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Back to the Food List
Food Found in Winter
| PP 33, 549 |
"I have seen and eaten food that Ayla has found, even in winter. You even ate some of it tonight. She gathered the pine nuts from the stone pines near the river."
"Those lichens that reindeer like can be eaten," one of the older women said, "if you cook them right."
"And some of the wheats, and millets, and other grasses still bear seed heads," Esadoa said. "They can be collected."
"Yes, but be careful of ryegrass. It can foster a growth that is harmful, often fatal. If it looks and smells bad, it's probably full of ergot, and it should be avoided," Ayla advised. "But certain edible berries and fruits stay on the bush well into winter - I even found a tree with a few apples still clinging to it - and the inner bark of most trees can be eaten." |
| PP 34, 576 |
They often supplemented their diet, which was heavily oncentrated on lean meat, with the inner bark of conifers and other trees, usually cooked into a broth with meat, and they were delighted when they found berries, frozen but still clinging to the bush. Juniper berries, which were particularly good with meat if they didn't use too many, were prevalent; rose hips were more sporadic, but usually plentiful when found, and always sweeter after freezing; creeping crowberry, with a needlelike evergreen foliage, had small shiny berries that often persisted through the winter, as did blue bearberries and red lingonberries.
Grains and seeds were also added to the meat soups, gathered painstakingly from dried grasses and herbs that still bore seed heads, though it took time to find them. (...)
Whinney and Racer (...) browsing on twig tips, chewing through to the inner bark of trees, and included a particular variety of lichen, the kind reindeer preferred. She collected some and tested small amounts on herself, then made some for both of them. They found the taste strong but tolerable, and she was experimenting with ways to cook it. |
| PP 34, 577 |
She also used the vegetation that was readily available even in winter, such as the needles of evergreens, particularly the newest growth from the tips of branches, which were rich in the vitamins that prevented scurvy. She regularly added them to their daily teas, mostly because they liked the tangy, citruslike flavor, though she did know they were beneficial and had a good idea of when and how to use them. She had often made needle tea for people with soft bloody gums whose teeth became loose during long winters of subsisting essentially on dried meats, either by choice or necessity. |
| PP 39, 657-658 |
Their high-protein diet of lean meat often left them less than // satisfied, even when they had eaten their fill. Inner barks, and teas made from the needles and twig tips of trees offered only limited relief. |
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Abbreviations |
Editions |
| CB |
The Clan of the Cave Bear |
The page numbers refer to the hardcover editions by Crown Publishers, Inc, New York 1980, 1982, 1985, 1990.
Book 1-3 are the Special Collector's Edition, I don't know if the page numbers differ from those of the 'normal' hardcover editions. |
| VH |
The Valley of Horses |
| MH |
The Mammoth Hunters |
| PP |
The Plains of Passage |
| (...) |
omission |
Copyright |
| ... |
original in text |
All book quotes: © Copyright Jean M. Auel
The format and text contents of this site are the property of the author |
| MGMH |
'A Modern Herbal', by Mrs. M. Grieve |
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