Simpler Living
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

Some may ask, why forage when cultivated food can be purchased from the supermarket year round? Simply put, food that is picked at peak flavour and grown naturally, without toxins, just tastes better. What's more, collecting, or simply consuming, foraged foods helps nurture a whole new appreciation for nature.

Foraging doesn't have to be about replacing meals entirely. As writer and wild food expert Euell Gibbons wrote in his book, "Stalking the Healthful Herbs" (a follow-up to "Stalking the Wild Asparagus" and "Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop," both classic texts on recognizing, gathering and preparing wild foods), "We do not live on wild food but we usually eat some wild foods every day. We don't feel there is a special virtue in doing this -- it is just that I love to gather and prepare these delicacies and we like the taste of them. There are mere ornaments to our cuisine…."

Getting started
There are dozens and dozens of commonly known edible wild plants growing across North America, and yet the more I learn about foraging, the less I feel like I know.

But I found reassurance in this 1972 interview with Mother Earth News, in which Gibbons gives the following advice: "The novice simply cannot expect to start out and immediately gather all the wild plants in his area ... but it only takes about one minute to learn to identify one plant. If you learn the winter cress today, you can pick all the winter cress you want. After you've found and eaten it a few times, you won't feel any different about foraging a particular plant than you feel about selecting a head of cabbage at a supermarket or picking lettuce from your garden."

So, start small, perhaps with the easily identifiable and familiar wild edibles such as dandelions or wild berries. Get a reputable reference text (such as Peterson's "A Field Guide on Edible Wild Plants") or take a course.

But above all, never, ever eat anything you are not 100 percent sure of. And just because something tastes good, doesn't mean it is good. The notorious Death Cap mushroom, which causes liver and kidney failure, resulting in coma and death, reportedly has quite a pleasant taste.

Additional tips
- Learn when to forage. While wild edibles in general can be foraged year-round, many have a narrow harvest window. Don't bother looking for morels in fall (they're a springtime delicacy), and leave puffball hunting until the fall.

- Learn where to forage. You won't find the same wild edibles in a field than you would in an old orchard. Know the growing habitats of what you're looking for. Think twice about foraging for greens alongside a road, as plants can absorb lead from automobile exhaust.

- Learn how much to forage. Foragers are inherently conservationists. If you pick too much one year, next year's harvest will be depleted. If you pick enough for today and leave the rest to reseed and rejuvenate, you'll enjoy years of gastronomic enjoyment. It's a good, and tasty, lesson of how to live within limits.