Her Beasts

Acorns & Cattails

The next morning when Iris awoke she found that she had already been washed clean and redressed. Caspian was nowhere in sight and Iris could only assume he was out hunting more prey for the cold season.

Iris couldn't help but question how much food was "enough". If this world works like the modern world then the cold season should only be three months or so.

Walking into the kitchen, Iris lifted back the rug covering the cellar entrance. She then pushed the stone cover back and slowly walked down a wooden ladder. For safety's sake, Iris had wanted to hide their food and create a safe place for her to hide in case of intruders. Beastmen often starved in the cold months due to a lack of food, so one could never be too careful.

Walking around the cellar, Iris took stock of the amount of food they had stockpiled so far. They had many large bins full of dried and smoked meat. There were dozens of prey in their cellar already. Iris felt both amazed that Caspian had already done so much and confused as to why her latest quest was yet to be completed.

Just one of these large prey would be enough to feed Iris for nearly a month. Even with Caspian eating a lot more than her, surely the amount they had now would be enough? Iris was unsure what the problem was but could only hope a few more days of collecting prey would complete the quest. It would snow any day now and they would not be able to collect food for much longer.

Iris decided to carefully organize her new purchases and put them away in the cellar. The stone box full of honey had not been able to safely be placed in her animal hide bag. Thus, she had to carry it back home. Honey was very precious as it could sweeten her herbal teas and even be used in cooking. This she placed inside one of the carved-out stone cupboards that held her spices.

The cattails, acorns, and plantain leaves would need to be dried and processed to be used. Plantain leaves were really far better fresh and could be eaten in stir-fries or salads. However, with their natural anti-inflammatory and immune-boosting properties, they were a real superfood. It would be better to have them throughout the cold season to use in soups and stews than to eat them all while they were still fresh.

The cattails and acorns are natural starches easily foraged for, both in the modern world and the beast world. However, they would have to be carefully processed to ensure they were safe to eat.

Acorns could be turned into flour and grits before being made into numerous other delicacies. Due to the bitter and potentially poisonous tannins in the acorns, it's best to either boil the acorns for three hours or use cold water for over a week to leech the tannins out.

The boiling method would obviously be faster but the flour it would produce would be darker in color and would destroy the gluten-like properties in the flour. As such, Iris could only set the nearly fifty pounds worth of acorns aside for later when Caspian returned. She'd need river water and she did not feel safe braving the dangerous forest for such a thing. That wasn't even to mention the weight of the water and stone pot would be far too much for her to carry.

Cattails are edible from top to bottom and contain many vitamins and even potassium. Thankfully, cattails were not as dangerous to eat raw, they just needed to be prepped and dried for the cold season.

As the pollen found in the tail could also be used as a flour, Iris first placed them into a normal animal skin bag and shook it around to loosen the pollen. She did this repeatedly in small batches, transferring the pollen to a larger, clean animal skin as she went. The rest of the cattails were set aside for the next step. Once all the pollen was removed, Iris used a strip of animal hide to tie it together and placed it in a corner. Later, when Caspian was home, she would have to ask him to carve out some large stone jars for her to store flour in.