Euell Gibbons rocks the Casbah
Brother Seable was an artist. He painted elves and fairies on the gate of Pixie Playland, the local kiddy-rides park, and created murals for the rapid-transit station. One Christmas he carved a huge, wooden rocking horse, sturdy enough to handle a hard ride from any one of his eight children—even sturdy enough for him to sit on. That's saying something, since Bro. Seable was not a small man. He was tall, big-boned and jowly, with a Grecian nose, peppery grey hair and a big, Santa-like belly, bracketed on each side by red suspenders. Art, however, was not similarly bracketed for Bro. Seable—it overflowed into every aspect of his life, whether he was painting, sketching, cooking, raising kids, working in the back garden or teaching high school classes. To him, any intriguing subject could be redefined as an art worth mastering. Just like every other kid at church, I loved him. He was one of the first people I met with the attitude of a Renaissance man.
Bro. Seable taught two classes at the high school—art and survivalism. I think he must have pitched the latter idea to the school administration, since it was hardly an orthodox area of study for a public school, but it didn't take long for survivalism to become the most popular elective class. During the school year, he'd teach the kids how to recognize, forage and cook edible plants and creatures; at the end of the year, they'd go on a week-long expedition where they were meant to get their food provisions from the land. Some years they did well, and other years they were reduced to living on grasshopper stew, but it was always an interesting trip.
There's no doubt Bro. Seable recognized a kindred spirit in Euell Gibbons. Now mostly remembered as the pitch man for Grape-Nuts cereal in the '60s, Euell Gibbons rose out of obscurity when his first book, Stalking the Wild Asparagus, was published in 1962. Euell (somehow it seems too formal to call him "Mr. Gibbons") was born in Clarksville, Texas in 1911. Much of his knowledge about wild food came from his mother, who taught him how to recognize edible plants when he was still young. During his teen years, when his father could find no work and there was nothing left to eat, Euell resorted to foraging all day to keep his family fed; once they survived for a month on whatever he could provide. Later in life, the foraging that had once been a necessity became his hobby and his passion. Euell became something of a self-taught wild food anthropologist, interviewing local experts, working with botanists, and doing research on all kinds of wild foods and their uses. He and his wife were known for hosting "wild parties" where the primary component of each item on the menu was a wild food.
It seems Euell longed for a writing career, but was unable to get publishers interested in his fiction. At some point, his literary agent suggested he combine his passion for wild food and his love of writing. The result was Stalking the Wild Asparagus, an informative, entertaining guidebook dedicated to teaching others how to recognize, gather and cook all kinds of wild food. At any other time, the book might have been passed over as a mere curiosity, but Euell was fortunate enough to go to press just as the "back to nature" movement began to gather steam in the United States. The book was a runaway hit, making the bestseller lists and turning its author into an overnight celebrity. Several sequels, including Stalking the Healthful Herbs and Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop, followed soon after, but the original remains the author's best-known and most popular book. Euell Gibbons passed away on December 29, 1975, but Stalking the Wild Asparagus remains in print today.
The book begins with some thoughts on wild food. Euell discusses the benefits of foraging, the joy of getting back to nature, learning to banish "food prejudices" and being open to new flavors. He points out that many people who do not consider themselves foragers have gathered wild berries growing by the roadside, and that the key to successful foraging is being able to recognize edible plants. He indicates that he has focused specifically on foods that are not just technically edible, but delicious when properly prepared. His writing style is forthright and casual, designed to draw in readers and excite their curiosity about foraging.
Readers will recognize many of the foods described in this book: wild asparagus, berries, Jerusalem artichokes, onions, persimmons, fancy mushrooms and wild rice, to name a few. Others, like the day lily and mulberry, are primarily considered ornamental plants in North America, but are also good for food. What may be more surprising are the common weeds that Euell identifies as foodstuffs: burdock, Japanese knotweed, milkweed, wild mustard, pigweed, pokeweed, purslane and cattail. Not only does he describe where these plants grow and which parts are used, but he also gives tasty-sounding recipes for them. The black-and-white botanical drawings by Margaret Schroeder, while more sparse than I'd prefer, are accurately drawn and will help novice foragers to identify wild foods correctly.
The cattail, in particular, seems to be one of Euell's favorite wild plants: "For the number of different kinds of food it produces there is no plant, wild or domesticated, which tops the common Cattail." He immediately identifies six different parts of the plant—the bloom spike, pollen, rootstock core, sprout, root joint, and young peeled shoot—that can be used in vastly different ways for cooking, baking or eating raw in salads.
However, Euell does not confine foraging to plants alone; in the chapter "How about the Meat Course?" he discusses some unusual wild game: opossum, raccoon, muskrat and woodchuck, with recipes for each. Unsurprisingly, he reiterates his comments on food prejudices at the beginning of this chapter, since these animals are rarely eaten or even recognized as food outside the Southern states. Additional chapters discuss the food value of bluegills, carp, crayfish (aka crawdads), frog's legs, turtles and terrapins.
In the penultimate chapter, Euell points out some wild plants with medicinal qualities: wild ginger, horehound, mullein, wild sage, witch hazel and many others. He describes how to soothe a case of poison ivy with jewelweed juice, and how to build up an immunity by eating the immature spring leaves of poison ivy every day for three weeks. (Wisely, he admits this remedy could be dangerous.) If you're interested in learning more medicinal uses of wild plants, Stalking the Healthful Herbs covers this subject in greater detail.
Although you can pick up Stalking the Wild Asparagus new at Barnes & Noble and other booksellers, try to look for a used copy first; there's little difference between the original edition and the various reprints. My own copy is the paperback Field Guide Edition, issued in 1970. I picked it up at a Value Village for the low, low price of 75 cents. (It was cheap because of a misprint—there's an extra signature glued into the book, so I have two sets of pp. 85-116. I guess the printer really wanted to reinforce the culinary benefits of the day lily.)
These days there are multiple books on foraging, many with beautiful full-color photographs, but somehow they're not as good as the original. There's something honest and appealing about Euell's informal writing style and unabashed love for his subject that makes this book a fascinating, fun read, even if you never intend to do any foraging. If nothing else, you have to admire how he took a
discipline born of desperation and spun it into an art form.
I'm sure Bro. Seable would agree.