as a pest. One place where I hunted had banana passionfruit growing wild in the bush and I used to fill up my shirt with the fruit, possums absolutely loved them as well. No snakes or turtles in NZ (quite glad about that). Cheers

@Cervus elaphus
The prickly pear fruit is nice eating.
Bob

 

[PerH]

The Bushtucker Man series is perhaps the best of that kind thats made,and Ray Mears also.

 

[Cervus elaphus]

@Cervus elaphus
The prickly pear fruit is nice eating.
Bob

Now you tell me, I could have cleared Goondiwindi of all their cacti

 

[Cervus elaphus]

@Cervus Elaphas
May be you should be called Bear Grills. I know some of the bush tucker in my home area but it varies along from region to region and is a hell of a lot to learn.
Bob

haha more like bare bones. Foraging used to be a given once but we have seemed to have lost the art. We are still hunting but no longer gathering. Aborigines and Maori know how to live off the land. I've only covered some of tucker available and not gone into coastal seafood (kaimoana) and plump native pigeons (kereru). Add these and you can live like kings. Kereru are protected birds now.

photo: nzbirdsonline

 

[Bob Nelson 35Whelen]

haha more like bare bones. Foraging used to be a given once but we have seemed to have lost the art. We are still hunting but no longer gathering. Aborigines and Maori know how to live off the land. I've only covered some of tucker available and not gone into coastal seafood (kaimoana) and plump native pigeons (kereru). Add these and you can live like kings. Kereru are protected birds now.
View attachment 409734
photo: nzbirdsonline

@Cervus elaphus
They say you can eat the Australian Galah ( a type of parrot). You cook it in a pot of boiling water with a rock in it. When the rock goes soft you throw the galah out and eat the rock. They make jerky look like prime cut

 

[BourbonTrail]

Now you tell me, I could have cleared Goondiwindi of all their cacti

In Arizona they make prickly pear margaritas…just swap tequila out for some Bundy rum

 

[Cervus elaphus]

In Arizona they make prickly pear margaritas…just swap tequila out for some Bundy rum

Bundy rum?. Being a bit of a rum aficionado, I would stick with tequila with or without worm.

 

[Cervus elaphus]

@Cervus elaphus
They say you can eat the Australian Galah ( a type of parrot). You cook it in a pot of boiling water with a rock in it. When the rock goes soft you throw the galah out and eat the rock. They make jerky look like prime cut

I'm familiar with galahs Bob, most of which you can find on Aussie roads. There is one bird tougher than those and that's the swamp hen, rail, or kiwi pukeko.

 

[Cervus elaphus]

@Cervus elaphus
They say you can eat the Australian Galah ( a type of parrot). You cook it in a pot of boiling water with a rock in it. When the rock goes soft you throw the galah out and eat the rock. They make jerky look like prime cut

Meant to tell you Bob that there is a good NZ hunting/shooting TV program on NITV if you can get that channel down in NSW. Usually on about 11pm. Worth checking it out.
We're in covid-19 lockdown up here in Brizzie. over it.

 

[Cervus elaphus]

Meant to tell you Bob that there is a good NZ hunting/shooting TV program on NITV if you can get that channel down in NSW. Usually on about 11pm. Worth checking it out.
We're in covid-19 lockdown up here in Brizzie. over it.

program is called "Hunting Aotearoa"

 

[Bob Nelson 35Whelen]

Meant to tell you Bob that there is a good NZ hunting/shooting TV program on NITV if you can get that channel down in NSW. Usually on about 11pm. Worth checking it out.
We're in covid-19 lockdown up here in Brizzie. over it.

@Cervus elaphus
I have seen the show you are talking about it's not bad.
This lock down was all started by 1 funked out limo driver in Sydney. We are also in lock down on the Central Coast.
Give me a ring it would be good to have a yarn during this time.
Bob

 

[PerH]

Now you tell me, I could have cleared Goondiwindi of all their cacti

Look on Yt for Ray Mears Desert episode, he m3ntions theapaches and theiruse of pear cacktus and the one plant one wish one had a farm with some thousands of.

Namely The Agave plant.

 

[Cervus elaphus]

Look on Yt for Ray Mears Desert episode, he m3ntions theapaches and theiruse of pear cacktus and the one plant one wish one had a farm with some thousands of.

Namely The Agave plant.

Must have a look at that because we have an Agave plant in a nearby garden which has a huge drooping flower like this

 

[Cervus elaphus]

@Cervus elaphus
I have seen the show you are talking about it's not bad.
This lock down was all started by 1 funked out limo driver in Sydney. We are also in lock down on the Central Coast.
Give me a ring it would be good to have a yarn during this time.
Bob

ok will do

 

[Bob Nelson 35Whelen]

ok will do

@Cervus elaphus
Did I pm you my phone number.
I am available from 7am until 9pm most days.
Bob
@BeeMaa rang me from the USA at 7am this morning.
Bob

 

[Cervus elaphus]

Look on Yt for Ray Mears Desert episode, he m3ntions theapaches and theiruse of pear cacktus and the one plant one wish one had a farm with some thousands of.

Namely The Agave plant.

I had a look on yt and found that episode, very interesting what use was made of desert plants. thanks