About this item
"Wild spinach about 7 feet tall and fully mature. Well-fed wild spinach is well-branched and produces a huge quantity of seeds when mature. The leaves are still edible at this stage but are reduced in quality, taking on a somewhat off-flavor. According to research on other mature plants, the leaves on these older plants retain most of their nutrients and phytochemicals as long as they are still green." (Left: The author stands in for perspective, 2006.) Imagine what you could do with eighteen delicious new greens in your dining arsenal including purslane, chickweed, curly dock, wild spinach, sorrel, and wild mustard. John Kallas makes it fun and easy to learn about foods you've unknowingly passed by all your life. Through gorgeous photographs, playful, but authoritative text, and ground-breaking design he gives you the knowledge and confidence to finally begin eating and enjoying edible wild plants.
About the Author
John Kallas is one of the foremost authorities on North American edible wild plants and other foragables -- almost all of which are native to North America, or naturalized here from European origins. He's learned about wild foods through formal academic training and over 35 years of hands-on field research. John has a doctorate in nutrition, a master's in education, and degrees in biology and zoology. He's a trained botanist, nature photographer, writer, researcher, and teacher. He's taught thousands of people about wild foods, given hundreds of wild food presentations to a wide variety of groups, assembled a comprehensive wild food library, and documented hundreds of wild foods in photographs and notes. Between newsletters, magazines, academic periodicals, and the Internet, John has published over 100 articles on edible wild plants. In 1993, he founded the Institute for the Study of Edible Wild Plants and Other Foragables along with its educational branch, Wild Food Adventures. John's company is based in Portland, Oregon, where he offers regional workshops, and multi-day intensives on wild foods. John travels the rest of North America conducting field research, training special groups and organizations, and speaks at conferences and universities. Dr. Kallas begins the first of the Wild Food Adventure series of books with "Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate." The series is designed to provide readers with in-depth practical information they cannot get anywhere else. Books in the series are designed to be substantial in content, authoritative, easy to use, cleverly written, and fun to read. Rich with photographs, they will give the reader the tools to be successful early and often at identifying, gathering, and dining on the plants covered.
