I try and imagine myself eating snails, squid, octopi, snakes, eels. The list could be long. All things considered by some to be delicacies. No way. On a homesteading site I am on someone posted a picture of skinned dogs hanging in a chinese meat market. Such an uproar. Many people have pet pigs but somehow eating a dog, or a horse, is a capitol crime. I’m betting that if there was dog bacon it would be a different story.
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Not eating horses is an English thing that Americans inherited. Deeply rooted in the Christian conversion of the Anglo-Saxons.
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I once read a book that was contrasting cultures. Why some succeeded for long terms and others did not.
One of the interesting extreme contrasts was made between India and China.
On food the author said the Chinese learned to make cuisine from any and all animals, vegetative, insects. Necessity over the millenniums.
The people in India in contrast developed too many foods no-no’s, never-evers.
Like all authors there were gaps in his understandings. Most far-eastern Asians will gag and vomit at the thought of intentionally eating products made from the mammary gland of lactating animals. Yogurt, cheeses. Breast milks are only for babies they will say.
More expanded reading , watching, asking tells me that many foods no-no’s were evolved for reasons of local climate and ability to store safely.
Even more reading, asking, studying more foods preferences and no-no were based on social control factors. Control the stomach, control the person.
As a young adult I reveled in expanding to eat anything. Me an American ate a lot of horse meat for a few years. It was much cheaper.
Now . . . the last decade or so I still could and can; but select fish, or chicken/turkey whenever possible.
Ain’t nothing more irritating dumb than a chicken. And the hatched out 50/50% male, female, you’d best do something useful for a peaceful flock with all of those fighting for dominance roosters. No joy and peace of mind in watching hens being raped, again and again.
Fish I will not call dumb. Just limited purpose evolved programmed. Food stocks for something. That is pretty much all of the multiple birthers.
Nope. Never ate dog. Never had the need to.
And think food social controlling is only old, ancient??
The movies Bambi; Freeing Willie (Keiko the Orca); Finding Elmo; Spirit (the wild horse), any and all of the horse movies Black Beauty to the War Horse.
Then the decades now, of dog movies . . .
S.U.
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I have not eaten the flesh of any animal or fish in 33 years. Have done fine without it. However it is a predator planet, top to bottom and what anyone else chooses to eat is not my business.
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Evolving diets and needs, adapting to cost and storage, overcome social tensions and stigmas. Admittedly I am ignorant to most the food processes across the world, but decently informed of North America and learning more every day. In school my brothers and I were the wild childs showing up to lunch with head cheese sandwiches, pickled pigs feet, venison and elk burgers, bear pot roast, cow tongue and nose and more. Meat has always been a staple good in our house along with eggs bread and potatoes. Those 4 things raised and survived 3 boys, me being the youngest. We later branched into making our own sausages, pepperoni, jerky, salami which I enjoy the process as much as the tastings. Salmon, steelhead and trout were always around, smoked and bbq. Tasty treats, but not a staple like red meats and chicken were. Those we could raise and hunt. Hogs, cows, chicken, turkey we have raised for years and now goats. I’ll be the first of the family branching into rabbits, and we have always been an hour drive to saltwater for multiple species of clams, crabs, bottom fish, oysters, octopus, squid and more. One major upside to the Pacific Northwest we have an abundance of wild sustainable foods to harvest, if one but gets off their BUTT to go and get it. Coming into berry season now as well, huckle berries salmon berries thimble berries high bush cranberries wild straw berries black berrys black caps. A great growing environment for chantrels, morels, corals, candy caps, oysters, chicken of the woods, shaggy main, and lobster mushrooms. The buggery part comes in affording a piece of land a fella could raise crops on, to afford means to work a damn good paying job or work many long hours, my own current conundrum. More time at work and commuting means less time to get out and harvest the wild goods. So I spend my evenings of late planting greens. Trying a little of everything to see what will grow and what will not. Internet and books claiming this or that grows well and this does not, first hand experience in your local climate is irreplaceable. Though a little costly to set up growing operations and potentially have several failed crops the first few years. Poking and prodding local nursery’s, drive around and observe others gardens, checking markets at what is abundantly available and what is slim pickings
I am blessed that I got into trapping when I did along my own path to food self sufficiently. I learned many a new wild edibles I can harvest. Not only the meats of which beaver, muskrat, and bobcat are fine table fair, but more time in the woods finding other edibles. And there is a large amount I have learned right here on the DOW. I can’t afford the land to raise larger livestock, but I can let mother nature do the rearing and feeding. Gmo free steroid free pink slime free free range all organic wild goods. Better then any junk money that isn’t worth anything can buy. I am hopeful to maybe next year start some sort of chicken feed crops growing. Need to dig more research into that before attempting anything
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We give all our table scraps to the chickens then it goes to the compost pile when they are done with it. We just lost our rooster and he went to the pile too.
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Many good thoughts and views here, culture has a big impact. I can for instance for the life of me not see myself eating a birds nest as the north east asians but they see from their side that weird swedes eat surströmming, rotten fermented herring that they would never put in their mouths. A different aspect would be where an animal fed and grew up, if I had to eat a rat I would choose a rat that had eaten and grown up in the forest rather than one that grew up in the city or on a trash dump site.
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Ok, hope this is’nt inapropriate, or offend anyone, because this is not FOOD, it’s just a bad habit: tobacco, this is my first attempt to be self sufficient on this poison 
Well, i haven’t smoke in many years now, and don’t drink any beer or alcohol since 5 years, so, well, some bad habits i hold on to, and will do, Coffee! and what we Swedes call “Snus”
You may recognize it as brand names Copenhagen or Skoal! ?
So, coffee needs an enormous greenhouse, so i try tobacco instead.
“Virginia” variety, seems to grow well around here, my first attempt.
Please tell me if this is irrelative in this thread?
(I grow normal feed-crops also, this is just an experiment)
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it will grow but I was told it was heavier in tar then if it was grown in the south and doesn’t have as good of flavor. Thus it would be a lower grade of tobacco. I don’t know if that is true or not.
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Wery nice looking tabacco. I too got the Virginia.
Be carefull with preparation thugh, lm not sure how your stuff is prepared correctly but for smoking its quite a process… and l once gave my self one hell of a poisoning trying to chew dryed leaves. Read numb limbs and projectile vomiting. Nicotine is more poisonous thain cianide if l remember right
Yesterday we went mushroom picking, not much sucsess but we found a huge patch of wood strawberrys.
Right next to this ww2 memorial site, it was a secret partisan hospital. Only a few hundred yards from the main road, yet never discovered by the nazzis.
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That is very true, it’s the reason we Swedes are happy with our “smokeless tobacco” “snus” to put under our upper lips 
Almost all tobacco varietes tried in Sweden 1800s became lower grade, but it’s perfect to ferment to “snus”
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We call it something similar, Snuff or Dip which is different from Chewing Tobacco that comes in “Plugs”.
Some countries have a tobacco labelled as “snuff” that you actually snort into your nose. Very fine consistency and dry.
Tobacco has to be fermented for the most part. It happens naturally when hung in the rafters of a barn where you have hot humid summers, but other places you’ll want a chamber to ferment and cure the leaves. Desired color after it’s dried will be a yellow to brown color for your Virginia also known as Gold Leaf.
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Hi GoranK. for your caffeine addition maybe instead try tea-leaf bushes.
I know little about them.
I just know I like my strong black teas over even coffee unless the coffee is superior, the best Columbian.
Was a Canadian fellow on a challenge got me switched to strong teas.
Regards
Steve Unruh
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Hi SteveU, i’ve tried, but never learned to drink tea, can’t stand it, i would’nt survive a week in the UK 
Ill probably try coffe substitute then, like they did here in the wartime (people was more upset over the shortage of coffee than gasoline, there was a big “black market” for coffee then)
Popular coffee substitute was made from chicory and Swedish turnips (rutabaga?)
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Ok the rutabaga coffe idea sends shivers down my spine 
that must be horrible! Sulfur compounds present in brassicas is what lm thinking… l have smelled enaugh of them rotting.
I have heared of potato peal coffe thugh… probably horible too.
Lots of good substitutes thugh. Dendelion root, acorn, barley malt, chicory root… I dont like coffe my self but l do pccasionaly brew what l call “exspress beer”. Boil sugar, barley coffe and hops together and add yeast when it cools. It producrs a dark beer like beverage after its left to ferment for a few days.
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Well, those coffee substitutes was probably horrible, as long there are coffee to buy i will do ok
I learned a real horror story about wartime coffee substitutes, a very popular brand was made by a unscrupolous man, he bought piles of fodder beets from farmers, the common way to store them was on the ground, covered with a layer of straw, and layer of dirt on top. On hard winters the beets got bad from freezing, then this guy bought them cheap, transported them to his “factory”, cut them, roasted them, grind it up, and sold as a coffee substitute.
When the public health care shut his bussines down, they found the coffee substitute to contain: grinded straw, dirt, worms, rats, and a fair amount of gophers.
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And yet in the horrors of war, I’m sure a soldier was provided just a bit of momentary comfort in that hot cup
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Well, this was sold to civillians only, soldiers got real coffee, controlled by the head of military.
Even that Sweden was not in war, many men was mobilized to the borders, many older people remember their fathers/ brothers was home on leave for some days, bringing real coffee in small paper “envelopes” for one cup, they saved to bring home some for the family.
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My grandpa told me stories of soldiers sneaking in coffee packages from home, and grandpa was on a uboat himself. He LOVED his coffee he drank it until the day he left this world, and there was never not a pot on at his house from before sunup to after sundown. Fresh load of grounds in the morning and as the day went on less and less grounds for each pot, the after dinner coffee was more or less coffee flavored water haha. I remember in his old shop there were many tin #10 cans full of nuts, bolts, seeds and what not. They were on the front porch with plants in them, covering the stacks on all the tractors and combines to keep water out. That man ran on coffee, pipe tobacco and diesel smoke. I want to say it was his cousin? That grew the tobacco for him, while grandpa was a wheat and barley farmer with a few cattle and milk cows. And i remember a couple walnut trees in the back yard too, we would use one of his coffee cans toss a few nuts in and roast them on the fire after burning fence lines all day before planting season started
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It is good to have a knowledge of the medicinal benefits of various herbal teas. Black tea, green tea and orange pekoe are all the same plant only processed in different ways. Tobacco has some health benefits but I’m not sure if nicotine has any. However snus or long term smoking will certainly destroy your teeth and gums but it is a hard addiction to break. In February I quit wheat. I don’t have an addictive personality but that one is a struggle for me. All North American commercial wheat is GMO and poisoned with glyphosate. It is grown in it and used to extend storage as well. I was having problems with indigestion for quite a while. After giving up wheat products that went away.
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