Teaching experience: (died in 1975)
Primary region: Central and Eastern North America
Books
Stalking the Wild Asparagus
Written by Euell Gibbons, illustrations by Margaret F. Schroeder
Copyright 1962
Table of Contents includes:
- Some Thoughts on Wild Foods
- The Acorn: Ancient Food of Man
- The Green Amaranth: Invader from the Tropics
- Wild Apples and Crab Apples
- Arrowhead or Wapatoo: Favorite Food Plant of American Indians
- The Jerusalem Artichoke
- Stalking the Wild Asparagus
- The Sweet Birch
- Blackberries and Dewberries
- The Huckleberry and Blueberry Tribes
- Great Burdock or Wild Gobo
- Calamus: Confection, Cure-all and Salad Plant
- Supermarket of the Swamps: the Common Cattail
- Wild Cherries
- Eat Your Chicory and Drink It Too
- Wild Cranberries
- The Official Remedy for Disorders
- New Food from a Familiar Flower
- A Salute to the Elderberry: With a Nod to Scarlet Sumac
- Using Wild Grapes
- Ground Cherries for Pies and Preserves
- The Groundnut or Indian Potato
- Japanese Knotweed: A Combination Fruit-Vegetable
- Juneberries, Shadberries or Serviceberries
- Sweets from Trees
- May Apple, or American Mandrake
- The Common Milkweed
- Mulberries: Red and White
- The Cult of the Mycophagists
- Wild Mustard: Nature’s Finest Health Food
- The Wild Onion Family
- The Pawpaw: A Tropical Fruit Come North
- The Sugar-Plum Tree: Persimmon
- Beating the Pigs to the Pigweeds
- Poke: Wild Potherb par Excellence
- Purslane: India’s Gift to the World
- Raspberries and Wineberries
- The Sassafras for Food and Drink
- Economics of Wild Strawberries
- The Spring Beauty or Fairy Spuds
- The Common Sunflower
- Wildwood Teas
- Walnuts and Hickory Nuts
- The Nose Twister: King of Wild Salad Plants
- Wild Rice: Epicurean Delight
- Winter Cress: The First with the Most
- A Wild Winter Garden in Your Cellar
- Wild Honey
- How About the Meat Course
- Spinning for Bluegills
- How to Cook a Carp
- The Crayfish: A Real Luxury Food
- On Eating Frog’s Legs
- Turtles and Terrapins
- Herbal Medicine from Wild Plants
- The Proof of the Pudding
Review: Gibbons’ book is regarded as a classic in foraging literature. He enthusiastically shares his love of wild foods and provides many ways to cook them in recipes. The accompanying illustrations are accurate black and white line drawings. Some good plant field guides would be necessary to assist the reader in identifying the plants discussed in the book.
Available from: Bookstores and online bookstores.
Stalking the Healthful Herbs
Written by Euell Gibbons
Copyright 1966
Publisher’s Description: Here Euell Gibbons shows the reader how to enjoy the culinary and medicinal virtues of herbs and wild plants. Drawn from the author’s wide knowledge of plants as well as from the lore of native Americans and early settlers, the information is supplemented by nutritionists at Pennsylvania State University who worked with Gibbons on analysis of the entries.
Review from Publishers Weekly: Even those who have no intention of combing the countryside for cleavers, slippery elm or velvet dock will welcome the return to print of this 1966 classic guide to American wild herbs for its wealth of knowledge. Many since the late Gibbons (Stalking the Wild Asparagus) have written about the medicinal and nutritive properties of indigenous flora, and nouvelle cuisine has domesticated the notion of edible flowers, but the author’s good-humored approach to preparing pine tree needles, boiled nettles and similar treats establishes his as a uniquely charming voice in the self-important world of health foods (“I would like to think that it was sheer genius that caused me to get all the proportions right in my first attempt to make this fragrant ambrosia rose petal jam, but I know it was just blind luck”). Gibbons is the quintessential American naturalist, rhapsodic about nature but eminently practical as well–and never above looking for get-rich-quick schemes, as demonstrated by his experiments to produce a chocolate substitute from basswood. Illustrated. (Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.)
Available from: Bookstores and online bookstores.