Foraging With Kids

A fun, informative guide to safely foraging with kids—featuring beautiful illustrations, plant facts and profiles, and 50 family projects for making the most of your wild edibles In today’s world of increasingly sedentary lifestyles and a growing detachment from the food that we eat, it has never been more important to encourage children to put down their screens, get outside, and engage with the natural world around them. Foraging with Kids is a fun, practical book for parents and their children that encourages families to interact with their environment and gain a practical understanding of the natural world through exploration and play. Featuring projects based around 50 easy-to-identify plants common in parks, forests, and hedgerows worldwide, Foraging with Kids makes the challenge of discovering functional flora just as achievable to those who live in the city as in the countryside. Once they have foraged their plants, children will be amazed by the diverse practical uses of their discoveries—from making soap from conkers or setting a delicious egg-free custard with plantain, to stopping minor cuts from bleeding with hedge woundwort. Children will take great pride in seeing their gatherings forming part of the family meal, and parents will be amazed at how even the most vegetable-averse child will develop an enthusiastic appetite for a meal that they have contributed to. Featuring beautiful hand drawings, essential information on plant facts and identification, and a diverse range of engaging family projects, this is the perfect book for anyone who wants their children to get outside, connect with nature, and have a lot of fun in the process.

There’s food growing everywhere! You’ll be amazed by how many of the plants you see each day are actually nutritious edibles. Ideal for first-time foragers, this book features 70 edible weeds, flowers, mushrooms, and ornamental plants typically found in urban and suburban neighborhoods. Full-color photographs make identification easy, while tips on common plant locations, pesticides, pollution, and dangerous flora make foraging as safe and simple as stepping into your own backyard.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “An imperative call to action” (Nick Offerman) to get children off their screens and into nature, with tips for bonding activities that teach the importance of outside time and build tough, curious, competent kids—from the New York Times bestselling author and host of the TV series and podcast MeatEater “A revelation for families struggling to get kids to GO OUTSIDE, or to just stop using the darn smartphone.”—Michaeleen Doucleff, PhD, New York Times bestselling author of Hunt, Gather, Parent In the era of screens and devices, the average American spends 90 percent of their time indoors, and children are no exception. Not only does this phenomenon have consequences for kids’ physical and mental health, it jeopardizes their ability to understand and engage with anything beyond the built environment. Thankfully, with the right mind-set, families can find beauty, meaning, and connection in a life lived outdoors. Here, outdoors expert Steven Rinella shares the parenting wisdom he has garnered as a father whose family has lived amid the biggest cities and wildest corners of America. Throughout, he offers practical advice for getting kids radically engaged with nature in a muddy, thrilling, hands-on way, with the ultimate goal of helping them see their own place within the natural ecosystem. No matter their location—rural, suburban, or urban—caregivers and kids will bond over activities such as: • Camping to conquer fears, build tolerance for dirt and discomfort, and savor the timeless pleasure of swapping stories around a campfire. • Growing a vegetable garden to develop a capacity to nurture and an appreciation for hard work. • Fishing local lakes and rivers to learn the value of patience while grappling with the possibility of failure. • Hunting for sustainably managed wild game to face the realities of life, death, and what it really takes to obtain our food. Living an outdoor lifestyle fosters in kids an insatiable curiosity about the world around them, confidence and self-sufficiency, and, most important, a lifelong sense of stewardship of the natural world. This book helps families connect with nature—and one another—as a joyful part of everyday life.

From Darwin to David Attenborough, many naturalists built their careers on a curiosity which began in early childhood. However, in this digital age our children can all too easily become isolated from meaningful contact with both the natural world and the people around them. Foraging for wild food can help refocus them and a day gathering edible plants, picked in the wild, can be a great way to reconnect with family and nature. With clear information, instructions and illustrations, this book looks at 30 edible plants commonly found in our parks, woodlands and hedgerows. It shows you how to identify them safely and gather them to make delicious recipes that are easy to create and tempting and nutritious for young children. The plants are organized by season and there are scrumptious things to make throughout the year including puffball kebabs, sea beet huff-a-puffs, staghorn sumac lemonade, sweet potato & chestnut burgers, and hazelnut chocolate spread. Once you've caught the foraging bug, you'll soon be looking for chestnuts to roast, hazelnuts to crack, or the best wild apple trees. Foraging is for life!

From fiddleheads to spruce tips, wild food can be adventurous and fun--with the right guide. In Eating Wild in Eastern Canada, award-winning author and conservationist Jamie Simpson (Journeys through Eastern Old-Growth Forests) shows readers what to look for in the wilds and how and when to collect it. Grouping foods by their most likely foraging locations--forests, fields, and shorelines--and with 50 full-colour photographs, identification is made accessible for the amateur hiker, wilderness enthusiast, and foodie alike. Includes historical notes and recipes, cautionary notes on foraged foods' potential dangers, and interviews with wild-edible gatherers and chefs. While gathering wild edibles may be instinctive to some, there is an art to digging for soft-shelled clams and picking highbush cranberries, and Simpson joyfully explores it in this one-of-a-kind narrative guidebook.

In this field guide to foraging wild edible plants, Sergei Boutenko (son of raw-food guru Victoria Boutenko) explores the health benefits of wild-harvested food, explains how to safely identify trailside weeds, herbs, fruits, and greens that grow worldwide, and shares his delicious, nutrient-dense recipes. Sergei Boutenko has been gathering wild plants since he was 13, when, early on in a 6-month hike from Mexico to Canada, he and his raw-food family ran out of provisions and turned to foraging for survival in the wild. Back in civilization, Boutenko was dismayed by the inferior quality of store-bought food and industrial agriculture, and began to regularly collect wild plants near his home and on his travels. Now, in Wild Edibles, he shares knowledge gleaned from years of live-food wildcrafting and thriving in harmony with nature. This practical guide to plant foraging gives hikers, backpackers, raw foodists, gardeners, chefs, foodies, DIYers, survivalists, and off-the-grid enthusiasts the tools to identify, harvest, and prepare wild edible plants. The book outlines basic rules for safe wild-food foraging and discusses poisonous plants, plant identification protocol, gathering etiquette, and conservation. Boutenko explores in detail the many rewards of eating wild flora: environmental protection, sustainability, saving money, economic self-sufficiency, and healthy living. He draws on thoroughly researched nutrition science to make a compelling case for the health benefits of a diverse, local-food diet that includes wild greens. The majority of the 60 edible plants described in this field guide can be found worldwide, including common-growing trees. Over 300 color photos make plant identification easy and safe. A chapter containing 67 high-nutrient vegan recipes—including green smoothies, salads and salad dressings, spreads and crackers, main courses, juices, and sweets—provides inspiration to join Sergei on the trail to radiant health. “Wild Edibles: A Practical Guide to Foraging, with Easy Identification of 60 Edible Plants and 67 Recipes has taught me that my backyard is full of free food! Way to go, Sergei.” —John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market From the Trade Paperback edition.

“Doug Deur invites us to discover the taste and history of the Northwest.” —Spencer B. Beebe, author of Cache and founder of Ecotrust The Pacific Northwest offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Douglas Deur as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Pacific Northwest Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska.