Stirring the Cauldron

New Moon Newsletters from Jessica Prentice

New Hunter's Moon

October moondark kitchen notes
from Jessica Prentice

Happy New Hunter's Moon! This next lunar cycle was called the Hunter's Moon, or sometimes the Blood Moon, in colonial America and old farmer's almanacs, as this time of year was an important time to store meat for the coming long winter. The harvest was over, and the year's plant foods were safely preserved. Now was the time to go hunting for meat, to ensure an adequate supply of protein, fat, and bones for nourishing broths to sustain the tribe or family through the months when nothing would grow.

Long before farmer's almanacs called this the Hunter's Moon, we were hunting -- throughout the vast majority of human history, in fact. Some estimate that 99% of our species' life on this planet has been spent as nomadic hunters -- a skill that enabled us to survive the last ice age. The layer of ice on the earth was sometimes as much as three miles thick, and plant foods were very few and far between. Throughout much of the northern hemisphere, meat was virtually the only food source for nomadic humans.

The development of farming and animal husbandry is an extremely recent phenomenon, which has been concurrent with a huge population explosion. It's one of those chicken and egg questions: did we learn how to farm in order to feed the growing population, or did the population expand because we learned how to farm? Either way, the numbers of nomadic, subsistence hunter-gatherers is rapidly declining, and the vast majority of the food we eat is domesticated. We are even farming fish now. The population being what it is nowadays, wild foods -- from big game to forest mushrooms, from deep ocean fish to edible sea weeds, from wild birds to medicinal herb plants -- are all in danger of over-harvesting. This means that humans are harvesting them faster than they can replenish themselves in nature. When this happens, not only are the species in question in danger of extinction, but all the species in the ecosystem that depend upon them are threatened. This also threatens the way of life and the livelihood of those human beings who have over time developed the skills of harvesting them -- traditional fisherpeople, herbalists and wildcrafters, elk-hunters and mushroom-hunters.

As these species and practices become more rare, organizations and regulations spring up in an effort to preserve them, from the United Plant Savers working to preserve endangered medicinal plants to strong federal and state regulations restricting many kinds of hunting (from bears to ginseng to abalone), a huge effort is being made to preserve our remaining stock of wild edible species for our own and future generations. How successful these efforts are still remains to be seen.

I, for one, wish them all great success. I had the good fortune recently to try a food that is highly regulated here in Northern California: abalone. Once upon a time, abalone were extremely plentiful along this coast, sustaining indigenous coastal peoples and later immigrant communities who settled here. Now they are so over-harvested that it is illegal to harvest them to sell, and the numbers you can harvest at a time are extremely limited. My partner and I were recently invited to dinner by some friends who'd just returned from an abalone-diving trip, and though we were expecting a quiet evening at home, I jumped at the opportunity to try this very rare and special food with such an illustrious history. I was not disappointed.

Abalone is very tough, and needs to be thoroughly pounded before cooking. My friends did this, and then dredged the thin strips of abalone in flour, dipped them in egg, and pan-fried them. They were utterly delicious, mild-flavored, almost like pork, but lighter -- not at all fishy tasting. I'm considering learning how to scuba dive so that I can repeat the experience some day!

I have also been lucky to accompany experienced "hunter-gatherers" on other occasions: I have taken 'field'-trips to collect medicinal and edible herbs such as nettles, which we divided into tender tops for cooking and tougher leaves which we dried for tea. Years later I was delighted to find them growing by the roadside throughout Europe -- a discovery that provided many cupsfull of delicious tisane. I collected sea-weed off the Northern California coast, sloshing through shallow tide-pools shortly after dawn on the morning of the "minus tide", when the sea exposed some of its copious but hidden vegetation. My favorite specimen from this trip was a delightful little plant called "cystocera", which is delicious pickled. It is nearly impossible to describe -- the best I can do is to say that it was like little strips of green, crunchy, edible bubble-wrap soaked in brine. Now if there were anyway to make that sound GOOD... I was truly sorry when I finished the little jar.

A few years ago an enthusiastic experienced mushroom hunter took me out on a hunt for chanterelles in the woods of Marin County. We came home with bagsfull of them and feasted. A few years later I was delighted by a vision I saw while waiting for a train in the north of the Czech republic: a little one-car train (it looked almost like a San Francisco trolley car) returned from a trip to the mountains, and a couple dozen people emerged, each carrying a large basket full of what looked like porcini mushrooms. (In spite of myself, my American mind began adding up how much those mushrooms would be worth in gourmet grocers in US cities -- a huge sum!) Using a mixture of a bit of English, a bit of German, and a lot of sign language, I managed a very primitive conversation with one of the mushroom hunters, who described the plentiful pilzen in the forest and shared a few of his recipes. It is a wonderful memory, both because it was actual evidence of the legendary importance of wild mushrooms in the lives and cooking of Eastern Europeans, and because I was heartened to hear that there are places where the wild foods are still thriving and bountiful. More evidence of an abundant planet...

I am just realizing as I write this how many wonderful 'wild' foods I encountered on that European trip. I have to admit that the very best meal I had anywhere (and this was a voyage filled with great food and memorable meals), was in Sweden. My friends there took me to a well-known but moderately priced restaurant in Malmo, and there I ordered my first ever venison steak. I had some trepidation because the menu said that it came with a cinnamon sauce, which seemed like it might be a bit much. I ordered it anyway because I was anxious to try some wild game. It came as a very pink, very perfect-looking steak with a deep brown aromatic sauce, and there were some potatoes and some kind of vegetable on the plate -- honestly I can hardly remember because I was so fixated on that meat and its warm and wonderful aroma. The flavor did not disappoint. The cinnamon sauce was a perfect balance of subtlety and strength, and I think it was just about the best meat I've ever tasted anywhere.

On a slightly different note: I recently had the pleasure of seeing a movie that's been on my 'list' for a long time: The Saltmen of Tibet. Made by a German filmmaker, it is a documentary about traditional Tibetan nomads who take a yearly month-long pilgrimage to a salt lake high in the Himalayas to hand-harvest salt. They pack the salt into huge handwoven bags, which they hand-sew closed and then load onto a herd of yaks to transport back to their community, and eventually trade for barley and other necessities. They perform ritual prayers of gratitude to the goddess of the lake, make ritual offerings to her, speak in a sacred, secret language during the journey, and uphold a high standard of conduct as they near the lake. This ancient and sacred way of life is now threatened by newly formed roads that lead to the lake, enabling trucks to drive up there and haul off huge quantities of this free 'commodity.' It is a wonderful film. It isn't available on video, but if you spot it being screened at a film festival, as I did, you might want to check it out. [webster's note: actually, it is available on Amazon.com] Another wonderful movie that is perfect viewing during the month of the Hunter's Moon is Atanarjuat (The Fast Runner), an old Inuit legend brought to the screen in beautiful form by a company of Inuit filmmakers. This movie is a unique look into a traditional hunting culture with great attention to detail and historical accuracy, from the oil lamps to the hunting tools to the ice-block igloos. The acting is wonderful too!

Hunting, foraging, cooking and eating wild foods are all precious opportunities to connect with many, many millennia of human ancestors who lived off the amazing bounty of this planet. It is also important to remember that there are still many cultures and communities who seek to preserve traditional ancestral knowledge of wild foods, and to maintain a subsistence life style in which they take what they need from the earth (and no more), and use every part of what they harvest, wasting nothing. As a society, we need to be increasingly subtle in our understanding of what it means to be both 'ethical' and 'sustainable' as we interact with this planet and its abundance. We want to respect and protect ecosystems; honor all the gifts of the earth -- animal and vegetable, fungal and mineral; preserve pure, wild foodsheds for future generations; and celebrate cultural traditions of respectful harvest of historic food sources. These are ALL important goals, and I pray that we may be ever mindful of them as we undertake a process of discernment in developing policies and practices for hunting and gathering. This is not an easy endeavor, but it is a noble one.

In an effort to further educate myself about the foodways of the indigenous hunting cultures of this continent, I finally tried making pemmican. This is a food that was eaten by many North American cultures, its use extending from Northern peoples living in what is now Canada to as far South as what is now Texas. It was made by slowly drying the meat of wild game, either by the fire or in the sun, then pounding it in a mortar and pestle, and mixing it with rendered suet and often dried berries and sometimes maple syrup or other ingredients. As it cools, it hardens into a high energy food that is naturally preserved and so concentrated that very little of it provides lots of energy. It is arguably the only food that has passed the test of keeping large numbers of people alive and healthy for long periods of time when no other foods were available. Pemmican is the original power bar.

I made mine with grassfed beef, as I couldn't get buffalo meat, that I baked in a low oven overnight and then ground it to a powder. I mixed this with suet (beef fat) that I rendered myself, dried organic cranberries and a little bit of organic maple syrup. I was surprised that the recipe didn't call for salt, though traditionally it seems it was usually made without it. I've been eating small spoonfuls at intervals, and though I'd hardly call it "delicious", the mild flavor is growing on me. But mostly I'm just intrigued by this high-protein, naturally concentrated survival food, and its profound historical significance as an extremely effectively preserved food. There are cases on record of packages of pemmican wrapped in rawhide that were in fine, edible condition after ten and even twenty years.

On a final note, I am preparing a meal of foods "cultured, fermented, risen, and sprouted" for a program called "Basic Kneads" at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, as part of a naturally leavened, woodfired oven bread conference. The dinner will be the evening of November 16 and is open to the public. For more information go to: www.headlands.org. It's going to be a great evening and it would be great to see some of you there.

Have a wonderful and wild Hunter's Moon!