The Wild Gourmets: Adventures in Food and Freedom [Hardcover]

Have to agree with the other one star. There is a complete lack of detail and a lot of 'lifestyle' filler. Plus there are annoying things that they get wrong like the suggestion that when collecting razor clams you squirt brine down their hole because it revolts them and so they pop up. Funnily enough a sea dwelling animal isn't that revolted by salt water, it's in fact because they think the tide has come in and so come up to feed. Very lazy, hardly useful, shameless cash in.

Buy Hugh FW 'A cook on the wild side' for a good overview and match with a good field guide (because the pictures aren't great) is my advice.

Where do I start without having an embolism? Well, random hatred is going to pop into my head so forgive me while I vent myself online, grrr.

A tottering pile of useless, vain and idiotic ideas for city dwellers who want to get close to nature through the pages of some toss inducing dim wits who look good, like to have their photo taken in rugged poses but couldn't write a guide book to foraging/camping/cooking if they didn't have a team of photographers and graphic designers to fill in 95% of a book they want £20 for, retail. If you find this for 50p in a bargain bin it may be of some use for starting a camp fire, apart from that don't bother.

So why am I so angry about a book that I didn't buy but was given as a Christmas present? Well firstly I'll address the fact that it is useless-

So you want to go foraging for some wild food? You reckon the Wild Gourmets asking £20 for their guide may have the answer, the book is pretty thick after all so it must have some useful information contained within, WRONG! You get loads of graphics, pretty photos and what look like some monochrome splodges in the margins. Well those monochrome splodges are all you get to identify 'some' of the seaweeds, wild herbs, berries etc. that you are expected to live on in the wild. Yep, you get no colour photographs or clear instructions on where these plants grow, their ranges, locations or seasons. The other half of the plants casually discussed don't even have the benefit of the monochrome splodge- so happy poisoning or more likely happy wandering around scratching your head in a field cursing the day you decided to forgo the supermarket and decided to 'Go Natural' and survive on what you can hunter gather.

Secondly I'll address the charge of vanity I levelled at this crapfest. Yes you get loads of poses of Guy looking rugged and Tomi looking whimsical. Don't they both look so adorable, and does it cross your mind 'I wonder if they are getting jiggy in that tent?'. Well that's about all you get from the photos in this Hello/Ok mag purporting to be a cookbook/foraging guide. The colour photos are there to romantacise and not to inform, Thomi looking fey and Guy hanging upside down in his wellies ( I kid you not) are taking up the whole budget at the colour printers, hence for the info you really want the publishers only have enough left in their back pockets to give you those idiotic monochrome splodges in the margins!

Finally before I have a coronary, this book is thoroughly idiotic. Count the pages yourself, there must be 30 or more telling you how to shoot a bird or deer ( don't forget the gun license, the paperwork, gun cabinet etc) and five lines or less on Wild Garlic, Yarrow etc and no friggin photo to tell you what it looks like. But don't worry there are some monochrome diagrams to show you what a deer and squirrel look like. Of course there are some photos of nuts etc. but more often than not they have been inserted because they look good and the poor old graphic designer, coughing up the coke from a night out in Soho, doesn't know his nuts from his elbow and so has unhelpfully been unable to inform the dear reader that the full page image in front of them is i.e. a hazel etc. But that's not the most idiotic part, try tying a knot from the four pages supplied- ha, enjoy the fun while your camp is blowing off into the distance and you are still trying to work out the rudimentary clove hitch or you could erect a tent like wot they do- live all year in one of them single wall, cotton, TB inducing, wind catching kites, ha, ha try it and find out why I'm hysterical. However, they do tell you how to make the 'good shitter'- make sure when you go down to the end of the field to squat you take this book with you, it might finally come in useful!

Rant over, book up for sale second hand- the odd page missing!

I purchased this book soon after the TV series and the plan was to read it cover to cover. Boring, the book went on the shelf for about a year.... Then we moved into the country... Wow this book got a whole new life. I just wish I had the paperback instead so I could take it with me. Out and about picking wild vegetables, herbs and shooting the odd rabbit, pigeon and partidge, this book covers the lot and then how to prepare it and cook it as well. I must admit that not many of us get the chance to nip into the countryside with a high power rifle to shoot a deer like Guy Grieve (we would get arrested) so a fair bit of the book is beyond us but substitute rifle for air rifle and deer for rabbit and there is enough to interest most outdoor types. In short, if your idea of a day in the country is a visit to your local park then this is not for you, but if you are the "Great Outdoors" type with a bit of adventure inside you - Get the paperback!!