About potbelly stoves and other little things
Again, a short introduction. I can’t help but remember Oleg Matison’s review “how you kept warm in the apartments outside..., like water and so on... - this is not nonsense.”
I also thank the author under the nickname Century of Art. All these reviewers simply inspired memories.
The word "potbelly stove" is known to this day. And even the song “A fire curls in a cramped stove” was clearly written about her.
During the Siege, this metal stove was a luxury item. The round stove with a tall chimney, known today at construction sites, was rarely seen. Basically these were boxes on legs with an “L”-shaped pipe.
Firstly, getting it was a problem. There was no metal, there was no one to weld this metal box.
We lived without a stove for a long time. We heated boiling water from our neighbors, who allowed us to heat the water. This was also a great feat, since no one supplied fuel.
The blockade gave me habits that I still keep to this day.
The first is that hot tea and any hot water is not a drink, it is food. So I fill myself up by drinking hot water. This suppresses the desire to eat more.
The second rule is that tea and hot water cannot be drunk immediately. First you need to lightly squeeze the glass in your hands and warm your hands. Then in those years we sniffed boiling water to warm our noses, and then after drinking tea we had to wrap ourselves up tightly so as not to lose the acquired warmth. At that time, children were not accustomed to the fact that something would be served for tea.
On the contrary, if you drink boiling water, lunch is over.
The potbelly stove was brought to us by our one-legged house manager, Nikolai Ivanovich, our guardian angel. Someone died and left this stove. As always, he was unhappy and reprimanded his mother. “What are you doing! Like an INHUMAN!. The child is small."
The mother was silent. She silently looked at this unprecedented gift. Luckily our room had a fireplace. It was left over from the owners who lived in the entire apartment before the revolution. Only my mother and I and some woman were left in our apartment. We rarely saw her. She came once a week and slept.
The house manager put the pipe into the fireplace and, using matches made of cardboard, but with a normal head, lit some piece of paper and brought it to the “potbelly stove”. The fire reached into the oven.
The house manager remarked: “The traction is good!”
Mom looked in confusion, first at the house manager, then at me. I stood tightly hugging her warm legs. “What are we going to heat with?”
“Well, what is your first day in the world? Walk around the apartment, maybe someone still has books!”
Mother was scared. “I won’t burn books!”
“What a fool! What's good about them? Tolstoy, Pushkin, and there’s nothing else in them. Think about it! They’ll write new ones.”
He walked around the apartment, went into the end room and came with two floorboards. On you for the first time! Don't burn in vain! Only when you are going to freeze or make boiling water. That's all. Take it from that room. No one will live there anymore, but God willing, after the Victory, the new residents will make new floorboards. Make sure no one else knows about this fuel." He left, and we prolonged our happiness, and only the next day we flooded the potbelly stove. And they sat next to her, huddled close to each other. On two benches. One of them still kept the memory of Vaska Finyakin. He never returned from Nevsky Piglet.
It was happiness. You could warm up, put your hands on, without gloves, unbutton your padded jacket a little and warm up two metal mugs of tea.
But like any happiness, it was short-lived. The heat quickly dissipated and we waited again for the next time. At night we slept again covered with everything warm that was in the house. Although there was no time to sleep due to air raid alarms. I had to run to the roof. I often had a dream that someone would come and steal these floorboards, and one day I tore off four floorboards and hid them. But still, my mother noticed, and we heated them in due time.
Water
Oddly enough, in the first days of winter there was water. I remember how they insulated the pipes in the basements, but in the end it didn’t help. The pipes were bursting due to frost. The water was turned off every now and then, and then turned off for good.
Water was extracted from the Fontanka River. At that time she was still considered pure. But then there was no other one. Oddly enough, I don’t remember anyone getting sick, especially not having a cold. I think that whoever was sick eventually died, and only the strong remained. I can’t say anything about myself. I only have one photograph left. There I am a skeleton on thin legs. But whether it was genes or my mother’s decoctions (I already wrote about the spruce branches that her friends brought from digging trenches), I didn’t get a cold.
The supply of water soon became my responsibility. I had a sled just big enough for two buckets. The buckets were tied to the sled, and I went to the Fontanka. There, at the ice hole, there was a line of women like me or very old women. They were telling the news. The story about the “Rat Watering Place” was heard especially often. Rats went to water at night, and sometimes even in the morning. And as the old women said, if a person came along the way, they instantly ate him up, down to the skeleton... I didn’t see this. Now I have little faith in it. But then it scared me and for good reason. There was an alley behind our house, there was a vacant lot where there was a storage area for corpses. In our area they found corpses and if they could not identify them, they took them to this wasteland - a storage area. Then they were taken out by special teams. People didn’t even have the strength to raise those who had fallen. Then a terrible saying was born. “You don’t need to help, you’ll lie down next to you.” But people helped. And even points were organized where the fallen were taken, and there they were raised to their feet, by feeding and warming them if possible. I knew some people saved by this service.
And there were a lot of rats in the storage areas, so I was afraid to go there.
There was another legend. This legend concerned cannibalism. I was told more than once in this line for water that children were being kidnapped. I was afraid of all the men who rarely came along the way. But I don’t know that any of my few friends were kidnapped.
As for washing, it was harsh. The baths opened after the blockade was broken. First, a bathhouse opened near the Nekrasovsky market. But we were far away, and then near us
Dostoevsky street. We went to the bathhouse with our basins (gangs). I was no longer allowed into the women's department. There were long queues at the bathhouse. I went to the bathhouse with my uncle from our yard. He collected all the boys. And we stood in line, then undressed in a large common locker room. There they strictly made sure that the boys had their hair cut, otherwise they would get lice. I especially remember the shower. There was a queue there too. My mother gave me a piece of soap wrapped in a rag.
There was enough water and we happily filled the basins from two cold and hot taps. Our escort's special passion was ears. He personally examined and demanded that the ears “glow.” We came out clean and refreshed and so on until the next week. But this was already the spring of 1943.
That's all I remember for now.
Since I have already started writing about rumors, this means that my memory is running out of information.
Congratulations to everyone on Victory Day.
Reviews
Good evening, Igor!
This is really interesting. With a potbelly stove ("correct", cast iron) and
I have some memories: when I was four years old, I fell on my shoulder
imprinted. Over the years, the burn scar almost completely “overgrew”, but at first
was quite noticeable. By the way, in the 70s, men made from sheet steel
"boxes on legs" with a "samovar" pipe without any welding - that's all
was done according to the principle of roofing work: cutting, cutting out blanks
using a chisel and “bending the parts together”...
Thank you and all the best to you! Sincerely, A.T.
Six bakeries operated in besieged Leningrad. Production did not stop for a single day. For a long time, the technology for making bread was hidden; bakers' documents were labeled "for official use" and even "secret". The basis of bread then was rye flour, to which cellulose, cake, and flour dust were mixed. Then each factory baked bread according to its own recipe, adding various additives to it.
The autumn of '41 and winter of '42 are the hardest times. In November 1942, thousands and thousands of people were already dying from hunger and elementary dystrophy. On November 19, the Military Council of the Leningrad Front adopted a resolution “On reducing bread standards.” Here's the beginning:
“In order to avoid interruptions in the provision of bread to the front troops and the population of Leningrad, the following norms for the supply of bread should be established from November 20, 1941:
workers and engineers 250 g.
employees, dependents and children - 125g;
units of the first line and warships 500 g;
Air Force flight technical personnel 500g;
all other military units 300 g; Leningraders lived on such rations for more than a month.
There are several recipes for blockade bread, they are well known, and sometimes flour substitutes in them reach up to 40%. Here are some of them:
Defective rye flour 45%, cake 10%, soy flour 5%, bran 10%, cellulose 15%, wallpaper dust 5%, malt 10%. Various organic ingredients were added to the dough, such as sawdust from wood. Sometimes the quality of the products suffered greatly from this. After all, the share of sawdust was more than 70%.
In addition, at the beginning of the blockade, a large amount of water was added to the bread; as a result, the resulting bread was a liquid mucous mass....(ugh, I’m adding this on my own behalf).
This is how “one hundred and twenty-five blockade grams with fire and blood in half” were born, which entered the memory and consciousness of millions of people as a symbol of inhuman trials, and became the basis for disputes, versions and legends. For many days during the siege, a piece of bread remained the only source of life and the only hope for a person.
Cars with bread are coming to Leningrad!
When the frost crackles over Ladoga,
The blizzard sings about the snowy expanses,
This is heard in that harsh song -
The engines are humming and humming.
More than half a century has passed since that terrible time. But the memory is alive... Not even the memory of people, but the memory of the earth. Now in the vicinity of the village of Kobona, where the Road of Life began, at first glance nothing reminds of the past. Busy villages, sunny weather, on weekends from early morning cars with mushroom pickers scurry back and forth. But in these forests you feel uneasy, even in summer. Harsh century-old forests. They remember. They remember everything. The forest is dark. Trees rush into the sky. And the sky is the same as it was many years ago. Remembering the smell of gunpowder, exploding shells. Then painted red.
It’s good to have a snack with the whole family on the shore of the wide Lake Ladoga, sitting next to full baskets of mushrooms and berries. For some reason, on a warm, carefree day, I think exclusively about the beauty of the landscape. But in winter I won’t risk appearing here. The wound of winter Ladoga is too deep and incurable.
The blizzard is blowing, the vultures are bombing,
Nazi shells are making holes in the ice,
But do not close the blockade ring on the enemy
You stand at the monument to the truck, which is at the turn to Kobona, and look into the distance. And it’s as if you see it all. White road, red snow. You begin to realize what land you are resting on in the summer, where you are in general. On the ground soaked through with blood. Russian blood. This is scary. Maybe we shouldn't disturb these places? No. This is the memory of a great people. But the memory must be alive.
The first to travel along the ice road on November 20, 1941 was a horse-drawn sleigh train of three hundred and fifty teams. The thickness of the ice increased, and gradually Lake Ladoga turned into a huge ice plain, along which trucks walked one after another, under fire. Each one carried one and a half tons of cargo, so such vehicles began to be called “lorry-and-a-half”. Cars often fell into ice cracks, gaps from shells and bombs. The drivers tried to save the priceless cargo. It happened that the engine broke down on the way, and then the driver had to repair it right in the cold, with his bare hands. The fingers froze to the metal, and they were torn off along with the skin. Experienced drivers made two to three trips a day.
Nobody knows how many people died under German bullets and remained at the bottom of Ladoga forever.
Then the lorry rushed through a hundred deaths,
A hundred times the sky fell on them,
But the word "bread" was equal to the word "life"
And if there is life, that means victory.
For residents of Leningrad, the winter of '44 is almost more important than the spring of '45. There were two Victories for them. The blockade was broken on January 18, 1943. During the seven-day battles, they managed to liberate the villages of Sinyavino and Shlisselburg, which are not far from the famous Nevsky patch.
On the left bank of the Ladoga Bridge there is a museum-diorama “Breaking the Siege of Leningrad”. The canvas depicts snow-white snow, spoiled by traces of guns, the swept surface of the Neva. And right under your feet lie the remains of sleepers, charred helmets and rifle barrels. The troops of the Leningrad and Volkhov fronts have united! People who participated in Operation Iskra helped to recreate this.
And the happiest day for Leningraders was January 27, 1944 - the blockade was completely lifted. “The city of Leningrad has been liberated from the enemy blockade!” In the evening there was a fireworks display. 324 artillery pieces on the Field of Mars, at the Peter and Paul Fortress and on the Spit of Vasilievsky Island fired 24 salvos. No one slept that night.
And the city believed in the roar of cannonades,
That the whole country lives with his anxiety.
And therefore the icy road
Cars with bread are coming to Leningrad,
Cars with bread are heading to Leningrad.
The texts of Hitler's speeches have survived to this day. He argued that Leningrad would inevitably die of starvation. Leaflets were dropped on the city from airplanes, and they called for surrender. But the Leningraders did not give up! At times, the situation of people in the besieged city became so desperate that even the most courageous defenders began to feel that a terrible prophecy was about to come true: “Petersburg will be empty!” But the Leningraders did not give up.
900 days. 900 days of cold, hunger and death.
Flashes of war flared in the sky,
Where the battles took place, the fields lie without edge.
And the bread ripens, and there is no price for it,
And gray Ladoga waves roll.
It is beautiful there. Insanely beautiful. It seems like nothing special - you might say this happens in every village, but no. All around is not just a rural landscape - all around is life, for which such fierce battles were fought more than sixty years ago. Joyful voices, endless fields where rye and wheat ripen. And Ladoga. My native Ladoga is so alive, and the waves lazily hit the shore. But what do they want to tell us, these eternal waves?..
Peaceful years fly over her,
Centuries will pass, but people will hear,
Like through a blizzard, frost and thunder of guns
Cars with bread are coming to Leningrad,
Cars with bread are heading to Leningrad.
During the years of the siege, Leningrad was not just a besieged city, whose residents tried to survive despite hunger, cold, bombing and suffering. It has turned into a whole separate world with strong and courageous people, with its own orders and, one might say, with its own language. Over the course of 900 terrible days and nights, many words appeared in the vocabulary of Leningraders used to refer to objects of life under the siege. the site remembered the definitions of the siege dictionary, forgotten after the liberation of Leningrad.
Berklen
Due to the lack of tobacco in the city, Leningraders made it themselves from improvised materials. Berklen is a smoking mixture of fallen birch and maple leaves. They were dried, ground and stuffed with the resulting powder into cigarettes and cigarettes.
Picked out
People who were taken out of besieged Leningrad to other cities were called picked out. This name stuck due to its consonance with the word “evacuated”.
Grammics
Leningraders affectionately called their meager rations - 125 g of bread per day per person - by grams. More than half of the siege bread consisted of sawdust, cake, cellulose and wallpaper dust. For most residents of besieged Leningrad, this bread was the only food, and they ate it without losing a single crumb.
The blockade survivors lovingly called grams 125 g of bread - their daily ration. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Dystrophy Shrotovna Shchei-Bezvyrezovskaya
Even under incessant shelling and conditions of terrible famine, Leningraders did not lose their sense of humor, which helped them survive. So dystrophy - exhaustion, which suffered from every second resident of the city - was humanized and a full name was invented for it: Dystrophia Shrotovna Shchei-Bezvyrezovskaya. At that time, meal, crushed and defatted plant seeds used to feed animals, were considered a real delicacy, and one could only dream of a plate of cabbage soup with beef tenderloin.
Duranda
In the first year of the blockade, Leningrad stores still sold cake - compressed bars of waste left over from flour production. Such pieces of cake were called duranda. It was steamed in a saucepan until it had the consistency of porridge, or it was baked, adding the last remaining sugar to duranda cakes: the result was a kind of candy. In the most terrible and hungry first winter of the blockade, Duranda saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of Leningraders.
Death corridor
In January 1943, residents of besieged Leningrad in just 17 days laid 33 km of railway on the left bank of the Neva, connecting the besieged city with the country. The siege survivors were building a bridge across the Neva while the Nazis were firing at them from the Sinyavinsky Heights. Due to the increased danger of the work, the Leningraders themselves called the road being built the Corridor of Death. As a result, 75% of all cargo was delivered to Leningrad via this railway, and only 25% via the Road of Life through Ladoga. One train on the railway replaced one and a half thousand lorries. However, by that time the Road of Life had already been glorified, so only Leningraders knew about the Corridor of Death with its terrible name.
The construction site of the railway in Leningrad was called the Corridor of Death. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Bloody Crossroads
Leningraders called the intersection of Nevsky Prospekt and Sadovaya Street bloody. During the blockade there was a tram stop here, so this place was very often subject to enemy shelling. In August 1943, at the Bloody Crossroads, 43 people were killed simultaneously as a result of fascist bombing.
Hooks
During the blockade, malnourished dystrophic children being treated in a hospital were called hooks. Due to severe weight loss, small children became so thin that they looked like skin-covered skeletons, and their spines protruded forward, which led to such a comparison.
Swaddlers
Leningraders called pelenashka corpses wrapped in sheets, transported by residents of besieged Leningrad on sleds to the burial site. These sheets and rags replaced coffins for the dead.
People buried the “baby diapers” on their own, without coffins. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Povalikha
At first, during the blockade, Leningraders cooked bran porridge. This food was completely tasteless and had no calories. The porridge was called “povalikha” - it was believed that after eating it a person immediately fell asleep.
Sweet land
In the first days of the siege of Leningrad, the Germans dropped a shell on the Badayevsky food warehouses, where 3 thousand tons of flour and 2.5 thousand tons of sugar were stored. As a result of the bombing, the warehouses were completely burned down with all supplies. Exhausted Leningraders ate soil soaked in melted sugar and sold the “sweet land” for big money.
Crystal
The concept of “crystal” appeared in the first harsh winter of the siege and had nothing to do with the noble appearance of glass or tableware. This word was used to describe the frozen and numb corpses that lay on the streets of besieged Leningrad.
Corpses frozen in the streets were called crystal. Photo by D. Trachtenberg. Photo: Archive photo
Devil's Bridge
The Liteyny Bridge has always enjoyed a bad reputation in the city on the Neva: dozens died during its construction, and then it became a place of attraction for suicides from all over the city. When the Nazis began to continuously fire at the Liteiny Bridge because of its proximity to the Road of Life, the residents of besieged Leningrad finally believed that the bridge was cursed and began to call it the Devil’s Bridge.
Khryapa
During the years of the blockade, Leningraders built a kind of vegetable garden in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral: there they grew cabbage. True, full-fledged heads of cabbage did not grow in the area - only individual green leaves came out, which were called khryapa. In the first winter of the siege, khryapa was salted and fermented, and in the second, it was eaten with vegetable oil.
On the square in front of St. Isaac's Cathedral they grew cabbage - khryapa. Photo: AiF/ Yana Khvatova
Death Valley
Leningraders called Lenin Square and Finlyandsky Station the Valley of Death. It was from here that the famous Road of Life began, along which food and everything necessary for the life support of the city was delivered to besieged Leningrad. The Germans knew about this, and they bombed the Finland Station almost around the clock.
10 facts about besieged Leningrad.
The blockade lasted 872 days
On September 8, 1941, Leningrad was besieged. It was broken through on January 18, 1943. By the beginning of the blockade, Leningrad did not have sufficient supplies of food and fuel. The only way of communication with the city was Lake Ladoga. It was through Ladoga that the Road of Life ran, the highway along which food supplies were delivered to besieged Leningrad. It was difficult to transport the amount of food needed for the entire population of the city across the lake. During the first winter of the siege, famine began in Gol, and problems with heating and transport appeared. In the winter of 1941, hundreds of thousands of Leningraders died. On January 27, 1944, 872 days after the start of the siege, Leningrad was completely liberated from the Nazis.
630 thousand Leningraders died
During the blockade, over 630 thousand Leningraders died from hunger and deprivation. This figure was announced at the Nuremberg trials. According to other statistics, the figure could reach 1.5 million people. Only 3% of deaths occurred due to fascist shelling and bombing, the remaining 97% died from starvation. Dead bodies lying on the streets of the city were perceived by passers-by as an everyday occurrence. Most of those who died during the siege are buried at the Piskarevskoye Memorial Cemetery.
During the years of the siege in Leningrad, hundreds of thousands of people died. Photo from 1942. Archive photo
Minimum ration - 125 grams of bread
The main problem of besieged Leningrad was hunger. Employees, dependents and children received only 125 grams of bread per day between November 20 and December 25. Workers were entitled to 250 grams of bread, and personnel of fire brigades, paramilitary guards and vocational schools - 300 grams. During the blockade, bread was prepared from a mixture of rye and oat flour, cake and unfiltered malt. The bread turned out to be almost black in color and bitter in taste.
The children of besieged Leningrad were dying of hunger. Photo from 1942. Archive photo
1.5 million evacuees
During three waves of the evacuation of Leningrad, a total of 1.5 million people were removed from the city - almost half of the city's total population. The evacuation began a week after the start of the war. Explanatory work was carried out among the population: many did not want to leave their homes. By October 1942, the evacuation was completed. In the first wave, about 400 thousand children were taken to the Leningrad region. 175 thousand were soon returned back to Leningrad. Starting from the second wave, evacuation was carried out along the Road of Life across Lake Ladoga.
Almost half of the population was evacuated from Leningrad. Photo from 1941. Archive photo
1500 loudspeakers
To alert Leningraders about enemy attacks on the city streets, 1,500 loudspeakers were installed. In addition, messages were broadcast through the city radio network. The alarm signal was the sound of a metronome: its fast rhythm meant the beginning of an air attack, and its slow rhythm meant a release. Radio broadcasting in besieged Leningrad was around the clock. The city had an ordinance prohibiting turning off radios in homes. Radio announcers talked about the situation in the city. When the radio broadcasts stopped, the sound of the metronome continued to be broadcast on the air. Its knock was called the living heartbeat of Leningrad.
More than 1.5 thousand loudspeakers appeared on the streets of the city. Photo from 1941. Archive photo
- 32.1 °C
The first winter in besieged Leningrad was harsh. The thermometer dropped to -32.1 °C. The average temperature of the month was 18.7 °C. The city did not even record the usual winter thaws. In April 1942, the snow cover in the city reached 52 cm. Negative air temperatures remained in Leningrad for more than six months, lasting until May inclusive. Heating was not supplied to the houses, sewerage and water supply were turned off. Work in factories and factories stopped. The main source of heat in houses was the potbelly stove. Everything that burned was burned in it, including books and furniture.
The winter in besieged Leningrad was very harsh. Archive photo
6 months siege
Even after the blockade was lifted, German and Finnish troops besieged Leningrad for six months. The Vyborg and Svirsko-Petrozavodsk offensive operations of Soviet troops with the support of the Baltic Fleet made it possible to liberate Vyborg and Petrozavodsk, finally pushing the enemy back from Leningrad. As a result of the operations, Soviet troops advanced 110-250 km in a western and southwestern direction, and the Leningrad region was liberated from enemy occupation.
The siege continued for another six months after the blockade was broken, but German troops did not penetrate into the city center. Photo: www.russianlook.com
150 thousand shells
During the siege, Leningrad was constantly subjected to artillery shelling, which was especially numerous in September and October 1941. Aviation carried out several raids a day - at the beginning and at the end of the working day. In total, during the siege, 150 thousand shells were fired at Leningrad and more than 107 thousand incendiary and high-explosive bombs were dropped. The shells destroyed 3 thousand buildings and damaged more than 7 thousand. About a thousand enterprises were put out of action. To protect against artillery shelling, Leningraders erected defensive structures. Residents of the city built more than 4 thousand pillboxes and bunkers, equipped 22 thousand firing points in buildings, and erected 35 kilometers of barricades and anti-tank obstacles on the streets.
The trains transporting people were constantly attacked by German aircraft. Photo from 1942. Archive photo
4 cars of cats
Domestic animals were brought to Leningrad from Yaroslavl in January 1943 to fight hordes of rodents that threatened to destroy food supplies. Four carriages of smoky cats arrived in the newly liberated city - it was smoky cats that were considered the best rat catchers. A long line immediately formed for the cats that were brought. The city was saved: the rats disappeared. Already in modern St. Petersburg, as a sign of gratitude to animal deliverers, monuments to the cat Elisha and the cat Vasilisa appeared on the eaves of houses on Malaya Sadovaya Street.
On Malaya Sadovaya there are monuments to cats who saved the city from rats. Photo: AiF / Yana Khvatova
300 declassified documents
The Archival Committee of St. Petersburg is preparing an electronic project “Leningrad under siege.” It involves posting on the “Archives of St. Petersburg” portal a virtual exhibition of archival documents on the history of Leningrad during the years of the siege. On January 31, 2014, 300 high-quality scanned historical papers about the blockade will be published. The documents will be combined into ten sections, showing different aspects of life in besieged Leningrad. Each section will be accompanied by comments from experts.
Samples of food cards. 1942 TsGAIPD St. Petersburg. F. 4000. Op. 20. D. 53. Original Photo: TsGAIPD St. Petersburg
Vegetarians of the forty-second
"...1. Cut the peeled acorns into 4-5 parts and add water. Soak for two days, changing the water 3 times a day. Then pour the acorns with double the volume of clean water and put on fire. At the first sign After boiling, drain the water, pass the acorns through a meat grinder. Spread the resulting mass in a thin layer to dry in air, and then in the oven. Grind the dried mass in a coffee mill. When setting the mill to coarse grinding, you get cereal for porridge, and at a finer setting, flour for flatbreads.
2. Boil the burdock roots and cut into small pieces. Serve topped with some sauce.
3. Soak Icelandic lichen in a solution of baking soda for 24 hours, drain the solution, and pour clean water over the lichen for 24 hours. Drain the water, chop the lichen and boil for 1.5-2 hours until a gelatinous mass is obtained. Salt, add bay leaf, pepper, onion. Cool, add vinegar, pour into plates. The resulting jelly has a mushroom smell."
What is this? Vegetarian cooking tips? Partly yes. These and other similar dishes were eaten by people who had to become vegetarians due to difficult life circumstances. The recipes are taken from a unique book, the authors of which are employees of the Botanical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences named after Academician V.L. Komarova. It was written in besieged Leningrad.
Gollerbakh M.M., Koryakina V.F., Nikitin A.A., Pankova I.A., Rozhevits R.Yu., Smetannikova A.I., Troitskaya O.V., Fedchenko B.A., Yurashevsky N. .TO. The main wild food plants of the Leningrad region. L., 1942.
The main wild food plants of the Leningrad region
The main wild food plants of the Leningrad region
Leningrad newspaper, magazine and book publishing house, 1942
Scanning and processing: Olga and Nikita Andreev (St. Petersburg), Victor Evlyukhin (Moscow)
Prepared materials This email address is being protected from spambots. You must have JavaScript enabled to view it.(Moscow), leader of the "Books" section on the Skitalets server
PREFACE
Wild flora is a rich source of numerous beneficial plants. Among them, food plants occupy a special place. From early spring to late autumn, in meadows and forests, along the shores of lakes and fields, in parks, gardens and around human habitation - everywhere in the grass carpet you can find many useful, highly nutritious and vitamin-rich plants. The importance of food wild plants is especially great in early spring and early summer, when fresh vegetables are not yet ripe, and the content of vitamins in their reserves from last year is sharply reduced.
By spring, the reserves of vitamins in the human body are also depleted. In spring, the human body, due to a lack of vitamins, becomes tired. This deficiency of vitamins partly explains the well-known observation that many diseases, and especially tuberculosis, are greatly aggravated in the spring. Vitamins are of exceptional importance in metabolism. Proper metabolism in the human body is a necessary condition for health and performance.
Finally, vitamins are of great importance in the body’s fight against infectious diseases. With a sufficient amount of vitamins, the body can more easily cope with tuberculosis, typhoid, and other diseases.
Green parts of wild food plants are a complete source of various vitamins that are so necessary to maintain human strength and health. Therefore, with the appearance of the first greenery, it is necessary to use wild plants rich in vitamins.
Many plants of wild flora have long been used as food both in the USSR and abroad (for example, nettle, sorrel, lungwort, quinoa, etc.), being included in the usual assortment of vegetable plants along with cultivated vegetables. Many of them have won such an important place in the diet of the population that they have even been introduced into culture (for example, arrowhead - in Japan and China, lungwort - in England, burdock - in Japan, dandelion - in France, etc.).
But many useful food plants are unknown to the general population. Therefore, scientists at the Botanical Institute named after Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences took the trouble to compile a real brochure about the main wild food plants of the Leningrad region.
This brochure describes only the most common and proven food plants found in the Leningrad region. But due to the fact that the plants described are widespread throughout the central and northern zone of the European part of the USSR, the significance of this brochure is not limited to the Leningrad region.
The following researchers from the Botanical Institute took part in the preparation of this brochure: prof. B. A. Fedchenko, prof. R. Yu. Rozhevits, prof. O. V. Troitskaya, Candidates of Biological Sciences M. M. Gollerbakh, A. A. Nikitin A. I. Smetannikova, V. F. Koryakina, junior researcher I. A. Pankova. All data on the chemical composition of the plant given in the brochure were written by Candidate of Chemical Sciences N.K. Yurashevsky. Candidate of Biological Sciences I. A. Linchevsky took part in the organizational and technical work of the literary editorial office. The drawings were made by artists V.K. Markova, N.R. Pashkovskaya, M. Gabe.
At the end of the brochure there is a brief bibliographic index of the main literature on wild food plants, checked by Candidate of Biological Sciences I. A. Ol and intended for those readers who would like to become more familiar with the nutritional qualities of a particular plant.
Data on the beneficial properties and collection of edible mushrooms (cap mushrooms and tinder fungi) are not included in this brochure, but will be included in a special issue compiled by prof. L. A. Lebedeva and prof. A. S. Bondartsev.
When collecting wild food plants, you should especially beware of poisonous plants that are widespread in the Leningrad region, belonging to the umbrella family - poisonous plants (Cicuta Virosa L.) and spotted hemlock (Conium maculatum L.).
Many edible plants are not described here, but with further research they may reveal exceptional nutritional qualities. The thoughts of researchers - botanists, technologists, doctors, culinary specialists - should work towards further study of many other vitamin-rich and edible plants with a view to their widespread use in the diet of the population.
We are deeply confident that further research work will reveal the beneficial properties of many common and widespread plants and will bring them to the benefit of wide sections of the population of Leningrad and the Leningrad region.
Deputy Director of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V. L. Komarov
Academy of Sciences of the USSR,
Candidate of Biological Sciences
B. TIKHOMIROV.
I. IMPORTANCE OF WILD PLANTS IN THE DIET
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
The composition, quantity and quality of food largely determines human health - his performance, creativity and life expectancy. Proper nutrition is the basis for high productivity. As a result of poor nutrition, a number of diseases associated with metabolic disorders in the body develop.
The amount of vegetables and fruits consumed by a person is one of the indisputable indicators of a balanced diet. Plants contain all the nutrients necessary for humans: proteins, fats, carbohydrates, mineral salts, vitamins, etc.
Plant foods, compared to animal foods, contain less protein and fat, but usually more carbohydrates, mineral salts and vitamins. But among plants there are those in which the amount of protein substances is equal to that in products of animal origin, such as spinach; There are a lot of proteins in nettles, quinoa, as well as in plants belonging to the legume family (like soybeans, peas, beans, etc.). Plant proteins are digested somewhat worse than animal proteins, mainly due to the presence of fiber, but young shoots of plants, which have less of it, are digested much better and can be a good source of protein food.
Plants contain phosphorus, necessary for bone and nerve tissue, as well as iron, in a form easily digestible by humans. Mineral salts are represented mainly by basic salts, which are beneficial for the alkaline balance of the blood.
If a person’s food contains about 50 percent of greens and vegetables, the necessary, correct metabolism is established and the food fully fulfills its role as a restorer of the body’s strength.
Plant products are characterized by the presence of fiber, which is generally poorly absorbed, but in the diet it also has a positive meaning, on the one hand, regulating the activity of the intestines, on the other, representing ballast substances, a kind of “filler” of the stomach, giving a quick feeling of fullness.
Plants also contain organic acids that add variety to the diet.
But plant foods are especially important as a source of vitamins. Vitamins are substances that are biologically active in small quantities, the presence of which in food is absolutely necessary. As Funk points out, vitamins “act as economizers in the body, allowing better utilization of nutrients, especially proteins.” Therefore, “with an abundant supply of vitamins, it is possible to reduce food rations and especially proteins.” With a lack of vitamins, sometimes even with plenty of food, the so-called vitamin deficiency develops, one of the consequences of which can be diseases such as scurvy and others.
Plants contain all the essential vitamins, including vitamin C. This vitamin, which is of great importance in the metabolic process, does not accumulate in the human body and must be administered daily with food. One human dose of vitamin C or ascorbic acid required for normal metabolism is 25-50 milligrams per day. Therefore, it is necessary to daily eat plants containing this vitamin, and since it is most abundant in the green parts of plants, it is necessary to daily introduce fresh greens into the body.
As a rule, there is always a shortage of vegetables in food at the end of winter and early spring, until the first harvest from the gardens is received. This explains the frequent ailments and fatigue of people in the spring.
In the spring, it is necessary to introduce into food an additional source of nutrition, rich in precisely these substances valuable for the human body - fresh greenery from wild plants. In many countries, they have long been introduced into diets as a necessary and important spring dish. The significance of wild edible plants lies precisely in the fact that they can be consumed from very early spring in the form of fresh herbs.
Among wild plants there are those that have long been used as food by humans, such as nettle, sorrel, and quinoa. But besides those mentioned, there are many edible wild plants that are not used due to ignorance by the general population. Some of them are very rich in vitamins. Thus, rapeseed contains from 70 to 260 mg of vitamin C per 100 g of wet weight (Note. Or, according to the generally accepted abbreviation: 70-260 mg%), i.e. 3-10 person-doses (although the usual content of vitamin C in rapeseed about 60-70 mg%)); in the shepherd's purse - up to 170 mg%, i.e. about 3-8 human doses. Such plants, prepared in the form of salads, have not only nutritional, but also important medicinal value. For those suffering from vitamin deficiency, they are one of the best medicines; even 50 g of greens per day is enough to restore normal metabolism.
Eating fresh greens from wild edible plants will introduce variety into our diet and increase our ability to work.
II. GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE COLLECTION AND USE OF WILD FOOD PLANTS
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
1. Correct plant recognition is necessary. You can eat only those plants that are truly edible and healthy. Meanwhile, there are many plants whose consumption by humans entails harmful consequences for health. Some poisonous plants cause fatal poisoning. People usually suffer from poisonous plants as a result of ignorance about them. Children are especially often poisoned by them, as they grab everything they can get their hands on. Therefore, a detailed acquaintance with the appearance of a useful plant is necessary from a book, poster, herbarium specimen, or as directed by a specialist.
2. Of the green parts of plants, young shoots have the greatest nutritional value, as they are the richest in protein substances compared to other parts of plants. Therefore, it is these parts that should be eaten and should not be collected from hard woody organs, hard stems and roots, or wilted greens. If the leaves and stems of a plant are used, they should be collected before flowering, as later they lose their nutritional value and become coarse.
3. Plants should be collected in clear weather; It is more advisable to do this in the afternoon for the following reasons:
a) in the morning the leaves and stems are covered with dew, which makes cleaning the plants difficult,
b) leaves and green parts of plants produce starch in the light, which is why in the evening the leaves are much richer in starch than in the morning (at night, starch gradually passes from the leaves to other organs of the plant).
4. Plants must be thoroughly cleaned of any debris that may fall on them and from small insects that are constantly on them. Then they must be washed from soil, dust and any dirt.
5. You cannot collect food plants in landfills or places where sewage accumulates. Taken from here, they can be the cause of infectious diseases.
6. The collection of green parts of perennial plants should be done so that only the above-ground part of the plant is cut and removed, without damaging the underground part - the root or rhizome of the plant, from which a new shoot may appear.
7. If a plant is collected by the roots, and only the above-ground part is used for food, the roots must be cut off so that other plants are not contaminated with soil during transportation and storage.
In order for wild food plants to be beneficial, you need to know how to prepare them properly. This is especially important when making salads.
The first condition for the usefulness of salads is their freshness. Since greens quickly wither and rot, salads should be prepared on the day of harvest, with the exception of those that require pre-treatment, such as dandelion salads. You can allow short-term (no more than one or two days) storage of collected plants, but on condition that the lower part of the stems is immersed in water, and the upper parts of the plant must be sprinkled with water. For salad, you need to select fresh young leaves, discarding the old ones. Greens should be washed in two to three changes of cold boiled water. Since anti-scorbutic vitamin C is unstable and easily destroyed upon contact with air, all preparation processes - chopping, grinding, crumbling green mass - should be carried out quickly and, if possible, without access to air, preferably in the salad dressing itself, i.e. in a small amount of liquid , which can be used to pour greens on top. From crushed plant parts, vitamin C passes into water. Acids protect vitamin C from destruction, so salad dressing should be slightly acidified with vinegar or some other organic acid, such as citric acid.
Salads should be prepared not in metal containers, but in glass, earthenware, porcelain or wood. Chopping and crumbling greens also cannot be done with a metal knife.
All methods of processing foods, such as cooking, drying, salting, reduce the content of vitamin C, which is why it is especially important to eat raw, fresh greens. When cooking greens, it is necessary to immerse the plants in boiling water, and not allow gradual heating. Boil for no more than 10-15 minutes. Adding soda during cooking, which preserves the color of vegetables well, is harmful, since in an alkaline environment the destruction of vitamin C is especially intense.
Vitamins are better preserved in those plants that have significant acidity, for example, sorrel. Conventional air drying of plants greatly destroys vitamins.
Salads are seasoned to taste with salt, vinegar, sometimes vegetable oil or sugar, yogurt, kefir - milk or soy.
III. BASIC INSTRUCTIONS FOR MAKING FOOD FROM WILD PLANTS
The collection of wild plants for the purpose of using them for food, both raw and processed, can be done from early spring to late autumn. Plants at a young age, when they are still quite tender, are best used raw, since the vitamins they contain are destroyed completely or partially during various processing methods, especially those associated with heating (boiling, scalding, etc.), and their value of such a food product is greatly reduced.
Eating plants raw is possible as salads, purees, dressings for soups, etc.
For salads, young leaves or shoots with leaves are collected, depending on the type and age of the plant. The collected material is sorted to remove foreign impurities (last year's leaves, leaves of other plants, soil, etc.). When collecting plants, the need for further sorting should be taken into account. The sorted plants are thoroughly washed in cold boiled water until completely clean, squeezed or placed on a sieve to remove excess water and cut (plants with very tender leaves, such as shepherd's purse when young, can be used uncut). The chopped plants are placed in a salad bowl or jar (metal containers should be avoided, as they destroy vitamins), and the dressing is made depending on the availability of seasonings. The following products can be used as salad dressings - based on 100 g of greens:
1) salt - from 1/8 to 1 teaspoon;
2) vinegar - from 1 teaspoon to 3 tablespoons;
3) vegetable oil - from 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon,
4) yogurt or kefir (soy is possible) - from 1 to 3 tablespoons;
5) granulated sugar - from? up to 1 1/2 teaspoons;
6) mustard - from? a teaspoon or more;
7) ground bitter pepper - to taste.
The number of products in the seasoning and their variety may vary depending on the capabilities and taste of the consumer, as well as on the taste of the salad plant. Bitter plants should not be seasoned with pepper or mustard, as this will increase the bitterness, but it is very good to add a little sugar, which will reduce the bitterness. On the contrary, plants with a sweetish taste (for example, dead nettle) benefit in taste from the addition of hot seasonings. Salads can be made from each plant separately or by mixing them. In the latter case, you need to take into account the taste, smell and density or roughness of the plants. Good mixtures are obtained by combining fragrant plants with odorless ones.
Plants used for salad are not recommended to be stored for a long time in assembled form. It is best to store salad greens for no longer than two days. For such storage, the washed plants should be placed in a glass jar, closed and placed in a cool and dark place. Prepared salads should also not be stored for long periods of time, both to avoid sliming and spoilage of their taste.
To prepare the puree, plant parts washed in boiled water are passed through a meat grinder and seasoned to taste with the same seasonings as salads.
Soups can be seasoned with fresh herbs, chopped or ground in a meat grinder. Such soups can be made hot, the usual type, and cold, like botvinya. In the first case, hot soup seasoned with a minimum amount of cereal, flour or pasta (the meat broth does not need to be seasoned with cereal), before serving it is seasoned with herbs, the amount of which will depend on the desired thickness of the soup. After this, the soup, without subjecting it to further boiling in order to preserve vitamins, is eaten.
It is better to make cold soup in oil, but you can also use meat broth. The soup is prepared in the usual way; The cereal or flour filling is kept to a minimum, as in the first case. Then the soup is cooled, seasoned with ground herbs, mustard or pepper and vinegar to taste, as well as curdled milk or kefir (from soy milk). Greens that have one or another aroma can be used raw as a topping for a variety of food dishes.
Plants, as they develop, become coarser and unsuitable for raw consumption, so they should be processed - by boiling, pickling, fermenting and pickling. Coarsened fresh plants, for the preparation of certain dishes, are subjected, depending on the degree of their coarsening, to more or less long cooking. After cooking, the plants are cut into smaller pieces or passed through a meat grinder (puree) and used for soups, cabbage soup, porridges, cutlets, etc.
When making soups and cabbage soup, chopped greens are added to the same water in which they were boiled (except for those cases when a bitter plant is used as food - then the water after boiling is poured out and the greens are added to fresh water). Boiled greens are seasoned with salt, oil or some kind of fat, and if there is meat, then raw pieces of meat and boiled like a regular soup until fully cooked. If the plants were overcooked, it is better to cook the meat separately, combine both parts together and boil once.
Porridges are prepared in the same way as puree, but after grinding, put the plants in a saucepan, add some of the water in which the boiling was done (the amount of water will depend on the desired thickness of the porridge), bring to a boil and season with salt, oil or fat and a small amount flour or cereal ground into flour.
The cutlets are prepared from a mass prepared as for puree, to which only salt is added, and fried in a very hot frying pan so that a hard crust immediately forms, which makes it possible to avoid adding flour.
Stewed greens can also be made from wild food plants. To do this, use more fleshy plants (for example, kupyr, hogweed, hogweed), each individually or in a mixture, cut into small pieces and stewed in the usual way. Food from salted or pickled greens is prepared in the same way as from fresh ones. If pickling or ripening has made the greens too spicy to taste, then they must be thoroughly rinsed in water before use.
Due to its rather pungent taste, pickled greens can be eaten directly, without processing, or as a seasoning in dishes made from fresh or dried greens.
When consuming dried herbs, they are boiled in the same way as when preparing them from fresh ones. In some cases, when coarser fleshy parts of plants (for example, thick stems, roots) were dried, it is useful to soak the dried herbs in cold water for several hours before boiling, in which then further boiling is carried out.
IV. FLORA OF THE LENINGRAD REGION AS A SOURCE OF FOOD RAW MATERIALS
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
This brochure does not include berry plants, since their use is known to everyone. It must be emphasized, however, that the collection and procurement of berries in the Leningrad region, as well as in its neighboring regions, should be expanded this year in the widest possible way and many times exceed the quantities in which some berries were collected (raspberries, strawberries, rowan, currants, etc.) in previous years.
V. DESCRIPTION OF THE MAIN FOOD WILD PLANTS OF THE LENINGRAD REGION
(Plants are arranged in the order of the system adopted in "Flora of the USSR")
1. Broadleaf cattail
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Large perennial, up to 2 m high, with creeping rhizome and broadly linear leaves. The flowers are unisexual, collected in a long cylindrical spadix, in the upper whitish part of which there are staminate flowers, and in the lower, dark brown part there are pistillate flowers.
Cattail rhizomes are very rich in starch; their chemical composition is approximately as follows: 18% crude protein (Note: The measure of the amount of crude protein (aka crude or not pure protein) in a plant is the % of total nitrogen. Since there are larger or lesser in plants, the measure of the amount of crude protein (aka crude or not pure protein) in the plant is % of total nitrogen.) up to 6% pure protein, 52% carbohydrates, of which up to 46% starch, and 21.7% crude fiber.
It grows in shallow water, in swamps and marshy banks of rivers and ponds, usually in small, but sometimes in very large thickets.
Its starch-rich rhizomes and young stems should be collected as a food product; the former are used to prepare flour or used baked, and the latter are used in salads and marinades. Collecting rhizomes is quite hard work and requires some skill; It is best to use an iron shovel, a hook or a pick - a pick with several teeth.
2. Common arrowhead or arrowhead, sometimes called Water arrow or Goose leaf
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
The plant is 30-90 cm tall, with a thick rhizome and tubers on the roots (overwintering buds), arrow-shaped leaves and a spreading inflorescence with white flowers, the petals of which are violet-purple at the base.
Dry arrowhead tubers contain about 55% starch and over 7% soluble sugars.
It grows in shallow water, in swamps, along the banks of slow-flowing rivers, along streams and near lakes, usually forming numerous but clumpy thickets.
Very common throughout the Leningrad region, found even within the city of Leningrad itself, in ponds and along the river. Karpovka.
In the spring, as well as at the end of summer and autumn, rhizomes, as well as nodules formed on the roots, should be collected as a food product, since both contain a lot of starch.
The tubers and rhizomes of arrowhead are eaten baked or boiled, like potatoes, and have a taste reminiscent of peas; when fresh, they have the taste of raw nuts. Ground tubers provide good starch, which can be successfully added to dough.
When collecting rhizomes, it is better to use an iron shovel, since when they are pulled out with a hook or a pick, the root nodules usually break off and remain in the ground, which, of course, reduces the collection.
In Japan and China, this plant is cultivated as a vegetable, and varieties with much larger tubers have been bred.
3. Umbrella susak
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Perennial, 90-150 cm tall, easily recognizable by its thick short rhizome with crowded, linear leaves and beautiful pink flowers collected in an umbellate inflorescence; however, in deep water it loses its usual appearance, takes on the character of an aquatic plant, has long, ribbon-like leaves and does not develop flowers.
Fleshy rhizomes contain significant amounts of protein and starch.
It grows in shallow places in standing and slowly flowing waters, in swamps, creeks and river banks, less often in deep water (1-2 m). It is found more or less in abundance, but does not form very large thickets.
Common throughout the Leningrad region, also found within Leningrad itself (Karpovka river).
The rhizomes should be collected as a food product; they are dried and ground into flour, from which bread and flatbreads are baked. According to the conclusion of Irkutsk chemists in 1871, “the flour from the roots of susak contains everything that is needed for human nutrition.” The rhizomes are also eaten baked in ash or fried. From 1 kg of roots, 0.25 kg of flour is obtained. Previously, among the Yakuts, flour from susak roots was an essential food product.
Collecting rhizomes is quite hard work and requires some skill; It is best to use an iron shovel, a small hook or a pick.
Before flowering, which occurs in late June - early July, it is quite difficult to find susak, since it is hardly noticeable; persons unfamiliar with the area should follow the instructions of local residents.
4. Common reed
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
A large plant 1-2.5 m high, with long creeping basal shoots spreading along the surface of the ground or at a slight depth (rhizomes), with hollow stems, with wide, large leaves and an apical, usually dark-colored panicle.
Chemical composition
| Development phase | Crude protein | Protein | Crude fat | Soluble carbohydrates |
| Before flowering | 9,2 | 8,2 | 1,9 | 2,5 |
| During flowering | 6,0 | 4,8 | 2,4 | 8,7 |
| During fruiting | 6,3 | 5,2 | 2,9 | 7,6 |
Thick cane rhizomes contain 3-5% sugar and over 9% starch.
It grows along the banks of standing and flowing waters, in ponds, lakes (especially overgrown ones), in swamps and generally on wet soils, such as floodplain meadows, coastal sands and swampy forests, usually forming more or less large thickets.
Young shoots and germinating buds of shoots that appear in May - early June, as well as reed rhizomes, should be collected as a food product. During flowering and fruiting, the rhizomes no longer contain sugar, and therefore collecting them at this time is not recommended.
Young shoots and buds taste sweet and can be used raw as a delicacy or eaten as a vegetable for salads and vinaigrettes; when boiled or stewed, they can be used in soups, purees, and also added to flatbreads and dough for baking. Dried thick rhizomes can be used to make bread and flatbreads, which are quite nutritious (it's good to add a little real flour). You can make a coffee surrogate from roasted rhizomes.
You can collect young buds and shoots, as well as rhizomes, either on the dry bank of a reservoir or by uprooting them from the soil from the bottom of the reservoir, which is not always easy, because the rhizomes sit firmly in the soil. It is best to use an iron rake, a hook or a cat - a small three-bladed anchor.
Since the collection of material should be carried out in early spring, at the end of May - beginning of June, when the reed is just beginning to grow or is under water, then to find it in an unfamiliar place one should be guided by the presence of old, last year's dried stems, which usually stand before the middle summer
Food material from cane can be harvested in significant quantities (up to tens of tons).
5. Floating manna
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Perennial, up to 120 cm high, with a creeping rhizome and a sparse, one-sided panicle bearing large, 1.5-2 cm long, almost cylindrical, 7-11-flowered, light green spikelets. The grains are round, about 1 mm long.
Chemical composition of grains: up to 75% sugary substances (mainly starch), 9.7% proteins, 0.43% fat.
Grows in swamps, ditches, damp meadows, river banks and ponds in shallow water; It usually does not form large thickets.
As a food product, mature seeds should be collected in the second half of summer, delivering good cereal, the so-called Polish or Prussian semolina, which has a pleasant taste and is very nutritious.
Seeds are collected by knocking them off the panicle with a stick, and specimens affected by smut (Ustilago longissima) must be avoided, as they are considered poisonous.
6. Rye fire
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Mono- or dioecious plant, up to 1 m high. The panicle is multi-spikelet, drooping when fruiting. The spikelets are lanceolate, with ripe fruits with imbricated lower floral scales that do not cover each other. A winter plant that infests rye.
Chemical analysis of grains is as follows: crude protein 8.8-9%, crude fat 1.4-2.8%. nitrogen-free extractives 60.9-65.8% and 4.9-9.5% fiber.
It grows in fields among crops, mainly as a malicious weed of winter rye.
Very common throughout the Leningrad region.
The seeds are used for food, which are best collected in the second half of summer when winnowing grains. The seeds are consumed in the form of porridge or jelly is prepared from them, similar to oatmeal.
7. Volosnets or Kolosnyak sandy or Sandy oats
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Perennial, about 1 m tall, with long underground shoots-rhizomes, easily recognizable by the bluish, very hard cutting leaves and the apical spike-shaped inflorescence, reminiscent of an ear of wheat or rye.
Chemical composition of the aboveground part of the plant
| Development phase | Crude protein | Protein | Crude fat | |
| During heading | 10,6 | 7,6 | 4,1 | 41,5 |
| During flowering | 10,4 | 7,3 | 4,1 | 43,2 |
| During fruiting | 8,7 | – | – | – |
| Late autumn | 5,7 | – | – | – |
It grows only on sand, mainly along the seashore, and on dunes, less often in coastal pine forests, along sandy river banks and sandy embankments of railways near the seashore, where it sometimes forms large thickets, stretching in stripes or in separate groups.
In the spring, as a food product, you should collect seeds preserved in last year's ears (sometimes there are quite a lot of them), young shoots at a very early age and rhizomes. Seeds should be collected in autumn. The seeds are quite edible; they can be used to make flour for flat cakes and even bread, since they contain starch; When making the dough, it’s good to add a little real flour for binding. Young shoots and buds can be used as a vegetable for salads and vinaigrettes, and boiled or stewed, used in soups, purees, and also added to flatbreads and dough for baking. You can make a coffee surrogate from roasted rhizomes. Dried and ground rhizomes of the volosnets are also suitable as a flour substitute.
It is very easy to collect young shoots and buds, although they are usually found in small quantities, but thicker rhizomes must be chosen. For individual use, the hair can be widely used.
8. Warty birch
(Compiled by A. A. Nikitin)
A widespread and well-known tree, found in the Leningrad region both in the wild and in cultivation - parks, street and roadside plantings.
Young, newly blossoming birch leaves contain from 150 to 250 mg% ascorbic acid.
The leaves can be eaten, as they contain a number of nutrients, as well as vitamin C. However, they become coarse very quickly and therefore can be used fresh for making salads only at a very early age, immediately after bud break. You can prepare a vitamin infusion from birch leaves, similar to coniferous infusion.
In early spring, at the beginning of sap flow, birch sap can be extracted from birch trunks by tapping, which is a very tasty and nutritious drink. It can be consumed both fresh and processed - in the form of various kvass and syrup. Syrup from lemon-yellow birch sap, brought to the thickness of honey, has a pleasant sour taste; contains about 60% sugars (mainly glucose). With 250 birch trees per 1 hectare (with an average diameter of 40 cm), it is possible to obtain up to 40 tons of birch sap.
To obtain sap, you should select a young, large birch tree in the spring (before the leaves begin to bloom), make a 1.5-2 cm cut to find out whether sap will flow out of it, and if sap flows out, make a hole across it, stick it tightly into it splint and place a vessel to the splint to collect the juice; from a good tree you can get 1-4 buckets of juice. The collected juice should be immediately poured into bottles, 2 teaspoons of granulated sugar should be placed in each bottle, corked and placed in the cellar in the sand, and when the heat begins, on ice. Before drinking, you can put one teaspoon of granulated sugar on the glass, then the drink will foam a lot.
In the Leningrad region, there is a downy birch (Betula pubescens Ehrh.), close to this species, whose leaves are ovate, less often rhombic ovate, rounded at the base; young leaves are sticky, quite heavily pubescent; adult leaves are pubescent only at the bottom and at the corners of the veins. This species is distributed in the northern part of the region, reaching the northern border of forests. It is used in the same way as warty birch.
9. English oak
(Compiled by A. A. Nikitin and I. A. Pankova)
A well-known large tree up to 40-50 m tall. The bark on old trees is thick, cracking, and dark; on young trees it is smooth, silver-gray. The leaves are on short petioles, oblong-obovate, pinnately lobed at the edges. The flowers are inconspicuous, hardly noticeable. Staminate flowers in pendulous catkins; pistillates that produce acorns sit one or several on long stalks.
The fruit is an acorn covered with a plus. The oak tree blooms in the spring and bears fruit in the fall.
Oak is quite widespread in the European part of the USSR (in the southwest, Ukraine and beyond the Volga), its northern border lies within the Leningrad region.
Shelled acorns have the following chemical composition: crude protein 6.7-7.9°/o. starch 54.2-57%, soluble sugars 9.9-10.3%, crude fat 3.9-5%, fiber 3.5-9.9%.
The given figures indicate that acorns deserve attention as a food product. The collection of acorns, both for coffee and for other food products, should be carried out mainly in the fall after the first frost, that is, during the period when the acorns are already ripe and begin to fall from the trees. Green acorns should not be consumed, as they contain substances that are poisonous to humans. It is possible to collect acorns in the spring, before they begin to germinate, immediately after the snow melts, but during this period the harvest is less productive, since a significant part of the acorns is collected or eaten by animals and birds during the autumn-winter period; In addition, by spring, a large percentage of acorns deteriorate from prolonged exposure to dampness. However, it should be noted that winter freezing makes acorns less astringent.
Collected acorns must be well dried to avoid rotting. Drying is done by scattering the acorns in a thin layer in a fairly dry and warm room, and it is necessary to stir them repeatedly so that drying occurs evenly. If the acorns are poorly dried, they will become warm during storage and easily spoil.
Further processing of acorns depends on what kind of food product will be made from them. Acorns of various types of oak trees have long been used to produce coffee surrogates due to their pleasant taste. In addition, you consider acorn coffee to be nutritious and useful for stomach diseases and is even recommended for children and heart patients since it does not contain caffeine. To produce coffee, acorns are peeled and peeled. They should not have any deposits (mold), foreign impurities or odors. The acorns are then roasted. Roasted acorns are ground in a mill. The taste of acorn coffee has a characteristic but pleasant bitterness.
The use of acorns for the manufacture of other food products has so far been very limited, although in the literature there are indications of the possibility of using them for making porridge and flour, and the latter is recommended for baking bread to be mixed with ordinary flour in quantity? the whole weight of flour or with double the amount of potatoes. However, as practice has shown, acorn flour can be used without mixing it with grain flour or potatoes.
To prepare cereals and flour from acorns, it is necessary to remove their astringent, unpleasant taste, which depends on the content of tannins in them. To do this, peeled acorns are cut into 4-5 parts and filled with water. Soaking in water is carried out for two days with a triple daily change of water. Then the acorns are transferred to a saucepan, filled with double the volume of clean water and heated. At the first signs of boiling, the water is drained, the acorns are thoroughly washed with water and placed in a sieve or colander to drain the water. To speed up the process of removing binders, a preliminary two-day soaking in cold water can be replaced by soaking for one day, followed by double or triple heating to a boil, of course, with a corresponding change of water.
The soaked acorns are passed through a meat grinder. The resulting raw mass is spread in a thin layer onto paper or plywood to dry. To ensure uniform drying, the mixture must be stirred from time to time. The dried mass is transferred to sheets (baking sheets) and subjected to additional drying in the oven, on the stove or on a temporary stove (frying should be avoided and in no case allowed to burn). The dried mass (when tested on the tooth should crunch like a cracker) is cooled and ground in a coffee mill. When the mill is set to coarse grinding (grains no smaller than the size of a pinhead), acorn grits are obtained for cooking porridge, and with a finer setting, acorn flour is obtained; The most beneficial is the finest grinding of acorns - to the state of powder.
When making porridge, acorn grits are poured with water (so that the grits are covered by one or two fingers of water) and boiled with the lid closed. After the cereal has boiled sufficiently to taste, add a small amount of salts and season with oil.
Acorn flour can be used both for making flatbreads that replace bread and pancakes, and for making confectionery products such as cakes. To make flatbreads, flour is mixed with water, blindly acidified with citric acid or vinegar, with bread kvass, or with a mixture of water and bread kvass.
The dough should be very thick, like thick sour cream or even somewhat thicker, not runny, but fall from the spoon in pieces. Acorn dough does not have the viscosity and stickiness characteristic of dough made from regular flour, and therefore cannot be rolled out as usual. Add a small amount of soda to the prepared acorn dough to make it more loose, a little salt and, if you want to make the cakes sweet, then some sweetness (sugar, saccharin, honey), then mix thoroughly, place on a lightly oiled frying pan and spread on it to give the dough a flat cake shape. If there is no oven and the cake needs to be baked with one-sided heating, for example, on a temporary stove, then the raw cake placed on a frying pan is covered with a second frying pan, approximately equal in size to the first and also pre-greased with oil, and placed in the oven. When frying, the smell of fried dough begins to spread (with good heating after 15 minutes); after which, without opening the frying pan, they turn the cake over to the other side, i.e., the upper frying pan is thus placed on the stove, and the lower one turns into a lid. Then the latter is immediately removed, and the cake is fried in the open form.
To make pancakes, the dough is kneaded in the same way as for flat cakes, but its consistency should be much thinner (the thickness usual for making pancakes). It is very good, if possible, to add a little starch or soy or pea flour to the dough. Should I add flour according to the calculation? flour to the total mass of dough.
Confectionery products from acorns can be made if some additional products are available, at least in small quantities, namely:
1) sweets: sugar, saccharin, honey for sweetening flat cakes and spreading;
2) material for coating: jam, marmalade, dry or fresh fruit, regular or soy cottage cheese, etc.
In the absence of eggs, egg powder or melange, fairly heavily sweetened acorn flour cakes are made in the manner described above. When the cakes have cooled, they are greased (depending on the availability of the above-mentioned products) with jam, marmalade or cottage cheese, with a layer of at least half the thickness of the cake, covered on top with a second cake, which is also greased with some kind of grease, but with a thinner layer; the number of cakes with coating can be increased if desired. If you have nuts, sunflower seeds, etc., then sprinkle them on top of the coating. It is better to try nuts and seeds toasted and finely chopped, which gives a pleasant aroma. In the presence of eggs, egg powder or melange, the taste of the cake can be significantly improved, since eggs give the dough richness, looseness and tenderness; There is no doubt that a cake made from acorns according to the recipe for making a nut cake will not be inferior in taste to the latter.
All of these products can be made from a mixture of acorn flour and coffee grounds. The latter is dried on a stove, on a baking sheet and also ground several times in a coffee mill; the components in a mixture of acorn flour and coffee ground flour can be taken in any proportions, depending on the amount of these products.
Soaked and fried acorns also have good taste. To do this, peeled acorns are not cut into pieces, but only divided lengthwise into two natural halves and soaked in water for at least three days with water changes as frequent as possible. Then the wet acorns are scattered directly on the surface of a temporary stove or in a frying pan and evenly fried, turning them with a knife (avoid burning). Frying should be done to such an extent that a crispy crust forms on top. These roasted acorns have a mealy, slightly sweet taste.
10. Stinging nettle
(Compiled by I. A. Pankova)
A perennial herbaceous plant with a long creeping rhizome that overwinters in the ground, from the buds of which stems grow up to 150 cm high, erect, tetrahedral, usually not branched, covered, like the whole plant, with hard, burning hairs. The leaves on the petioles are opposite (they sit opposite each other on the stem), oblong-ovate with a pointed, strongly elongated apex, and coarsely serrated along the edge. The flowers are very small, inconspicuous, collected in drooping earrings emerging from the axils of the upper leaves. Blooms from June to autumn.
According to I.V. Larin, the chemical composition of the grass is as follows (all figures are for absolutely dry weight)
| Development phase | Ash | Crude protein | Protein | Fat | Cellulose | Nitrogen-free extractives |
| Bloom | 16,7 | 10,8 | 18,7 | 6,0 | 19,2 | 30,4 |
| The flowers have faded | 19,8 | 22,7 | – | 3,5 | 10,3 | 32,5 |
According to N. Volzhsky (collection time 5/VII), - crude protein 22.2%, pure protein 16.7%, fat 2.15%, fiber 35.6%, nitrogen-free extractives 22.1%, ash 17, 8%.
According to literary data, the leaves of stinging nettle contain up to 207 mg% of ascorbic acid, according to research from the chemical laboratory of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V. L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences, - 12/V 49 mg%, and according to the laboratory of the Sanitary Inspectorate of the City Health Department, - 17/ V 72 mg%.
It is found in wastelands, near housing and roads, in vegetable gardens and orchards, along river banks. Often forms entire thickets.
In the Leningrad region it is widespread.
The above-ground part of the plant is eaten. In the spring, when the nettle is still quite tender, young shoots with leaves are used fresh for making salads. Later, the plant becomes coarser and becomes unsuitable for salads, but can be used boiled to make cabbage soup and puree. Even in late autumn, the younger parts of the plant (tops of shoots with leaves) are edible.
Harvesting for future use can be done by drying, fermenting or making purees.
It is possible to prepare everywhere. In the Leningrad region, another type of nettle with stinging hairs is found, namely, stinging nettle (Urti c a u r e n s L.), very similar to stinging nettle. This type of nettle differs from stinging nettle in the following ways: the plant is annual, without rhizomes, monoecious, with a lower stem (up to 70 cm high), usually branched from the base; leaves are ovate or rounded, with a short pointed tip. Since both of these species are edible, they can be collected together to make food. It grows in the same conditions as stinging nettle.
Stinging nettle - Utrica dioica L. 
Stinging nettle - Utrica urens L.
11. Common sorrel
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A perennial plant, by mid-summer it develops stems up to 75 cm high, ending in a panicle of pink-greenish flowers with a simple perianth (i.e., not divided into a calyx and corolla). Common sorrel differs from a closely related species, small sorrel or sorrel, by its perennial root and larger, arrow-shaped leaf blades.
The leaves and stems of common sorrel contain free oxalic acid and its potassium salt. The protein content in the plant is about 7%, nitrogen-free extractive substances are over 35%, and crude fat is about 1%. Sorrel concentrate contains up to 300 mg% ascorbic acid.
Common sorrel grows in meadows, where it often forms continuous thickets, mainly in damp places, along road slopes, along forest edges, along railway embankments, etc. In the Leningrad region it is found everywhere, and therefore it can be collected everywhere.
Mostly the leaves and young stems of sorrel, which are very tasty in their raw form, are used as food raw materials; young stems are called stolubuntsy and are readily eaten. The leaves and young stems make excellent soup, green cabbage soup, puree, etc. Sorrel is well prepared for future use and, due to the ease of its collection, can serve as an industrial item for the winter.
12. Water sorrel
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A perennial plant, easily distinguished from common sorrel by its large size, leaf shape and other characteristics. The stems are strong, powerful, reaching 2 m high; the leaves, especially the lower ones, sit on long petioles and have a large plate, up to 20 cm long, triangular, but not sagittal.
In terms of its chemical composition, this plant is close to the previous species (common sorrel).
Water sorrel grows along the banks of streams and rivers, in swamps, and sometimes in damp meadows. In the Leningrad region, it is much less widespread than common sorrel; There are certain indications of the occurrence of this species in the valleys of many large rivers, as well as along the coast of the Gulf of Finland. You can also indicate damp places on Vasilievsky and Aptekarsky islands in Leningrad itself as locations for this species.
Harvesting should be done in early summer, before the leaves become too coarse and tough.
The same parts as common sorrel are used as food raw materials, but here the entire plant is larger and coarser, so without pre-processing it is of little use for food. It is quite suitable as a puree or material for soup and has the advantage that, due to its large size, it is easier to collect and prepare.
13. White quinoa or mari
(Compiled by A. I. Smetaniikova)
Spring, annual plant, 15-100 cm high, with small, inconspicuous green flowers in balls, collected in a panicle. The leaves are ovate-rhombic or oblong, unevenly toothed, less often entire, petiolate, covered, like young shoots, with a whitish-powdery coating. In the absence of plaque, the leaves are pale green. Fruits with a blunt edge, almost smooth. The seeds are black and shiny. Quinoa seedlings are easily distinguished by a thick powdery coating and by the reddish tint of the stem and petioles of the first pair of leaves.
Quinoa seeds germinate unevenly, at different times, from spring to mid-summer; Quinoa blooms late (mid-summer) and unevenly. Therefore, it is always possible to find both young and old plants at the same time. Quinoa contains up to 120 mg% ascorbic acid.
Quinoa seeds contain almost as much nitrogenous substances as wheat seeds, and are very similar in composition to oats (with the exception of nitrogenous substances).
Chemical composition of the plant
| Plant parts | Crude protein | Protein | Crude fat | Nitrogen-free extractives | Cellulose |
| Leaves and stems | 2,6 | 1,6 | 0,2 | 3,4 | 1,7 |
| Seeds | 12-19 | 10-17 | 3,8-7,3 | 36,5-49,5 | 15-20,3 |
Quinoa is the most common weed in crops, especially in vegetable gardens; it is found in large numbers in garbage areas, roadsides and ditches, i.e., mainly on soils altered by human activity. In the Leningrad region it is widespread everywhere. In Leningrad itself, it is found everywhere in areas where there were or are vegetable gardens, vacant lots, wherever the soil is loose and sufficiently moist. It is recommended to collect quinoa in vegetable gardens.
Leaves, young shoots, young inflorescences, and also seeds are eaten. People began to eat quinoa a very long time ago, especially the seeds, as an admixture to bread.
If there is a lack of vitamins and various vegetables, the leaves and young stems of quinoa are of particular interest, which are eaten in fresh, pickled, pickled and dried forms.
It is necessary to collect the tops of young plants and rough leaves from the upper part of the stem.
Flatbreads, soups, and cabbage soup are prepared from quinoa, and cabbage soup can be cooked from quinoa alone, adding vinegar to taste or without it, or mixing with young nettles, sorrel or spinach.
Here are some simple recipes for making soups and purees, as well as preparing quinoa for future use.
Cabbage soup 1) rinse 400 g of quinoa from dust and dirt with cold water, put in boiling water, boil until soft, drain in a colander, squeeze, rub through a sieve, add 1 tablespoon of flour (any flour can be made from cereal), 1/2 tablespoon of butter and, adding salt to taste, fry the whole mass, then dilute with hot water or broth.
2) Sort, wash, boil with boiling water, drain, squeeze and finely chop or chop, add 1 spoon of butter and 1/2 spoon of flour and dilute with hot water or broth.
Puree. Sort, wash, squeeze, put in boiling water. As soon as the leaves become soft, drain the water, pour over cold water, squeeze, finely chop, rub through a sieve. Add 1 1/2 tablespoons of oil and 1/2 tablespoon of flour (any kind), add 1 cup of soy milk and boil several times. If you have other greens or dry vegetables, then it’s good to add them for taste, after frying them in a frying pan or stewing them in a saucepan.
Preparing quinoa for future use
1) Dried quinoa. In spring or autumn, collect young plants and dry them outdoors in the wind or sun, in bunches or spread out. Store in jars or boxes lined with paper. Before use, boil with boiling water.
2) Salted quinoa. Clean off dirty and old leaves, wash, dry in the fresh air or on the stove, scatter on paper, put in a barrel or jars, sprinkle with salt (you need 1? cups of salt per bucket), cover with a wooden circle (jar-saucer, close to the mass ). After the mass has settled, add fresh leaves. Before use, rinse, chop and add to the soup.
3) Pickled quinoa. Peel, wash, squeeze out water, chop finely, put in a saucepan, add salt, boil until thick. Allow to cool, then place in a jar or wooden barrel. Fill with a fairly strong solution of salt and vinegar.
Here are the most common recipes. Any housewife can find a number of new recipes, depending on the availability of other products.
14. Woodlice, Chickweed
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Plant 5-30 cm tall. with a weak, recumbent or ascending, branched stem and paired, ovate leaves. The flowers are small, terminal and axillary, white.
The weed, which grows in abundance near houses, in gardens and along forest roads, avoids dry and brightly lit places.
It is found throughout the Leningrad region as one of the most common plants. It tastes like spinach.
From spring to late autumn, the entire plant should be collected as a food product, which is used fresh for salads, and boiled for cabbage soup and puree.
Harvesting is extremely easy, as the plant takes root very weakly. It is recommended to collect when growing vegetable gardens.
It can be used not only for individual consumption, but also for collection in mass quantities for puree preparations.
15. Water lily or white water lily or white nymphea
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
The plant is easily recognized by its large, about 20 cm, round-oval leaves floating on the surface of the water, and its beautiful white, large, honey-smelling flowers.
Chemical composition
| Sample time | Plant parts | Starch | Crude protein | Cellulose | Soluble substances |
| 14/VIII | Rhizomes | 46,0 | 6,5 | 10,0 | 23 |
| 18/IX | Rhizomes | 49,2 | 8,7 | 6,0 | 20 |
| – | Seeds | 47,0 | – | – | – |
In the spring, young rhizomes are collected as a food product, which can be eaten fried or boiled; they can also be processed into edible flour for flatbreads or for mixing into dough. Before grinding, the rhizomes are dried, and the flour is washed, draining the water.
It is quite difficult to pull out rhizomes from the bottom of a reservoir; this is done with the help of a hook, an iron rake or a grapple - a small three-bladed anchor. Locations of larger thickets should be obtained from local residents.
It is quite suitable not only for individual use, but also for mass harvesting, and when collecting, you don’t have to separate the rhizomes of the Lump and Yellow Lump growing together, since their properties are almost the same.
16. Yellow egg capsule
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Similar to the previous species, it is a plant with large round-oval leaves floating on the surface of the water, but with coarser, yellow flowers and a capsule-shaped rather than spherical fruit with a convex stigma.
Chemical analysis of the yellow egg capsule shows that the rhizomes contain 18.7% starch and 7.1% soluble sugars, and the seeds contain 44% starch.
Otherwise it is quite similar to the water lily, with which it usually grows together.
17. Field jar
(Compiled by A. A. Nikitin)
An annual plant, sometimes developing as a biennial, up to 50 cm tall. The leaves are oblong, mostly serrated along the edges, the lower ones are petiolate in a rosette, the upper ones are sessile. The flowers are small, white, collected in an oblong raceme. The fruit is a round, flattened pod with a notch at the top and a border along the edge. Blooms from April to autumn.
Young spring leaves contain about 100 mg% ascorbic acid (according to the chemical laboratory of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences), about 20: crude protein, up to 5% crude fat, over 40% nitrogen-free extractives and about 25% fiber.
It grows everywhere in arable lands, fallow fields, vegetable gardens, weedy places and along roads.
It is found everywhere in the Leningrad region.
The leaves are eaten in the form of salad. They have a pleasant, soft, spicy taste (somewhat reminiscent of turnips in taste) and have a rather strong garlicky smell. Yarutka can be used in salads on its own or as an admixture with other plants. Due to its unique taste and smell, it requires a smaller set of seasonings when making salads and can even be used with just salt.
18. Crescents arcuate and common
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
Biennial, often perennial plants, 30-70 cm high, with alternate lyre-shaped, pinnately dissected leaves (the upper leaf lobe is larger than the lateral, small ones, located one opposite the other). The upper stem leaves are sometimes entire. The flowers are in dense clusters, golden-yellow, not large, with a strong honey scent. The fruits are narrow, long pods spaced from the stem. The seeds are small, almost black, and contain up to 33% fatty oil.
According to studies conducted at the Botanical Institute. Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences analyzes that the green parts of plants contain from 70 to 260 mg% of ascorbic acid.
Very cold-resistant, the leaves overwinter well under the snow and are fresh in early spring and late autumn. Young shoots develop already in April (in early spring).
They grow as weeds on loamy soils, in crops, in fallow fields, on meadows and slopes, in the Leningrad region - very common, sometimes so abundant that the fields appear yellow from their flowers, bloom from the beginning of May (in early spring) until the end of June (if late).
The plants have a bitter taste, reminiscent of radish.
In folk medicine it was used as an antiscorbutic remedy.
Young leaves and shoots of cremes are eaten as salad (the stems are tender before flowering). In Western Europe, they are widely used as a salad, as they can be collected in very early spring and late autumn, as fresh greens.
The use of plants as salad plants should be recommended due to their high vitamin C content. It is from this point of view that they can be important for their therapeutic and nutritional use in early spring in cases of vitamin deficiencies. As a salad, they are of particular importance in April - May; All the green parts of the plant are collected, but the buds - unblown inflorescences - are not taken. When making a salad, you should add a certain amount of sugar to the weak vinegar dressing, which increases the taste.
Packing - when collecting in large quantities - in shingled baskets. Storage - no more than two days, with quick transportation, like fresh herbs.
19. Meadow heartwood
(Compiled by I. A. Pankova)
Perennial herbaceous plant, with an erect hollow stem up to 50 cm high. and wintering rhizome. The leaves are pinnately divided, appearing to consist of individual small leaflets (8-12) located on a common petiole. The basal leaves, collected in a rosette, have rounded leaves, while the stem leaves are oblong and very sparse. The flowers are quite large; pale purple. Blooms from May to July.
Grows in wet meadows, along the edges of swamps and ditches, in damp bushes and forests. In the Leningrad region it is found everywhere.
The plant is quite tender; It has a sharp, slightly bitter, but pleasant taste. Fresh leaves are suitable for making salads and vinaigrettes. When boiled, they can be used in soups, purees, porridges, etc. For salads, it is better to take spring, younger leaves.
Salads are prepared in the usual way (see other salads); Preparation for future use is possible in dried form or in the form of puree.
In the Leningrad region, another type of core is often found, namely, bitter core (Cardamine amara L.). This species differs from the previous one in the absence of a cavity in the stem and its angular-furrowed surface, while the first has a rounded stem. The bitter heart is also edible, but has a more bitter taste.
20. Common shepherd's purse
(Compiled by I. A. Pankova)
An annual or biennial plant, up to 40 cm high, with a simple or branched stem, at the base of which the leaves are clustered in the form of a rosette. Stem leaves are small, sparse, toothed or entire, sessile; basal - on petioles, larger, with more or less deep grooves and teeth. The leaves may be pinnately dissected. The flowers are small, white, collected at the top with a brush. The fruits are small triangular pods that resemble a shoulder bag, which is where the name of the plant comes from. Blooms from late April to late autumn.
The seeds contain from 17 to 35% fatty oil. According to the chemical laboratory of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences, in the spring the leaves of the plant contain about 120 mg% of ascorbic acid.
Shepherd's purse is found everywhere in the fields, in weedy places, in vegetable gardens, orchards and along roads. It is widespread throughout the Leningrad region as a weed.
The plant is very tender and tasty. It can be successfully used fresh for making salads, and boiled for making cabbage soup and puree. The seeds are suitable as a mustard substitute. It is prepared for future use by drying and making puree.
21. Rosehip or Rose cinnamon
(Compiled by V.F. Koryakina)
Shrub, from 0.5 to 3 m tall, with thin twigs and prominent branches covered with brown-red bark. the spines are small, curved, sitting in pairs at the bases of leaf petioles. The leaves below are grayish-green, fluffy, unpaired-pinnate, consisting of 5-7 oblong-oval leaflets, serrated-toothed along the edges. Flowers are often single, less often in groups of 2-3-5, on short, smooth stalks; the petals are pinkish, the sepals are erect after flowering, remaining until the fruit ripens. The fruits (false berries) are spherical, or bottle-shaped, or spindle-shaped, smooth, fleshy, orange or red in color. The overgrown fleshy receptacle (the fleshy membrane of the fruit) is filled with numerous hard-hairy achenes. Rosehip is the most valuable and accessible raw material for obtaining vitamin C, which is contained in significant quantities in its fruits.
The common rose hip is widespread both throughout the northern zone of the USSR and in the Leningrad region. Grows in shaded areas among other types of tree and shrub vegetation, namely: bird cherry, buckthorn, rowan, willow, alder, birch, viburnum, etc., mainly in river floodplains; In some places it forms large, rather dense thickets, but is also found in isolated specimens. It also grows in cleared areas among forests, along their edges, along ravines, and between fields. Rosehip, growing on flooded soils of river floodplains, is characterized by a high content of vitamin C in its fruits.
Harvesting rose hips can begin from the moment they ripen, approximately from August, and continue until severe frosts. The effect of the first severe frost on the vitamin C content of fruits is very insignificant.
Everyone can provide themselves with the necessary amount of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) by collecting rose hips. It is also necessary to harvest rose hips for the vitamin industry. Rose hips are usually collected by hand, but to speed up the collection, you can use hand-held metal fork scoops. With manual picking, daily productivity can reach 10 kg of raw fruits per person, but with the use of scoops, harvesting productivity increases significantly.
When collected from the bush, rose hips are easily separated from the stalk. The fruits retain tendrils (remnants of the calyx at the top of the fruit), which are separated manually or mechanically when preparing the raw materials for drying. Drying rose hips can be done in conventional vegetable dryers. This drying method produces a product with a good content of vitamin C. You can also dry it in Russian ovens, but make sure that the fruits do not fry, which leads to a decrease in the vitamin C content. Drying in attics is also practiced, although this requires a long time. To speed up drying, it is recommended to cut the rose hips in half; with shorter drying, better preservation of vitamin C is observed. By rubbing rose hips, a valuable vitamin concentrate is produced - jam. The production of jam can be carried out at any grinding station and also at home. Frozen raw materials can be used for jelly, compotes, etc. Rosehip jam can be prepared from both raw and cooked material. In the first case, mature rose hips are manually cleared of seeds. Then take one part of the rose hip pulp, add two parts of powdered sugar and 1% of the weight of the raw jam - citric acid. The resulting mixture is ground into a homogeneous mass. When making jam from boiled material, take 1 kg of rose hips and boil them in one liter of water for 10 minutes (from the moment of boiling), then rub them through a sieve. Add sugar to the resulting puree, to taste, and a little citric acid; Then this mixture is boiled over low heat for an hour. If jam is made from frozen fruits at home, it is necessary to store the finished product in the cold to preserve vitamin C.
You can make a coffee surrogate from rose hips by frying them in a frying pan (over low heat, stirring). This coffee is aromatic because it contains some vanilla essential oil. Below are a few more recipes for using rose hips at home.
1) 10 g of dry rose hips are washed with cold water and boiled under a lid for 8 minutes in an aluminum or enamel bowl. The infusion is then left for 10 hours and filtered. Before use, the infusion can be heated and consumed in the amount of 1 glass per day.
2) One tablespoon of fruit pulp, cleared of hairs and achenes, is boiled for 8 minutes in? glass of water, then infuse for about two hours. After filtering, the liquid is consumed in the amount of -1 glass per day; the pulp can be used in compotes.
3) Rosehip in powder form, in a dose of 1 tablespoon per? glasses of water, prepared in the same way as dry fruits (recipe No. 1), without infusion.
22. Clover
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
Perennial herbs. Stems are straight, erect or recumbent. The leaf consists of 3 leaflets. The flowers are small, collected in heads. The fruits are beans with one or more seeds.
The following clovers can be used as food:
Red or Red Clover - Red Woodpecker
The leaves of the compound leaf are elliptical and pubescent, like the stem. The flower heads are dark red, less often pinkish, and larger than those of other clovers. At the bottom of the head there are usually two sheets close to it. The beans are small, with one seed.
It grows in meadows and forest edges, and is widespread in the Leningrad region.
Clover hybrid or Swedish red and white
The leaves of the compound trifoliate leaf are elliptical or oblong, glabrous. The flower heads are small, spherical, pink. Beans with 2-4 seeds. Blooms from May to September.
Grows in wet meadows, mainly on loamy soil. It is often found in the Leningrad region, but less frequently than the previous one.
Creeping clover - White porridge or White woodpecker
A low-growing plant, characterized by a recumbent, creeping stem along the ground. The leaves extend upward from the stem and have very long petioles. The length of the petiole to which the leaflets are attached can reach 20 cm. Individual leaflets are heart-shaped or obovate, notched along the far edge, glabrous. Heads on long peduncles. The flowers are white or pinkish, after blooming. brownish. Beans with 3-6 seeds. Blooms from late May or early June until autumn.
A cold-resistant plant that overwinters well. It is very common in meadows and pastures, and sometimes as a weed in fields and red clover crops.
All three clovers in a non-blooming state can be easily distinguished from one another by their leaves. In red clover, the leaves are pubescent, and in hybrid and creeping clover they are usually bare, but in hybrid clover they are oblong and do not have a notch at the end, and in creeping clover they are heart-shaped, with a small notch along the outermost edge.
In practice, you can collect all three of these clovers together.
Chemical composition
The figures given are averages obtained from the works of various authors - Larik, Popov, etc.
| Protein substances | Fat | Nitrogen-free extractives | Cellulose | Ash | Content of ascorbic acid in leaves 1, mg% | |
| Clover | 12 - 19 | 2 - 4 | 29 - 47 | 18 - 43 | 5 - 10 | 35 - 110 |
| Clover hybrid | 15 - 19 | 2 - 3,5 | 36 - 47 | 20 - 28 | 9 - 10 | up to 190 |
| Creeping clover | 14 - 17 | 1,5 - 3,5 | 34 - 49 | 12 - 25 | 6 - 12 | 70 - 100 |
1 Data from the chemical laboratory of the Botanical Institute.
As can be seen from the analyses, clovers are highly nutritious plants, rich in protein substances. The importance of leaves and young shoots is especially great in this regard. The leaves are 2-3 times richer in proteins and 3 times poorer in fiber than the stems. As they grow, starting from the flowering period, the stems become very coarse and rigid; this prevents their use as food products. When cut or mowed, they grow back well.
Clover has become widely used as food products relatively recently. In Ireland, dried flower heads were ground into flour and added to bread. In Scotland and Ireland, dried and ground leaves were used for the same purposes. In Germany and Austria, in recent years, meadow and creeping clovers are often used for making soups, like the spinach plant.
Leaves and young ones should be eaten, i.e. not hardened clover stems. The leaves can be used fresh, raw in salads. Clover should mainly be used for preparing first and second courses. Clover greens are very tender, boil easily and quickly and make good nutritious soups. For taste, it is recommended to add a little sorrel to the soup. Clover also makes a good puree, especially with the addition of sorrel. Second courses can also be made from clover. In pancakes made from yeast dough, you can add clover puree in an amount 5-6 times greater than the volume of the dough (approximately 10 g of flour per 1 pancake). Cutlets are also prepared from clover puree, adding boiled porridge or cereal to it (at the rate of approximately 10 g of cereal per cutlet). Flatbread or casserole from clover puree is prepared without adding other products.
Clover can be dried for future use, but the leaves usually fall off when dried. For ease of storage, the dried mass can be crushed. Other methods of preserving clover are also used.
23. Common sorrel, Hare sorrel or Hare cabbage
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
A small plant up to 10 cm high, with a thin creeping rhizome and thin stems, easily distinguished by its leaves, consisting of three leaves, like clover, but drooping down at night, making it seem as if the plant has curled up to sleep. In the light, the leaves straighten out. The flowers are quite large and white.
It grows in the shade of trees, mainly in old spruce and pine forests, where it is very common at the foot of trees, but without forming significant thickets.
Found in abundance throughout the Leningrad region.
In the spring and throughout the summer, the leaves and green stems should be collected as a food product, which are used for salads, vinaigrettes, cabbage soup, purees, and for soft drinks. Collection is very easy.
Due to its small size, sorrel is more suitable for individual use than for mass collection by industrial organizations, which, however, is possible when covering a large area.
24. Ivan-tea or common fireweed
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A perennial plant with an erect stem reaching a height of 1? m or more, planted with alternate leaves and ending with a cluster of rather large flowers. Distinctive features from all other plants of our flora are relatively large pink-purple flowers with 4 sepals, 4 petals, 8 stamens and a long lower ovary.
Ivan tea grows in dry places, along the edges of forests, in places of forest fires - burnt areas, as well as in cuttings - fresh forest clearings, where it often forms continuous thickets over a significant area, which makes it extremely easy to collect this plant for industrial purposes.
In the Leningrad region, Ivan tea is widespread, and therefore its collection is possible wherever there are suitable habitats for it.
Young leaves and shoots of Ivan tea, which can be eaten as a salad, are of greatest importance as food raw materials; Young Ivan tea greens are no less suitable for making puree, which can be used as a seasoning for all kinds of dishes. Ivan tea soup is less pleasant, as it has a somewhat tart taste.
Ivan tea leaves also serve as one of the favorite tea substitutes and, when brewed, give a rather tasty drink.
Young root shoots of Ivan tea are used as food instead of asparagus or cabbage; The sweet roots are sometimes eaten as a vegetable.
25. Forest kupir
A perennial herbaceous plant up to 130 cm tall, with a rather thick, fleshy root. The stem is hollow, hollow, grooved on the surface. The leaves are triangular in general outline, repeatedly pinnately dissected and seem to consist of smaller pinnately arranged leaflets, and these latter have cuts along the edges. The upper leaves have fewer cuts and their blade is bipinnate.
The flowers are small, white, collected in the form of a complex umbrella. Blooms from May to August.
According to G.V. Pigulevsky, the roots contain 20.3% starch, 5.7% glucose, 3.3% disaccharides, 10.5% fiber; according to Wemer - sucrose 5.64%, reducing sugars 0.96%, starch 14.5%. According to research by the chemical laboratories of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Sanitary Inspectorate of the City Health Department, kupir leaves collected in May contain about 50 mg% ascorbic acid.
It grows in gardens and parks, near fences, in forests, among bushes and along the edges of fields. In the Leningrad region it is found everywhere.
In early spring, fresh leaves are used for salads. Young shoots, peeled, are also quite tender and edible raw. Older plants can be eaten after fermentation or grinding in a meat grinder. In this form they are used to make soups, cabbage soup, and purees. In the Caucasus, the roots are also considered edible, although, according to some sources, they contain harmful substances. When consumed as food, you can add various amounts of honey to the kupyr, as this combination is very pleasant to the taste.
Harvesting for future use can be done by drying ripening and making puree. Depending on the density of the thicket, the harvest size can reach 1 ton per hectare (an adult plant in a dense thicket).
Note. When collecting kulir for making edible products, you should beware of mixing it with a similar poisonous plant of the same family, spotted hemlock (Conium maculatum L.). The hemlock can be distinguished from the following features: the petioles of the leaves of the hemlock are triangular in cross-section, while those of the hemlock are round; Hemlock has reddish spots on the stem in its lower part, which are not found in sedum; hemlock has an unpleasant mousey smell and a burning taste, while kupir, although it has an islandy taste, is devoid of pungency, and the smell is somewhat reminiscent of carrots.
When collecting plants of the umbrella family, you should also be especially careful of hemlock or poisonous weed (Cicuta virosa L.), which grows near water bodies, in ditches and often in shallow places in the water. The rhizome of the poisonous milestone is divided by partitions into separate chambers, which easily distinguishes it from other plants of this family. All parts of the plant are poisonous, but the fleshy rhizome is especially poisonous in the spring.
Forest rose - Anthriscus silvestris (L.) Hoffm. 
Spotted hemlock - Conium maculatum L. 
Vekh poisonous - Cicuta virosa L.
26. Cumin
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
Biennial plant, about 50-70 cm tall, with succulent spindle-shaped root. The leaves are oblong in outline, repeatedly pinnately dissected into narrow linear lobes. The flowers are small, white or pink, collected in complex umbels. The fruits are achenes, about 3 mm long, brown-brown, containing about 16% fatty oil and 4-6% essential oil, which causes the specific smell of caraway.
In the first year, only a basal rosette of leaves is formed. In the second year, a flowering and fruiting stem develops from the overwintered root. On oily soils and in cultivation, caraway root is thicker and can be consumed as a vegetable. Grows on dry meadows and slopes.
Young leaves and shoots can be collected in the spring and eaten raw as part of salads; somewhat better - mixed with other greens.
In addition, the green parts of cumin are used as a spinach plant, that is, boiled, for the preparation of soups and cabbage soup. Cumin root is also eaten, mainly as a substitute for parsnips. Roots should be dug up in early spring from overwintered specimens, or in the fall, when they are richest in nutrients. In flowering and fruiting specimens, the roots contain few nutrients.
Caraway seeds are used in the food industry in the production of bread, cheeses and various dishes. From them, caraway oil is obtained, which is important in medicine and perfumery, and is also used in food.
When collecting plants in large quantities, the greenery should be packaged in light, shingled baskets, and the roots - in boxes. Storage of greens is no more than two days.
When collecting seeds, the stems are cut off when they begin to turn brown and tied into sheaves. After drying, the sheaves are threshed and the seeds are poured into bags.
27. Common borer
(Compiled by A. A. Nikitin)
Perennial herbaceous plant up to 100 cm high. with long underground rhizomes, from the buds of which in spring grows a hollow, fist-shaped stem, furrowed on the surface, and sometimes branched at the top. The leaves gradually decrease in size towards the top of the stem. The basal and lower stem leaves are complexly constructed: on a common petiole, triplets of leaflets sit opposite each other, the apex of the petiole also ends in three leaflets. The individual leaflets in each trifoliate taper towards their base and apex, the edges of the leaflets are double-toothed. The upper leaves are trifoliate, sessile. The flowers are white, very small, collected at the top of the stem in a complex umbrella. Blooms from June to mid-August.
The chemical composition, according to Popov and Elkin, is as follows: crude protein 10.5%, protein 7.9%, fat - 3%, nitrogen-free extractives 48%, fiber 28.4%, ash 10.1%. According to a study by the chemical laboratory of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences, at the beginning of May the leaves contain about 50 mg% of ascorbic acid, and at the end of May - 84 mg °/o (laboratory of the Sanitary Inspectorate of the State Health Department).
It grows everywhere - in gardens and parks, in forests, among bushes, sometimes forming almost continuous thickets. In gardens and parks it is a difficult weed to eradicate.
In the Leningrad region it is found everywhere - in the spring, fresh leaves of the plant can be used to make salads. Older leaves, as well as their petioles and shoots, can be eaten both raw and boiled for making soups, cabbage soup, and purees. Parts of adult plants are quite coarse and therefore they must be eaten either in a very crushed form, by passing through a meat grinder, or by first being fermented. When making food from honeydew, you can add marigold greens in various quantities, which impart a pleasant aroma. Harvesting for future use can be done by drying, fermenting and making purees.
Depending on the density of the thickets, the harvest size ranges from 1 to 30 kg of wet weight per 1 ha.
28. Hogweed
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A perennial plant with a tall, erect, ribbed stem reaching l? -2 m high
Hogweed is easily distinguished from all other umbelliferae of our flora by its large rough leaves and rough stem, as well as green or yellow-green flowers, and not white, as is the case with our other umbelliferae.
Hogweed grows mainly in places with significant moisture; Most often you can find hogweed in damp bushes, forest edges, damp meadows, sometimes along roads and in weedy places. It is widespread throughout the Leningrad region and is often found in continuous thickets, so collection and harvesting is possible everywhere and will not present any difficulties. Collection time: June, July.
Almost all parts of the hogweed are eaten; the rhizome serves as a root vegetable due to its abundant sugar content; young leaves are suitable as a salad; More mature leaves and stems of hogweed in decoction provide a good broth, and are also used for preparing cabbage soup, soups, purees, etc.
29. Medicinal lungwort
(Compiled by R. Yu. Rozhevits)
Plant up to 30 cm high, with a branched rhizome, ovate-lanceolate leaves with a narrow-winged petiole. Flowers in inflorescence, drooping, on short stalks, initially pink, then purple or blue.
It grows everywhere in deciduous forests, usually in small quantities.
Found throughout the Leningrad region. In early spring, the basal leaves should be collected as a food product, which are used as a vegetable in salads, soups and purees, and also as an addition to dough or potatoes. In England it is grown in large quantities for salad.
It can be used not only for individual nutrition, but also collected in quite significant quantities by organizations for storage for future use.
30. White Clary or Dead Nettle
(Compiled by I. A. Pankova)
A perennial herbaceous plant with a creeping rhizome that produces creeping underground shoots. Stems are erect, tetrahedral, branched or unbranched, up to 125 cm high. The entire plant is covered with rather soft hairs. The leaves are petiolate, opposite (located opposite each other on the stem), ovate, pointed towards the apex, serrated along the edge. The flowers are white, rather large, collected in whorls. Blooms from May to September.
According to the chemical laboratories of the Botanical Institute named after Academician V.L. Komarov of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Sanitary Inspectorate of the City Health Department, young plants in May contain 50 mg% of ascorbic acid.
It grows in vacant lots, near houses, along roads and ditches, near fences, in bushes, in forest meadows. In the Leningrad region it is found everywhere.
The above-ground parts of the plant are eaten. In early spring, young shoots are used to make salads. Later, in a more coarse state, the plant is used as a spinach plant, for making cabbage soup, soups and purees.
It is prepared for future use, just like stinging nettle.
31. Large plantain, Traveler, Roadside plant
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
A low plant with wide, elliptical, bare leaves spread out in the form of a rosette. On the leaves, 3-9 parallel veins are clearly visible, especially well on the underside. The flowering stem is leafless, at the top with a spike of densely seated small, greenish-brown flowers. Blooms from June to autumn. The seeds are small, dark brown. Fresh leaves contain: nitrogenous substances 2%, nitrogen-free extractive substances 10%, crude fiber 2%, fats 0.5% and ash 2.7%. In the dry residue: nitrogenous substances 11%, nitrogen-free extractive substances 58%, crude fiber 11%, fats 2.7% and ash 14%. Mature leaves contain little tannin; in young ones - a certain amount of sugars (glucose and fructose). Psyllium seeds contain about 19% crude protein and up to 10% fat. Plantain leaves, according to analyzes from the chemical laboratory of the Botanical Institute, contain about 30 mg% of ascorbic acid.
It is found along roads, in gardens, ditches, vegetable gardens, and in fields as an extremely common plant. In the Leningrad region - everywhere and can be collected in large quantities. The leaves are used in folk medicine as an astringent and anti-scorbutic agent and for the treatment of wounds.
It is eaten in the Far Eastern region and the Caucasus, where broth is made from the leaves. In Yakutia, the seeds are stored for the winter and fermented with milk, after which they are used as a seasoning for dishes. Sometimes used instead of flour. The seeds are also used for food in Manchuria.
Young plantain leaves make a delicious soup. The greens are very easy to boil, but for taste it is recommended to add a little sorrel. In addition, flatbreads can be made from plantain, for which you should add flour at the rate of 20 g per 1 flatbread, as well as cutlets, to which instead of flour you can add 10 g of cereal per 1 piece.
In contrast to other greens, which sometimes have a laxative effect on the stomach, plantain does not have this property, which is why it is useful to use it together with other green plants.
32. Burdock, Burdock, Burdock
(Compiled by O. V. Troitskaya)
Biennial, up to 150 cm high. branched plant, with large basal leaves, dark green above, grayish-tomentose below. The inflorescences are baskets, mistaken for flowers in the hostel, and are lilac-red. The outer leaves of the basket have a hook at the end, cobwebby, easily sticking to objects with which they come into contact.
In the first year, burdock develops basal leaves and a succulent fleshy root from the seeds, penetrating into the soil up to 40 cm. The root overwinters in the soil, and in the second year the plant blooms and bears fruit.
The root contains in the dry residue 12.3% crude protein, up to 69% carbohydrates, of which 45% inulin, 0.8% crude fat, about 7% fiber.
It grows like a weed in gardens, near homes, in vacant lots, preferring loose soil rich in humus. In Leningrad it is widespread within the city and throughout the region.
Inulin, like starch, is a complex sugar compound (polysaccharide). In the body, insulin is converted into fruit sugar (fructose) and is completely absorbed.
It is cultivated in Japan, where the root, as a vegetable, is consumed in large quantities in the spring.
Only the roots are used for food; the leaves are bitter and tasteless. The root, on the contrary, is slightly sweet, reminiscent of an earthen pear in taste. The roots are dug up in the fall, after the first year of development from seeds, or in the spring, when the first leaves appear, before the flowering shoot appears. During the flowering period, the roots are deprived of nutrients, and there is no need to take them at this time.
The roots are used boiled (cut into small pieces and seasoned with some sauce), stewed or pickled. They can go to making cutlets, flatbreads with the addition of cereals and flour. Dried and roasted, they make a good coffee substitute.
When cleared of soil and the old, outermost layers, the roots can be stored for future use in a dried state and are used in winter after preliminary soaking.
33. Chicory
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A perennial plant with a tall stem reaching 125-150 cm in height. and giving protruding branches, usually ending in a flower basket. Chicory is immediately distinguished from all the asteraceae of the local flora by its large baskets of blue flowers, and the entire plant is more or less rough.
Chicory root is very rich in various nutrients, and a number of studies have been devoted to their study. The most important here is inulin (a substance close to starch), the content of which in the roots ranges from 11 to 19%; In addition to inulin, chicory roots contain up to 4% crude protein, as well as reducing sugars (mainly fructose) - up to 2.5%. The amount of fat does not exceed 2% by dry weight. The bitter taste of chicory depends on the glucoside - intibine. When chicory is roasted, an essential oil called chicory ol is formed; The characteristic aroma of toasted chicory depends on it.
Chicory is found mainly on sloping hillsides, as well as in waste areas, near homes and along the edges of fields. Chicory, generally speaking, is a southern plant and grows only in places in the Leningrad region.
As a food raw material, chicory produces a root that is of great value, due to which chicory is grown in vegetable gardens. Chicory root serves not only as a substitute for coffee, but also as a necessary admixture when preparing a coffee drink from natural coffee, since without the addition of chicory, coffee does not receive the proper taste and color. The youngest leaves of the chicory rosette are also edible as a salad. Collection time - July-September; Harvesting earlier produces a product that is less nutrient rich.
34. Bodyakbolotny
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A biennial plant with an erect stem reaching almost 200 cm in height. The leaves are covered with stiff bristles, and the bases of their blades run down the stem, which is how this species is easily distinguished from others close to it. Bright red flowers are collected in small baskets, clustered at the top of the stem.
There is no data on the chemical composition of the plant.
It is often found, but exclusively in damp meadows, grassy swamps, and sometimes along ditches. In the Leningrad region it is distributed everywhere, and therefore thistle can be collected everywhere. Some other types of thistle are no less valuable food plants, especially the ubiquitous weed Common thistle (Cirsium arvense Scop.).
Young leaves and young shoots are more suitable for consumption; they can be used for salads and vinaigrettes without any pre-treatment; when boiled, thistle makes a good soup, even in an older state; well-ground shoots of thistle lose their hardness and prickliness and can thus make an excellent puree and serve as a seasoning for porridge, dough, etc.
35. Common dandelion
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A perennial plant, easily distinguished from all our other plants belonging to this family by the presence of only one basket with bright yellow flowers at the top of a leafless flower arrow and the complete absence of hard pubescence both on the leaves, collected in a basal rosette, and on the stem. When the fruits ripen, with the slightest breath of wind, the seeds fly away in different directions (hence the name dandelion), which is facilitated by special flylets of feathery hairs. Chemical analysis data indicate that dandelion is an extremely nutrient-rich plant; Dandelion leaves contain various sugars - sucrose (up to 4%), fructose and glucose; crude protein in amounts up to 20%, fats over 3% and about 35 mg% ascorbic acid. Dandelion roots contain protein - about 5%, malic acid - 2% or more, sugary substances, in particular fructose - over 10%, as well as a very large amount of polysaccharide, close to starch and called inulin, the content of which in dandelion roots reaches 53% . The amount of inulin in dandelion roots gradually increases during the summer and reaches a maximum in the fall. Insulin is therefore a reserve substance for the spring development of the plant; Thus, in early spring, at the beginning of April, the amount of inulin in dandelion roots is no less than in late autumn, since the plant begins to grow no earlier than the end of April - beginning of May.
Dandelion is found in a wide variety of habitats - on lawns, meadows, weedy places, near housing, on the outskirts of fields. In Leningrad, dandelion is spread literally everywhere and is one of the most common plants. Collection of dandelion leaves for food purposes should be done in spring and early summer, in May - early June; collecting roots - on the contrary, by the end of summer, in autumn, or, finally, in the very early spring, i.e. in August-October or in April.
As a food raw material, young dandelion leaves are used, which are extremely suitable for salad, separately or as an admixture with other plants; young dandelion leaves are devoid of any bitterness, but later they become bitter; By artificially shading the developing dandelion leaves, we obtain leaves that are devoid of green color (in botanical parlance, etiolated) and almost devoid of bitterness. In France, dandelion is widely cultivated as a salad plant. Dandelion root, due to the abundance of nutrients in it, is suitable for drying and, when ground, can serve as an admixture to flour; Even more valuable is the use of dandelion root as a substitute for coffee, and dandelion can easily replace chicory - a relatively rare plant in our country. When collecting dandelion leaves and roots, one should not forget that in the Leningrad region there is a plant very similar to dandelion, but with completely different properties. This is Paznik, which belongs to the same family of Compositae and differs from dandelion in the presence of pubescence on the entire plant, as well as special scales sitting on a common receptacle for each flower. Fortunately, paznik is a rather rare plant in the Leningrad region, although it must be borne in mind that it is sometimes found in garbage areas even on the territory of Leningrad itself.
36. Field sow thistle
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
Perennial. Field sow thistle is easily distinguished from related species by its long creeping rhizome, higher growth, reaching 150 cm, larger baskets of bright yellow flowers, located several at the ends of the branches of the stem, and especially the shape of its leaves, oblong and mostly with large edges. triangular teeth facing the stem; The fetal tuft consists of simple (not feathery) white hairs.
Thistle seeds contain up to 31% fatty oil.
Field sow thistle is one of the most common weeds, extremely difficult to eradicate from fields and vegetable gardens, since it quickly reproduces with the help of its long rhizomes that go deep into the soil. We do not find thistle outside of cultivated soils and waste areas. In the Leningrad region, sow thistle is found everywhere, and therefore it can be collected everywhere, especially conveniently in vegetable gardens, where it is often possible to collect a significant amount of this plant in a small area. Leaves, especially younger ones, are used as food raw materials, as well as stems, which lose their roughness under the influence of processing at high temperatures and thus become quite suitable for making soups, purees, etc.
The plant is suitable for harvesting throughout the summer.
37. Sootog native
(Compiled by B. A. Fedchenko)
A plant that is close in its characteristics and chemical composition to the previous species (field thistle), from which it is easily distinguished by the absence of a creeping rhizome, shorter stature, smaller flower baskets and the shape of the leaves, wider and more deeply pinnately divided than the previous one.
Thistle, unlike the previous species, grows almost exclusively in vegetable gardens, as a specific garden weed, or in garbage areas near homes. In the Leningrad region it is found everywhere and therefore can be collected everywhere.
Leaves (mostly young ones) and stems are eaten. In its fresh form, thistle is suitable as a salad plant, as well as for making vinaigrettes; processed at high temperatures, sow thistle is used for preparing soups, purees, as an admixture to dough, boiled potatoes, etc.
VI. EDIBLE LICHENS
(Compiled by M. E. Gollerbach)
Lichens, of course, are well known to everyone, but very often among the population they are called mosses. They are widespread in our forests on the soil, stumps and bark of trees, as well as on fences, hedges, old walls, stones, etc., sometimes hanging in in the form of gray or grayish-greenish beards, then forming protruding bushes, rugged leafy plates or thin crusts, painted in a variety of colors, some bright orange. When moistened, they turn somewhat green, but are never bright green and do not form stems with leaves, which is easy differ from mosses. These plants belong to the division of lower spore plants and represent, in fact, a peculiar group of fungi containing green algae cells inside their bodies, which they feed on. Therefore, they are almost independent of the place where they settle and can grow in a wide variety of conditions.
Among the lichens there are those from which you can prepare nutritious and tasty food. We will indicate only two of them, growing on the soil, as well tested in nutritional terms and widespread in large quantities in the Leningrad region.
Icelandic lichen (popular name - "Icelandic moss", scientific - Icelandic cetraria)
Icelandic lichen usually forms continuous thickets of whitish-brown or dark brown turf cushions on the soil, crunching underfoot in dry weather. These turfs consist of more or less curly bushes formed by ribbon-like, branching lobes, sometimes wide, sometimes narrow, sometimes wrapped in tubes, usually with small cilia along the edges. On the upper side the lobes are darker, on the lower side they are whitish, dotted with bright white indented spots, and at the base, where they come into contact with the soil, they are reddish, which is a very characteristic difference between Icelandic lichen and some other similar lichens.
This lichen grows especially well in dry sandy soil in pine forests, heather thickets and open spaces. Under these conditions it is usually so abundant that it can easily be collected in any quantity.
The easiest way to collect Icelandic lichen is to use your hands.
Its tufts are very weakly connected to the soil and are very easily separated from it. There are no roots or anything like that here. The turfs are taken whole and used as food. In dry weather, it is more convenient to collect them, since fewer soil particles are captured, they are easier to shake off and clean in place, but they take up more space and crumble more. Moistened lichen is elastic, its turf can be compressed and stuffed into bags in larger quantities. However, at home, the collected material must be thoroughly dried. It should be borne in mind that completely dry lichen can be preserved without spoiling for an indefinitely long time, but even slightly damp lichen quickly becomes moldy and rots. It is necessary to carefully remove foreign impurities from the collected turf, especially pine needles and soil particles, the presence of which gives the cooked food an unpleasant taste and smell. It is clear that the best collections of Icelandic lichen for food purposes are obtained not in the forest, but from open places, since fewer foreign impurities are captured here. It is important to note that for use for food purposes, Icelandic lichen is very convenient in the sense that it can be collected in over a long period of time - from the moment the snow melts and when other food plants are just awakening, and until new snow falls, when many other plants have already disappeared. This is explained by the fact that lichens do not die in winter, but are perfectly preserved under the snow and become immediately available as soon as the snow melts.
The nutritional value of Icelandic lichen is primarily confirmed by many years of folk practice, since it has long been used as food by residents of the northern countries and our northern regions, where it grows in abundance. The same is evident from its chemical composition. Chemical analysis shows that Icelandic lichen in its dry state contains the following substances (in percentage):
- lichen starch (lichenin) - 43.72
- bitterness agent (cetrarin) - 2.95
- sugar - 3.68
- wax and chlorophyll - 1.57
- gum - 3.63
- pigments - 6.86
- organic residue - 35.88
- potassium tartrate and calcium, calcium phosphate - 1.86
Thus, about half of all substances in Icelandic lichen is starch, and starch is close to wheat or potato, i.e., a completely nutritious product. The disadvantage of lichen as food is the lack of vitamins in it.
The main thing that prevents the direct use of Icelandic lichen for food is its very bitter taste, but this bitterness can be easily removed. For this purpose, after thoroughly cleaning it from impurities, it is soaked in some alkali. The most convenient and easiest way is to use pharmaceutical soda or potash. A weak solution is prepared from them, 4-5 g (but not more than 20) of potash or soda per 1 liter of water, and the lichen is immersed in this solution so that it is just covered with the solution (if the weight of the lichen is known, then take about 100 g of potash or soda per 1? kg of material). In the absence of potash or soda, you can use with great success ordinary laundry lye, which is prepared at the rate of 250-300 g of ash per ? buckets of water (or 45-50 g per 1 liter). Before soaking the lichen, this lye is diluted in the following proportion: for 1 kg of lichen, 8 liters of lye and 16 liters of water. In both cases, the lichen is soaked for 24 hours, after which the solution becomes brown and very bitter. This solution is drained, and the lichen is washed several times in clean water and left in it for another day. As a result, the lichen must completely lose its bitterness, otherwise it is soaked in alkali for not one, but two days. The washed lichen, deprived of bitterness, is either dried and stored for future use, or directly used for cooking.
The dishes that can be obtained from Icelandic lichen are very varied. In the simplest case, it should be slightly crushed and simply boiled in water.
After 1?-2 hours of boiling, a gelatinous mass with pieces of blades is obtained, almost tasteless, with a faint mushroom smell. If you add salt and the usual flavoring spices used when cooking mushrooms, such as bay leaves, peppers, onions, etc., you get a dish that resembles mushrooms. When cooled, with the addition of vinegar, it turns into a spicier snack-type dish. In addition, boiled lichen can be divided into pure jelly and the rest of the mass. For this purpose, after cooking, it is tipped onto a sieve and squeezed through a linen rag. The remainder is consumed as stated above, and from the jelly, which is tasteless in itself, various dishes, salty or sweet, are prepared by adding various spices and flavoring substances. When preparing foods such as jellied or sweet jellies, frozen lichen jelly perfectly replaces gelatin, differing from it in its opacity. It is only important that when it hardens, it retains its shape, for which it is boiled until thick, or allowed to stand until the excess water comes out on its own. The jelly separated from the water is dissolved again and used.
In addition to preparing independent dishes, apparently quite varied, Icelandic lichen can serve as a high-quality admixture to bread and flour products in general. For this purpose, use raw material soaked in alkali and washed, crush it and add it in equal quantities to the bread dough. The dough is allowed to rise well and baked like regular bread. The same is done when baking flatbreads, pancakes, pancakes, etc. In these cases, however, it is often much more convenient to thoroughly dry the lichen freed from bitterness and grind it into flour. This flour keeps very well in a dry place and can be used at any time. In addition to bread products, it can be added instead of rye or wheat flour and to a wide variety of food products, or it can be boiled into jelly yourself when preparing the dishes mentioned above.
In addition to using Icelandic lichen as a food product in everyday life, it can also be used in the food industry - in baking as an admixture in baking bread products, etc., which is based on the high content of starch in it - lichenin. Like potato starch, lichenin can be saccharified and therefore molasses and sugar are obtained from the lichen. Experiments in this regard were quite successful. In other words, with the development of appropriate technological processes, this lichen is suitable wherever starch is processed.
Icelandic lichen is very convenient for harvesting for future use. In the simplest case, it is completely enough to free the turf from soil and impurities and dry it thoroughly. To make it take up less space, the turf can be dried between sheets of paper under a press (a board with a couple of bricks). Another way is to first soak the material in alkali, free it from bitter substances, and then dry it and store it whole or grind it into flour. One way or another, in a dry state, lichen can be stored indefinitely without deteriorating or losing its qualities.
Deer lichen (popular name - "deer moss")
Species of deer lichen grow in large turf-pillows on the soil in the same places as Icelandic lichen. In contrast to the latter, deer lichen turfs are gray, whitish-gray or greenish, and are formed not by flat blades, but by round stems that are empty inside. The stems branch from the very base, forming spreading bushes, and at the top they end in thin, curved drooping (in the gray Cladonia rangiferina and whitish-greenish Cladonia silvatica) or erect branches collected in a dense bunch of capitate shape (in the whitish-greenish Cladoma alpestns).
Collecting deer lichen is even easier than Icelandic lichen, since it grows even more abundantly, covering the soil in pine forests with a continuous cover that stands out with its whitish color. Such burs are called “white-moss burs”. For food purposes, there is no point in distinguishing between individual types of deer lichen, and they can be collected together. The methods for collecting, drying and storing them are exactly the same as for Icelandic lichen. In the same way, here it is necessary to soak the lichen in alkali before eating in order to get rid of the bitterness. However, it should be borne in mind that the nutritional value of this lichen is apparently lower than that of Icelandic lichen, and its consistency is much coarser and difficult to boil. When boiled, it does not form a jelly, but spreads apart. Therefore, it is better to use it in the form of flour, for which the material, purified and freed from bitterness, is again dried and ground into flour. This flour is used in the same way as mentioned above. For industrial use, especially for the production of molasses and sugar, deer lichen is in no way inferior to Icelandic lichen.
Both lichens - Icelandic lichen and deer lichen, as indicated, within the Leningrad region are especially abundant in white-moss pine forests, and they should be looked for wherever the latter are common.
VII. CONCLUSION
The wild food plants described in our brochure can bring considerable benefits if every Leningrader takes their collection seriously, as a source of highly nutritious and vitamin-rich plant materials.
By collecting fresh greens from wild food plants throughout the summer, every Leningrader and resident of the Leningrad region can diversify their diet by introducing vitamin-containing plants into it.
We must use every opportunity to travel outside the city, work in the suburbs, in individual gardens outside the city, trips to suburban parks in order to collect wild edible plants.
A variety of plant foods containing a significant amount of vitamins will increase our productivity and maintain strength and health.
However, it would be wrong to limit the use of wild plants for food purposes only to current collection in the summer.
By collecting wild food plants, we can completely provide ourselves with them not only during the summer, but also prepare highly nutritious and vitamin-containing foods for the winter.
By collecting wild edible plants and preparing them for long-term storage (drying, salting, pickling, pickling), Leningraders and residents of the Leningrad region can provide themselves with a significant supply of wild vegetable plants for the long months of winter, thereby protecting themselves from the possibility of various diseases associated with deficiency vitamins
So, without wasting any time, use the instructions given in our book - collect wild edible plants!
VIII. INDEX OF MAIN LITERATURE ON WILD FOOD PLANTS
I. Literature on Flowering Plants
1. Vasilevskiy L. A. and L. M. Food surrogates. Ptgr, 1 n.-chem. those. ed. 1923.
2. Evdokimov A. A. Edible wild plants of the North. Arkhangelsk. Severn region ed. 1932.
3. Zhadovsky A. E. Microscopic analysis of food and flavoring substances of plant origin. M.-L. Snabtekhizdat. 1934.
4. Zalesova E. N. and Petrovskaya O. V. Complete Russian illustrated herbal dictionary. St. Petersburg, ed. Caspari. 1900.
5. Znamensky I. E. Wild edible plants. Chemical-technical reference book, part IV. Plant raw materials. Ed. V. N. Lyubimenko, vol. 12. L. Goskhimizdat. 1932.
6. Izakson E. B., Epifanov N. G. and Tarasov N. V. New and forgotten plants in public catering. Under. ed. A. Mironova. L. Lenoblidat. 1934.
7. Kanshina D.V. Popular library of applied knowledge, vol. II. Interests of the stomach. St. Petersburg, ed. M. Remezova. 1895.
8. Kashperova A. Preparing canned fruits, berries and vegetables at home. St. Petersburg
9. Kling M. Feed products. 1933.
10. Forage plants of natural hayfields and pastures of the USSR. Ed. prof. I. V. Larina. All acad. agricultural Sciences named after Lenina, L. 1937.
11. Lenkov P.V. Seeds of field weeds of the European part of the USSR. M.-L. Selkokhozgiz. 1932.
12. Archer 3. I. Wild vegetables of the South Ussuri region. "Proceedings of the Dalfil Mountain Taiga Station. Academy of Sciences of the USSR", vol. II. 1938.
13. Lyubimenko V. N., Monteverde N. N. and Sulima-Samoilo A. Edible wild plants of the northern zone of Russia, vol. 1 and 2. N.-techn. committee at the Commission food Petrogr. Work. Comm. Ptgr. 1918.
14. Maltsev A.I. On the use of weeds and other wild plants in the home. "Transactions on applied botany", vol. XIII, no. 3. 1922-1923.
15. Medvedev P.F. Nettles of the USSR. Species composition, distribution and use (Appendix 71 to "Proceedings on applied botanical, genetic and rural."). L., ed. All inst. plants 1934.
16. Melnikov N.P. Production of coffee surrogates. Ed. ed. magazine "Technical collection", St. Petersburg, 1873.
17. Modestov A.P. How to supplement our nutrition. Public conversations about the use of commonly found wild plants for food. Dept. imprint from the collection. "Vegetable gardening", ed. Moscow region vegetable gardens, com. M. 1918.
18. Nikitinsky Ya. Ya. Surrogates and unusual sources of food products of plant and animal origin in Russia. M. Gosplan. 1921.
19. Obukhov A. N. Commodity research of medicinal, technical and aromatic raw materials, vol. I. Vneshtorgizdat. M.-L. 1934.
20. Partansky P. N. Practical botany. Flora of European Russia. Kursk 1894.
21. Tserevitinov F.V. Chemistry and merchandising of fresh fruits and vegetables, ed. 2. M.-L. Selkhozgiz. 1932.
22. Rollov A. X. Wild plants of the Caucasus, their distribution, properties and application (with the designation of native names of plants). Ed. Kavk. phylox. com. Tiflis, 1908.
23. Weeds of the USSR, vol. I-IV. L., ed. Academician Sciences of the USSR 1934-35.
24. Sulmenev N.D. On the chemical composition and digestibility of quinoa seeds. "Pharm. Journal", 1893, No. 5.
25. Sulmenev N. D. Quinoa, its chemical composition and digestibility of nitrogenous substances. 1893.
26. Taliev V.I. Key to higher plants of the European part of the USSR, ed. 9. M. Selkhozgiz. 1941.
27. Fedchenko B. A. and Kreyer G. K. Resources of the main medicinal and technical raw materials of the Leningrad region and Karelia. L., ed. L. O. Vses. Chamber of Commerce, 1934.
28. Flora of the USSR, vol. I-X. L., ed. Academician Sciences of the USSR. 1934-1941.
29. Erisman F. Quinoa, swan bread. Encycloped. Dictionary Brockhaus and Efron, half volume 33, 1896.
II. Literature on lichens
1. Gollerbach M. M. and Elenkin A. A. Lichens, their structure, life and significance. L. Uchpedgiz. 1938.
2. Elenkin A. A. Lichens as an object of pedagogy and scientific research. Journal "Excursion business", Ptgr. 1921 No. 2-3, 1922, No. 1.
3. Elenkin A. A. Mosses and lichens. Key and guide to collection and storage, L. Library journal. "In the workshop of nature." 1930.
4. Lyubimenko V.N. Icelandic moss as a food product. Ptgr., ed. Pishchev. n.-techn. inst. 1919.
5. Reiznek A. and S. Instructions for collecting, storing and eating Icelandic moss. M. 1918.
6. Savich V.P. Edible and fodder lichens. Sat. "Natural resources of the USSR". L., Lenoblidat. 1932.
IX. INDEX OF FOOD USES OF PLANTS
based on Internet materials
When the Germans came to Russian land once again, they did not think that they would have to be stuck here until winter. But they were met with hostility, and they were also stopped on the approaches to Moscow. And then the Krauts became acquainted with what Russian frosts are.
But, if our soldiers at the front could fight the cold without denying themselves firewood and food, then the people locked in besieged Leningrad found themselves in a terrible situation when they had to withstand both cold and hunger. More than half a million people died. They didn't deserve blasphemy. How those who survived against all odds did not deserve it.
Everything in this article is a complete outrage. But, before I talk about its author, who riveted the tag “Mine”, and therefore must be responsible for his words, I will say about the content.
Here is a short list of claims why, in HIS opinion, Leningraders did not use potbelly stoves:
1. The potbelly stove is ineffective; it would take 24 hours to heat it; there was no firewood for this.
2. Fire hazardous.
3. We need factory production, about which there is not a word.
4. In the fall, Leningraders did not know about the blockade, so thoughts about potbelly stoves did not arise.
5. There is no mention of the systemic distribution of potbelly stoves
6. There are no memories of purchasing potbelly stoves on the black market.
Let's start with the fact that a potbelly stove (or a temporary stove, according to the terminology of that time) really belongs to non-heat-intensive stoves.
These stoves heat up quickly and easily transfer heat to the surrounding area. That’s why they cool down quickly after the wood has burned out. Of course, few could afford to heat a potbelly stove 24 hours a day. In this mode, potbelly stoves worked in factories, hospitals and similar institutions. But even during those periods of time when fires were blazing in the potbelly stoves, people could at least sit for a while at the heat source and warm up boiling water for themselves, dry cubes of siege bread, or cook a liquid stew from products or their substitutes. All the blockade survivors indicated that they walked around the house without undressing, wrapped up as thoroughly as possible.
Potbelly stoves were indeed the cause of many fires during the first winter of the siege. Therefore, taking into account this sad experience, in preparation for the second wintering, the city authorities developed fire safety rules.
If anyone is interested in this question, you can read the book in its entirety using the link provided. I will only give drawings of temporary furnaces from this publication
Where did the siege survivors get such stoves?
A little educational program.
Let's say some townspeople cannot imagine what a potbelly stove is. And if you’ve ever seen a potbelly stove, you’ve most likely seen a cast-iron stove.
However, summer residents, village residents and simply those who have had to travel outside the city and find themselves in a difficult situation know very well that you can make a stove from almost anything - box-shaped, tubular, bucket-shaped, etc. that is, for the body of a metal stove, anything that has an internal cavity for firewood, and in which two holes can be made: for a pipe and for storing firewood, will do. Example:
Another option for a simple stove is a potbelly stove made from a barrel.
This, of course, is a potbelly stove for a greenhouse; you can’t cook anything on it, but you can make a vertical potbelly stove from a barrel in the same way.
Making a box-shaped potbelly stove not only for a man, but also for a woman will not be particularly difficult, especially if it is not made of galvanized steel (as in the photo), but of simple tin. In the right photo is a stove that served all summer: jams, compotes and other preparations for the winter were cooked on it (they say that it did not have time to cool down).
Few doubt that the Russian people are inventive.
« The Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad houses a tabletop potbelly stove made from cut-up cans of stew that came through Lend-Lease. The fact is that during the war, potbelly stoves, as an addition to the main military production, were manufactured at the Kirov plant, the Karl Marx plant and many others. But, apparently, in insufficient quantities. Therefore, most of the potbelly stoves in the rear and at the front were homemade. They were made from a variety of materials, and a pipe for the chimney was often more difficult to find than metal for the stove itself“- explained historian from St. Petersburg, researcher of the siege of Leningrad Dmitry Sotchikhin
I would like to add another excerpt from the fire safety rules to this photo.
“The facades of the houses during the blockade looked unusual - pipes from homemade stoves were sticking out of almost all the windows, which were clogged with plywood, iron, and rags,” say museum staff. The stoves required special permission; they were manufactured at city enterprises, but demand exceeded supply, so in houses there were even heaters made from tin cans of American stew, supplied under Lend-Lease. "Potbelly stoves", as well as smokehouse lamps, torches and damper lamps, often became the cause of fires that killed thousands of people: only in the period from November 1941 to March 1942, due to careless handling of fire in Leningrad, 1289 fires." From here
The TASS photo is dated October 1941.
At the Metalloigrushka factory, transferred from Pushkin to Leningrad, women, along with boxes for mines, MANUALLY made potbelly stoves for the local population. One of these women was Raisa Nikolaevna Khizhnyak
...Thanks to the “potbelly stove,” the temperature in the large room was, depending on the distance from the stove, from +10 to +5 C, so we were constantly in winter coats, washing ourselves once a day with slightly warmed water...” From the recollections of an eyewitness blockade
+5 and +10 are still not -35 degrees!
The potbelly stove quickly appeared on the black market; one had to buy it for a lot of money, and then for bread. What can you do, you'll give everything away. The winter of 1941-1942, as luck would have it, was fierce: -30-35 C. At the front, potbelly stoves were also burning in our dugouts, firewood was also being mined, but warmth came from another five or six soldiers who were crowded on the bunks; and in a city room you can’t gain any heat from two or three dystrophics. - D. Granin
In general, I have already answered all the points with the help of which they are trying to deny the siege of Leningrad in general.
And now, closer to the point.
I'm sorry that I have to address this difficult topic again. Look at what “Sedition” and the one who is clearly the enemy’s mouthpiece have encroached on:
And look from which account in CONTACT this scoundrel is writing here
You can check it yourself. Just look at the address with id421249764 on VKontakte -
