Katrina Blair - The Wild Wisdom of Weeds: 13 Essential Plants for Human Survival

Advance Praise for The Wild Wisdom of Weeds

Katrina Blair keeps it really simple and approachable.... Her recipes have inspired me to experiment with new ingredients in my ferments.

Sandor Ellix Katz , author of The Art of Fermentation , from the Foreword

Weeds used to be something you kill, eradicate, make war on, get rid of. But weeds are the plants that thrive, and The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is a much-needed guide to understanding the virtues these plants possess and the wisdom of knowing them, using them, and keeping them around. Weeds are clearly more important than we have imagined.

Deborah Madison , author of Vegetab le Literacy

Covering a small number of the most common edible/medicinal plants in depth, The Wil d Wisdom of Weeds offers information on these species and their close relatives from multiple perspectives. From identification, harvesting, and uses, through personal experiences and philosophy, to science and mysticism, this book has it all. Wherever in the world you live, whether youre a beginner or experienced forager, youll have lots of fun reading and using this book.

Wildman Steve Brill , naturalist and author of the foraging app Wild Edibles

The Wild Wisdom o f Weeds provides a beautiful and empowering exploration of wild foods, helping you to identify, prepare, and celebrate edible weeds that you might otherwise overlook with simple tips on medicinal use, and charming, nutrient-dense recipes. A must-have for any beginning or serious forager.

Jennifer McGruther , author of The Nourished Kitchen

This is the kind of information that should precede gardening and farming. Katrina Blair expertly shows that before picking up a hoe or spreading a single seed, we can turn to our yards, fields, and forests for so many of the foods and medicines we need to live well. The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is a gem and will be foundational reading for anyone wanting to live close to the goodness of this Earth.

Ben Falk , author of The Resilient Farm and Homestead

The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is one of those rare and important books that have the capacity to radically alter your view of a world you thought you knew well. Youll never look at weeds the same again!

Ben Hewitt , author of The Nourishing Homestead and The Town That Food Saved

I dont know anyone more qualified to write this book than Katrina Blair. Ive seen her go into the woods to harvest wild plants and weeds and then transform them into gourmet meals later that day that rivaled the best from any fancy restaurant. She definitely knows her stuff and I am proud she wrote The Wild Wisdom of Weeds .

Markus Rothkranz , author of Free Food and Medicine

Katrina Blairs great celebration of thirteen wild weedy plants that have followed human civilizations is a lively and passionate argument to change our attitude to weeds, to admire their resilience and high nutritional value, and to embrace them as a valuable resourceat the same time improving our mental and physical health by becoming closer to the natural world. A fun and enjoyable read.

Martin Crawford , author of Creatin g a Forest Garden

Katrina Blair has written a comprehensive guide to thirteen foraged food plants that we can find anywhere in the temperate world, diversifying our diet while giving sensible guidelines to ensure we leave our wild plant colonies healthy. She encourages us to grow the weeds we love to eat, so we can literally forage on our doorsteps, and teaches us their medicinal properties, making food our medicine, too. This is an engagingly written manual of radical self-responsibility, full of recipes and information, that belongs on every bookshelf.

Maddy Harland , editor and cofounder of Permaculture magazine

Common weeds can be even more nutritious and medicinal than our favorite vegetables. Three cheers to Katrina Blair for sharing the depths of such friends as lambsquarter and purslane! Release your inner goat and go graze. Use these fantastic recipes to become an inspired gourmet of wild things. This book radiates with thorough research and first-hand knowledge of plants that matter.

Michael and Nancy Phillips , authors of The Herbalist s Way and The Holistic Orchard

This may be the most important book you will ever read. Far more than just a book about foraging, it offers, with comforting clarity, hope for the future of feeding the world when before there seemed to be none.

Nomi Shannon , RawGourmet.com

Required reading for the survival of our species! What can we do to live more sanely in an increasingly insane world? Katrina Blair offers a new world of possibilities. The myriad brilliant insights and pragmatic solutions within The Wil d Wisdom of Weeds are essential and evolutionary.

Happy Oasis , adventure anthropologist and founder of Raw Spirit Festival

For more than a decade, I have been learning about the outstanding value of common weeds as survival food, as free and natural live foods with nutritive values far exceeding those of store-bought greens, and as sources of natural medicines to help restore health to bodies robbed of their vitality by the toxins, stresses, and poor diets of our modern world. There are thousands of wild edible plants on our planet, most of which are unpleasant to eat and difficult to locate or identify. Many of us wonder where and how we might best begin to learn to find and use these wild edibles. Katrina Blairs The Wild Wisdom of Weeds is the perfect handbook for taking this journey back to better health, vitality, food security, and peace of mind, by learning to collect and use thirteen common nutritious and delicious wild weeds that grow pretty much everywhere that people live. It is a fantastic resource, and I highly recommend it!

Matthew Stein , author of When D isaster Strikes and When Technology Fails

Copyright 2014 by Katrina Blair.

All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise noted, all photographs copyright 2014 by Katrina Blair.

All illustrations copyright 2014 by Jaime Becktel.

No part of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.

Project Manager: Hillary Gregory

Editor: Makenna Goodman

Copy Editor: Eric Raetz

Proofreader: Helen Walden

Indexer: Lee Lawton

Printed in The United States of America

First printing September, 2014

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 15 16 17 18

Our Commitment to Green Publishing

Chelsea Green sees publishing as a tool for cultural change and ecological stewardship. We strive to align our book manufacturing practices with our editorial mission and to reduce the impact of our business enterprise in the environment. We print our books and catalogs on chlorine-free recycled paper, using vegetable-based inks whenever possible. This book may cost slightly more because it was printed on paper that contains recycled fiber, and we hope youll agree that its worth it. Chelsea Green is a member of the Green Press Initiative ( www.greenpressinitiative.org ), a nonprofit coalition of publishers, manufacturers, and authors working to protect the worlds endangered forests and conserve natural resources. The Wild Wisdom of Weeds was printed on paper supplied by RR Donnelley that contains at least 10% postconsumer recycled fiber.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Blair, Katrina, 1969

The wild wisdom of weeds : 13 essential plants for human survival / Katrina Blair.