The Forager Handbook by Miles Irving (Ebury Press)
Publication date; 2 July 2009
A review of the forthcoming forager handbook
We were sent ‘the forager handbook’ a little while ago for review and I have to say that I didn’t really know what to expect, I’ve picked up so many books on foraging over the years and found that many of them disappoint, especially when they’re up against the stalwarts found in many wild food book collections. It’s good to be able to say that the forager handbook isn’t one that disappoints, although it’s not what we would usually expect from a foraging/wild food cookery book.
It’s a decent size hardback with about 400 pages and an old time, some might call classic binding that does work well to produce an attractive book that feels like a quality purchase, although it’s much more likely to be found on a coffee table than out in the wilds due to its size and weight.
The book is broken down into 3 parts:
PART 1 BASICS
Part 2 PLANTS (over 365 are covered)
PART 3 RESOURCES
There is some good introductory information to foraging covering the law, how to forage, soils, gathering and using plants amongst others. This is a good lead into the rest of the book and sets the tone for responsible foraging
The content, which is the real interest to most people is very good, it’s broken down into different species families, so, for example you would get all the plants in the ‘Dock’ family and then the ‘Figwort’ family at the start of each new section there’s a description that covers general information – Poisonous or not, growing conditions, characteristics etc that are appropriate to that pant type, then it covers the individual plants from distribution and habitat through to uses and recipes going into adequate details to get a great deal from your foraging.
The 300 odd pictures throughout the book are of high quality and they’re scaled if they’re not life sized which is great for helping identify them and the pictures are taken at the most useful stage of the plants life helping you to know when to gather as well as what to gather, the pictures are a strong point in the book, but also a weakness, they are all black and white and even though they’re good quality I do feel that having colour would have made identification much easier and well as helping our ability to recognise what’s around us form the pictures. The classic feel of the book should have been kept to the covers and not influenced the photography.
The resources section of the book is well laid out and useful for furthering ones interest and for fast identification of the information you want to get out of the book, with advice on where else to look for information as well as an excellent glossary.
Conclusion: Overall I like the book, I do think that it would have been better with colour photographs but even without it’s worth owning, although at a rrp of £30 it’s not cheap but you can find it cheaper if you look about.
Available from the 2nd July from all good bookshops
Publication date; 2 July 2009
A review of the forthcoming forager handbook
We were sent ‘the forager handbook’ a little while ago for review and I have to say that I didn’t really know what to expect, I’ve picked up so many books on foraging over the years and found that many of them disappoint, especially when they’re up against the stalwarts found in many wild food book collections. It’s good to be able to say that the forager handbook isn’t one that disappoints, although it’s not what we would usually expect from a foraging/wild food cookery book.
It’s a decent size hardback with about 400 pages and an old time, some might call classic binding that does work well to produce an attractive book that feels like a quality purchase, although it’s much more likely to be found on a coffee table than out in the wilds due to its size and weight.
The book is broken down into 3 parts:
PART 1 BASICS
Part 2 PLANTS (over 365 are covered)
PART 3 RESOURCES
There is some good introductory information to foraging covering the law, how to forage, soils, gathering and using plants amongst others. This is a good lead into the rest of the book and sets the tone for responsible foraging
The content, which is the real interest to most people is very good, it’s broken down into different species families, so, for example you would get all the plants in the ‘Dock’ family and then the ‘Figwort’ family at the start of each new section there’s a description that covers general information – Poisonous or not, growing conditions, characteristics etc that are appropriate to that pant type, then it covers the individual plants from distribution and habitat through to uses and recipes going into adequate details to get a great deal from your foraging.
The 300 odd pictures throughout the book are of high quality and they’re scaled if they’re not life sized which is great for helping identify them and the pictures are taken at the most useful stage of the plants life helping you to know when to gather as well as what to gather, the pictures are a strong point in the book, but also a weakness, they are all black and white and even though they’re good quality I do feel that having colour would have made identification much easier and well as helping our ability to recognise what’s around us form the pictures. The classic feel of the book should have been kept to the covers and not influenced the photography.
The resources section of the book is well laid out and useful for furthering ones interest and for fast identification of the information you want to get out of the book, with advice on where else to look for information as well as an excellent glossary.
Conclusion: Overall I like the book, I do think that it would have been better with colour photographs but even without it’s worth owning, although at a rrp of £30 it’s not cheap but you can find it cheaper if you look about.
Available from the 2nd July from all good bookshops
