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A review by amandakitz
Urban Foraging: Find, Gather, and Eat 50 Wild Plants In Your Neighborhood by Lisa M. Rose
4.0
I really liked the book and enjoyed the more culinary aspects of the herbs Im familiar with in a medicinal context. The recipes are lovely and I have a few already picked out I am excited to try. There were many pairings and ideas for appetizers, cocktails, garnishes, teas, and other applications outside of the written-out recipes. I would imagine that not every forager is making appetizers and cocktails regularly and thats definitely the audience, but there are also plenty of ideas for adding herbs into frittatas, salads, greens, soups, sandwiches, and an array of other things. One suggestion to add it to a radish-and-butter sandwich must be a Michigan thing; I had never heard of that one. And she is clearly quite fond of goat cheese, as am I, and it made its way into many entries.
If you're a first time forager, I would recommend getting an experienced person to join you or a more thorough guide for the actual plant identification as this book has mostly nice aesthetic pictures and not as many useful identification pictures. I was surprised that she included wild carrot because it is easy to confuse with hemlock, which she noted, but I also would not have been able to make a positive identification from that entry alone. Be careful in your identification and always double check and ask someone if you're uncertain.
I do wish someone in editing had caught the use of the slur "g*psy" in one of the titles and removed it and I was surprised that she would be unaware of that issue, so be warned that is there and I hope it is removed in later editions.
Overall I really liked it as a recipe and idea book, I'm excited to start making tasty dishes with the plants Im already used to using medicinally and a handful I haven't gotten a lot of experience with yet.
If you're a first time forager, I would recommend getting an experienced person to join you or a more thorough guide for the actual plant identification as this book has mostly nice aesthetic pictures and not as many useful identification pictures. I was surprised that she included wild carrot because it is easy to confuse with hemlock, which she noted, but I also would not have been able to make a positive identification from that entry alone. Be careful in your identification and always double check and ask someone if you're uncertain.
I do wish someone in editing had caught the use of the slur "g*psy" in one of the titles and removed it and I was surprised that she would be unaware of that issue, so be warned that is there and I hope it is removed in later editions.
Overall I really liked it as a recipe and idea book, I'm excited to start making tasty dishes with the plants Im already used to using medicinally and a handful I haven't gotten a lot of experience with yet.