Dig for Gold

I recently bought myself yet another book for my already too large collection... Come to think of it, can a book collection be too big? Especially if one was a literature major?

Anyhoo, it's a book on foraging, a passion of mine that I would like to see more widespread. Far be it for me to say that one can feed oneself solely from wild foods, but foraging is a wonderful way to supplement one's diet with foods that are not available commercially. Many wild foods are extremely nutritious, and packed with flavours that cannot be found anywhere else. Foraged foods are perhaps too scarce to become a staple, but they are great for livening up boring fares. On the plus side, foraging eally connects you to the passing season, and sharpens your awareness of the environment you live in. And you really cannot beat the pleasure you get from knowing that the goodness on your tongue was free!

I have previously mentioned the seminal book by Euell Gibbons, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, but I have generally avoided making hard and fast recommendations because most of the books I've seen are too region-specific. However, this new book by Alys Fowler is quite interesting: Alys is one of my favourite garden writers. Trained in England and in New York, Alys takes on a more global and urban take to gardening, and her love of food colours all of her books. The Thrifty Forager is a good reference book, without the heavy details of a guide book. But what is particularly interesting about this book is that it approaches foraging from the urbanite's point of view: the books I've seen to date present foraging as a rural, or at the very least, wild area, kind of activity. Alys, on the other hand, is very much a city-girl, and sees bounty within the concrete jungle most of us live in.

Great reading if you are thinking of taking up foraging, or if you are a gardener waiting for the winter to thaw out...


Happy reading, and bon app'!