The Skillful Forager

The ultimate forager’s guide to working with any wild plant in the field, kitchen, or pantry—featuring plant profiles, harvesting and preservation tips, and easy recipes From harvesting skills that will allow you to gather from the same plant again and again to highlighting how to get the most out of each and every type of wild edible, trusted expert Leda Meredith explores the most effective ways to harvest, preserve, and prepare all of your foraged foods. Featuring detailed identification information for over forty wild edibles commonly found across North America, the plant profiles in this book focus on sustainable harvesting techniques that can be applied to hundreds of other plants. This indispensable reference also provides simple recipes that can help you make the most of your harvest each season.

A field guide/cookbook for foraging enthusiasts Delicious wild edible plants and mushrooms are abundant throughout North America, not only in the wilderness but in urban areas, too. Learn how to identify, harvest, and eat the tastiest plants in your backyard. Intended as much for the cooking enthusiast as for the survivalist, this book includes recipes that will transform even the most common edible backyard weeds into guest-worthy fare. Even experienced foragers will be impressed with plantain leaf chips that are crisper and tastier than kale chips. Dandelion flowers become wine, Japanese knotweed becomes rhubarb-like compote and tangy sorbet, red clover blossoms give quick bread a delightfully spongy texture and hint of sweetness.

“An invaluable guide for the feast in the East.” —Hank Shaw, author of the James Beard Award–winning website Hunter Angler Gardener Cook The Northeast offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Leda Meredith as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Northeast 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 New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Rhode Island.

A comprehensive and easy guide to bringing wild food indoors and new life to your cooking. Many home cooks want to experiment with wild foods and explore new flavors, but don’t know where to start—The Forager’s Pantry was written for you. This comprehensive and accessible book by Ellen Zachos takes readers through spices and herbs, flowers, fruit, greens, nuts and seeds, tubes and roots, and mushrooms, showing how some of the best ingredients come from nature itself. The Forager’s Pantry is for any home cook, chef, or foodie who wants to incorporate foraged flavors into their everyday cooking. This guide will start with individual ingredients before going into techniques, preservation, and master recipes, making foraged food both accessible and delicious. This book is for the adventurous home cook just waiting to get started—combine new foods with familiar staples, explore wild ingredients, and bring new life and excitement to your cooking.

For nature lovers as well as cooks, there's plenty to whet the appetite in this unique field guide-cum-cookbook. Starting with the first plants ready for eating in the early spring (watercress and nettles) and following the sequence of harvest through the late fall (persim-mons and Jerusalem artichokes), Kay Young offers full, easy-to-follow directions for identifying, gathering, and preparing some four dozen edible wild plants of the Great Plains. And since most of the plants occur elsewhere as well, residents of other regions will find much of interest here. ø 'This is not a survival book," writes the author; "only those plants whose flavor and availability warrant the time and effort to collect or grow them are included." The nearly 250 recipes range from old-time favorites (poke sallet; catnip tea; horehound lozenges; hickory nut cake; a cupboardful of jams, jellies, and pies) to enticing new creations (wild violet salad, milkweed sandwiches, cattail pollen pancakes, day-lily hors d'oeuvres, prickly-pear cactus relish). ø Reflecting the author's conviction that just as we can never go back to subsisting wholly on wild things, neither should we exclude them from our lives, this book serves up generous portions of botanical information and ecological wisdom along with good food.

Incredible Wild Edibles is an invitation to enjoy the best food on Earth. This guide provides complete information on 36 traditional fruits, nuts, herbs, and vegetables that have nearly disappeared from our modern diets. Rediscover these wholesome, super-nutritious, gourmet foods for free! In a humorous but authoritative style, the author tells how to identify these plants with confidence, where and when to find them, what parts to use, and how to prepare them for the table. He gives practical advice on harvesting and discusses safe and responsible foraging practices. Contains index, bibliography, glossary, range maps, foraging calendar, and more than 350 color photos. For all experience levels, from novice to expert.

“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.

Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West is a full-colour photographic guide to the identification, edibility, and medicinal uses of over 250 plant species, growing from Alaska to southern California, east across the Rocky Mountains and the Northern Plains to the Great Lakes. Herbalist and naturalist Gregory Tilford provides a thorough introduction to the world of herbal medicine for everyone interested in plants, personal well-being, and a healthy environment.