Spring officially arrives this week, and what better time for the release of Amy Stewart's delightful new book, The Drunken Botanist. As you're planning your garden, foraging for wild plants, or simply looking for a good cocktail recipe (and cocktail party conversation topics!), you don't want to miss this entertaining and illuminating guide to "the plants that create the world's great drinks." More

In Preserving Wild Foods, chef Matthew Weingarten and collaborator Raquel Pelzel celebrate wild and seasonal foods of the coastline, pasture, garden, forest, and wetland — and the preservation techniques that can make these treasures available year-round.
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Cloudberries, reindeer lichen, and black grouse aren't the sorts of ingredients everyone has in his or her pantry or local environment, but that shouldn't prevent home cooks and food lovers from being enchanted and inspired by Chef Magnus Nilsson's new cookbook, Fäviken. More

On the train into San Francisco last week, I noticed some cactus growing along the fences with brilliant purple fruits perched on the end of each thorny arm. It wasn't until I saw baskets of this same fruit at the market over the weekend that I realized what I'd seen: prickly pears! Have you ever made anything with this fruit? More

Blue elderberry wine is every bit as good as a grape wine—or so says Hank Shaw, forager extraordinaire. When blue elderberries are picked at perfect ripeness, crushed, soaked, and fermented, he likens the result to some of the "huskier, more brooding" red grape wines like Mourvedre and Petit Verdot. If this idea intrigues you, you're in luck! Mr. Shaw has provided a step-by-step guide to making your own elderberry wine, and since the elderberry season runs from July to early October, now is the perfect time to do it. More

I get really excited when I see berries growing on the side of the road. I inherited this obsession from my mother who, during our vacation each summer in northern Idaho, would go on a walk with a big bag and not allow herself to return until she had picked a thousand huckleberries. We'd make dozens of jars of jam, huckleberry pancakes, and frozen kiddie drinks. I don't remember us ever looking at a recipe. More

Something strange is happening in my back yard. In a summer with droughts that rival the Dust Bowl and a prolonged heat wave harsher than any in recent memory, the apple tree right outside my kitchen door is flourishing like never before. That is to say, it's producing a lot of fruit. More

Taking a road trip this summer? If you keep a look out, you could find yourself within easy reach of an afternoon fruit snack foraged right near the road! The following guide explains what types of fruit you're likely to find, and how to go about getting them: More

Who: Ben Jacobsen
What: Jacobsen Salt
Where: North Oregon Coast

Salt is so basic, elemental, and simple. It's one of the one of the oldest local foods, having been harvested by sea–faring people for thousands of years. You could argue that it is the one cooking ingredient with the strongest sense of place, locality, history and importance. Salt is essential. Ben Jacobsen believes everyone deserves hand-harvested sea salt, so he gathers buckets of brine from the blustery Pacific Ocean off the coast of Oregon (about 80 miles from Portland) and transforms them into glorious white crystals. More

Truffles! What else on this earth is hunted morning, noon and night in lush forests by men, women, children and dogs with the tenacity of Holy Grail seekers? I'd venture to say not a thing. Join me and the father-son team, Luciano and Christiano Savini, as we romp through the forests of Tuscany in search of this rare, precious, and mysterious fungus. (Oh, did I mention these two were the ones who received the Guinness Book of Records award for largest truffle ever found?) More