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Foraging Edible Wild Plants

About

Here you'll find posts on different wild plants I eat and enjoy, with plenty of images and descriptions as well as  harvesting and cooking techniques.

Favorites

• Wild Fruit | Leafy Greens | Ramps | Milkweed | Hickory Nuts 
• Black Walnuts | Wild Caraway | Sweetfern | Angelica | Spruce Tips

Variety is the spice of life.

I harvest a lot of things on this website. Foraging can be intimidating, and often guidebooks only have one or two small images of plants.

It's a big leap of faith from thinking you know what something is to putting it in your body or serving it to others.

One tool in a kit

I've designed this website to be a culinary companion to other resources you may already have. Think of it as one tool in a set of tools you can use to learn about different wild ingredients.

I try to cover: what it is, how to identify, look alikes (if any) when and where to harvest, and what you can do with it in the kitchen.

Sam's books are the gold standard in foraging.

Other Resources

Other tools in your plant identification kit I recommend are:

• Foraging guides, especially Sam Thayer's.
• Going on forays and plant walks with local experts in your area.
• Social media groups on Facebook. Joining a group specific to your area can show you what people are picking. It's like having eyes and ears in the woods.
• Despite what many of my peers will say, Identification apps like INaturalist and others have a pretty good success rate of getting plants to genus.

Moderation and Safety

Once you've found a new plant, mushroom, or anything, make sure to only consume small amounts when you start. Start with eating 4 oz of cooked leafy greens, or 2 oz (raw weight) of mushrooms if it's your first time.