About this item
Foraged delicacies have become the latest foodie obsession. Wild edibles collected by professional foragers are proliferating on the plates of top-tier restaurants because they offer novel and ultra-fresh sensations for the tongue, and they frequently taste more flavorful than farmed foods. For people seeking new food experiences and wanting to forage for themselves, Idiot's Guides: Foraging shows how to find wild edibles and when and how to harvest them. Includes 30 tasty recipes that describe how to prepare these wild foods. * Includes common plants all across North America. * Covers positive plant identification. * Multiple large, full-color photos identify each plant (including the mature plant, how it looks at various stages of growth, and how it looks at the right stage of growth for harvesting) . * Each entry gives facts on the plant's habitat, physical properties, which parts are edible, harvesting sustainability, preparation, storage, and poisonous look-alikes. * More than 30 delicious recipes. * Includes range maps and charts that list plants by habitat and by season.
About the Author
Mark "Merriwether" Vorderbruggen, Ph.D. has been a forager all his life. Both his parents were children of the Great Depression and their families foraged to get through those terrible times. Thankfully, this knowledge passed on to Merriwether. Knowing how to harvest nature's free food fed him through the poverty years of childhood and on through getting a master's degree in medicinal chemistry and a Ph.D. in physical organic chemistry. For the last eighteen years he's worked as a research chemist in the oil industry using his knowledge of natural products to develop environmentally friendly replacements for traditional oil field chemicals. More recently these skills have been turned to household chemical products, making your home safer. However, his evenings and weekends are spent guiding people back to nature's bounty, not only teaching them which plants are edible and/or medicinal but also proselytizing how foraging heals the body, mind, and soul...and prepares them for the zombie apocalypse! Since 2008 his website www.foragingtexas.com has been one of the top wild edible plant sites on the internet.
