Excellent book! I'm a complete beginner, but this book is so helpful! Very informative and delightful recipes. Thank you so much for the opportunity to read such a gem!

This is a unique book with excellent information and recipes. I doubt that I will be foraging anytime soon, but if I come across a good source of free fruit, I am ready!!!

When I received a digital ARC of Sara Bir's The Fruit Forager’s Companion, the only thing I didn't like was the fact that it was deleted after the review period and I didn't get to keep a copy.

I absolutely loved this book and plan to purchase a copy of my own.

As most of our blog readers know, our family forages a LOT. We put up about 300-400 pounds of wild foods a year. Much of that is fruits -- apples, pears, gooseberries, wild plums, bush cherries and of course elderberries (most readers also know that I've written a book about foraging and using elderberries and we forage at least 20 gallons of elderberries each year). I am constantly looking for new ways to use our fruits, especially as I'm not big on just making sugar-laden jellies or pies with everything. I'm also always looking to expand the fruits we forage. This book fits the bill on both.

The book provides general information on foraging, lots of color photos for ID purposes, info on each fruit, and a few recipes for each.

The fruits covered are:

apples
apricots
aronia
autumn olives
barberries
blackberries
blueberries
cherries
crab apples
cranberries
currants
elderberries
figs
gooseberries
grapes
ground cherries
hackberries
huckleberries
juniper
lemons
limes
loquats
mahonia/Oregon grape
mayhaws
mulberries
oranges
passionfruit
pawpaws
peaches
pears
persimmons
plums
pomegranates
prickly pears
quince
raspberries
rose hips
serviceberries
spicebush
strawberries
sumac

Not only are these fruits covered in detail, but the book also highlights poisonous look-alikes to avoid.

Many of these fruits aren't in our area (zone 4 Minnesota) but enough of them are to make this book invaluable. (For readers in our area, I also highly recommend the books Wild Berries & Fruits Field Guide of Minnesota, Wisconsin & Michigan (Wild Berries & Fruits Identification Guides) and Cooking Wild Berries Fruits of MN, WI, MI (Foraging Cookbooks) by Teresa Marrone).

Recipes include Meyer lemon kimchi, habanero crabapple jelly, pawpaw lemon curd, and fermented cranberry relish.

The author also includes recipes for foods to complement the fruits, such as kolachi (jelly filled cookies) and granola.

At 400 pages, this is a book that will be put to good use by foragers of any skill level.

Although foraging for fruit is a nice concept, most of us prefer to gather our fruit at farmer’s markets, grocery stores, or roadside stands. However, for those who want to get into the foraging effort, The Fruit Forager's Companion: Ferments, Desserts, Main Dishes, and More from Your Neighborhood and Beyond by Sara Bir, contains the information to get started. Although foraging isn’t a pastime for those who don’t walk through neighborhoods or places where fruit may be available for the taking, this cookbook contains dozens of mouthwatering recipes that can be used for foraged fruit, or for fruit legitimately purchased.

Gooseberry Fool is a popular dessert in Britain, and Bir’s recipe is as good as you can get in Britain. A favorite recipe from this book is the recipe for Caramel Apple Clafoutis; it is good exactly as written, but having rhubarb around that needed to be used, I added it along with the apples and ended up with a fabulous sweet-tart dessert that will be served over and over. If you find yourself with too many cranberries, you can make her delicious Cranberry Ketchup. The recipe for Italian Plum cake is great, and you can substitute several kinds of fruit for the plums.

Everything in the book isn’t dessert – the Pork Tenderloin with Rosemary Roasted Figs and Onions is suitable for company and is very good. And so is the Raspberry Glazed Salmon. In fact every recipe I have tried so far from this book has turned out picture-perfect. At least I assume mine turned out pretty enough for a picture. There are only a few pictures of the dishes, which is one of the few drawbacks of this cookbook. Nowadays, most of us want to see what we are making before making it. However, the directions are easy to follow and the recipes can easily be made by both beginning and expert cooks. There are recipes using not-so-well-known fruits, so it will give us an excuse to use something new. There is also good information on the fruits used in the recipes.

The Fruit Forager's Companion: Ferments, Desserts, Main Dishes, and More from Your Neighborhood and Beyond may inspire more of us to forage, but it will definitely inspire us to prepare luscious dishes with fruits. This is a fun cookbook to own, and has enough recipes to make a good variety of luscious dishes.

Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Now all I have to do is go in search of these treats! Sadly, I live in an urban area and there really is little to forage in terms of fruit. Growing up I used to forage sugar pears at abandoned homesteads, blackberries, strawberries, and even apples, It's difficult to find these yummy treats now, but I do keep an eye out for them! But If you happen upon some of these delicious fruits in your foraging, this recipe has lots of great recipes for using them! And the photos of the dishes make me wish I had free fruit to create them with, but farmers market and neighbors fruit trees may have to suffice..

I've recently gotten interested in foraging but didn't know where to start (well, and had to wait for winter to end). Having moved to a new state within the last year, I'm not that familiar with the plants available to me. This book helps give an overall picture of what's available in the continental US. (If you're in Hawai'i, I'm afraid this probably won't be of much use to you. She doesn't go out of her way to include Alaska, either, but as a born-and-raised Alaskan whose grandma took her out berrypicking every year, I know a lot of the berries she includes in "northern US" and other similar descriptions do, indeed, grow in Alaska.)

The book also has appealing, well-written recipes to help inspire you if you're not sure what to do with some of your foraged treasure. Most of them could be used with store-bought fruit, too.

Helpfully, the author includes warnings for some (mostly wild) plants that aren't safe to eat, especially some that look similar to other safe-to-eat plants. I can see this being especially useful for beginners like me and transplants to a new area who aren't as familiar with the local plants.

What it's missing: a chart summarizing all the edibles strewn throughout the book. At the beginning of each section on a particular fruit, there's information about where it's found in broad terms, such as northeastern US. It would be really handy if there were an overall chart summarizing this so it was available all in one place. It would be fantastically helpful if there were also estimates of when each particular fruit is ready to harvest. I know specifics aren't possible because of the size of the country we're dealing with, but general statements like "mid-summer" or "late autumn" would be helpful for planning foraging outings.

Overall, this is a really good intro to foraging and an excellent cookbook for foraged fruits. I hope to put it to use in Colorado when plants start fruiting.

Great pictures. Great recipes. And excellent content on foraging. Overall the author did an excellent job sharing the art of foraging - it's an under saturated topic so that also made me really appreciate the authors effort too.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39299133-the-fruit-forager-s-companion

This gorgeous culinary nature guide should find a place on the shelves or Kindles of anyone who enjoys cooking fruit. The author tells us how she walks and forages, mentally mapping out the locations of likely harvests and returning later to take advantage. Whether garden apple trees that are under-utilised, or wild berries (like the eponymous huckleberry of Huckleberry Finn) or pick your own raspberries, the fruit picker has the choice crop and it's free or cheap.

Look forward to the luscious recipes in the book, like buckwheat huckleberry buckle, with colourful photos of preserves and pies to accompany the illustrations; and photos of the growing fruits in situ. After all, you need to be sure what you are picking. A few toxic relatives - like nightshade - are shown so you can tell them apart. And we get a warning to watch out for thorns and poison oak.

The book is set in North America, where folks are lucky enough to have grapes growing wild, paw paws and lemons fruiting in random parks and bogs with cranberries and blueberries. Then there are odder natives like mahonias and mayhaws. If you have not explored your neighbourhood, maybe it's time you did. The history and notable uses of the trees and shrubs - gooseberries or elder, say - are listed, so you can get to know the plant. I found every page a delight, with informative but accessible language and enough detail for the botanist. The photos are an inspiration, whether to plant some shrubs in your garden or to cook and store the crops.

Some useful tools for picking - minimal - and cooking are listed at the start. Some useful resources are placed at the end, such as websites, books and a Youtube vlogger who eats the weeds. The whole is a delight.

I downloaded an e-ARC from Net Galley, which means I now have to go and buy my own copy. This is an unbiased review.

The Fruit Forager's Companion is a great reminder that despite the towers of concrete and miles of asphalt around us nature is still providing us with great foragable foods. It's great to remember that in that vacant field what is growing around us is in season and edible. Foraging isn't limited to the wilderness though and there are so many uses for the fruits on trees we have planted or inherited in and around our homes. The book provides clear and simple recipe which allow people to easily use their foraged treasures.

If you get seasonal fruits in bulk when on sale, grow fruits or get fruits from someone and never knew what to do with so many fruits, this is the perfect book for you.

This book makes me sad that I live in a fruitless suburban void, why are there no fruit of any kinds in people's yards I can't help by wonder. I love foraging, yes even in suburbia where mostly I am getting edible weeds out of the few pesticide free areas I know of, it makes me miss my childhood and early days where I had access to a lot more foraging spaces. Sadly I was never lucky enough to have access to fruits, some various berries and crabapples, and one sad persimmon tree that only ever gave me a single persimmon, were the main wild growing fruits I had access to.

If you are lucky enough to live in an area where foraging for fruits is an option definitely get this book! It is also useful if you grow fruit and run out of ideas on what to do with the harvest (save binge eating) the text is witty and enjoyable to read and full of useful techniques for a fairly large variety of edibles.