I was given Jerusalem artichokes by someone, planted some, tried to cook a batch of them just once.
I had to throw them away, after a few bites. I found them really loathesome. I suppose if I was starving I’d like them, if there was nothing else to eat.
Exactly what I’ve heard. I sliced off a bit of one tuber and tried it. As I said, sorta like a dirty water chestnut, only drier. IIRC, the Extension even handed out recipes, but only one guy I used to know ever tried them. He said he’d boiled some and sliced and fried some others. He didn’t rave. I heard that farmers who tried to feed them to the cows weren’t successful, either. Supposedly, you could grind and dry them and use them as *flour*.
We have lots of commercial potato and other vegetable farms around here. Also a lot of Amish (who buy their seeds locally at the store). I suspect we would have access to their excess if SHTF. We have lots of seed savers, too. I save some, myself, mostly tomato and red pepper.One tomato and one red pepper provide enough seeds of that variety to plant a home garden. Everyone gardens to some extent.
My favorite SHTF gardening meme is a line in “Jericho”. They are trying to keep a school together and one of the teen boys opts out because:”I have to go home and help my mother plant beets in the bath tub.” As a container gardener, it stuck with me.
“I had to throw them away, after a few bites.”
The bumpy tubers have little taste on their own. They pick up the seasoning you use and that’s where the taste comes from. You normally butter a potato and it’s the same with these tubers. These tubers give you, for one thing, carbohydrates for energy but it’s carbohydrate that turns into sugar at a low rate which keeps you going and is good for diabetic people.
The smooth tubers, as opposed to the bumpy ones, are more favorable on their own but still need seasoning. They are easier to prepare since they don’t have the bumps on them where dirt could hide. Anyone preparing the bumpy kind needs to take care to clean them well due to the bumps.
In a SHTF situation, if something is food, it is valuable for you and others.