Edible Wild Plants Wild Foods from Dirt to Plate

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.

Edible Wild Plants divides plants into four flavor categories -- foundation, tart, pungent, and bitter. Categorizing by flavor helps readers use these greens in pleasing and predictable ways. According to the author, combining elements from these different categories makes the best salads.

This field guide is essential for anyone wanting to incorporate more natural and whole foods into their diet. First ever nutrient tables that directly compare wild foods to domesticated greens are included. Whether looking to enhance a diet or identify which plants can be eaten for survival, the extensive information on wild foods will help readers determine the appropriate stage of growth and how to properly prepare these highly nutritious greens.

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 photgrapher, writer, researched, and teacher. 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.

For more information, see www.wildfoodadventures.com

Edible wild plants have one or more parts that can be used for food if gathered at the appropriate stage of growth and properly prepared. Edible Wild Plants includes extensive information and recipes on plants from the four categories:

Foundation greens: wild spinach, chickweed, mallow, purslane; tart greens: curly dock, sheep sorrel, wood sorrel; pungent greens: wild mustard, wintercress, garlic mustard, shepherd's purse; and bitter greens: dandelion, cat's ear, sow thistle, nipplewort.

Dr. John Kallas has investigated and taught about edible wild plants since 1970. He founded Wild Food Adventures (www.wildfoodadventures.com) in 1993 and is the publisher and editor of Wild Food Adventurer. He lives in Portland, Oregon.

The definitive work on harvesting and eating wild greens

Edible Wild Plants is a pictorial guide to edible plants that transports the reader into a world of new food possibilities. This is a genuinely useful new tool for the modern day forager, gardener, and food preparer. With today's needs and sensibilities in mind, this book reveals what wild foods are all about, showing dramatic evidence of their potential for use, and describes/reveals them in unprecedented depth, clarity, and in full color -- the kind of depth that gives readers confidence in their ability to correctly identify and finally begin using the plants.

The following plants are covered in detail, 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 give for an additional 24 plants whose coverage is found using the index.

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.

For more information on this book, other publications by John Kallas, and wild foods in general, see www.wildfoodadventures.com

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. Edible Wild Plants divides plants into four flavor categories -- foundation, tart, pungent, and bitter. Categorizing by flavor helps readers use these greens in pleasing and predictable ways. According to the author, combining elements from these different categories makes the best salads.