📘 Guides › 🍞 Food · 🆘 Emergency · 📇 Index A–Z

🥫 Food When It's Scarce: Storage, Rationing & Nutrition

How to keep a household fed for a year or more with no stores: how much food people need, what to store and how to keep it good for decades, how to share it out fairly, how to prevent the hunger diseases, how to refeed someone who is starving, how to keep babies alive, and what wild food the Illinois Valley gives month by month. The books are in Food-Security\ (Storage-Rationing, Nutrition-Deficiency, Foraging). Growing, milling and cooking staples are in Food-From-Scratch\, and cellars and drying in Food-Storage\.

⚠️ Rules that prevent the worst outcomes

• Grain alone is not enough. Stored wheat, rice and beans have almost no vitamin C. Store vitamin C tablets and learn to sprout seeds. Under 10 mg a day can cause life-threatening scurvy within months (BYU, p. 1).
• Never oxygen-pack or vacuum-seal moist food. It can grow botulism. Dry food under 10% moisture only (USU, p. 97).
• Feed a starving person slowly. Big meals all at once can kill them.
• Babies: breast milk first. Never give plain animal milk under 6 months (WHO 2004, p. 40).
• Never cut the share of children, pregnant or nursing women, or the sick first.
• Eat no wild plant you have not identified for certain. Death camas and water hemlock grow right here and kill.

---

🍽️ How much food people need

Daily needs (US official tables; "active" there only means walking over 3 miles a day — wood, water and hand-digging are heavier, so plan from the top of each range) (Dietary Guidelines, pp. 153–154; protein p. 146, p. 148):

Person	Calories a day	Protein a day
Man, 19+	2,200–2,600 inactive; 2,800–3,000 active	56 g
Woman, 19+	1,600–2,000 inactive; 2,000–2,400 active	46 g
Teen boy	up to 3,200	52 g
Child 9–13	—	34 g
Child 2–8	1,000–2,000	13–19 g
Pregnant	+340 (2nd trimester), +452 (3rd)	71 g
Nursing	+330 (first 6 months), +400 after	71 g

Plan on 2,100 kcal per person per day, averaged over all ages, with at least 10–12% from protein and 17% from fat (WHO 2002, p. 6; Sphere, p. 228) — at least 53 g protein and 40 g fat (Sphere, p. 260).

Adjust it (WHO 2002, pp. 11–13):

• Cold: add 100 kcal for every 9 °F (5 °C) the average temperature is below 68 °F. Valley winter days average about 40 °F, so a poorly heated house should plan about +300 kcal per person, November–March (rule of thumb from that formula).
• Sick or already thin: add 100–200 kcal. Heavy work: more.

What 2,100 kcal looks like: 400 g cereal (about 2 cups dry), 60 g beans, 25 g oil (2 Tbsp), 50 g fortified flour, 15 g sugar, 5 g iodized salt = 2,113 kcal, 58 g protein (WHO 2002, p. 14). For a year: about 322 lb grain, 48 lb beans, 20 lb oil, 12 lb sugar, 4 lb salt per person (our arithmetic).

Handy number: 790 g (1.74 lb) of dry wheat gives 2,600 kcal and 103 g protein — so 1 lb of dry grain ≈ 1,500 kcal (Kearny, p. 90).

📚 Go deeper: Food and Nutrition Needs in Emergencies, p. 11 — adjusting for cold, sickness and work; Dietary Guidelines, p. 153 — calories by age and activity.

📋 A year's food: the list and a worked example

BYU's one-year list for one adult (BYU, p. 1), and the same for 2 adults + 2 children under 8, who count as about 3 adults (children under 8 need about half — USU, p. 65):

Item	1 adult	Household (×3)	Sealed shelf life
Wheat	132 lb	~400 lb	30+ years
White rice	65 lb	~195 lb	30+ years
Rolled oats	29 lb	~87 lb	20 years
Pasta	21 lb	~63 lb	—
Beans, peas, lentils	62 lb	~186 lb	25 years
Nonfat dry milk	60 lb	180 lb	15 years (cool)
Sugar or honey	70 lb	210 lb	30+ years
Iodized salt	8 lb	24 lb	30+ years
Cooking oil	2 gallons	6 gallons	about 1 year
Butter (frozen), peanut butter	6 lb each	18 lb each	—

That is roughly 2,200 kcal a day (our rough arithmetic). Also: baking soda, baking powder, yeast, can openers, a grain grinder (hand mill and metate, FAO p. 17), and recipes that use only stored food. USU's simpler rule: about 300 lb of grain per person per year, 25–60 lb of it rice (USU, p. 68).

Fill the gaps (rule of thumb): vitamin C tablets (multivitamins keep less long — BYU), vitamin D or cod-liver oil, extra iodized salt, whole grains and beans (not only white rice and flour), seeds to sprout, and a plan for fat once the oil goes rancid (lard, oil seeds, animals).

📚 Go deeper: BYU Longer-Term Food Storage — the one-page table; USU Food Storage for Emergencies, p. 65 — wheat, rice, oats and beans chapter by chapter.

📦 Storing it for years

Heat is the main enemy. Keep food at 40–70 °F. In BYU research, wheat stayed good 25 years in a cool basement but only 5 in a hot garage or attic. Keep containers off bare concrete (USU, p. 31). Our summers pass 100 °F and sheds get hotter — use the coolest inside room or a cellar (Root Cellar guide).

Keep grain dry. Above 12% moisture it starts to break down, above 15% it molds, at 20% bacteria grow. Freezing does not harm it (USU, p. 66). Seal it in the dry season (July–September), not in wet winter air (rule of thumb).

Packing with oxygen absorbers (USU, p. 98):

1. Use oxygen-tight containers only: #10 cans or Mylar/foil bags. Plastic buckets slowly let oxygen in — put a Mylar bag inside the bucket; the bucket keeps rats out.
2. Absorber size: 100 cc per quart jar, 300 cc per gallon bag or #10 can, 2,000 cc per 5-gallon bucket. (Some charts say 500 cc, but a full bucket of grain holds about 1,500 cc of oxygen (arithmetic); extra absorber does no harm.)
3. Work fast: an opened pack starts in 20 minutes and is spent in about 5 hours. Reseal spare packets in a small jar. Label every bag with contents and date.

• Absorbers are not edible; hand warmers are not a substitute.
• Dry food under 10% moisture only. Never moist food, home-canned butter or oil-coated raw eggs at room temperature — botulism (USU, p. 32).

The Mylar bag keeps oxygen out and the bucket keeps rats out; the absorber goes in just before you seal (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Bugs (USU, p. 95): oxygen held under 1% for 12 days kills every stage, so Mylar with absorbers kills weevils (the common grain pests, FAO p. 78). Dry ice: 3–4 inches of grain in a bucket, 2–3 oz crushed dry ice, fill, lid loose 30 minutes, then seal (p. 66). Freeze 2–3 days, warm a day, freeze again. Heat in a 130 °F oven for 30 minutes — but heated grain will not sprout, so never heat seed grain.

Sealed, low-oxygen	Keeps (USU)
Wheat	good bread after 32 years (p. 66)
White rice	25–30 years (p. 69)
Dry beans	20–30 years (p. 49)
Rolled oats	up to ~30 years (p. 73)
Nonfat dry milk	3–5 years cool, as little as 3 months hot (p. 52)
Brown rice, whole-wheat flour, cornmeal, nuts, pearled barley	not for long storage — oils go rancid; store whole grain and grind as needed (p. 32)

Rotate by eating it. Cooking one day a week only from storage rotates everything about every 7 years. Before throwing old food out, cook a sample — the stale smell on opening often fades. Old beans that won't soften: add ⅛ tsp baking soda per cup (BYU, p. 1).

📚 Go deeper: USU, p. 97 — oxygen removal and the botulism warning; USU Grain Insect Control, p. 11 — temperature, food-grade containers, container sizes.

⚖️ Setting and running a fair ration

Work out the ration (rule of thumb):

1. Weigh everything, item by item.
2. Count the days to the next harvest and add about 3 months of reserve.
3. Daily ration per person = stock ÷ (people × days), for each food.
4. Turn it into calories (1 lb dry grain ≈ 1,500 kcal) and compare with 2,100. The gap is what the garden, hunting, fishing, foraging and animals must make up.

Example (our arithmetic): 3 adult-equivalents, 13 months (395 days). 900 lb of grain ÷ (3 × 395) ≈ 0.76 lb per person per day ≈ 1,100 kcal — half the need. Start the garden and the rabbits and chickens now.

Keep it fair (rule of thumb, except where cited):

• One standard scoop per food, marked with its weight. A written daily log: date, what went out, to whom, what is left.
• Two people present whenever stores are opened. Keep stores locked and out of sight.
• Make sure children, the sick, older people and pregnant and nursing women really get their share — give them smaller, more frequent portions (Sphere, p. 235).
• Fuel, pots and water matter as much as food — lacking any one hurts as much as a short ration (WHO Management of Nutrition, p. 74). Store salt and spices: people eat more of a dull diet when it tastes good (p. 75).
• Grind just before eating (Kearny's pipe-and-can grinder). Milling loses about 10% of wheat or corn (WHO, p. 75), and ground whole corn keeps only 6–8 weeks (Sphere, p. 232).

If this goes wrong: one person losing weight faster → check they really eat their share (children and old people often give theirs away). Stores shrinking faster than the log → reweigh, check for rats and spoilage before suspecting people.

📚 Go deeper: Sphere, p. 235 — fair distribution; WHO Management of Nutrition, p. 74 — rations, fuel, milling (scanned, not searchable); Kearny, p. 84 — a homemade grain grinder.

🔥 Cooking with little fuel

A fuel shortage is a nutrition problem: one refugee pellagra outbreak happened partly because people had no fuel to cook the beans they were given (WHO Pellagra, p. 29).

1. Soak beans first (USU Dry Beans, p. 2).
2. Crack or grind grain — meal cooks much faster than whole kernels.
3. Boil briefly, let insulation finish it. Cook meal with at least 4 parts water to 1, boil briefly, then finish in a fireless cooker for 4–5 hours (Kearny, p. 89).
4. Build a haybox: a box packed with hay, wool or blankets around a lidded pot (the parts; cut-away drawing). Beans and meat boil 20–25 minutes before going in (Practical Action, p. 5); old beans longer (USDA FB 771, p. 16).

A haybox: insulation packed all around the pot, a tray under it and a thick cushion on top, so no heat escapes (Practical Action, p. 2).

📚 Go deeper: USDA Homemade Fireless Cookers, p. 4 — building one; Firewood guide — making the wood count.

🩺 Hunger diseases: spot them, prevent them

These come from eating the same few stored foods for months, and each is easy to prevent.

Disease	Missing	Signs	Prevent with
Scurvy	Vitamin C	Tired, aching legs → swollen bleeding gums, tiny bleeds at hair roots, swollen joints	Sprouts, rose hips, berries, raw greens, potatoes, tablets
Beriberi	Thiamine (B1)	Numb, burning, weak legs; or swelling and heart failure	Whole wheat, oats, beans, peas
Pellagra	Niacin	Dark, rough, sunburn-like rash on hands, neck, face (drawing); diarrhoea; depression or confusion	Lime- or ash-treated corn, beans, peanuts, meat
Rickets	Vitamin D	Swollen wrists and rib ends ("beads"), bowed legs, late walking (drawing)	Sun on bare skin, eggs, liver, fish, cod-liver oil
Goitre	Iodine	Swelling at the front of the neck (drawing); miscarriage; brain damage in babies	Iodized salt, seafood, kelp

Scurvy (WHO Scurvy, pp. 15–17): 10 mg of vitamin C a day prevents and cures it; gums improve within about 2 weeks. Rose hips and many berries have over 300 mg per 100 g; cooking destroys it; breast milk covers a nursing baby (p. 33).

Sprouting for vitamin C (WHO Scurvy, pp. 35, 50; Kearny's sprouting drawing; photos):

1. Soak whole (unsplit) beans, peas, lentils or wheat 12–21 hours.
2. Drain and spread between damp cloths; keep them damp.
3. Eat when shoots are ½–1 inch (30–48 hours) — the shoot holds the vitamin. Raw, or cooked under 30 minutes. Dried sprouts lose it.
4. 1½–2 oz of dry seed per person per day is enough.

• Sprouted 3 days in light so they turn green, they also give some vitamin A (Kearny, p. 92).

Soak, spread between damp cloths, eat when the shoots are ½–1 inch (a diagram drawn for this guide).

Beriberi can appear within 2–3 months on white rice or white flour (WHO Thiamine, p. 14). Babies nursed by deficient mothers can die within hours, usually at 1–3 months old (p. 22). Don't over-wash rice or pour off its water. Strong tea, raw fermented fish and molds in damp food block thiamine (p. 17).

Pellagra comes from corn-heavy diets with untreated corn (WHO Pellagra, p. 13); one outbreak began 4 months after peanuts were dropped from a ration. If corn is a staple, nixtamalize it (FAO, p. 19; Food from Scratch) and eat beans or meat with it.

Rickets and our winter sun: 10–15 minutes of sun on a child's bare skin daily prevents it. Treatment: 5,000 IU vitamin D daily for 4–6 weeks, then 1,000 IU daily for 6 months, usually from fish-liver oil (WHO Management of Nutrition, p. 46). Rule of thumb: at 42° N the November–February sun is too weak to make vitamin D, and the valley is often cloudy — store cod-liver oil or vitamin D, and get children into the summer sun.

Iodine: adults need about 150 µg a day (WHO, pp. 36–37), and 250 µg when pregnant or nursing (WHO 2007). About ½ teaspoon of US iodized salt gives roughly 150 µg — you don't need more salt than that. The Pacific Northwest was historically part of the US "goitre belt" (rule of thumb) — store iodized salt sealed, dry and dark, and use fish and kelp from the coast.

📚 Go deeper: WHO Scurvy, p. 35 — the famine sprouting method; WHO Thiamine, p. 19 — forms of beriberi; WHO Pellagra, p. 8 — the rash and outbreaks; Where There Is No Doctor, p. 24 — goitre.

🦴 Starvation and refeeding slowly

Recognize it (WHO Management of Nutrition, pp. 25–26; malnutrition; signs in children, mild to severe):

• Marasmus — "skin and bones", an old man's face, loose "baggy pants" skin on the buttocks (drawing).
• Kwashiorkor — swollen feet and legs, peeling "flaky-paint" skin, thin loose hair, misery, no appetite (drawing).
• Adults — wasting and weakness, sometimes swelling.
• For every severe case there may be about 10 moderate ones.

Refeed low and slow:

1. Sudden big meals can cause fatal refeeding syndrome (rule of thumb).
2. Starter formula (WHO F-75) for a severely malnourished child, used for the first days until appetite returns: 25 g dried skim milk + 70 g sugar + 35 g cereal flour + 27 g oil + water to 1 litre, boiled 5–7 minutes. Or 300 mL fresh cow's milk + 70 g sugar + 35 g flour + 17 g oil + water to 1 litre (WHO Severe Malnutrition, p. 21). After it cools, WHO adds 20 mL of mineral mix per litre (potassium and magnesium — "it must be added") and 140 mg vitamin mix or a multivitamin; recipes on p. 61.
3. Small feeds every 2–3 hours, day and night (p. 22). No iron in the first week (p. 9).
4. Adults: WHO aims for about 40 kcal per kg of body weight a day; once appetite returns, give ordinary food with added oil (WHO, p. 111). But if they've eaten almost nothing for a week or more, start lower — about 10–20 kcal per kg a day, building up over 4–7 days (UK NICE guidance). Feeding too much too fast can stop the heart (refeeding syndrome).
5. Dehydrated and starving: don't give full-strength rehydration salts. One ORS packet in 2 litres plus 50 g sugar and 40 mL mineral mix (ReSoMal) (WHO Severe Malnutrition, p. 18).

Note: these manuals are from 1999–2000; WHO updated its guidance in 2013, including some drug doses. F-75 and ReSoMal are still used — leave the drugs to someone trained.

📚 Go deeper: WHO Severe Malnutrition, p. 21 — F-75 and F-100 recipes and charts; Where There Is No Doctor, p. 6 — recognizing malnutrition; WTND ch. 21, p. 12 — malnourished children.

🍼 Babies and toddlers in a shortage

Breastfeeding first (WHO 2004, pp. 21–23):

• Only extreme hunger lowers a mother's milk — feed the mother well. Keep nursing when mother or baby is sick, and nurse more often.
• Weak or premature babies: express milk and feed it from an open cup (removing milk by hand; cup feeding).
• Substitutes only for babies with no breast milk, by cup, not bottle (p. 27). If a baby is due or small, store real infant formula as a backup: about 110 g a day, 3.3 kg (7¼ lb) a month (same page).

If the milk has stopped or the mother is gone:

• Relactation: a woman who stopped breastfeeding can make milk again, for her own or an adopted baby, without another pregnancy; even a woman never pregnant (a grandmother) can sometimes make some (WHO Relactation, p. 7; scanned). Frequent suckling brings the milk.
• A healthy wet-nurse is next best (WHO 2004, p. 23).
• Homemade dry-milk formulas in two old books are a last resort — see the last section.

Babies 6–24 months:

• Porridge thick enough to stay on the spoon, not thin gruel, enriched with mashed beans, oil, egg or greens. Flour from sprouted grain cooks thinner, so more food fits a small stomach (WHO Complementary Feeding, pp. 17–18).
• Non-breastfed babies under one need 5 meals a day, not 3 (p. 37).
• Non-breastfed toddlers: 200–400 mL milk a day if they eat other animal foods, otherwise 300–500 mL. Goat, cow or sheep milk — boil raw milk (WHO 2005, pp. 14–16).

📚 Go deeper: WHO Infant Feeding in Emergencies, p. 21 — keeping breastfeeding going; A Book for Midwives, p. 7 — cup feeding removed milk; Where There Is No Doctor, p. 14 — the first 6 months.

🌿 Wild food around the valley

📷 Not sure what it is? Photograph it with the plant and mushroom identifier (🔧 Tools tab). It suggests names and flags poisonous groups, but it's often wrong: confirm every feature here before you eat or use anything.

What the Takelma ate here. The Takelma people lived along the middle Rogue and south toward the Illinois River (Sapir 1907, p. 3). Their staple was the "black acorn" (Sapir, p. 8; California black oak; photo), pounded, sifted, leached with hot water on clean sand and boiled as mush (Sapir, p. 9). Camas (photo) was pit-roasted on alder over hot stones, sometimes for days, then mashed into cakes for winter. Manzanita berries (flowers and berries) were pounded to flour with sugar-pine nuts; tarweed and sunflower-type seeds were parched and ground. They also ate madrone berries, pine nuts, salmon, steelhead, trout, crawfish and freshwater mussels.

Month by month (compiled from several books; dates shift 2–4 weeks with elevation and weather):

Months	Gather	Notes
Dec–Feb	Bigleaf maple sap (tapping); stored nuts; rose hips (wild rose); cattail roots; first miner's lettuce and chickweed	Sap runs on freeze–thaw days (OSU, p. 2); Saunders, p. 161
Mar–Apr	Nettle tops (drawing), miner's lettuce, dock, cattail shoots, morels (especially after a burn)	Young nettles before flowering (OSU, p. 2); morels
Apr–May	Mark camas while it blooms (camas vs. death camas)	Death camas blooms in May at about 1,400 ft — our elevation (PNW 104, p. 2)
Jun–Aug	Wild strawberry, thimbleberry, serviceberry, manzanita berries, Oregon grape (July–Aug)	NRCS Manzanita, p. 1; Oregon grape (drawing)
Aug–Sep	Blackberries; salal; huckleberries up high; blue elderberry (cooked only); hazelnuts; sugar pine nuts	Salal, p. 75; huckleberry, p. 126 (drawing, p. 125); hazelnuts in early autumn (NRCS) — Food from Scratch says June–July, so start looking in summer
Sep–Nov	Acorns (black oak, white oak, tanoak); chinquapin; wapato from ponds; chanterelles after soaking rains; rose hips (photos); abandoned-orchard fruit	Wapato, p. 1; Mushroom guide

Leaching acorns, roasting camas and using cattail: Food from Scratch.

📚 Go deeper: Sapir, Notes on the Takelma, p. 8 — local foods and how they were made; UCCE Foods from the Tanoak Forest, p. 2 — acorn processing; USFS Special Forest Products, p. 75 — berries and shrubs with seasons.

🌰 How the first peoples did it, step by step (acorns, camas, pinole, salmon, the year's round): Skills of the Valley's First Peoples.

☠️ Foraging safety rules

📷 Not sure what it is? Photograph it with the plant and mushroom identifier (🔧 Tools tab). It suggests names and flags poisonous groups, but it's often wrong: confirm every feature here before you eat or use anything.

1. Eat nothing not 100% identified — ideally confirmed by two people with a book.
2. Skip the whole wild-carrot family (white umbrella-shaped flower heads — poison and water hemlock photos; wild carrot, poison hemlock). Western water hemlock grows along valley creeks and kills fast, by seizures (PNW 109, p. 5; chambered root and stem, p. 1; look-alikes side by side, pp. 3–4).
3. Camas: dig only from a patch you watched bloom and marked plant by plant, only blue-flowered plants. Skip every white or cream-flowered plant — death camas is creamy-white and every part is poisonous (PNW 104, p. 2; WSU photos; Army drawing).
4. Always leach acorns. Always cook elderberries; never eat their stems, leaves or green berries (OSU, p. 4; elderberry drawing).
5. Never eat bracken fern — it holds a cancer-causing compound and an enzyme that destroys thiamine (WSU, p. 11; drawing).
6. Cook anything from ponds (wapato, cattail, watercress) — parasites (rule of thumb).
7. Throw out moldy, damp or discolored grain, and grass seed heads with black ergot spurs (USU, p. 66; rule of thumb; ergot photo).
8. Lean meat alone starves you. Living on rabbit or lean venison without fat causes "rabbit starvation" — keep fat in the diet (render lard; rule of thumb).
9. Try a new wild food in a small amount first, and take no more than a third of a patch (rule of thumb).

Western water hemlock: the thick rootstalk is hollow, with cross-walls making chambers full of poisonous juice (AIB 415, p. 110).

Water hemlock flowers: white umbrellas like the rest of the carrot family; leaf side veins run to the notches, not the tips (AIB 415, p. 109).

Death camas in bloom: yellowish-white flower clusters above grass-like leaves; skip every white or cream-flowered plant (AIB 415, p. 35).

If someone may be poisoned: death camas causes drooling, mouth numbness, vomiting, weakness, confusion and an irregular heartbeat 1–8 hours after eating (PNW 104, p. 2). Keep them warm, on their side if drowsy, watch their breathing, and keep a piece of the plant (rule of thumb). See the Field Care guide.

📚 Go deeper: PNW 109 Western Waterhemlock, p. 5 — look-alikes side by side; USDA Plants Poisonous to Livestock, p. 23 — bracken; PNW 104, p. 2 — death camas bloom time and symptoms.

⚠️ Old advice in the library to ignore

• "Two pounds of cooked grain per day" as an adequate diet (FEMA HS-4, p. 111). It should be about 1½–2 lb of DRY grain; 2 lb cooked is only about 800–1,200 kcal. The same page says "adults do not get rickets" — they do (it is called osteomalacia). Instead: plan from 2,100 kcal and the tables above.
• Grain puree for babies under 6 months, and scarce cow's milk saved for them (FEMA HS-4, p. 114) — outdated and dangerous. Instead: breast milk, relactation or a wet-nurse; no animal milk or solids before 6 months.
• Homemade skim-milk + oil + sugar infant formula (FEMA HS-4, p. 114; Kearny, p. 96) — a last resort only, when no breast milk, wet-nurse or real formula exists. It is not a complete infant food, and emergencies make all artificial feeding riskier (WHO 2004, p. 27). If you must: boiled water, a cup not a bottle, made fresh. Kearny himself says mother's milk is best.
• "Ferns on toast" — Saunders 1920, pp. 146–147 recommends bracken. Don't (cancer, thiamine loss).
• Camas with no death-camas warning — Saunders, pp. 43–45. Instead: follow rule 3 above.
• Drug doses in the WHO 1999–2000 malnutrition manuals predate WHO's 2013 update. Use the feeding methods; leave the drugs to trained hands.

📚 Go deeper: WHO 2004, p. 40 — why no animal milk before 6 months; WHO Severe Malnutrition, p. 21 — the feeding methods that still hold.

🖼️ Pictures & diagrams

Look before you try it. 🖼️ = drawings in the books on this drive; 📷 = photos in the offline Wikipedia.

Storing, grinding and cooking

• Hand grain mill and stone metate — FAO, p. 17; Quern-stone
• Kearny's homemade pipe-and-can grain grinder — Kearny, p. 83
• Weevils and moths in stored grain — FAO, p. 78; Rice weevil
• Mylar bags, oxygen absorbers, dry ice — BoPET (Mylar); Oxygen scavenger; Dry ice
• Hay-box (fireless) cooker — Practical Action, p. 2; USDA FB 771, pp. 8–9; Haybox

Hunger diseases and starvation

• Scurvy and beriberi — Scurvy; Thiamine deficiency
• Pellagra rash — WTND, p. 8; Pellagra
• Rickets — WTND, p. 19; Rickets
• Goitre — WTND, p. 24; Goitre
• Marasmus ("skin and bones") and kwashiorkor (swollen) — WTND, p. 6; WTND, p. 7; Marasmus; Kwashiorkor
• Signs of malnutrition in children — WTND ch. 21, p. 12
• Sprouting seeds — Kearny, p. 92; Sprouting
• Removing breast milk by hand, and cup feeding — A Book for Midwives, p. 6; p. 7

Wild foods of the valley

• California black oak and its acorns — NRCS, p. 1; Army oak drawing; Quercus kelloggii
• Camas — NRCS, p. 1; Camassia quamash
• Manzanita flowers and berries — NRCS, pp. 1–2; Arctostaphylos viscida
• Tapping bigleaf maple — OSU, p. 4; Acer macrophyllum
• Stinging nettle — USFS, p. 121; OSU photo; Urtica dioica
• Oregon grape, salal, huckleberry — USFS, p. 45; p. 75; p. 125; Gaultheria shallon
• Elderberry (cook it) and wild rose hips — USFS, p. 111; USFS, p. 103; Rose hip
• Hazelnut — NRCS, p. 1; Corylus cornuta
• Wapato — NRCS, p. 1; Sagittaria latifolia
• Morel — USFS mushrooms, p. 24; Morchella

The deadly look-alikes

• Western water hemlock: chambered root, leaves, look-alikes — PNW 109, p. 1; pp. 3–4; WSU, p. 14; Cicuta douglasii
• Poison hemlock and wild carrot — WSU, p. 13; Conium maculatum; Daucus carota
• Death camas — PNW 104, p. 2; WSU, p. 4; Army drawing; Toxicoscordion venenosum
• Bracken fern — WSU, p. 11; USFS, p. 101; Pteridium aquilinum
• Ergot on grain heads — WSU, p. 9; Claviceps purpurea

---

🔗 Related guides

• Food from Scratch — milling, acorn flour, camas, nixtamal corn, lard
• Root Cellar guide — a cool, dry, rat-proof place for stored food
• Seed Bank guide — growing next year's food and the calorie crops
• Chickens, Rabbits, Goats and Milk, Butter & Cheese — meat, eggs, milk and fat on little bought feed
• Mushroom guide — fall mushrooms and the deadly look-alikes
• Field Care guide — poisoning, dehydration and sickness with no help coming
• Firewood guide — the fuel cooking depends on
• Skills of the Valley's First Peoples — acorns, camas, salmon, cordage and baskets, houses, and tending the land with fire, the way people here lived for thousands of years.