In this touching and informative memoir about foraging for food in New York City, Ava Chin finds sustenance...and so much more. Urban foraging is the new frontier of foraging for foods, and it's all about eating better, healthier, and more sustainably, no matter where you live. Time named foraging the "latest obsession of haute cuisine," but the quest to connect with food and nature is timeless and universal. Ava Chin, aka the "Urban Forager," is an experienced master of the quest. Raised in Queens, New York, by a single mother and loving Chinese grandparents, Chin takes off on an emotional journey to make sense of her family ties and romantic failures when her beloved grandmother becomes seriously ill. She retreats into the urban wilds, where parks and backyards provide not only rare and delicious edible plants, but a wellspring of wisdom. As the seasons turn, Chin begins to view her life with new "foraging eyes," experiencing the world as a place of plenty and variety, where every element--from flora to fauna to fungi--is interconnected and interdependent. Her experiences in nature put her on a path to self-discovery, leading to reconciliation with her family and finding true love. Divided into chapters devoted to a variety of edible and medicinal plants, with recipes and culinary information, Eating Wildly will stir your emotions and enliven your taste buds. A few dandelion greens here, some wood sorrel there, perhaps some daylily shoots thrown in for color and tang. Creating a meal from what some would call weeds was Chin’s specialty. The “Urban Forager” columnist for the New York Times, Chin happily spent her days like a rabbit, nibbling her way around the city streets and urban parks of her native Brooklyn. She did this not out of necessity due to impoverished circumstances but out of a passion for the healthy, diverse cuisine and healing properties native plants provide. She also did it out of a sense of loss and discovery. Abandoned by her father before she was born, Chin was raised by an embittered single mother and doting grandparents. Although she ultimately achieved professional success, her personal relationships failed miserably. Foraging helped her understand loss and rejection, and her poignantly candid memoir illustrates that one sometimes has to veer from the beaten path to find what one needs in life and in love. --Carol Haggas "In this instructive and often charming book, Chin, who wrote the Urban Forager blog for The New York Times, explores uncultivated tracts of land -- from Prospect Park in Brooklyn and Central Park in Manhattan to...a housing complex in Boulder, Colo. -- in search of physical and emotional sustenance....Studded with instructions for everything from identifying edible plants...to preparing a wild foods brunch..."Eating Wildly" should inspire readers to grab a box cutter and some baggies and head for the nearest park." -- The New York Times Book Review "Chin's story is as much about her personal journey as it is about the food, a pot-boiling mix of narrative and instruction. Sharply revealing, and, at times, uncomfortably honest, the book throws wide a window into a fascinating New York -- nee, American -- story, that's thrillingly voyeuristic to read and unbearably human." -- The Village Voice "A delectable feast of the heart." --Kirkus Reviews "From the first pages of Chin's memoir-with-recipes, you'll be rooting for her as she roots for wild edibles in NYC." -- MORE magazine "Chin's memoir is the story of finding when you've stopped looking so hard and offers practical advice for foragers of all experience levels." -- Starred review Library Journal Ava Chin is the author of Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal and the former Urban Forager columnist for The New York Times . She has written for the Los Angeles Times , Saveur , The Village Voice , Spin , and others. A former slam poet and activist, she is a professor of creative nonfiction and journalism at CUNY. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter. Follow her at AvaChin.com. Eating Wildly 1 The Search for a Wild Weed Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus ostreatus) I am walking along a secluded, wooded path in a park in Brooklyn—my favorite place to forage for wild edibles in the city. My backpack is filled with plastic bags, a worn field edition of Euell Gibbons’s Stalking the Wild Asparagus, and a box cutter that doubles as a knife. The wood mulch and dirt are damp beneath my sneakers as I make the slow climb up toward my destination. Down below, cyclists and joggers are making their way along the road that loops through the park, and I can hear the resounding clomp of a horse along the bridle path. In the height of early autumn, everything below is obscured by a rich tangle of leaves just starting to turn reddish gold in the morning light. A dog barks in the meadow. I pause under the shade of a giant oak tree, scanning a fallen lo