"This is the ultimate guide, and Chris is the undisputed heavyweight champion of foraging in the South." -Sean Brock, author of Heritage and chef of McCradys, Minero, and Husk
The Southeast offers a veritable feast for foragers, and with Chris Bennett as your trusted guide you will learn how to safely find and identify an abundance of delicious wild plants. The plant profiles in Southeast Foraging include clear, color photographs, identification tips, guidance on how to ethically harvest, and suggestions for eating and preserving. A handy seasonal planner details which plants are available during every season. Thorough, comprehensive, and safe, this is a must-have for foragers in Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Part of the Timber Press Regional Foraging book series, this is for foragers in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and northwestern Florida.
Chris Bennett is a forager, writer, cheesemonger, and trained chef. He has worked with top chefs around the Southeast providing unique ingredients to the area's best restaurants. He has been featured in Birmingham Magazine, Cooking Light, Garden & Gun, Discover St. Clair, and The Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook. He is a frequent speaker, and was selected as one of Southern Living magazine's "50 Innovators Changing the South." Preface: Foraging in the Southeast
Foraging for wild edibles is undergoing a renaissance in the United States. Whether it is the logical extension of the farm-to-table movement or the result of decades of American reforestation, foraging is an experience no longer claimed just by hunters and campers. We are living in a fortunate moment when you might find local edible wild plants on your dinner table at an urban restaurant. You might be able to take a community foraging class taught by a local expert who lives in your neighborhood. You may even find yourself in your own backyard plucking some wild ginger for your morning tea or gathering dandelion greens for the evening's salad.
This rebirth of interest in edible wild plants is good for the landscape and for preserving our cultural heritage. Foraged foods require no packaging, spraying, or fertilizing to be at their freshest and most tasty. They need no trucking or shipping to reach your table, for this is as close to the land as you can eat. From the mountains of West Virginia and the Carolinas to the swamps of Louisiana and the coastal floodplains of Mississippi and Alabama, the Southeast is extremely rich and diverse in wild edibles. Wild plants are copious in wild lands; no logging, clearing, or plowing is required to create optimal growing conditions for these edibles. At the same time, this free food is available in all types of landscapes-urban, suburban, rural. The range of different plant habitats in the Southeast is staggering: mountains, foothills, plateaus, floodplains, swamps, marshes, grasslands, forests, ridges, valleys, lawns, meadows, overgrown fields, thickets, disturbed soil, seashores, riverbanks, lakes, and bogs. This makes foraging accessible to everyone, in every part of the region and within every budget. For many folks who are eager to reconnect with heritage cooking and lifestyles, foraging also offers a direct link to the past. Those hickory nuts and that garlic mustard you might find today are the same ingredients early Native Americans and European settlers were gathering for their own meals in days long ago.
Foraged foods are good for our bellies, too. Distinctively wild flavors are adding a new dimension to American regional cuisines. No one knows this as well as chefs in the Southeast, who recently have been cooking with and seeking out traditional and foraged foods with enthusiasm. Growing up in Alab
