{"id":6962,"date":"2012-09-17T08:02:59","date_gmt":"2012-09-17T15:02:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/?p=6962"},"modified":"2013-02-02T18:53:37","modified_gmt":"2013-02-03T01:53:37","slug":"stalking-the-wild-asparagus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/stalking-the-wild-asparagus\/","title":{"rendered":"Stalking the Wild Asparagus"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There&#8217;s a bunch of watercress growing wild at the low end of our creek. And wild plums thick at the upper end. And stinging nettles in between, and all three of them delicious. I know this because I first read Euell Gibbon&#8217;s charming book on foraging for wild food 50 years ago.\u00a0\u00a0All these years later it&#8217;s still one of the best books on finding wild foods in North America. It won&#8217;t help you identify the edible plants and critters; there&#8217;s no photos, only a few minimal line drawings, and very little in terms of identification help. Gibbons assumes you&#8217;ll use other sources, including friends, to help you learn to distinguish them.<\/p>\n<p>What Gibbons offers in his books (including his sequels on herbs and beachcombing), is what to do with what you find, and why bother. He is a delightful writer who tells memorable stories about his life-long adventures in discovering wild foods and uncovering (through historical research) how they can be prepared. Gibbons is not concerned about the survival aspects of wild food. For him the adventure is culinary, and an antidote to white bread and office work.\u00a0It is hard to convey the paucity of cuisine in suburban America at the time he was writing. His passions helped open up American palates.\u00a0And despite the fact that you can buy dandelion greens, fern fiddles and wild mushrooms at some farmers&#8217; markets today, his books can still open your eyes to the edibles and adventures that lie unseen in your own neighborhoods. I enjoy re-reading him every now and then to be reminded of wild foods I overlook. I&#8217;ve used his advice many times.\u00a0I get\u00a0an immense and distinct satisfaction from adding even a small bit of wild food to a meal.<\/p>\n<div class='ctx-module-container ctx_default_placement ctx-clearfix'><\/div><span class=\"ctx-article-root\"><!-- --><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Classic guide to wild foods<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[176],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6962"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6962"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6962\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9686,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6962\/revisions\/9686"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tkdev.kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}