Smarty Pants From The American Scholar

Foraging has been part of the human story forever, and its post-pandemic resurgence is a return to ways of living with the natural world that have only recently been forgotten. Gabrielle Cerberville, or the Chaotic Forager, as she’s known online, is one of the voices championing the practice on social media. Her videos distill the beauty of living with the seasons into bite-size videos, many of them including recipes, from pine-syrup mugolio to simple dry-sauteed mushrooms. Her new book, Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life, combines personal essays with a kind of narrative field guide, along with—of course—dozens of wildly creative recipes, making for the book version of walking through the woods with a friend.Go beyond the episode:Gabrielle Cerberville’s Gathered: On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal LifeFind foraging workshops and videos on her website, TikTok, and InstagramRead Michael Autrey’s account of foraging for mushrooms, or Matthew Desmond’s reporting on the wild ginseng trade