Euell Gibbons tells how to find marvelous food in every coastal area of North America.This book contains numerous drawings for identification and abounds in recipes and cooking tips from chowders and clambakes all the way to simple epicurean treats such as boiled periwinkles dipped in melted butter.
Nika Hazelton
Euell Gibbons the author of Stalking the Wild Asparagus has written another great nature book about the marvelous food that the seashore and tidal waters offer for the taking, and how to cook it. I think Mr. Gibbons is one of America's most original writers about nature and food, and I've followed his advice about the gathering of periwinkles, edible seaweed and such and cooked them a la Gibbons with delicious results. The book is the best antidote for the tedium of mechanized modern life. I can't think of any other that has given me as much pleasure each time I've picked it up."
—The New York Times Review
Craig Claiborne
Euell Gibbons is a gentle-natured man with gaunt, Lincolnesque features. He is also an excellent cook and a naturalist who lives by the pen. His most recent book, Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop, is an affectionate account of his years in foraging the fruits of salt water and seashore. It is also a very good book for cooking by.
The recipes in The Blue-Eyed Scallop range from such seeming exotica as bluegill newburg and goose barnacle buns to plain steamed mussels and beach plum jam. The word seeming is used advisedly because this is a serious work that is a pleasure to read. The author is not only a man who is dedicated to nature but also one who writes with facility and flashes of wit.
Mr. Gibbons and his wife live a quite and cultivated life in a small Pennsylvania community called Beaverstown. For years they have been know to their friends and acquaintances for their "wild parties' in which freshly gathered foods from field and stream are brought into their kitchen for a banquet.
In the normal course of dining, the couple rely at times on the neighborhood butcher and grocer but their table is more often graced with salads made of sea rocket and purslane; breads make of hickory nuts, and desserts such as wild strawberries with cream and May apple chiffon pie.
"Stalking the Blue-Eyed Scallop would make a fine gift for anyone with a sense of adventure who lives by the side of a sea, cove or bay. It is a practical guide to the edibles that abound in and around tidal areas and these are more numerous than the average man dreams of. It is conceivable that, equipped with the book, an adventurous spirit might live for endless time with a minimum expenditure of money for food other than for sugar, salt, flour and other pantry staples.
—The New York Times
Matthew Alfs
Yet, to those who actually knew him, as well as to those who took the time to read his many books and articles, Euell Theophilus Gibbons (1911-1975) was nothing short of a naturalist and survivalist of the first rank, not to mention a great ecological hero--in a class with figures like Rachel Carson, Aldo Leopold, Henry Thoreau, and John Muir.
Careful historians have largely concurred with this assessment, noting that Gibbons was one of several prominent naturalists who ushered in our modern ecological renaissance. Indeed, Gibbons' writings, like Rachel Carson's, possessed true motivational power, spurring many people to relinquish the idea of "conquering nature" (the cultural war cry of the 1950s) and to start thinking about living in harmony with it. He was arguably even the chief one of a handful of nature writers of the 1960s and early 1970s who actually succeeded in bringing people back to the land, and thus to the very well-spring of true ecology. Here the Cleveland Natural Science Museum's Explorer newsletter perhaps put it best: "None can exceed Euell Gibbons in presenting the material in a fashion that makes you want to dash right out and try his advice."
In appreciation of Euell Gibbons' efforts, Susquehanna University awarded him an honorary doctorate. Then, too, Boston University has carefully preserved a collection of his notes and materials. Today, as well the Euell Gibbons Environmental Foundation continues the important wilderness educational work that he had started
American Survival Guide Magazine, September 2000
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
With this book along, there is no reason why anyone on the beach cannot live on practically nothing.
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