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On Foraging, Feasting, and the Seasonal Life
by Gabrielle Cerberville
From "the Internet's Mushroom Auntie," a stunning, illustrated guide to foraging and the bounties to be had, both personal and edible, in exploring the world around us and using the gifts it has to offer in our lives.
Foraging is becoming increasingly popular, from TikTok to tasting menus at the most exclusive restaurants around the world. People are discovering that delicious wild edibles are waiting for us in our own backyards, led by champions such as Gabrielle Cerberville. Known as "The Chaotic Forager" online, Cerberville argues that foraging is the past, present, and future of food, and the key to unlocking a reciprocal relationship with the land that feeds us. Through learning to engage with the world of wild food, she contends, we can also build a kinder, more respectful relationship with ourselves.
Gathered is an adventure in foraging that awakens us to the beauty of the seasons and the world we live in, heightening our senses to the crunch of snow underfoot and the sharp prick of a thorny bramble. Season by season, Cerberville takes us along through winning harvests and missteps, introducing us to the beautiful complications of foraged edibles and the various ways to eat and prepare them in delicious recipes such as Chanterelle Peach Pie with Basil, Wild Blueberry Ginger Gimlets, and Pulled Hen of the Woods with Juneberry BBQ Sauce. Cerberville also chronicles indigenous practices of honoring the earth, and their own long road to self-discovery and acceptance.
With this book as a guide, readers will learn to find, identify, harvest, and process wild food to use in their own kitchens and develop a greater kinship with the natural world. A memoir with recipes, color photos, and illustrations throughout, Gathered is an invitation to move beyond our comfort zones, open our eyes, and dig into the earth.
"…a deeply spiritual, thoroughly practical, and even life-preserving rumination on the practice of foraging the unbounded smorgasbord of plants and fungi in our cities and forests. Invoking the venerated foraging traditions of both Indigenous and enslaved North American peoples ("This is sacred knowledge," she repeats), Cerberville narrates her often serendipitous expeditions ... with a humanity and eloquence equal to the precision she uses to identify plants, their textures and flavors, and recipes that use them to their best advantage." —Booklist (starred review)
"An enthusiastic manual for finding, identifying, harvesting, and processing wild edibles...Cerberville creates lively accounts of her quests in fields and forests for assorted mushrooms, berries, flowers, buds, leaves, and nuts...A charming guide to nature's bounty." —Kirkus Reviews
"Gathered is an exquisite dish, prepared by a master, layered with all the ingredients that make up foraging itself: the deeply personal, the broadly historical, the botanical, the mycological, the precisely culinary, and the endless adventure of hunting ingredients." —Samuel Thayer, author of The Forager's Harvest
"Gathered is a glowing, vivid book that invites us to look more closely at the world around us — and to taste it, too. Gabrielle Cerberville writes with clarity, heart, and deep respect for the landscapes she explores. Cerberville shows us that the practice of foraging is not about taking, but about participating — about paying attention, showing gratitude, and approaching the natural world as a partner rather than a resource." —Molly Williams, author of Jane Austen's Garden: A Botanical Tour of the Classic Novels
This information about Gathered was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Gabrielle Cerberville, otherwise known as the "Chaotic Forager" and sometimes as "The Internet's Mushroom Auntie," is a celebrated foraging educator, community mycologist, and climate advocate based in the Charlottesville area. Known for her informative, funny, high-energy social media content, which has gained her nearly two million followers across platforms, Gabrielle has given keynotes, classes, and forays around the country. A current PhD student at the University of Virginia in the Music Composition and Computer Technologies program, Gabrielle researches the intersection between art, science, and our responsibility to understand, protect, and communicate with the natural world.
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