About

Welcome, all, and thanks for visiting my internet weblog! The site was born of my long-dormant interest in foraging wild plants for food, one that was rekindled the summer after I moved to Colorado from parts west by way of a circuitous route of self-discovery.

I started writing about my adventures with wild food on my first blog, a writing-about-anything site that once lived at etmarciniec.com. After completing nearly 50 entries about edible wild plants, I realized I’d hit upon an interest area–both for myself and a couple of folks out there on the internet.

So, I decided to make a site dedicated entirely to foraging and preparing wild food. Wild Food Girl launched on June 16, 2010, and the site took on a life of its own shortly after it began.

In addition to posts about searching for, identifying, and eating various wild foods replete with scientific names and source citations, Wild Food Girl also became an outlet for some vivid and goofy storytelling about a few characters in my life, told in the context of our shared interest in wild food. This format developed naturally and I’m not sure what you call it but I sure hope you like it!

I have been foraging on and off for the past 25 years. In recent years I’ve experimented with wild food obsessively, to the point that wild foraged plants now make up a consistent part of my diet. I have great enthusiasm for finding, studying, identifying, tasting, experimenting with, and creating delicious meals with edible wild plants and I look forward to sharing my ongoing journey with you.

In the education arena I hold numerous degrees–a BA in archaeology, an elementary school teaching credential, an MA in technology education, and an AASI Cert III for all you forager-snowboarders out there. I like to pester a few established wild edible authors with questions via email, and those kind enough to answer are often quoted herein. Nevertheless please find that this is careful work, as I have tried my best to provide solid, useful, and safe information, making and noting errors when they occur. Likewise if you find an error or something in question, I would definitely appreciate a note via the contact form (click Contact in the links at top). Amidst it all, I hope you find the off-color one-liners at least mildly humorous.

Wild Edible Notebook

Part of my project has been the Wild Edible Notebook. During its first and most successful season (2010), I published a digital version each month during the local high country Colorado foraging season from June to November. In 2011 I started putting the Notebooks out again in May, but only finished two before a “real world” journalism job took me out of my natural plant habitat to spend 15-hour days at my desk on a regular basis. Happily, I am now back with the plants again. I’m starting the Wild Edible Notebook back up in April of 2013, with bold new plans to complete an entire season.

The Notebooks are organized by month, with each entry dated to evoke record-keeping of information and observations, but told in story-like fashion replete with colorful pictures, of my ongoing wild food journeys. My hope is that readers will be able to draw useful information from the accounts, while also appreciating the stories and jokes interspersed therein. Some accounts come from a place of experience, others recount new journeys down wild roads that may be familiar to some, and eye opening for others.

These Notebooks are available for free download, for a limited time as they are released each month, to email list subscribers.

To join, scroll to the bottom of this page and fill in your info. You’ll receive an email asking you to click on a confirmation link, and after doing that, you’ll get another email with the download link for all of the Wild Edible Notebooks current and past—in your choice of either a handy print-and-fold booklet or a file you can breeze through onscreen or print out one-sided. I won’t email too often and you can unsubscribe whenever you want.

But, one of these days, rest assured I will email you with an offer you can’t refuse!

Get Down with the Facebook:

There is also a WFG Facebook page for interested parties. Lively picture-laden wild food conversations occur there on a sometimes daily basis. Gossipy forager? Get gossiping! Or come by to get your wild food fix, share your knowledge, bone up on wild food news, or whatever suits your techno-foraging pleasure.

Got something to say?

Then say it–for worse or hopefully for better. How am I supposed to know what you think if you don’t say anything? Use the comment form, like the one below, on each post to leave public comments. Or drop me a line in private through the Contact link.

Thanks so much and happy foraging!

–WFG

Updated 4.13.13