One Woman’s Search for Personal and Vegetable Growth in New York City

A Look at Ava Chin’s Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal

By Morgan Noll

            In Eating Wildly: Foraging for Life, Love and the Perfect Meal, Ava Chin explores wildlife, family and personal growth in a journey that takes place in New York City. A lifetime nature lover and current resident myself, I was swept along in Chin’s unique experiences with the city’s natural outdoor wealth. As a participant in an unlikely but upcoming hobby, Chin scours the city’s green spaces looking for unexpected, wild edibles to add to her next meal. While foraging has begun to rise in popularity in recent years among an increasingly health conscious population, Chin’s relationship to foraging goes much deeper.

Some of her earliest memories include secretly eating the unexpected treasures she found sprouting from the earth as if they were placed there just for her. And perhaps they were: for Chin the discovery of wild plants and berries is sometimes spiritual, connecting her to the earth, past family members and herself. “Every act of foraging in the city, especially when I was about to take a bite of something I had only ever researched or read about, held a risk. But when coupled with my gut reaction that this was it –this was what I’d been searching for all this time—it became something more than that; it became an act of faith.” (Eating Wildly pg. 140) In this touching story of personal growth and reflection, Chin reveals the abundance of food growing wildly in New York City and provides her recipes detailing the best ways to prepare them.

Ultimately, foraging represents Chin’s deeper connection to the land itself and her reverence for the amazing surprises it can provide for us all. If you’re a foodie looking for a unique addition to your next meal, a New York City resident in need of a new way to connect with nature in the city, or just someone trying to get in touch with the earth that surrounds you, Eating Wildly can offer some insight.  

Interested in trying foraging for yourself with the help of the expert author? Join Ava Chin on Sunday June 1st on a foraging adventure in Brooklyn as part of OutdoorFest 2014.