T2K Cuisine - Food in the aftermath

[Draq]

I agree. We need a Food Contamination Table. I'll put together a list of poisons and illnesses common to spoiled food like my Water Contamination Table.

Excited!

[Draq]

Any progress

[The Dark]

Or reading any of the other books about wild edibles be it the Military Survival Manual or any of the other books out there.

Mustard plants are almost entirely edible, the same goes for cat tails and dandelions.

Or just going off of one of the lines from the survival manual, "If it walks, flies, swims or crawls it can be eaten!"

A lot of it comes from mindset and cultural morays.

When do we discuss survival cannibalism

One of my hobbies is visiting Native American archeological sites, and quite a few of them have books on what was eaten, with some including recipes. As long as there's someone to identify the plants, that sort of book would be useful.

[swaghauler]

Any progress

Sorry man, between work and my own campaign, I got distracted. I have some handwritten house rules I'll put up as soon as I get more time to type them. I've covered:
-Spoilage checks (1D20) based on time, temperature, and storage method (canning, sun drying, smoking, salting, etc...)
-Chemical/radiological contamination.
-And a chart listing the possible illnesses and side effects of spoiled foods.

It is similar to the one I posted for water purification.

[Draq]

Sorry man, between work and my own campaign, I got distracted. I have some handwritten house rules I'll put up as soon as I get more time to type them. I've covered:
-Spoilage checks (1D20) based on time, temperature, and storage method (canning, sun drying, smoking, salting, etc...)
-Chemical/radiological contamination.
-And a chart listing the possible illnesses and side effects of spoiled foods.

It is similar to the one I posted for water purification.

No rush at all, just didn't want to let a good idea fade.

[Pinhead Slim]

Hello, this thread finally pushed me to stop browsing and make an account!

Anyways we have come up with a lot of great uses for salt, but how were global supplies of salt in 1997 And I've heard there are some primitive ways people can extract salt, but would it be enough to preserve their own meats
And would mass production of salt be possible I've heard that for a decently long time in human history salt was almost as precious as gold. Would we go back to those times

Thanks for any helpful information, this thread has been great.

[The Dark]

Hello, this thread finally pushed me to stop browsing and make an account!

Anyways we have come up with a lot of great uses for salt, but how were global supplies of salt in 1997 And I've heard there are some primitive ways people can extract salt, but would it be enough to preserve their own meats
And would mass production of salt be possible I've heard that for a decently long time in human history salt was almost as precious as gold. Would we go back to those times

Thanks for any helpful information, this thread has been great.

It takes around 1 bushel of salt (55 pounds) to preserve 500 pounds of pork, and 1.25 bushels to preserve 500 pounds of beef.

There's a very good map of salt deposits in the United States at the Salt Institute.

During the Civil War, one of the major Confederate sources of salt was Saltville, Virginia. In a complex of 300 buildings with 38 furnaces and 2,600 kettles to boil briny water, it produced 4 million bushels of salt in 1864. In Florida, Apalachee and St. Andrews Bay were major salt producers; when the Union raided the latter, they recorded destroying 198 saltworks in just 7 miles of beach.

[Targan]

My mother and stepfather established and are now on the board of directors of a commercial salt field.

[ArmySGT.]

Hello, this thread finally pushed me to stop browsing and make an account!

Anyways we have come up with a lot of great uses for salt, but how were global supplies of salt in 1997 And I've heard there are some primitive ways people can extract salt, but would it be enough to preserve their own meats
And would mass production of salt be possible I've heard that for a decently long time in human history salt was almost as precious as gold. Would we go back to those times

Thanks for any helpful information, this thread has been great.

Kinda makes Israel with the Dead Sea valuable to their neighbors.. Ironically, I suppose. The Morton Salt complex is off of Interstate 80 west of Salt Lake City, Utah and can be seen in Google Earth. Might be a bit radioactive. Salt mines are still thriving world wide in the U.S., Peru, and some others.

Salt, Vinegar, and smoke along with canning jars and canning lids would have be a regular habit.

Lucky for the Portuguese that Bacaloa (salt cod) has been a staple for centuries.

[The Dark]

Kinda makes Israel with the Dead Sea valuable to their neighbors.. Ironically, I suppose.

Not especially. The Dead Sea's salt is only about 30% sodium chloride, and it has a lot of bromide salts, which are toxic (in small doses, it's an anti-epileptic. In large doses, it causes hallucination, seizures, and coma).

The Morton Salt complex is off of Interstate 80 west of Salt Lake City, Utah and can be seen in Google Earth. Might be a bit radioactive. Salt mines are still thriving world wide in the U.S., Peru, and some others.

Salt, Vinegar, and smoke along with canning jars and canning lids would have be a regular habit.

Lucky for the Portuguese that Bacaloa (salt cod) has been a staple for centuries.

Speaking of coastal nations and salt fish, seawater's a decent way to get salt. A gallon of seawater evaporating will provide around 4.5 ounces of salt, so around 196 gallons of water will provide a bushel of salt. That sounds like a lot, but if you can set up evaporative pools, it's not too hard to mass produce. If it needs to be done quicker, it can be actively boiled, but that's likely to be prohibitively fuel-intensive for a post-apoc group. Although I could see coastal groups placing a pot of seawater over the fire whenever they're warming themselves in the winter, to harvest the salt.

[WallShadow]

<SNIP>

Speaking of coastal nations and salt fish, seawater's a decent way to get salt. A gallon of seawater evaporating will provide around 4.5 ounces of salt, so around 196 gallons of water will provide a bushel of salt. That sounds like a lot, but if you can set up evaporative pools, it's not too hard to mass produce. If it needs to be done quicker, it can be actively boiled, but that's likely to be prohibitively fuel-intensive for a post-apoc group. Although I could see coastal groups placing a pot of seawater over the fire whenever they're warming themselves in the winter, to harvest the salt.

Setting up moveable plastic sheeting over the pools, weighted in the center to make a depression, with a collection bucket under the drip point would harvest pure, evaporated water as a byproduct of salt evaporation. It would probably also enhance the evaporative process, speeding it along.

[The Dark]

Setting up moveable plastic sheeting over the pools, weighted in the center to make a depression, with a collection bucket under the drip point would harvest pure, evaporated water as a byproduct of salt evaporation. It would probably also enhance the evaporative process, speeding it along.

True, a solar still would make for a useful secondary product. It won't produce much, relatively speaking, but having distilled water available can be useful. It might also help if mirrors could be set up to reflect additional sunlight on the pools to increase temperature. Another option for desert areas near the sea is a seawater greenhouse.

[swaghauler]

Hello, this thread finally pushed me to stop browsing and make an account!

Anyways we have come up with a lot of great uses for salt, but how were global supplies of salt in 1997 And I've heard there are some primitive ways people can extract salt, but would it be enough to preserve their own meats
And would mass production of salt be possible I've heard that for a decently long time in human history salt was almost as precious as gold. Would we go back to those times

Thanks for any helpful information, this thread has been great.

Welcome aboard sir! You should surf the forum thread map and add your own thoughts to the threads there.

There is a very large salt mine that actually travels under lake Erie. In fact, I was just there a couple of days ago getting "replenishment salt" for a PA municipality that burned up it's supply salting the roads during our last storm.

[WallShadow]

Welcome aboard sir! You should surf the forum thread map and add your own thoughts to the threads there.

There is a very large salt mine that actually travels under lake Erie. In fact, I was just there a couple of days ago getting "replenishment salt" for a PA municipality that burned up it's supply salting the roads during our last storm.

The access to it is under Cleveland, right Another probable storage facility, like the salt cave in Kansas (Missouri) that was a strategic storage point for years.

[The Dark]

The access to it is under Cleveland, right Another probable storage facility, like the salt cave in Kansas (Missouri) that was a strategic storage point for years.

Fairport Harbor, about 30 miles east of Cleveland. There was a nucleon decay detector located there 1982-1991 that was momentarily famous in 1987 for detecting 8 neutrinos from Supernova 1987A.