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Food, Juice and Alcohol
Certain species of cacti are things of importance in this time and setting. Especially when most Cacti are used as a source of water and food. Certain kinds are sliced open and shucked of their prickly outter skin. They're a good source of nutrition and the fluids we need, AND they pretty much grow everywhere. Used to cook, eat raw or even squeeze into juice.. sometimes even used to make moonshine, these are the populations primary source of food. Even for the Weres, because meat is not always available.
Dragon fruit or Pitaya are commonly eaten fruits grown on many kinds of cacti. They come in all kinds of colors, although if you want them to be sweet, I'd advise only eating the red skinned and white pulped Dragon fruit of the Hylocereus. These are used to cook or just eat raw, the outer skin and needles should always be removed or eaten around.
Aloe vera is also cultivated not only for food, but for it's healing properties(Which are more magical in this setting, thusly stronger. An Aloe plant will help a human heal certain wounds up to two times faster if the innards are spread over the wound daily).
Desert Amaranth functions as a short-lived green-stemmed herb. Varieties of this edible desert plant species grow in most deserts. Eat the tender young green shoots raw or cooked. In addition some dry the leaves for later use. Seeds are popped like popcorn or ground into flour before being added to bread recipes.
Prickly pear cactus contains flat spongy oval pads that provide food, but you need to remove the spines covering them first. Scorch them from the pads with fire or peel with a knife carefully so the spines do not puncture your skin. Scorching also softens the hard outer skin to expose the soft edible part inside more easily. In addition, the fruit of the prickly pear is good for eating as well.
Grasses: Eat the stems, roots and leaves of desert grass raw or boiled in water to broth. Avoid any desert grasses or grass seeds that are black as these contain fungus. Consuming a desert grass with this fungus can make you very ill and, in some cases, kill you.
Avoid Mescaline producing cacti. Mescaline occurs naturally in the peyote cactus (Lophophora williamsii), the San Pedro cactus (Echinopsis pachanoi) and the Peruvian Torch cactus (Echinopsis peruviana), and in a number of other members of the Cactaceae plant family. Mescaline is a naturally-occurring psychedelic alkaloid of the phenethylamine class. It is mainly used as an entheogen, and as a tool to supplement various practices for transcendence, including in meditation, psychonautics, art projects, and psychedelic psychotherapy.
((Meaning, that Mescaline producing plants cause a kind of 'hallucination'. Although the visuals are not 'true' Hallucinations as they are consistent with actual experience and typically intensify visual and audio stimuli, not the appearance of non existent fanciful objects or actions that the user believes are real. Prominence of color is distinctive, appearing brilliant and intense. Placing a strobing light in front of closed eyelids can produce brilliant visual effects at the peak of the experience. Recurring visual patterns observed during the mescaline experience include stripes, checkerboards, angular spikes, multicolored dots, and very simple fractals which turn very complex. Aldous Huxley described these self transforming amorphous shapes as like animated stained glass illuminated from light coming through the eyelids. Like LSD, mescaline induces distortions of form(Like looking at someone through a fish bowl, for example) and kaleidoscopic experiences but which manifest more clearly with eyes closed and under low lighting conditions; however, all of these visual descriptions are purely subjective. Research into the root causes for the patterns associated with mescaline, LSD and DMT have given rise to mathematical theories that explain the biological processes that are disrupted by molecules like mescaline.
As with LSD, synesthesia can occur especially with the help of music. An unusual but unique characteristic of mescaline use is the "geometricization" of three-dimensional objects. The object can appear flattened and distorted, similar to the presentation of a Cubist painting.
Mescaline elicits a pattern of sympathetic arousal, with the peripheral nervous system being a major target for this drug. Effects last for up to 12 hours. So be very careful. If the dosage is potent enough, if can also effect the Weres.))
Water
Now as for drinkable water, seawater is frequently boiled in large cauldrons and pots with glass, forged from the bountiful sands around them, placed a foot or two above the top at a 45 degree angle that leads to another fresh and originally empty pot or cauldron. This way, the fresh water condensation collects on the glass and then drips down into the previously empty pot, creating fresh and very drinkable water. The other benefits of this process is that it kills most bacteria and any parasites in the water at the same time.
ALSO, the salt that was previously in the water is left behind in the pot. Which is scraped away and used to flavor foods, make jerky and various other things.