Newly released Second Edition of FORAGING WILD EDIBLE PLANTS OF NORTH AMERICA

WHY I WROTE MY BOOKS

“Foraging Wild Edible Plants of North America”

NEW SECOND EDITION JUST RELEASED

 By Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges is the author of many foraging books, including “Foraging Wild Edible Plants of North America,” “Guide to Wild Foods,” and others.  He has also been teaching ethnobotany for many years, in the field and classroom.  Information about his books and classes is available from  www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com. 

 The cheapest way to get a copy of the latest FORAGING WILD EDIBLE PLANTS OF NORTH AMERICA  is through Amazon. The retail is $24.95, and you can also get an autographed copy at  www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com. 

 

 Since my youth, I have been extremely interested in the ethno-botany of native Americans, and how food was obtained before modern agriculture.  I learned that in Southern California, “passive agriculture” was practiced where native plants were tended to get maximum production.  I put my notes in order and in 1978, my first book, “Guide to Wild Foods,” was released.  That book led to a request by Stackpole books to write a recipe book based upon my first book.

 Of course I said yes.  I included the plants that are most common over most of North America, and began compiling all my recipes, as well as testing new ones.  In addition, I added various stories about cooking on the trail, and the types of gear and condiments you should always carry if you want a good meal.  Then I spent considerable time trying to come up with catchy names for the various recipes.  The result a year later was “Wild Greens and Salads.”  The book sold a few thousand copies a year and was never re-printed after the first edition.

 Thirty years later, I started writing foraging books for the Falcon Guides.  They were aware of my previous cook book, and wondered if I could revise it with full color photos and lots of new information.  Of course, I said yes.

 I worked for another year to update the text, to delete some plants and to add new ones.  Also, I once again spent considerable time coming up with catchy names to the recipes, usually recalling the first time I tried the recipe.  This is somewhat ironic too, coming from a guy who hardly uses recipes, and generally just follows the basics of cooking that was taught to me by mother.  For those who wonder if there is actually any food value to plants found in the wild, there is a chart at the end of the book detailed the nutritional analysis of many of the wild foods in the book, based upon the USDA’s “Analysis of Foods.”  You’ll be amazed that wild foods are generally more nutritious than much of what you buy at the supermarket.

 This revised book was released in 2016, “Foraging Edible Wild Plants of North America,” focusing primarily on leafy greens for salads, soups, and other dishes. 

 Now, in 2023, the second expanded edition includes the wild nuts and berries that are found widely in North America, not just in a given locale.

 I was really happy with the latest result, and the way the color photos turned out.  It’s 228 pages full of wild recipes, and various ways to use wild foods, their nutritional value, and the ways to process the plants, with lot of new full color photos of every plant.  The books has lots of interesting recipes.  Those of you who have come to my wild food classes know the ways I prepared wild foods, so many of the recipes in this book will seem familiar. 

 This was a very enjoyable book for me to write, full of photos showing people preparing the various wild food dishes.  

 Some of the recipes’ names incorporate some memory of when I first came up with that recipe: Chardon Crepes (from when I lived in Chardon, Ohio), Big Bend Breakfast (a cattail dish my brother and I cooked up in Texas), the David Ashley Special (a salad of wild greens devised by David, and I wonder if David even remembers this?), Crisptado Fantastico (my unique chickweed tostada), and many many more.

 The 2023 second edition includes a section on berries, and a section of nuts and seeds, with plenty of recipes for those who are challenged in the kitchen.  It also includes a feature about Enrique Villasenor, the ambassador to the Prickly Pear, and a feature about how Euell Gibbons influenced me.

 EARTH BREAD

Perhaps my favorite recipes are the Lamb’s Quarter recipes, because I use that plant nearly every day, both the leaf and seed. It’s a relative of the now-popular quinoa.  

 Lamb’s quarter can be made into salads, soups, stews, and even bread when you use the seed.  You might like my Earth Bread made from the seeds. From the reviews of those who have tasted it, some like it, some do not.

 According to the book, “I’ve served this Earth Bread to many foragers and have had mixed responses. A few people did not like it and said it tasted like dirt. There have also been ecstatic responses from people who found the bread ‘virile,’ ‘deliciously wholesome and amazing,’ and ‘primitive.’”  You’ll have to try it for yourself and see what you think. 

  

EASTER AND THE MAN BEHIND IT

EASTER AND THE MAN BEHIND IT

In Search of the Historical Jesus

 

 

Christopher Nyerges

[Nyerges is an educator, and author of such books as “Extreme Simplicity,” “Enter the Forest,” and “Self-Sufficient Home.”  You can learn more about his classes and activities at www.SchoolofSelf-Reliance.com.]

Jesus!  What a man he was!  Perhaps the most amazing thing about Jesus – a man who is known and worshipped by at least a third of all humanity, and around whom our system of reckoning time revolves – is that there is still so much debate about who he was, what he did, how he lived, and what he believed.  Hundreds of differing Christian sects are stark testament to the fact that though Jesus might have had “one message,” that message has been widely interpreted over the centuries.

Let’s work through some basics. As an historical person, he can be placed in a specific time and location.    All historians concede that they do not know the birthday of Jesus, but it’s not Christmas day.  Most scholars suggest that Jesus was born in either April or September, in 4 B.C. or 6 B.C.

“Jesus” was not his name, just the English rendering of Yeshua. Did he have a full name? Yes, of course, and it was not “Jesus Christ,” which is a title, meaning Jesus the Christ, or Jesus the Annointed.  Historians say that the actual name was Yeshua ben Josephus, that is, Jesus son of Joseph.  Another version says it is Yeshua ben Pandirah, Jesus son of the Panther.   In Indian literature, he is referred to as Yuz Asaf (“leader of the healed”), according to ‘Farhang-Asafia”, volume 1. In the Koran, he is known as Isa (or Issa).   

WAS JESUS BLACK?

Ethnically, culturally, and religiously, he was Jewish.  But occasionally, a writer will suggest that Jesus was actually black, with such evidence as the preponderance of the “Black Madonnas” found throughout Europe.  The only Biblical evidence on this are the two lineages of Jesus provided, which uncharacteristically include women.

The key genealogies of Jesus listed in the Bible are Luke 3: 23-31, and Matthew 1:1-17.  In these lineages, we are told of at least four of the women in Jesus’ genealogical line.  These are Rehab, Ruth, Tamar, and Beathsheba.  Rehab (also spelled Rahab) was a Canaanite.  Tamar was probably a Canaanite.  Bethsheba, often referred to as a Hittite, was more likely Japhethic, that is, not a descendant of Ham. (However, this is not clear).   Ruth was in the line of Ham. Now, who was Ham?  Who were the Canaanites and Hittites? 

 

According to Genesis 9:19, all mankind descended from  Noah’s three sons: Shem, Ham, and Japheth.  Ham’s descendants became the black people who settled in Africa, and parts of the Arabian peninsula.  His sons were Cush, whose descendants settled in Ethiopia, Mizraim, whose descendants settled in Egypt, Put, whose descendants settled in Libya, and Canaan, whose descendants settled in Palestine. The descendants of Cush were the main populace of the Cushite Empire, which extended from western Libya to Ethiopia and Nubia, all of present day Egypt, and the Arabian peninsula into the mountains of Turkey.  They spoke several languages and had skin pigmentation ranging from dark black to medium brown. 

 

It takes a bit of study to ascertain who these people were – and there were other possible African women in Jesus’ lineage as well – but, in general, when we are speaking of Cushites, Canaanites, descendants of Ham, etc., we are speaking of Africans.  It is entirely possible that this wasn’t a big deal when the scriptures were written since Jesus’ racial background was common knowledge.

 

So, although Jesus had some African ancestry, his physical appearance was such that he fit right in with the Jews of that era, based on  several passages that indicate that Jesus not only looked like every one else of the day, but was also very average and normal looking Middle-Easterner, not sticking out at all. 

 

THE EARLY YEARS

The Bible speak of the young Jesus talking to the Rabbis in the Temple, sharing his youthful wisdom with the elders to the surprise of his parents.  Then there is no Biblical record of what he did as a teenager, and during his 20s.  We don’t hear from his again in the Bible until his appearance on the scene at about age 30, where he turned water into wine at a wedding feasts, and is depicted as a healer, prophet, and fisher of men. 

His religious observations would have been the regular observations for Jews of the day, and quite different from the observations of most Christian sects today.  The reasons for this are well-known.  The early Christians were known as Judeo-Christians (Jews who followed the Christ), and as the new religion became more and more encompassing, it eventually became Christianity by the 4^th Century. In order to attract ever-more followers, Constantine made Christianity the official religion of the Kingdom, and Christianized all the popular Mythraic (so-called Pagan) observations and turned them into Christian Holy Days.  Catholic, after all, means Universal.

Growing up as a Catholic, I studied Jesus, and wanted to be “holy” like him. I wanted to be like Jesus -- but what did that really mean?  There was so much about this person that was beyond my ability to know.  For example, what Holy Days would Jesus have observed? Was he an Essene?  Was he a Nazarene? What did these groups believe and practice? Did he have any Buddhist influence?  Who were his closest followers, the apostles?  What did he actually teach his close followers, beyond what is known from his various public talks?  Were his miracles and public healings actual events, or were they symbolic stories?  These and other questions have always swirled around this man called Jesus.

 

As a student of the real and historical Jesus, here are just a few of the many books I have found to be useful.

Garner Ted Armstrong of the Worldwide Church of God in Pasadena, wrote a book about the “Real Jesus,” and Jesus was described as a hard-working, athletic, health-food eating powerful man, a sort of health advocate Gypsy Boots of the past. But certainly Jesus was much more than that.

 

Holger Kersten in his “Jesus Lived in India” book presents a very different Jesus, one who is depicted on the Shroud of Turin, and one who traveled to India and studied from the Buddhists. In fact, the way in which the holy men of the Bible sought and found the baby Jesus is very much of the pattern of the holy men of Tibet seeking and finding the next Dali Lama, and Kersten puts Jesus in that very same pattern. 

 

Manly Hall, who founded Los Angeles’ Philosophical Research Society, writes that the patterns of all historical saviors (he cites at least 16) include more or less the same elements.  But Hall is less concerned about historical facts than he is in demonstrating that there is an extant prototype of human spiritual evolution.

 

According to Harold Percival in his “Thinking and Destiny” book, Jesus succeeded in re-uniting his Doer and Thinker and Knower, his internal trinity, which put him in touch with his divinity, which made him, effectively, a God.  Though Percival’s terminology is unfamiliar to most Christians, he is less concerned about the historical details of Jesus and more concerned about what Jesus did, and became, that made him a focal point of most societies on earth over the last 2000 years. According to Percival, the virgin birth, the miracles, and the resurrection should all be studied to find the inner meanings for our own individual evolution.

 

There is also a silly but interesting book that purports to show that Jesus was never a person but actually a hallucinogenic mushroom.  Don’t bother reading it. Another book suggests that there was no Jesus, that he is just a made-up person as a metaphor of astrological principles. Really?

 

I believe it is unwise (and incorrect) to suggest that a Jesus never existed because of the way his followers centuries later chose to remember him, and continued to overlay so many symbols onto the historical person.

 

Jesus lived, and it is not reasonable to assume that the stories of such a great one arose from mere myth or fabrication. Such a person lived, and his influence of what he did and said affected many people, and everyone seemed to “read” that message of Jesus in their own way.

 

Regardless of your religious background or belief, you are likely to be richly rewarded by delving deeply into the nuances of who Jesus was.  When everyone’s mind is upon Jesus and the Mysteries during the Easter season, I have found great value in viewing the “Jesus of Nazareth” series, and I even find value in such depictions as “Jesus Christ Superstar.”  Unlike so many who purport to follow in his path, I find the real Jesus one who was not dogmatic, but one who knew that only when we recognize each other’s humanity do we rise up into our own divinities.

 

 According to Holger Kersten, “Jesus did not supply theories to be ground in the mills of academia, about his path and message – he just lived his teachings!  Tolerance, unprejudiced acceptance of others, giving and sharing, the capacity to take upon oneself the burdens of others, in other words, unlimited love in action and service for one’s fellow human beings – this is the path which Jesus showed to salvation.”