(07-22-2023, 07:23 PM)NightskyeB4Dawn Wrote: How is the quinoa and the couscous stocking and pricing at the moment?
I am a bit tired of rice, ramen, and pasta.
If you have goosefoot growing in your area, goosefoot seed can be gathered and substituted for quinoa. They are the same plant - chenopodioum - just different varieties. The original Indian Eastern Agricultural Complex - the first one, before corn was introduced to North America - included goosefoot as a domesticated crop. The seeds were cooked and eaten as quinoa, and the leaves were eaten as greens. Old leaves were burned to ash and used as a condiment to season food because of their high salt content. Chenopodium tends to pull salt out of the ground.
The domesticated variety was chenopodium jonessianum, which was domesticated from the wild variety we still have, which is chenopodium berlanderii. The only difference was that the domesticated variety had a seed coat that was only about half as thick, It was still being grown by the Indians here when the first Europeans arrived, but alongside the corn introduced from Central America. Descriptions the English gave of it is how I know the ash was used for the salt content.
In a thick stand of goosefoot, you can gather about a quart or so an hour of the seed which, when cooked, yields a good bit more volume.
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