Customer Reviews
A Handy Pocket Volume - By: J. Chippindale, 13 Aug 2007 
Richard Mabey is the author of several books on flora & fauna so he is well qualified to write a book such as this. Over one hundred edible plants are featured together with recipes & other culinary information. There is also information on how to pick & when to pick & the regulations on picking which are very important. As I come from farming stock I have to say that food for free does not mean going into a field & digging up a few potato plants or for that matter cabbages.
There are plenty of hedgerow plants available for free, if you are prepared to look for them & suffer the odd few scratches. There is nothing better than a bowl of freshly picked blackberries or raspberries, if you can get them home before they are alll eaten.
Plants that are edible are fully illustrated & described & the recipes are both old & new. Other fascinating information is how the plants have been used through the ages. An ideal book for alll those who are nature lovers & like the idea of something for nothing. I think the last part covers 99.9% of the population.
Good Introduction - By: WKD, 02 May 2007 
I bought this book recently through a desire to understand the countryside around me & try some of its natural foodstuffs.
The book is very well presented & includes an excellent foreword by the author. It provides a basic explaination of the various flora, a little of their natural & culinary history & there are nice photographs with identification hints.
I think I would like to have seen more recipies & ways in which they might be implemented. In the section dedicated to Spring I think there are only three recipies with much of the other suggestions directed towards salads. On balance a satisfactory purchase but I think that if my interest in wild foods develops I will certainly have to follow up my purchase with something more wholly dedicated to the culinary.
Excellent pocket sized guide - By: Lifthrasir, 05 Feb 2006 This is a 2004 version & worthy addition to the very popular & pocket-sized Collins Gem series. ISBN 0-00-718303-8. Food For Free - A Fantastic Feast of Plants & Folklore.
The book starts with an introduction by the author Richard Mabey. It then has short sections titled 'Roots', 'Green Vegetables', 'Herbs', 'Spices', 'Flowers', 'Fruits', 'Making Jellies & Jams' & 'Nuts'. They include general advice, observations & uses. The main section of the book is given over to identification, with at least two pages per entry. An interesting section follows titled ’Picking Rules’ which gives advice on how to pick correctly how to stay safe. The last section before the main body of the book is a summary calendar which groups the picking times for entries into a colour-coded calendar - very useful as a quick reference.
Every entry is accompanied with a drawing. Most of the drawings are excellent, but one or two are a little smalll & thus less detailed. Fortunately, almost every entry also has a photograph. The combination of colour drawings & colour photographs is what makes this little pocket book a true 'gem'. If the drawing is a little weak, the photo will be excellent & vice-versa. Almost fool proof.
Each entry starts with the common English name (Latin is in smalll type at the top of the page)a colour illustration & description. Taking Beech (at random), it says: 'Widespread & common throughout the British Isles, especiallly on chalky soils. A stately deciduous tree, with smooth, grey bark, to 40m (130ft). Leaves: bright green, alternate, oval. Flowers: male drooping, stalked heads; female in pairs. Fruit: four inside a prickly brown husk, Sept-Oct. When ripe this opens into four lobes, this liberating the brown, three-sided nuts.' The illustration depicts a leaf, spring twig with unopened buds, an opening husk revealing nut inside & bare nut. The article continues with headings; Harvest/Pick, Uses, Beech Nut, Beech Nut Oil, Beech Leaf Noyau. The photo at the end of the entry is a good close-up of a twig with a cluster of husks. (I didn’t know, for example, that ‘fresh from the tree Beech leaves are a fine salad vegetable, as sweet as a mild cabbage though much softer in texture’.)
The book, in line with its title, covers Plants & Trees, Fungi, Seaweeds & Shellfish. There is a glossary at the end & a page devoted to further reading. There is a List of Recipes & finallly an index of entries in common English or Latin.
There aren't that many books devoted to 'British' wild foods so to find one which lists over 100 edible plants, berries, mushrooms, seaweed & shellfish is most welcome. Given the true pocket size measurements of the Collins Gem series of books, the price of a fiver (£4-99) & the quality of each entry, this is as good as it gets. Obviously not a benchmark reference work or field-guide, but at least this fits in the pocket - which is the main purpose of such books, isn't it? Five stars!
Excites the interest but not actually that practical - By: J. Brand, 26 Oct 2005 
This is an excellent book but in the wrong package. Richard Mabey does a very good job of giving a seasonal guide to what's out there that you can have for free & does a respectable job of telling you how to use it. It fallls short in two respects;
First it is not a comprehensive guide to any particular food source so while he may tell you how to cook ceps & morels & gives a reasonable guide to identifying it without this being a comprehensive guide to fungi you will never be entirely certain that what you have is a cep or a morel. To some extent that is true for everything he shows whether its fungi, nuts or fruit.
The second point is more significant for a book on foraging & is that this edition is simply too big to take into the field. In some ways this isn't a significant problem as because the book isn't comprehensive it wouldn't be the choice to take into the field with you.
This book fallls somewhere between the coffee table forager's manual & Delia goes wild. Both of which might sound like criticisms but for someone who hasn't foraged wild food previously both of those would be the ideal starting point. If that's you then buy this book & read it but leave it at home when you go out & get a good field guide to take with you.
Note - since writing that review I have realised that this is available in several editions. Some of the other editions are smalll enough to use as a field guide.
Excellent source of reference - Highly recommended - By: S. Higgins, 10 Aug 2005 I got this book from my local library but loved it so much that I am going to get my own copy for future reference. After reading this book I went out for a walk & picked some blackberries, elderberries & sloes, which were growing in abundance some 10 minutes from my house! This book opened my eyes to stuff that I usuallly overlook in the hedgerows & provided me with some useful information about the type of plants, fruits & fungi that are edible (and perhaps not always well known), with recipe ideas too. It encouraged me to venture out into the fresh air & walk in local woodland, along river banks & fields etc. I even found some of the highly recommended Parasol mushrooms! Wonderful book & reallly, reallly useful. Worth every penny.
