Food for Free
A complete guide to help you safely identify edible species that grow around us, together with detailed artworks, field identification notes and recipes.
First published in 1972, this updated edition of Richard Mabey's cult bestseller has been revised to reflect the ever-increasing eco-awareness and popular interest in finding different, and more natural, sources of food. Each of the 240 types of fruit, nut, flower, seaweed, fungi and shellfish featured has its own identification field notes and artwork. Understand and learn about the fascinating edible species that you may come across and, with the help of the numerous recipes also included, find out the best way to pick and enjoy them.
Beautifully illustrated and written, ‘Food for Free’ will inspire you to take more notice of the natural harvest that surrounds us, learn how to make use of it and conserve it for future generations.
Richard Mabey is a naturalist and award-winning author and journalist. He won wide acclaim on the publication of the original Food for Free in 1972 – which has never been out of print since – and again with the publication of the colour edition in 1989. Among his many other acclaimed publications are Gilbert White (Whitbread Biography of the Year) and the ground-breaking bestseller Flora Britannica, which won the British Book Awards' Illustrated Book of the Year and the Botanical Society of the British Isles' President's Award and was runner-up for the BP Natural World Book Prize. He collaborated with Mark Cocker on Birds Britannica, and his book Nature Cure, described as 'a brilliant, candid and heartfelt memoir', was shortlisted for four prestigious prizes: the Whitbread Biography, the J.R. Ackerley for autobiography, Mind (for its investigation into depression) and the Ondaatje for the evocation of the spirit of place. He is an active member of national and local conservation groups and lives in Norfolk.