The weirdness with my diaphragm seems to have worn off entirely, which I\’m really glad of. I don\’t really understand how this weeklong experience happened without any pain, and still had such important side effects, but the human body is a weird mystery, so whatever.
Speaking of weird, I went with friends to go cattail pollen collecting! You can use cattail pollen as flour, and we wanted to try it, so off we went. It was quite an endeavor, what with it being hot out and having to push my way through the head-high cattails. It\’s no jungle, but it\’s probably the closest I\’ll get to traversing something like that. I didn\’t have sufficiently waterproof footwear, and quickly got soaked socks and such.
I used a technique recommended by a seasoned harvester: grabbing a gallon jug, cutting a hole in it, inserting the pollen-laden cattail head, and shaking it. This allowed me to collect mostly pollen in my efforts. The stuff is bright yellow, as you\’ll see, and I was quickly covered in pollen. Fortunately I\’m not allergic.
The results of my labors had to be sifted for bugs and plant fibers, which I did using a sieve to get the big stuff, and then cheesecloth for the smaller debris.
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| Fiber and bugs certainly won\’t kill you, but they\’ll mess up the texture of your baked goods. |
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| The final result! |
I want to say I was out there collecting for maybe 15-25 minutes, and we started collecting relatively early in the pollen window, so we had to search fairly hard for cattails with pollen. Which is probably why the end results only came out to half a cup. Still, that\’s more than enough for a recipe of pancakes, and that\’s fine with me. If I like the pancakes and flavor, I\’ll get a larger batch next year.
realisticautistic 