Foraging: Discover Free Food from Fields, Streets, Gardens and the Coast

by Paul Chambers

“A useful and practical field guide” to finding delicious, indigenous edibles—full of color photos and including a forager’s calendar (The Countryman).   Long before there were convenient supermarkets, foraging for edible plants was as essential to survival as hunting and farming. For today’s forager, it’s a fun and practically free way to eat fresh and get to know your local environment. In Foraging, naturalist author Paul Chambers gives you the knowledge and knowhow you need to start going on your own foraging adventures.   Focused on the British Isles, this comprehensive guide includes lists of indigenous edible plants, arranged alphabetically and by region. A full range of environments are covered, from the fields and forests of the countryside to suburban gardens, city streets, and even the coast. Chambers offers practical tips for identifying, collecting, preparing, and preserving forageables, as well each plants’ historical, cultural, and medicinal meanings and uses.   Packed with helpful illustrations and trivia, this volume is the result of years of experience and a passion for naturalism, and shares more than one hundred plants suitable for eating.

332 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 1, 2011

About the author

Dr. Paul Chambers is a naturalist. Currently, he is a freelance writer and scientific consultant. He is also interested in foraging.

Chambers has worked in London's Natural History Museum and was a producer for the BBC series "Talking with Dinosaurs."

Reviews

[Jeshua · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very informative but very quickly became a schlepp. I'm not at the stage in my life where I can actually forage in large quantities for genuine cuisine and I can't cook or bake or anything, so a lot of stuff was impractical for me.
I'm hoping that later in life, if God blesses me with a family then I can dust off this book and its pages will be much more useful and fun.

N.B. I went through a long period when I had returned this book to the library and didn't take it back out.