Look at this thought-provoking recipe from Ayun Halliday at Open Culture. They say this is the oldest recipe in the world, clocking in at 8000 years old:
NETTLE PUDDING
Ingredients
• 1 bunch of sorrel
• 1 bunch of watercress
• 1 bunch of dandelion leaves
• 2 bunches of young nettle leaves
• Some chives
• 1 cup of barley flour
• 1 teaspoon of saltINSTRUCTIONS
• Chop the herbs finely and mix in the barley flour and salt.
• Add enough water to bind it together and place in the center of a linen or muslin cloth.
• Tie the cloth securely and add to a pot of simmering venison or wild boar (a pork joint will do just as well). Make sure the string is long enough to pull the pudding from the pot.
• Cook the pudding until the meat is done (at least two hours).
• Leave the pudding to cool slightly, remove the muslin, then cut the pudding into thick slices with a knife.
• Serve the pudding with chunks of barley bread.
And this little bit from Ruth Fairchild made it even more interesting to consider:
You have to think how much more is wasted now than then.
Food waste today is huge. A third of the food in our fridges is thrown away every week without being eaten.
But they wouldn’t have wasted anything, even hooves would have been used for something.
They had to eat what was grown within a few miles, because it would have taken so long to collect everything, and even collecting water would have been a bit of a trial.
Yet today, so many people don’t want to cook because they think of it as a chore.