Funny find while mushroom hunting.
We found this little mushroom growing in peat moss. We would never eat this mushroom as it may be dangerous. I don’t recall the name of this type or if they are edible. Even if it was normally edible this one would not be as it is internally corrupted, so dangerous.
Another find, not edible though it is medicinal
These are the moments that you remembered for life.
Started learning about and finding different edible mushrooms. You need to learn the dangerous ones as well since they look so similar.
These are edible lobster mushrooms, chantrels look similar the difference is primarily under the cap, with smooth vs ridges and are also edible. The Jack-o’-lanterns look similar and are poisonous. Sooooo…. Make sure you read all the cross references.
Take a book and make sure you read all the info held within for your target. By the end of the day I was right into it including a couple quick stops on the way out of the bush for more orange looking finds.
At the end of the day we collected about 9 pounds though we discarded about a pound a half after cleaning and intense close inspection.
These lobster mushrooms do have a mild lobster taste to them. Some we cooked in olive oil with bacon and onions and some in garlic butter. The mild lobster taste was still there infused with the tastes of the cooking. I found I enjoyed them after left soaking / post cooking marinating longer than freshly cooked. The deeper taste and soft firm texture was a hit for me. Some we are selling, some canning and some freezing for later.
Take a book or two with you!
I just downloaded an app from Google Play called Shroomify. This is a Canadian mushroom app, I noted there were some for Russia, Brazil to name a few. On our walk my buddy brought his Audubon’s Mushroom Guide to North America. Excellent in its colour photos from numerous angles, which quite frankly are 100% needed with mushrooms! In the cross reference sections there are lots of easy to read instructions, observations and inspection notes (with glasses for us old farts) with detailed information. Pairing this book with a Patterson’s book would be a great option.
The hunting part was enjoyable to compete in with my buddy. Ladies have an advantage here as female brains and eyes can see shades and subtleties in colours men just can not. So male female team would find more than us two old dudes, so mix it up and go on a hunt!
This time we focused on the lobster and pine mushrooms which are not shown. We found about six different varieties on our wild forage. To me the best and coolest was a fully black and gleaming mushroom with a funnel top. So cool looking, but don’t touch as it is poison, but lovely.
Have fun, get out and soak up some free vitamin C before the government taxes it.
Filed under Bushcraft Scroungecraft, Food, Plants
Arthritis pain and inflammation down about 30% or so from before keto.
Grabbed a cottage roll followed directions to boil and serve. Hatted it! Next day sliced off some slabs, cooked them in avocodo oil, loved it. Tonight cooked some cottage roll slabs in a little bacon fat and onions with Himalayan salt and cracked pepper. Then platted the slabs and added some fresh ripe avocado with salsa sauce, loved it.
Filed under Health, Keto Carnivore
Yes, still alive! (I think, whole other discussion)
Still doing this on phone, so still weird autocorrect hell on words…… Ok back to business here.
Keto-Ketovore diet journey. I have changed at the 8 week mark to do this more ketovore for a few reasons. One of which was purely that it is easier for portion size along with ratios.
Observations; 1. My stomach issues have dropped to 90-95% irritation from pre keto. I have suffered for over 25+yrs with leeky gut and irritable bowel syndrome. As I said earlier this is a huge drop with less gurgling pain and a bonus of much reduced toilet paper usage and buying. Let’s put it this way, I bought in bulk way before prepping was a thing, sadly for reasons!
2. My skin on my arms and legs were increasingly showing pure white splotches from injuries and bug bites. Yesterday I noticed that these spots are much reduced and healing/tanning over. Sorry no before and after pics as I did not know this was even a thing that could happen.
Being a white dude of Irish and Scottish decent (plus pasty English and almost as pasty Germanic origins) it did not bother me overly. Now if your have a tan by being outside getting vit C or you were born with some sort of darker caramel or darker skin, this would be hugely visible.
I checked a few people on YouTube who are into keto and Carnivore diets and they said this is a common occurrence and a welcomed side effect. This ranged from mild regression to full colour pigmentation recovery!
I thought that is huge as an Aunt of mine who had some Italian heritage and a darker than my white pasty skin developed this condition 30 yrs ago. This has gotten worse for her and is very noticeable and she hates it. Doesn’t bother me as it does not change her personality or stuff like that but girls are cruel to each other.
I am still on track and shedding a pound every 5ish days. I remind myself I can feel my body getting muscle back and muscle weighs more than fat for the same size. So a 10x10x10 square of muscle would be heavier than the same sized fat.
So, that is why you can be smaller than last week but the same weight. Different size but same mass.
Every hike I am able to go on, every 2-3 days u gain muscle. I wear weighted gloves (1.5 lb per glove) and carry my oak quarter staff 1.75lbs. I also hike on trails that are atv trails with up and downs, mixed gravel, boulders and elevations. This all adds to calorie burning and muscle building and maintaining.
Soon I will be adding proper sized ankle weights. These dollar store crap I bought are too light and small. I wear them on my wrists normally. Next I will be adding a backpack frame with weights, only about 20lbs to start so not that radical..
I found a webpage that you add in your weight weight terrain and extra accessories and it spits back out how many calories you burn. For example just by doing my walks on mixed gravel and boulders I burn on average 100-125 extra calories per outing extra. Now each extra pound you carry add an extra calorie burn per km/m as well. So I am burning for example, 400 calories per trip of 3.5km hike + 125 km per terrain (sometimes more due to elevation work) plus an additional 140-60 Cals burnt for weights. So now my hikes are around 575-600 instead of just 400. Almost no extra work, no extra time, but loads more fun. Note: speed and pace also play a role, my dog walk app takes that part into account ok. What is does poorly is factor in terrain, so when I get to a few challenging areas which we can bypass or take on as the feeling hits, the dog walk app fails here. Now though from looking at the hiking calculator I am able to approximate better.
Find the equations, explanations and calculator here, https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/hiking-and-backpacking/ultimate-backpacking-calorie-estimator/
Filed under Food, Health, Survival Prepping
I had a week of a plateau without dropping any pounds. This I believe is where many fail and stop.
So this week I reminded myself that muscle weighs more than fat, and looked it up again to make sure. Yuppers, weighs more per mass so peeps you and I need to look at other things than pure weight.
Down two pant sizes, check. Feel energized and strong along with tightening of the belt, check. All good.
My lifestyle change includes no breakfast or enriched fatty coffee, just herbal tea. (That took me over three months to get over). No coffee or tea with caffeine, I have sadly become sensitive to it and let me tell you, twas hard to stop!
Coffee/caffeine/sugar/carbs all are addictive, you will get cravings and withdrawal symptoms. I looked that up as well. So, the intermittent fasting daily, no eating after 8pm till NOON at the earliest, daily! 16/8 is what it is called, 16hrs of fasting 8hrs to feed. Today I made it to 2 pm before making my brunch.
Even with these new thicker softer orthodics I can only go for a hike every second day. My non walking day now includes working out or Tie Chi again along with a HIIT (high intensity interval training) session that makes your body make some healthy stuff to counteract some other stuff. Very scientific, actually it is I just can’t remember what they are called and that my good people is perfectly acceptable!
The Dr’s and health gurus remember and tell you, I am just reporting my results and my journey, so it is acceptable to not know these things. I just need to know what to do to make my journey better.
HIIT that was recommended for starting is 30-40 seconds of high intensity, as hard as you can go, doing excersise of your choice. So that would mean, 30-40s seconds of fast hard pushup, or body lifts, or crunches, bike time etc with 40 seconds of resting then another 40 seconds and so on. To start it recommended to do 5-6 of these reps one right after the other. Then continue on with workout or cool down and rest. This HIIT (hiit) kickstarts your body to do that remarkable stuff for a good 24-36hrs. Then you need to do it again and again, rinse and repeat for maximum health and weight loss results and benifts.
That is why I was not worried when it did not go down for a week. This morning my scale reported (well shows actually, it is old like me) I had dropped another pound. So at just under 201pnds. For a drop of 18-19 pounds, twelve of which were a direct result of the last diabetic pill they put me on that got me mad enough to look up, ” get off diabetic pills” and “can you reverse diabeties”. Wish I had Googled and YouTubed that many years ago!
Honestly I may switch to Ketovore which is protein heavy or full on meatovore or carnivore. I am having a hard time getting the proportions of fats, proteins and carbs ratios right. It is harder than I originally thought it might be.
Follow up post: I forgot to mention the intermittent fasting part. Which in itself leeds credence to the ease and simplicity of the powerful diet and lifestyle tool.
The intermittent fasting was the easiest actually. No eating anything after 8pm until noon or 1pm. That is 16hrs of fasting which encourages Ketosis and Autophagy which activates the human growth hormone, which in turns starts cleaning, repairing and replacing cells. Plus other gobbldygup that is helpful… Lol.. I researched it.
This stage of the fat burning stage where the body switches to using the fats in our bodies for fuel instead of the glucose/carbs. This means you start loosing your visceral fat and belly fats.
A side note here is in order. Some people build up fats on the outside of muscle others like myself the fat built up behind the muscles in the organs. This visceral fat is harder to get rid of and is worse for you comparatively speaking. This is another reason why some people look thin but have hidden, packed around the organs fat issues. Get checked out, it could help you out.
…. A simple check for yourself here, tighten stomach muscles, can you feel them. Well if there is lots of covering fats, no you won’t.
Fasting routine. (For me)
In the mornings I am allowed what is called bulletproof coffee. This is coffee with cream and coconut oil or MCT a coconut oil. Yuk. Just yuk to me, so I drink herbal tea, one or two cups. No sugar or fats added. If you need a snack, it happens sometimes, reach for a protein which might be a boiled egg or a piece of bacon. (Really you can grab only one? Man you are tough and disciplined I need like two pieces for I am weak. Or it is because it is fricken yummy yummy in my tummy bacon. Don’t judge!)
Another drink I use which can be made hot or cold, is water, lemon and himalayan salt or other safe salts. (Sea salt has plastics in it now) For myself I prefer this hot as if it is hot I need no added sugar. When this is cold I need the sugar to choke it down. Might be different for you.
I may need to go ketovore or carnivore full time for 3+ months to reset my body. There is a correlation between length of illness and pills vs recovery time with keto/ketovore diet and lifestyle.
For example. Day 4 after dinner I had two pieces of gluten free bread, one with vegan marge and other with light jam.
Bam.. sugars whent from 7 ish to 12.5 .. two pieces of bread.
10 rice crackers, numbers from 7 to 10 … Sooo no breads or crackers for me.
This past month a nice side benefit has found me calmer, more centered and sleeping better which is also helping. Zero hunger pains or cravings. No carbs no cravings. I did two different tests on two different days to confirm.
It was weird, the days before hungry 20 minutes after eating. (I was still following regular doctors advice and following the SAD diet)
The first day on this no cravings or hunger and almost all days afterwards. So weird but, I will take it. The doctors say this is because your body is using gluten and cerials which causes insulin to rice and which has led to my insulin resistance.
As a I can beneficial side effect I can feel my core and muscles getting stronger again. Nice side effect after loosing muscle mass due to the diabetes symptoms and effects.
Lots of people go through life with no issues at all others struggle, it is in the dna the genes. Thus not my fault though it is my issues that needs fixing.
Only stress so far is trying to figure out avocados and how and when to make them ripe. Luckily they come in packages of 5. Or I can’t go out with you then, my avocado will be ripe in two days between 1pm to 5pm and wasted by midnight. I kid you not!
So for now I have two meals a day and one snack sometimes but sometimes not as well. I am following the 16/8 formula. 16 hours of fast with an eight hour feeding time.
The next stage would be either 20/4 or time reversal with your feeding time in the morning not the evening. Right now I believe that to be too difficult for me.
The reason you may do this could be to increase the fasting benefits if you reach a plateau and stop loosing weight. Another reason might be that you do heavy weight training in the mornings.
Then there is the one meal a day fast. So one big meal with a 1-2hr feeding window. Gotta say feeding as if I waited 23hrs to eat it would more resemble an animal at the feed trough more than a proper sit down dinner. Just saying and keeping it real here.
Lots of variables, so research for yourself, stand up for yourself with others including family and medical types. They are behind the times in real scientific research which has disproven some of the paid for quackery of the past. Big money, huge money in processed foods and medications. (Which could be cured with diet, proper diet not department of agriculture created food pyramid)
Honestly some doctors may be on the up and up and are not money grabbers but merely behind the times in knowledge or fully brainwashed by the pharmaceutical companies. So be polite but firm while pointing them towards educational sources. Some will think on it and thank you, others well there are always others aren’t there. I will say, “I have done my recent research, and it is safe and approved.”
My next post will be some of the documents and doctors along with health experts to help your knowledge base out while lending credence to my narrative here.
note: Hey. I know the spelling and grammar sucks. Posting this from phone and post stroke small brain injury so, ya you gets what yous gets…..
Filed under coffee and or tea, Food, Health, Thought Provoking
Coffee mornings
Coffee, forget to turn on the coffee maker.
Coffee, then forget you poured a cup and it’s cold.
Coffee, then you go pour another and leave it beside the pot.
Coffee, wow it is when the mornings strike that you need COFFEE before the coffee.
Filed under Blog post, coffee and or tea
Sept 14th Let’s See What’s Edible in Greenwood Conservation Area! Ontario Durham Region
Wild Edibles Walk and Talk, show and tell by Karen the Wild Edibles Foody and Guru 🙂
Sunday, September 14, 2014
10:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Greenwood Conservation Area2290 Greenwood Road, Ajax, ON
(map)
http://www.meetup.com/York-Durham-Toronto-Edible-Wild-Food-Foragers/events/199188852/
Calling all Preppers, Self reliant, Homesteaders, Bush Crafters and well anyone who want to learn really !
Fields of Nutrition on the walk, can you eat these?
Bulrushes, so versatile, edible, fire starter, cordage, building material
wild_E & CanAmPreppers channel – NOT CONNECTED ANYMORE DUE TO DISOLVING SITE AND ISSUES DUE TO SO CALLED PREPPER BUDDY WHO TURNED OUT TO BE NOT WHAT HE SAID HE WAS.
DO NOT RECOMEND THE CHANNEL AND PREPPER SITE EVER AGAIN
Fire, Snow and cooking
Re-Blogging and Linking to two separate articles here. Rogers Blog where he explains how to setup a campfire and a new to Youtuber, a prepper and self reliant buddy of mine who has a done a series of videos to show people how to make a winter shelter and how to build a winter fire.Â
This is a skill that anyone who lives in any climate where there is cold and winter should know of. This post will have some of my own info included, some re-blogged info from Roger’s blog along with a re-blogged video series from a ex Canadian Military buddy of mine who lives way out in the flatlands of Canada!
This winter campfire photo was taken in January a couple of years ago. The next photo shows the same fire pit in the summer time.
A great way to build a fire in winter if you have a camping spot for year round use or look for established camping spots along any trail or campground. Remember you do not have to always re-invent the wheel, just keep it simpler and it works.
Same firepit in summer time as the winter shot above.
A blog post by RMACTSC where he explains how to setup a campfire
…. excerpt.. KINDLING is the foundation of any fire. It is made of lightweight materials that are capable of burning quickly and igniting heavier materials. Kindling can be made from a mixture of twigs, tiny sticks, slivers of shaved wood, dried leaves, paper, cardboard, cotton balls, dryer lint, birch bark, dried grass, dried pine needles, etc. You’ll be using small sticks to then form a tepee and get your fire started. …. read more….
http://rmactsc.wordpress.com/2014/01/03/campfire-cooking/
The following link is to the topic of winter fire on the CanAmPreppers.net forum
excerpt … If you are in the bush and had nowhere to make a fire but on the snow, and no rocks were available because they’re all under the snow and ice, what would you do? … read more…
http://canampreppers.net/forum/index.php?topic=1091.0
The new YouTubers in action, building a winter fire and winter shelter heated by fire
Canadian Candle Fire on snow
http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5j4M5deU5cC-xt_HYiZgSA/videos
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-ZZFtEktXE
The next is a series of photos created while I was at Buroak Wilderness Adventures this summer. The owner of the camp a buddy of mine created a stunning all season fireplace/pit. Just look at all the features this cooking camp fire pit has;
Excellent campfire setup.
This shot shows the ease at which cooking at various heights is accomplished.
Dinner is almost ready, can you not just smell the yummy goodness! Fresh field potatoes, fresh picked corn (non gmo), fresh farm raised free range chicken.
Kinda making me hungry all over again! Plus the smell of freshly brewed coffee all cooked on hard and softwoods.
Remember the old ways, remember this is how Humans have lived for thousands upon thousands of years.
This is one of the reasons your computer screen saver is of the outdoors and not your bosses cubical or office! just saying !
Hopefully these skills will be appeal to you, so get out and learn or get out and practice but above all just get out and have some fun folks!
Until next time Cheers ~wild_E
Come on out to the forums at CanAmPreppers.net where we talk about this stuff and so much more for prepping, self-reliance, homesteading and survival skills.
I blog Naked Badge
wild_E 