A Few of My Favorite Things
Mid winter is upon us and in Massachusetts that means the foraging opportunities are few. It’s a slow 2 to 4 week period each year when the berries and fruits that lingered through the first snowfalls have all been consumed by birds and other furry friends. The cooler weather fungi, like oysters and enoki, have gone dormant. And yet, the cold nights haven’t lasted quite long enough to encourage sap flow or create harvestable chaga.
This change of pace lends itself perfectly to research and self-education. On Sundays, I love nothing more than cuddling up next to a warm fire, sipping tea and reading a foraging book of some sort. My cookbooks smell of recent recipes, their pages stained with experiments gone awry. My field guides are dog-eared with rough, worn edges and enough notes along the margins to make reading it almost impossible…almost.
For a forager, knowledge is everything. As a self-taught enthusiast, having reliable resources is paramount to both safety and success. Even more so with today’s current distressing trend of AI-generated content from fake authors. With this in mind, I have spent the past few days compiling a rather robust and what I am sure will be ever-growing list of my favorite foraging-focused things – from identification books, field guides and cookbooks to mushroom clubs, websites, restaurants and content creators.
I always like to do something a little extra special for my loyal subscribers and readers, so I have highlighted a quick hitting list of my top three recommendations for the beginner, intermediate or advanced forager below.
| Beginner |
| Peterson Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern/Central America |
| Samuel Thayer’s Field Guide to Edible Wild Plants: Eastern & Central Regions |
| Ellen Zachos’ Backyard Foraging |
| Intermediate |
| Samuel Thayer’s The Forager’s Harvest |
| Russ Cohen’s Wild Plants I Have Known…And Eaten |
| Peterson Field Guide to North American Mushrooms |
| Advanced |
| Boletes of Eastern North America by Alan Bessette |
| The Complete Guide to Edible Wild Plants – US Department of the Army |
| Judith Hurley’s The Good Herb: Recipes & Remedies from Nature |
Want to see my full list? Take a gander at my new page here! Have a favorite author, book or something else that I may missed? Please share in the comments below!
