A Classic- Like a Thoreau, Will Rogers & Mark Twain Blend
Rating:
5 / 5
Euell Gibbons (1911-1975) had an adventurous life to say the least. His first intro to wild foods was due to his family's poverty when they lived in New Mexico. At 12 years old, Gibbons went out in the surrounding country-side to forage for edibles to help feed his family and a life-long love of wild food got off to a pragmatic start. One of his first discoveries was wild asparagus, hence the book title namesake.
This book is lyrical, yet practical and covers a sizeable array of wild foods- location, preparation, uses, etc. Recipes are given all through the book as well as some medicinal use info. One of Gibbons' favorite plants was the Dandelion (Taraxacum officinale). He relates how the Dandelion has been one of humanities longest known and useful wild foods and medicines and laments the assault by lawn care chemical manufacturers in trying to demonize this beautiful, helpful gift from Nature.
Gibbons traveled the world lecturing on the benefits of wild foods and was often seen on popular talk shows along with becoming a pitch-man for Post Grape Nut Cereal commercials where he treated America to hilarious daily line: "...taste like wild hickory nuts!". Gibbon's came across like a modern-day cross between Mark Twain, Will Rogers and Henry David Thoreau.
Those familiar with Thoreau's recently published last manuscript, "Wild Fruits" will see the close resemblance to "Stalking the Wild Asparagus"- both now classics and useful guides to Nature's cornucopia of wild edible gifts.
Ancient Cuisine
Rating:
5 / 5
Toward the end of ASPARAGUS, Euell Gibbons relates stopping during a stroll with his wife "at a couple of blooming elder bushes and collecting a bag of elder blow with next morning's breakfast in mind". Clearly, he has a recipe for this strange woodland product, elder blow. That's just one of the strengths of this very strong volume: plenty of recipes and tips to make wild fare taste good. Unlike today's whole food zealot, Gibbons doesn't hesitate to add refined food such as butter or bacon or sugar to his natural bounty. He is equally authoritative on cooking as on gathering, giving clear steps on making everything from stuffed grape leaves to fried frog's legs to Elder Blow Fritters.But for me the real charm of Gibbons is his evocation of how we ate in the past; far, far in the past when all food was wild food. He speculates that mankind has probably eaten "many millions of tons more of acorns...than of the cereal grains". Fascinating, when you consider that no groceries now carry this formerly prevalent staple, as though it were as useless as an 8-track tape. Gibbons reminds that dandelions were prescribed by primitive doctors to ward off diseases caused by vitamin deficiency long before we had any concept of a vitamin. He is mindful, as he plucks wild grape leaves, that the Vikings reported the presence of grapes on our continent a thousand years ago, and thought that important enough to name it Vinland. His style is what one would expect from an amiable, erudite grandfather, a member of one of the last generations that saw starvation in America, and that knew the delight of tasting fresh spring greens after a long winter without vegetables. His type is often dismissed as corny and hopelessly outdated because they persist in old habits that have been rendered obsolete by refrigeration and truck farms. But his type pays no attention to such ridicule, focussing instead on the joys of hunting and gathering--not just for the meat and free vegetables, but also the pleasure of a "creative protest against the artificiality of our daily lives" or the pleasure of observing a "child's unspoiled sense of wonder" at "living, at least in part, as our more primitive forebears did". Reading ASPARAGUS is like watching such a child.
A Charming Classic
Rating:
5 / 5
I find the contrived home-spun common sense and naivety of contemporary books to be irritating, but with Euell Gibbons as the narrator I'm taken back to a simpler era (which may exist only in the popular imagination, but which still has an impact on those of us who from time to time rush through life). Rather than a how-to guide for foraging, I read in this book a way of living which stresses that, to use an already overused but apt phrase, we all stop to smell the roses once in a while.
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