IDENTIFICATION: A. syriaca, the most common northern milkweed, is an erect perennial. Three to six feet tall, milky juice, mostly single, stout, hairy stems. Flowers are pink to pink, 5 parted, densely-flowered drooping umbrels. A. syriaca has rough fat pods and leaves with short stalks. Make sure you have the right species. It can mean the difference between a pleasant meal or a bitter pile on your plate. TIME OF YEAR: Early to mid-summer ENVIRONMENT: Upland prairies, fields, meadows, waste places, prefers full sun METHOD OF PREPARATION: Young shoots, leaves and pods boiled in several changes of water. That can vary greatly, some are not bitter some are. Bitter ones should be boiled in copious amounts of water at least once. Whether cold water to start or boiling water to start will have to be learned by experimenting. If the cooked vegetable is bitter, try a different method. Gather leaves in early spring when they first open. Gather seed pods in summer. Parboil for three minutes, then discard bitter water and replace with clean boiling water. (Cold water tends to fix bitterness, other times hot water does.) Repeat this process three times, then cook the leaves for 15 minutes before seasoning them. A pinch of soda can be added during cooking to break down the fiber and improve flavor. The young shoots under six inches long, found during the spring are used as a vegetable. Remove the fuzz on the shoot by rubbing it off. Preparation is the same as for the leaves. Collect flower buds and flowers during the summer. Dip buds in boiling water for one minute, batter and deep fry. When cooked like broccoli, buds are similar to okra. The flower clusters may also be battered and fried. After cooking, buds, flowers and leaves can be frozen. Use like okra in soups. A bit of baking soda in the water will help break down the tough fibers in the seed pod. Parboiled for several minutes, the young pods may be slit, rolled in a cornmeal/flour mixture and fried or frozen for future use. http://www.eattheweeds.com/asclepias-some-like-it-hot-some-like-it-cold-2/ There are three times in the life cycle of the common milkweed (Ascleoius syriaca) plant when you can eat it. The first, when the tender short shoots are just emerging from the ground. When they are shorter than about eight inches (my hand span), they can be pulled, the bit of root end removed, and cooked. The next time you can forage for edible parts is the budding stage, show in the photo. The last opportunity is when the pods are very small, less than two inches. The milkweed contains a milky white sap consisting of alkaloids, latex, cardenolides and other constituents. It is considered toxic. Luckily, the toxins are water soluble and can easily be removed during cooking. http://www.annarbor.com/enter ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6jsAatEEio

Native American Equine Walking Display at the Rassawek Vineyards Spring Jubilee 2023 held in Columbia, Virginia. ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrzus-9rgsA

Realistically, practical skills and know-how are needed more than survival "supplies" and expensive gear. I believe things to be simpler than we've been led to believe. Life used to be simple... and we can re-learn how to live this way. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bo9hXBdTfzQ Milk: It Does a Body Good? https://www.westonaprice.org/health-topics/making-it-practical/milk-it-does-a-body-good/ The Biochemical Magic of Raw Milk and Other Raw Foods: Glutathione One of the many benefits of raw milk may be its ability to promote the production of a wonderful little compound called “glutathione” — this tiny compound consists of just three amino acids, but it is the master antioxidant and detoxifier of the cell. Looking at this little molecule for a few moments may be reductionist, but understanding how a food provides its benefits not only helps us better understand how to produce, prepare, and use that food, but also helps us identify other foods that may offer similar benefits. As I will describe below, for example, large amounts of raw fruits and vegetables may provide some glutathione-boosting power for people who cannot tolerate smaller amounts of raw milk. Heck, even — shudder — raw egg whites may give a glutathione boost in some people comparable to that given by raw milk! Glutathione — The Master Antioxidant and Detoxifier Glutathione maintains vitamins C and E in their reduced, active forms. It tightly regulates the production of hydrogen peroxide, which is a valuable signaling compound in small amounts but which promotes oxidative destruction of the cellular machinery in larger amounts. It quickly neutralizes lipid peroxides — nasty, dangerous breakdown products of the delicate and precious polyunsaturated fatty acids found in our cell membranes. On top of all these antioxidant functions, our cells use glutathione to make drugs and toxic chemicals more water-soluble so they can be excreted. Without glutathione, the antioxidant system breaks down, and toxic chemicals hang around to wreak havoc in our cells and tissues. Our bodies synthesize glutathione from protein. The most important amino acid needed for glutathione synthesis is cysteine. Cysteine is a sulfur-containing amino acid that is found in the diet, especially in animal proteins, and that our livers also make from methionine, another sulfur amino acid. These are the same dreaded sulfur amino acids that vegetarians claim leach calcium from our bones. As I pointed out in a blog post a few months ago, they don’t. Studies in both rats and humans show that deficient intakes of these supposedly bone-eroding sulfur amino acids lead to a deficient synthesis of glutathione. The more extensive rat studies show that glutathione increases as dietary protein inc ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucwYqvRSeUk