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As I drove south of Glennallen Alsaks I had to
stop and take a picture of these wild grasses. The grass had a beautiful
color so you are seeing its picture here. I should have tasted this grass
because some of the grass that I have tasted on this trip was just delicious.
Ok, I know that you think that I'm crazy or something, but many years ago I have
read that all grasses are eatable.
While I'm at it, I was told that when a dog
eats grass that the dog has an upset stomach. This couldn't be farther
from the truth. My old dog MacKenzie the Boone Dog would travel with me
everywhere. Many times I would see him eat things and different grasses
were one of them. So I watched what grass he was eating and he was
enjoying himself, he wasn't sick. So I tried the grass myself. The
grass that he was eating was tough and had a slightly prickly underside.
So I chewed and chewed and chewed and suddenly the grass suddenly melted in my
mouth. The grass was just delicious and I realized that after chewing it
for a long time, the enzymes in my mouth broke down the fiber of the grass and
melted it, then it became nutritious.
If you are out in the wild and try to just
eat the grass to fill your stomach, you will not get very much food value out of
it. On the other hand if you chew the grass until it melts, then it's
ready for your stomach and it becomes food and not fill.
Some of the grass that I eat is kind of
bitter from the chlorophyll, I imagine, and this grass will sour your stomach
and make you sick if you eat too much of it. This is the way many, so
called, poison plants are. They have too much tannin and make it bitter
making your stomach sour and again you get sick. I found that some plants
like the spiceberry bush berries are this way. But if you roll the berry
around in your mouth with your tongue you can separate the skin, pulp and seed
and spit the most bitter skin and seed out and get some nutrition from the
berry. You still cannot eat too much because, again, it will make
your stomach sour. That is the point where you have to change to a
different type of food. |
