The Wilderness Cure's Mo Wilde

Mo Wilde on Free Food: Wild Plants and How to Eat Them

Just in time for summer, we welcome expert forager Mo Wilde to guide you through natures bounty just outside your doorstep.

Whether you live in a city or in the countryside, a world of amazing, diverse wild food is at your doorstep. Not only is wild food free and sustainable; it is also jam-packed with nutrients and flavour beyond anything you will find in a supermarket.

In Free Food, award-winning author and forager Mo Wilde explains how to identify the plants, seaweeds, nuts and spices that are safe (and delicious) to eat, including foraging staples like wild garlic and lesser-known herbs like the fragrant sweet cicely. Organised into plant families, it gives you the tools to develop a deeper understanding of a plant's visual cues and their place in the ecosystem.

Once you have identified the plants, Wilde also describes ways you can eat them, whether that's making jams from wild berries or gluten-free flour from roots and nuts. The possibilities go on. You can deep-fry hogweed tempura; top your dishes with cow parsley; create a wild pantry of herbal infusions, spices and fermented drinks, and even tap beech trees for their sap.

Gorgeously illustrated, Free Food will awaken your sense of wonder. Whatever your lifestyle - whether you are an enthusiastic forager or simply curious about wild food - this book will inspire you to get outside and re-connect with nature.

Mo Wilde has had a life-long love affair with plants. She teaches foraging and is a founder member of the Association of Foragers, a member of the British Mycological Society and a Fellow of the Linnean Society. She also has a Masters degree in Herbal Medicine and runs a clinic specialising in herbal treatments for diseases. Monica lives in a self-built wooden home on 4 acres in central Scotland that she shares with 259 species of plants, 83 of insects, 62 bird species, 51 fungi, 13 wild mammals, 3 ferrets, 2 humans and 1 elderly cat.