Leela
Finding More than Mushrooms
Ready to go wild? Go off the eaten path and find your way back to the ultimate in food security, to the real Garden of Eden.
Foraging uncovers a benevolent world. No more starving amid abundance; no more fear of not enough.
Leela is Sanskrit for “play.” Foraging makes life an Easter egg hunt. And the funnest foraging is for fungi.
In this irreverent yet irrefutable guide, The Mushroom Man takes us back to a time before ID books, apps, and other modern crutches. Wild mushrooms are no harder to tell apart than store-bought produce. We’ve been eating them for seven million years BC (Before Costco). And the only field guide we needed had two legs.
With over 900 pages, countless anecdotes, and 950 illustrations collected over thirty years, Leela addresses the most common misconceptions about wild mushrooms along with dozens of questions left unanswered by top-selling ID books. Uniquely down to earth and entertaining, it offers find dining to health enthusiasts, courageous foodies, opportunivores, and armchair naturalists alike.
Come to where the flavor is. Seek and ye shall find these heavenly meats, right in your nearby woods or backyard, where shopping is a pleasure. This is one place you get what you don’t pay for.
At nature’s supermarket, the produce is always local, fresh, and free. Learn to gather your own; you’ll wonder why so few Americans do. After all, when you forage, it’s not just the food that’s wild and free.
available upon request
Alan Muskat, stand-up alchemedian and fungal fugleman, is the founding director of No Taste Like Home, the largest foraging education organization in the world.
I can’t decide if this book is more packed with wisecracks or wisdom, but I’d recommend it for either one.
Alan has a wonderful personality, and he is a great mycologist!
Paul Stamets (Fantastic Fungi)
Alan Muskat takes us back to where we came from: to Nature, the world of earth and water and plants, and also to our own true nature.
As Muskat shows, we can be civilized human beings, living in a complex technological culture, and remain connected with our roots at the same time. Having lost that connection is the source of much illness; re-establishing it is a path to health.
Dr. Gabor Maté, author, The Myth of Normal
If you must limit yourself to only one foraging book this year, choose this one by Alan Muskat. He’s like family. I wouldn’t trust anyone else. After all, if you can’t trust family, how did you get this far?
Gary Lincoff, author, Audubon Guide to North American Mushrooms
innovative, innervating, and informative
Dr. James Duke, author, The Green Pharmacy
delightfully conveys the joy and enthusiasm of hunting wild mushrooms
Leon Shernoff, editor, Mushroom, The Journal
very readable, especially for newbies
Britt Bunyard, editor, FUNGI
very interesting… a great interpretation
Dr. Tom Volk, mycologist
incredibly well written… has everything a new forager needs to know
Aurelia Kennedy, founder, Nantahala Outdoor Center
well-written, clever, informative and entertaining; I laughed out loud…
Deborah Morgenthal, Editor in Chief, Lark Books
brings a quick, constant humor and accessibility to a fascinating subject.
Michael Metivier, editor, Chelsea Green Publishing
friendly, thorough and entertaining… so much more than a field guide. Written in such a charming manner… accessible to a large range of people with different backgrounds. I love everything, including the illustrations. The best I’ve read yet.
Kimberley Cameron, literary agent
wonderful material… very clever! I am mightily impressed.
Lisa Ekus, literary publicist
I cannot begin to express how phenomenal this book is. It’s nutritional, political, comical, spiritual… it’s more multi-faceted than a diamond.
Rosiland Whiteley, RN
This is the book I’ve been dreaming of since the moment Alan first plugged me into the “woods wide web.” Every page captures the mushroom guru Alan is, the Lorax who speaks for the fungi. One of my most delightful memories is of Alan reciting mushroom poetry in the pouring rain, and this book brings that moment to life.
Whitney Dane, Chef
