What's in the Book

As the first volume of a planned series of books, this one focuses on important, abundant and nutritious wild greens and vegetables. Almost all of them originated in and are native to Europe and are now wide-spread throughout North America. If you can harvest these foods from your local surroundings in a matter of minutes, you are more likely to eat them regularly than if you have to travel to reach more exotic habitats. That is how many of our ancestors ate on a daily basis—from foraged plants growing within a short distance from their kitchens.

The following plants are covered in detail from dirt to plate, each illustrated by many beautiful photographs: wild spinach, chickweed, common mallow, purslane, curly dock, broad-leaved dock, sheep sorrel, wood sorrel, field mustard, wintercress, garlic mustard, shepherd's purse, dandelion, cat's ear, sow thistle, and nipplewort. Photographs and varying amounts of information are given for an additional 24 plants whose coverage is found using the index.

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About the Author

John Kallas is one of the foremost authorities on North American edible wild plants and other foragables. 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. For more see the Author page.


About the Publisher

Gibbs-Smith: We publish books designed to "enrich and inspire mankind".

This Book is the Solution
To Your Learning Needs

The field of wild foods, first popularized by Euell Gibbons in the 1960s, has been languishing from neglect. For a field with so much potential, wild foods remain a mystery after almost fifty years of books on the subject. People buy books and try to study the subject but come away with little understanding, knowledge, or confidence in their ability to identify the plants. Fear of the unknown results in less experimenting and even fewer pleasant dining experiences.

Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate is a pictorial guide to edible plants. It reveals what wild foods are all about, showing dramatic evidence of their potential for use, and describes them in unprecedented depth, clarity, and in full color—the kind of depth that gives readers confidence in their ability to correctly identify, recognize and finally begin using plants. Three hundred sharp photographs illustrate: different growth stages from seedling to fully mature plant, close-ups of edible parts at their choicest, processing techniques, key recipes, and finished dishes. This book reduces fears of misidentification and takes the mystery, not the romance or fun, out of the discovery process. In no time, readers go beyond just tasting to incorporating these foods into regular meals. Then going beyond that to inventing their own new recipes.


Universal Plants Covered

Most of the plants in this book are found throughout the United States, southern Canada, Europe, the Mediterranean, and parts of Asia.


From the Back Cover

Edible Wild Plants provides what you really need to know to have your own wild food adventures. Whether a beginner or advanced wild food aficionado, gardener, chef, botanist, nutritionist, scientist, or a dieter with special needs, this book is for you. Author John Kallas gives you unprecedented details, maps, simple explanations, and multiple close-up photographs of every plant covered at every important stage of growth. You learn that a plant is not only edible but when, why, and how it is. He can turn you into a successful, well-fed, and happy forager anywhere in North America.


Summary

Edible Wild Plants: Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate is substantial in content, easy to use, cleverly written, and fun to read. Rich with photographs, it gives the reader the tools to be successful early and often at identifying, gathering, and dining on these plants. Based on the experiences of John Kallas, a life long, full time wild food researcher, teacher, and author, it catapults a novice into many early triumphs, provides plenty of new useful and practical information for the seasoned professional, and offers naturalists a resource from which to teach wild food concepts.