Urban Foraging

- Find wildly delicious food for free in the city with this modern field guide to foraging, containing 32 recipesHawthorn berry ketchup, cherry blossom shortbread, nettle ravioli, elderflower fritters, cowslip summer rolls... these are just some of the tasty and surprising dishes you can make from wild food found in your city. With stylish photography and expert advice from a professional forager, this book explains how to identify 32 easy-to-find plants in the city and cook up a wild feast. Leaves, nuts, berries, branches, flowers and even weeds are all in the mix, proving that, even in urban spaces, there is an abundance of delicious food waiting to be discovered (and devoured).

The Urban Forager showcases one of California’s richest and most rapidly expanding culinary cultures: the eastside of Los Angeles. Food makers representing the eastside’s diverse food traditions share beloved recipes, ingredients, innovations, and neighborhood resources. It’s a hands-on, stunningly photographed collection of inspiring recipes, profiles, and references for both novice and adventurous home cooks as well as the culinarily curious.

Your city is full of wild food, you just need to know where to find it. Take a stroll to discover the ingredients for a wild apple tarte tatin. Turn the lilac bush found in a vacant lot into a delicious, delicately flavored jelly for your morning pastry. Discover a new way to feast on fresh food. Urban Foraging is a stylish, scrumptious guide to wildcrafting in the city. You’ll learn how to find, identify, harvest, and cook with 50 common wild plants, such as chickweed, dandelion, echinacea, honeysuckle, red clover, and pine. Expert forager Lisa M. Rose shares all the basics necessary for a successful harvest: clear photos that aid identification, tips for ethical and safe gathering, details on culinary uses, and simple recipes will help you make truly fresh, nutritious meals.

In this engaging and eye-opening read, forager-journalist Becky Lerner sets out on a quest to find her inner hunter-gatherer in the city of Portland, Oregon. After a disheartening week trying to live off wild plants from the streets and parks near her home, she learns the ways of the first people who lived there and, along with a quirky cast of characters, discovers an array of useful wild plants hiding in plain sight. As she harvests them for food, medicine, and just-in-case apocalypse insurance, Lerner delves into anthropology, urban ecology and sustainability, and finds herself looking at Nature in a very different way. Humorous, philosophical, and informative, Dandelion Hunter has something for everyone, from the curious neophyte to the seasoned forager.

Chin, who writes the "Wild Edibles" column for the New York Times, goes looking for love, blackberries, and wild garlic in this wildly uneven, yet warmly exhilarating memoir. Trekking through Central Park and other urban beaten paths and backyards, Chin leads us on a journey of discovery as she searches for the tender shoots poking through cement cracks and hardy wild plants resisting winter's bite.--

Your city is full of wild food, you just need to know where to find it. Take a stroll to discover the ingredients for a wild apple tarte tatin. Turn the lilac bush found in a vacant lot into a delicious, delicately flavored jelly for your morning pastry. Discover a new way to feast on fresh food. Urban Foraging is a stylish, scrumptious guide to wildcrafting in the city. You’ll learn how to find, identify, harvest, and cook with 50 common wild plants, such as chickweed, dandelion, echinacea, honeysuckle, red clover, and pine. Expert forager Lisa M. Rose shares all the basics necessary for a successful harvest: clear photos that aid identification, tips for ethical and safe gathering, details on culinary uses, and simple recipes will help you make truly fresh, nutritious meals.

CLICK HERE to download the first two chapters from The Front Yard Forager * It doesn't get any more local than your own front yard! * Delicious and nutritious original recipes featuring horsetail, wild fennel, chickweed, and more * Many weeds pack a greater nutritional punch than store-bought vegetables The Front Yard Forager brings DIY harvesting right to your door, making foraging easy, accessible, and fun for everyone even in the middle of the city or suburbia. From the yard to the parking strip, in city parks or along municipal thoroughfares, food is abundant and free for the taking! The Front Yard Forager invites all of us to take control of our food by entering into the fun and delicious world of foraging. A concise field guide and recipe book, it showcases the 30 most readily found edible urban weeds. From dandelion to day lily, nipplewort to nettle, and pineapple weed to purslane there’s a salad bowl full of fresh edibles just waiting to be collected and put to good use. Each plant profile features an easy-to-use field identification guide, including photographs, as well as where to find the plant and what to do with it in the kitchen. Recipes range from simple and classic to practically gourmet, while introductory chapters and sidebars cover the hows and whys of foraging: ethics, nutritional information, harvesting, precautions, and more. Written by Seattle's Melany Vorass, a longtime instructor of urban foraging, The Front Yard Forager brings DIY harvesting right to your door, making foraging easy, accessible, and fun for everyone—even in the middle of the city—or suburbia. Winner of the Nautilus Awards 2014 "Better Books for a Better World" Silver Award!