Wild Edible Basics, Foraging with the Wildman Series, a 56 minute videotape in VHS format, by Steve Brill, produced by Chris Allan, Canopy Media, available through website www.wildmanstevebrill.com for $18, including US postage.

Steve Brill, "The Wildman," is a widely renowned guru for vegetarians and all fanciers of foods harvested in the wild. He is the author of three books on his calling, one of which (The Wild Vegetarian Cookbook) was reviewed in our Fall 2002 issue.

This introductory tape is advertised as the first of series on "Wild Vegetarian Cooking."

It features six commonly collected foods: black walnuts, black cherries, "lambs-quarters" (Chenopodium album), "chicken mushrooms" (Laetiporus sulphurous), burdock, and rose hips. Each receives about three minutes of identification clues, collection and preservation tips, and suggestions for use. The burdock is also featured in filmed preparation of a Japanese recipe with carrots, ginger, sesame, garlic and chili sauce (Kinpira Gobo).

A list of recipes in the forthcoming series indicates that mushrooms will be well represented.

Most of the rest of the tape is given over general advice on collecting and preserving methods, including recommended equipment. Incorporated are generous cautions not only about toxins and pollution hazards but also about poison ivy and tick-borne diseases.

There is an intriguing tour of Brill’s' pantry and freezer. There is a brief bit on identification guides, in which Brill generously recommends other guides in addition to this own. There is an account of his famous arrest a few years ago for consuming a dandelion in Central Park. (He was so grateful for the resultant publicity that he has now consented to give his park tours under the auspices of the Park Superintendent. Meanwhile, poor Larry Stickney is still out the $150 fine he paid for plucking a chanterelle in Oakland's East Bay Park, and no one has invited him to give tours there. In New York, the law has savoir-faire?)

There are also a few bits of sheer nonsense, cementing Brill’s renown as a bit of a character, but on the whole the tape is very professionally done. This is no pastiche of dissimilar footage, as some similar efforts have been. It is well planned, scripted, photographed and edited. The graphics are stylish and informative. The sound is clear enough even for my hearing aid to cope.

My only reservation is for the medium itself. A video recording can be great entertainment and possibly great inspiration, but even the best can be an expensive and time-consuming to way to acquire and use information. For identification purposes, just a couple of pages of the average field guide can have more substance than five minutes of a good video program. It is far easier to navigate information in the field guide, and a good color print has better detail than a television screen (even HDTV).

Food preparation, a sequential process, is another matter. Anyone other than a skilled cook probably will find an animated presentation more useful than a recipe with static data and illustrations. The issue is cost effectiveness.

If you can afford both printed word and video - if you are, for example, the program chair or librarian for a mushroom or native plant society - this introduction to the Wildman's forthcoming video series is well worth a look.