Wild Foods Books

The Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants is a good book to have on your shelf if you are interested in if you want to know what wild plants are edible. The book does discuss many different types of plants that grow out in the wild. The Field Guide does a good job of discussing where to find the plants, how and when to harvest, and a general guide of preparing the food. Where I find this book lacking is that there are no actual pictures of the plants in question. Before I chose to eat something out in the wild I want to be doubley sure I am picking the right plant. So I do feel it is a good guide and filled with information, I wished some time could have been spent on photography for my personal piece of mind.

I owned this before and I remember it seeming more durable but it is well written.

This book first caught my attention in the 70s but over the years I had lost my original copy so I repurchased one. It is still a good book even though the pictures are all rendered as art, which makes me a little nervous on critical IDs. I enjoy the details on preparing the plants, some of which were apparently as the native Americans had done. It is a very good companion book to some of the more recent works out there such as the North American Guide to Edible Wild Plants.

I have long owned the earlier edition and excitedly bought this new one. This book is a good idea but poorly executed. (Let me say right away that I am the author of an edible plant book, so you can accuse me of bashing the competition if you want.) The older edition was one of the books that helped get me interested in this topic, and it is sentimental to me, so I keep trying to like this book but find it difficult.

While it does contain a lot of good information and covers an excellent selection of species, it is also full of inaccuracies - and how can a reader know what to trust? Out of the dozens of edible plant books I have, this is one of the least accurate and I believe is based on comparatively little first-hand experience. The misinformation and omissions are too numerous to list, but here are a few examples:

Jack-in-the-pulpit and skunk cabbage cannot be simply dried to eliminate their calcium oxalate. Believing this would be potentially dangerous, and painful at best. They require prolonged extreme dessication under hot conditions (I have some of both kinds that have been drying for 8 years and still have calcium oxalate a-plenty), or prolonged baking (days or weeks). Also, the book does not even mention that eastern and western skunk cabbage are completely different plants, nor does it specify which one it is talking about. The documentation of their food uses differs.

The drawing of arrowhead tubers looks so dramatically unlike the real thing that you would never know if you found them. The jerusalem artichoke tubers depicted are a cultivated form, which looks and tastes quite different from the typical wild type.

This book is not very good for identification and doesn't even use the scientific names of the plants. The preparation sections are typically 1-3 sentences - not much at all. Much of the text seems like space filler, although it is a good read.

All of the info in this book is easy to find in other books - the author doesn't seem to contribute anything to this field. If you have this book, keep it and refer to it. If you are considering getting into foraging, don't make it a priority. Depending on your location, check out Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie, Steve Brill's wild food book, Abundantly Wild (Midwest), The Euell Gibbons books, or Nancy Turner's books for the Pacific NW. These are all much better. Get a tree, shrub, and wildflower guide to your specific region for ID.

Other reviewers caution that this text "should not be your only source"... I agree, but I'd guess that's true of any such reference.

I like this book for the most part and have gotten some good ideas from it but I only gave it three stars because it's confusing.
For example, in the 9 to 12 month section there is a recipe for honey glazed corn. Both of which are potential allergens. I'm pretty sure the US recommendation is not to give kids raw honey until after a year. There's also a lot of cheese, butter and milk in recipes in the 6 to 9 month section. Also confusing to me. Other books I have say to avoid dairy, especially milk until after a year.
The author is British, so maybe things are different over there? Whcih I also find confusing. The whole allergy thing is confusing to me and the introduction of certain foods. No baby food I've read does an adequate job of explaining the introduction schedule. Is the delay of certain foods because of the likelyhood of survivial if the baby has a serious allergic reaction of is it more to do with the ability to disgest certain foods due to maturity of the digestive system? Does any one really know? I've heard that in India watery peanut butter is baby's first food!
But any way, there are some good ideas in here, although I have largely ignored the age sections.
I also agree with the other posters and would like some healthier ideas, including more vegan alternatives and baking with whole wheat, flax, less sugar! How about no sugar.
Cathe Olson's books: Simply Natural Baby Food has some great ideas and she also has a good family cookbook called Vegetarian Mother's... something. Good healthy ideas for the entire family.

I read and re-read this book for the first year of my son's life. I got wonderful recipe ideas and advice on freezing, too. My son enjoyed my purees very much. I always get compliments on what a "good eater" he is.
As we're not vegetarians, I also used, "Healthy Baby Meal Planner". These two books were a perfect pair for me.
A very pleasurable, informative book. When I have number two, I'll go right back to page one..no new books necessary!

I was given this book by my lovely sister in law for my 2 children. Unfortunately, whilst the recipes sound lovely and they do work out, my family disliked all of them! I liked them but I am the only vegetarian in the house. I guess it depends what type of food you like. If you like the ingredients you will probably like the recipes. So if you are a vegetarian you will probably think it is great! Otherwise you may have a lot of converting to do.

When my family and I became vegan, I needed some help with recipes for children. I found very few specifically vegan resources, and hoped that this book might have some vegan recipes.

It doesn't, and since it doesn't claim to be vegan that isn't a problem.

The problem, for me, is that the ingredients butter, cream, whole milk, and cheese are all throughout the book, most recipes containing more than one of those ingredients. I really can't imagine a baby or toddler being healthy eating SO MUCH saturated fat and cholesterol. Yes, their dietary needs are somewhat different from adults, but not so very different.

I was not able to try the recipes, but I rather think it should be a recipe book celebrating dairy and eggs. If you want to feed your kids lots of full-fat dairy and egg products, this is the book for you whether you are vegetarian or not.

If you want low-fat, whole-grain, vegetable-containing foods children will eat, skip this book altogether.

Cute little drawings all over, easy to read. No nutritional info for each recipe. The recipes are organized by age of the baby. For instance, one chapter is called "First Flavors: 4-6 months" and another is called "Texture and Taste: 6-9 months."

The basic baby purees are pretty much vegan. Once you get into the recipes at 6 mos and over, there is a lot of egg, milk or dairy and will require adapting for a vegan family. Some of the adaptions are simple -- just using rice or soy milk instead of cow milk, others will require more experience with vegan cookery to make it come out right like in the baked goods.

I wonder about some of the selections because they use strong tasting ingredients like cabbage, curries, etc. An adult might enjoy them but I wonder how agreeable it would be for a baby? There is an effort though to keep the tone of the recipes simple and appealing to the average person.

The little smiley and unhappy faces with the boxes under each recipe is useful to check off how baby reacted to the food for future reference. Not a whole lot of margin space to write adaption or more comments though. Because a babies tastes change over time, I would have liked more space to note when I tried it again how baby reacted. Maybe several lines of happy and unhappy faces with a space to add the date?

Overall, it's a cute collection, and looks fun, but while I appreciate the effort to put together something that babies could deal with and create meals for adults that "pull out baby portions" easily for a toddler, I would have found it more useful if it had these things:

Notations for nutritional info per recipe.

If the recipe was vegan, ovo-, lacto- or lacto- ovo- with some kind of symbol

If the recipe freezes well with some kind of symbol

Space in back to write down allergies, etc.

More margin space to write down comments

was paper back not cloth bound was listed wrong.

Frances Densmore delves into herbs of our specific area (we live in Northern Minnesota) in a way that male ethnobotanicists never have or possibly could. We have a treasure trove of herbal medicines at our disposal and she gives us the information needed to learn how to identify and use these medicines.

Rather than going to a pharmacy or health food store and spending oodles of money on supplements and/or herbs which are quite possibly made from the very 'weeds' that you stumble upon on a walk through your woods, or state forests...learn about your areas own treasure trove...I only wish you all had access to such a definitive book.

I learned alot from reading this book. It's fairly short, and has lots of interesting tidbits. Though I feel it should be renamed--it doesn't deal with most indian cultures, but rather the Chippewa Indians, as they are who Frances Densmore made an extensive study of. The title is a bit misleading. One thing I felt that would have improved the book would have been a bit more of a clear listing of the information in the book, but then again, it is rather dated material.

Densmore was liked and trusted by Native people, and had the advantage of Marry Warren English, an extraordinary Native woman living on the White Earth reservation as her interpreter and in many respects, co-author. Her book reflects information from (mostly) women of the White Earth, Mille Lacs, Red Lake, Cass Lake,Leech Lake reservtions of Minnesota, Lac Courte Oreilles, WI, and Manito Rapids, Canada, over a period of more than 20 years. Densmore had recorded many songs, including songs of the Midewewin (Grand Medicine Lodge) and explains that "Songs having been recorded, the Indian were willing to bring in the plants (that were sung with for healing) and to explain the manner of their use." Unlike male ethnobotanists, she developed a close relationships with the women, and participated on cooking, crafts, and ceremonies. The Native women found her another practiucal woman who was interested in recipes, sewing techniques and patterns, and how the day-to-day lives of families were lived. "The majority of the informants were women, and they became interested in describing the former methods of preparing vegetable foods" as well as uses for dyes, fibers, and medicines. Densmore got qwuite specific info (unlike most ethnobotanists) about such things as "scraping the bark away from the root," how long it was to be driend, how uch water to steep it in (informants brought her their pails, to measure). On the more technical side, Densmore got something most of the ethnobots don't bother with: the native names. She took info gathering about as far as you can go without computers, ith cross-referenced tables. (I am computerizing this for native students now). For each plant, she got a specimen and had it IDed by a botanist. Many plants were also analyzed, but the techniques of that period do not provide vbery good phytochmeical info. For those not interested in these aspects, still this book gives a very thorough and interesting picture of Anishnab eg (lakelands wooland peoples) way of life, recording many tnings that still happen here today. Fancxes Densmore, a musicologist rather than an anthro, had a strong feeling for the people and the places. She writes "In June the air is sweet with wild roses and in midsummer the fields are beautiful with red lillies, bluebells, and a marvelous variety of color. In autumn, the sumac flings its scarlet across the landscape, and in winter, there are miles of untrodden snow. The northern woodland is a beautiful country, and knowing it in all its changin seasons, one can not wonder at the poetry that is so inherent a part of Chippewa thought." This well expresses the spirit in which she approached her researches among Indian people, and it is quite a different attidue than male anthros (and scientific ethnobotanists) have. Yet this book is an outstanding example for its time, and up to the easy avilabity of computers to ordinary people, of scientific, as well as literary, work. A bargain at Dover's pric, even though there are mail order sources offering it $1 cheaper. Very highly recommended to anyone interested in real (rather than fantasy) Native traditional life. I don't hve time to write reviews of her other books (I have msot of them), but recommend them all very highly, not only the "Chippewa" (Ojibwe, Anishinaabeg) ones. She brought the same spirit to all of them, and learned and preserved many details of the beauty of native life at those times, things no one else in the white world was interested in then, and perhaps they still aren't.

I haven't read this book, but after reading the previous review from the other reviewer, it seems clear she highly recommends this book and thus made a mistake with her 1-star rating. It seems a shame and unjust that sales of this book would suffer because of the reviewer's mistaken star rating when her review was positively glowing. So I'm going to balance things out -- at least this book will have a 3-star rating.

There are some excellent books about coffee and its history. Some books about its politics and some about the business it engenders. Most of non technical coffee books tend to be a little biased against the rich world. This one is no exception.
Poor world producers and rich world consumers are the two sides of the same coin and as a matter of fact, unregulated, this market tends to behave like any other market: supply and demand drives it.
The fact is that Vietnam entered the Market «en force» in the nineties and suddenly the coffee world changed. Supply shot up overnight and demand, although it increased did not set up the supply surge. Thus, prices went down.
For those who know the coffee market, boom and bust is the rule. A surge in price would trigger a surge in production as new land would be put to use for coffee growing thus generating a supply bubble. Therefore, prices would fall, land would be set aside for other uses and people would go out of business. With or without ICO that has been the rule throughout the XXth century.
The thing is that coffee works in five years cycle, that is the normal time for a coffee tree to grow to mature production, and therefore to yield new coffee on the market until there is too much. These cycles are extremely difficult to anticipate - those who would do it would be billionaires - and are subject to hazards like frost or markets busts.
But the nineties also saw the coming of age of specialty coffees and the glorification of the Arabica kind. Suddenly, Blue Mountain or Kona coffees would fetch stratospheric prices.
Another piece of the puzzle is that coffee distribution is one of the most elaborated and financially demanding businesses, conducing to a huge concentration of the market. It therefore appears as if big corporation was after poor people profits.
This is a market where no evident truths are forthcoming and the most useless thing to do is to blame the rich, amongst which the inevitable US of A.
That Vietnam wanted to have a try on cash crop production is not the fault of Capitol Hill, and that they were hugely successful still less.
I think this book which enlightens some aspects of the coffee trade is trying to find culprits but offers no solutions. In ten years time, when the trend will have reversed and back again, Whose fault will it be?

I recommend that you peruse the pages of this book at your local library or book store prior to purchasing. The author has compiled 308 pages of supposed facts, ideas, opinions, and "objective illumination." No doubt some of the data provided is true and the first 83 pages engross the reader to the beginning of the history of coffee. Unfortunately the narrative then seems to fall apart not because the information may be false or questionable, but rather the author goes off on tangents which seem to simply fill up the pages. Is Rimbaud's influence on Bob Dylan and Patti Smith necessary in the discussion of coffee?

There comes a point when the reader realizes that the author's writing is more of free flow of thoughts and assumed facts. Add to this the lack of citations and notes (which the author fully acknowledges) and the book becomes a jumble of many figures, dates, places and people that lacks organization.

Antony Wild's (2004) book is The Good Tea and Coffee Company book of the month for January 2007.

At the outset, it claims to be a 'dark' history and it certainly doesn't disappoint in that respect.

Though sounding a little extravagant in portraying coffee as the 'forbidden fruit' in the Garden of Eden of the Old Testament, each chapter touches on sensitive ethical issues which are moving ever higher on the priority list of European consumers.

Tracing the origins of the cultivation of coffee back to the Yemen and the early attempts to create plantations elsewhere by The East India Company, we are taken on a journey of unexpected complexity as coffee finds its way into the social and religeous infrastracture of every continent it touches.

By the end of the book, we've had a lot more for our money than simply history. Antony Wild makes us look anew at something we have grown up with and almost taken for granted. He gives us the tools we need to think again about coffee - to bring it out of the darkness.. and into the light.

Apparently "Coffee: A Dark History" was written by a man who didn't take his mother's advice and may actually have believed everything he read. Speculation, legends, myths, semi-documented accounts all seem to be given equal weight in this book.

One gets the feeling that the author wants to believe that coffee use goes back to antiquity, even though he tells you he can't provide any evidence of that. More than once there is a vague reference to the Biblical forbidden "tree of knowledge" - which could have been coffee. In fact, any time a dark beverage is mentioned in any ancient writings - it might have been coffee! Though a reading of the context usually indicates that it was not.

The book presents material such as the discredited Germany study from the early 90's which claimed an analysis of the hair of 3000 year old Egyptian mummies contained cocaine and nicotine (but not caffeine). There is no scientific or historical support suggesting the ancient Egyptians had access to New World plants like coca or tobacco. There is no reason to even give it a one line mention in the book. Elsewhere there mention of Islamic Arabs in the 5th century, although Mohamed wasn't born until the 6th century.

When so many of the author's "facts" are in error, it's hard to know when he may have gotten something right. (Even an blind pig finds the occasional truffle, right?) If you really want to know something about the history of coffee, consult at least two other books after reading this one.

To add insult to injury, it's not even a lively or entertaining read. Not recommended.

One of the psychological effects of stimulant drugs is that they
are disinhibiting. That is, they erode our reluctances and our
inertia, they lull the pinch-nosed censor that lives in each of
us and stir up the grinning satyr. (Certain stimulants, like
the amphetamines, are so radically disinhibiting that their use
is associated with violent and self-destructive behaviour ).
There is probably no inhibition that we lay down as joyfully
as shyness and in the customary doses, that's just what
caffeine does. You might say that it turns up the pressure
on the expression of stray thoughts and feelings while it
loosens the valve that holds them in.

It's no surprise then that coffee was introduced
to Europe along with a social setting that harmonized
exquisitely with its use. The setting was the coffee
house, a place where coffee was served and conversation
was encouraged. The first coffeee house in England was
founded (in Oxford) by a man named Jacobs who brought
both the beverage and the idea with him from the Middle East.
The brew and the place proved to be very popular with
the students . It was so popular as a focus for meeting
and discussion that the Royal Society was founded there
in 1650. Lloyd's Coffee House in London eventually became
the famous insurance institution.
It's likely that the stimulant effects of coffee
would have been less appreciated had there not also been
an environment where those effects could be seen as a
virtue. It's hard to imagine that the taste would have
been appreciated at all if it had been presented by itself.
The popular reaction to coffee was nothing like
a response to a new food and everything like a response
to a medicine. Authorities in Prussia and England tried
to ban coffee and coffeehouses. Voltaire drank an
astonishing 50 cups a day and claimed that he could
not have written philosophy without it. Immanuel Kant
was reported to have whimpered when his coffee was
delayed. Perhaps most instructive is the testimony of
Balzac whose 100 novels suggest a certain frenzied
hyperactivity. Speaking of the effects of coffee, he said

."..Ideas begin to move like the Grand Army
of the Republic on the battlefield. Things remembered
arrive at full gallop. The light cavalry of comparisons
delivers charges, the artillery of logic hurries up with
trains of ammunition, the shafts of wit start up like
sharpshooters. Similies arise, the paper is covered
with ink; for the struggle begins and is concluded with
torrents of black water, just like a battle with powder."

This feverish testimony isn't an endorsement of flavor,
aroma and body., it's a love song to a psychoactive drug.
In the same way, Wild's useful book concentrates its energy
on the social and economic aspects of
the coffee trade. This discussion is not well-documented and
has a bit of a testy anti-american bias. The (to me) central
question of how this bitter concoction came to be the subject
of a grand connoisseurship is left untouched.

None the less, a useful book to introduce the subject.

--Lynn Hoffman, author of THE NEW SHORT COURSE IN WINE and
the forthcoming novel bang BANG from Kunati Books.ISBN 9781601640005

and to me, that is extremely disappointing. there is essentially no way you could safely identify listed edibles from the tiny pictures, in most cases only 1 per edible- (in some cases none, particularly the mushrooms!)- although, the book does state in the introduction that it is not to be used as a field guide. had i seen the introduction beforehand, or even sample pages, i probably wouldn't have ordered it. i do believe that the information the book does provide is credible (unlike so many other misinformation-laden wild food books), as the author writes from experience. as to how good the recipes are, i've no idea.

I read about this book and find this book a very helpful in my training programme in utilization of plant genetic resources in germany.At first I was looking for such book that I can have all the information about the genetic resources I found in this book.Thanks.

I purchased this book because my stepson harvested some acorns recently and I scoured my large cookbook collection, to no avail, for any information on how to process them or use them in cooking. This book contains information on that and so much more.

This would be an excellent resource for a hunter because game and fish of many kinds are covered here. There are recipes for venison curry, venison meatloaf, rabbit pot roast, wild duck with orange sauce and cornbread stuffed trout. There is also a section on edible wild plants and berries, with recipes. Nutritional information is given for many of the food items listed in the book. Did you know that deer meat is loaded with B vitamins, for instance?

To me, one of the best things about the book is that 100% of royalties go to Native charities. In the foreword it says that the royalties have helped to support scholarships, a children's camp and substance abuse programs. So you can give a little back, and you get a great source for Native North American foods.

This book is largely useless as a guide for identifying wild edible plants. There are no photos and few sketches. I know many of the plants that are in it but would not be able to identify them with any confidence by the sketches in this book if I did not. It does have recipes in it but you would need another source to identify the plants used in them.

...the author ...described some of the recipes as possum stew (she actually uses the animals she runs down on the road) and wasp larvae appetizers. Unless you have a taste for the extreme and you loved the menu on the Survivor Outback series, you would do well to steer clear from this one. A good novelty item, I guess.

This book has NO recipes for possum stew and none for wasp larvae appetizers. What it does contain, in plenty, is an excellent survey of good foods to be found in the wild. Ms. Wood takes up where the late Euell Gibbon left off. Indeed, they were contemporaries and mutual respectors of each other's knowledge. Not merely a "find-this-flower" book, nor simply a cookbook nor yet a book of edible esoterica, Ms. Woods has assembled a volume of wild food lore. You can learn when and where to look for certain food plants, how to recognize them when you do see them, and finally, how to best cook and present them. These potentially dry details are presented in a homey, chatty way that kept me thoroughly absorbed. Though the plants described are mostly from the east coast and Appalachia, I found a great many identical to what I see in the heart of our country. This is a fine book which will rest, dogeared and well-used, on my shelf of "books that make life an enjoyable thing." I hope the next edition is twice the size.

I returned this book immediately. It was full of bible verses and proselytizing. I wanted to give it 0 stars (not 1) but the Amazon template wouldn't allow that.

This is not a field guide to identify plants, although it does have good illustrations. What is so good about it are the recipes! You will need other field guides, but get this for preparation of the plants once you have found them.

The title is a bit leading, and while although I found reading this book a bit enjoyable (mostly do to her recipes and general outlook/writing style) there are a few too many things missing.

All around not a terrible book, my three starts are likely a little more then I'd say, BUT I did read it all the way through and have read it twice (I think hoping I just forgot some of the information I read the first time though honestly).

I was very bothered by one section, I believe about mushrooms, that she even suggested to get a better guide because it wasn't with in the scope of her book. The title does say "The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants, Mushrooms, Fruit, and Nuts..." right?

I would suggest buying other books to read along with this one. In fact I'd suggest reading a lot of foraging books before attempting to do so yourself. Especially ones written about your area specifically. A class and some online research would also be of great benefit!

It's amazing how 195 pages can contain information about all wild foods (of North America?) complete with descriptions and from field identification to its uses to the kitchen. Makes no mention of ethical harvesting (photos of ginseng and her stories of the market price of ginseng actually work against the spirit of wild foods) nor warnings of poisonous lookalikes (rendering the book dangerous). Never to be bought or caught holding a copy, so please be discreet if you want to find out for yourself in a library or bookstore.