Feasting Wild: In Search of the Last Untamed Food

Two centuries ago nearly half the North American diet was foraged hunted or caught in the wild. Today so-called wild foods are becoming expensive luxuries served to the wealthy in top restaurants. Meanwhile people who depend on wild foods for survival and sustenance find their lives forever changed as new markets and roads invade the world's last untamed landscapes. In Feasting Wild geographer and anthropologist Gina Rae La Cerva embarks on a global culinary adventure to trace our relationship to wild foods. Throughout her travels La Cerva reflects on how colonialism and the extinction crisis have impacted wild spaces and reveals what we sacrifice when we domesticate our foods -including biodiversity Indigenous and women's knowledge a vital connection to nature and delicious flavors. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo La Cerva investigates the violent bush meat trade tracking elicit delicacies from the rainforests of the Congo Basin to the dinner tables of Europe. In a Danish cemetery she forages for wild onions with the esteemed staff of Noma. In Sweden--after saying goodbye to a man known only as The Hunter--La Cerva smuggles freshly-caught game meat home to New York in her suitcase for a feast of heartbreak moose. Thoughtful ambitious and wide-ranging Feasting Wild challenges us to take a closer look at the way we eat today and introduces an exciting new voice in food journalism. A memorable genre-defying work that blends anthropology and adventure. Published 2022.