Wild foods

[Jeff Shaw]

Hi all, I am trying to find a book that contains what wild foods to pick for each month of the year, if there is such a book, can anyone help please??

[Hedgehogpie]

Most people will immediately point you at Food For Free* by Richard Mabey, which is a good, pocket sized starting point for the beginner but there are plenty of other books out there too. I like Roger Phillips' Wild Food, and there's a newly titled book from Pamela Michael called 'Edible Wild Plants & Herbs: A Compendium of Recipes and Remedies' which I thought was well laid out and interesting.

Your biggest problem as a beginner will be finding a book that has the ideal balance of enough info to help you identify plants and fungi correctly, alongside examples of recipes and details of uses that the plant has so that you can actually try them. Most 'foraging' books don't really balance those too things very well, so I would personally make sure to look for those that provide good culinary or medicinal info and then suggest that you also get hold of at least one well illustrated plant guide and some similarly good works on fungi to cover the detail needed for thorough identification (here I'd recommend Roger Phillips' book 'Mushrooms', and Michael Jordan's The Encyclopedia of Fungi of Britain and Europe). Also make a habit of learning and using the latin names for your finds - common names are highly variable from region to region but the latin never changes so if you give a latin name everyone knows what you mean and can go an find information about it & believe me, this really helps!

Have a wander around Amazon books to get a feel for the number of titles there are out at the moment, but if you're in the UK beware of the American publications which might contain plants not found here. Check out the larger bookstores too, and have a good flick through potential books before you buy to see if you like the format. I have something like 70 odd books in my personal library that cover plants and their uses and as I continue to study them that number's keeps rising!

Sorry this is a bit long, enjoy your foraging.

[Jeff Shaw]

thanks that was very helpfull, I used to be a chef so most recipies no problem, just trying to know what comes out at what time of year, many thanks I will go book hunting.

[frozenthunderbolt]

In NZ there is a book called "simply living" by Gwen Skinner

[Dave]

Hi Jeff, there's a wild food calender in the Self-Sufficientish Bible (by me and Andy) - your local library might have a copy of the book and you could photocopy those two pages for about 20p. That and a field guide or as others have said food for free should get you started for now.
Have you seen plants for a future? It's a great resource for wild food www.pfaf.org, you can more or less think of a plant and type it in to see if it's edible.

Hedgehogpie offers some good advice and shows the dangers of foraging - it is addictive!!

Hedgehogpie - I can can sympathise with the books, there's always that one more to add to the collection!

[Hedgehogpie]

Too true Dave, and the worst thing is I have yet to add your book to the ever expanding collection!

I will be getting a copy of it shortly though, I promise....

[Freeme]

I bought the Food for free and it is a great book but I too wanted to break things down month by month. Last year I missed out as I injured myself, well my dog bowled me over and tore my Bum muscle, boy did that take ages to get over so now I am a bit cautiouse but usualy collect berries and herbs and stuff for my ducks and chickens. Still want to collect some nettles for nettle beer but not done that one yet!!!!

[Hedgehogpie]

Try looking out for this one: Pamela Michael's 'Edible Wild Plants & Herbs: A Compendium of Recipes and Remedies' , which has a calendar listing what's around and when. It's quite a decent book with a good mixture of culinary and herbal/medicinal plant uses. Not pocket sized I'm afraid though!

[becks77]

Hi, We found and bought a pocket sized version of Food for free very useful when out for walks.