April 7, 2022 • 31 mins
Do you know where your food comes from? In today’s world, it’s easy to be disconnected from the meals on your plate. But when you take the time to look around, there are so many opportunities to source your food locally. Sometimes you can even find it in your own backyard. In this episode, Alicia sits down with forager and self-identified mushroom auntie Gabrielle Cerberville, who shares tips and resources for getting into foraging as well as the benefits of shopping locally. She and Alicia explore how tapping into your local ecosystem can deepen your relationship with yourself, your community, and your food.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
What is it really gonna take to heal ourselves, our communities,
and our planet. I'm Alicia Silverstone, and this is the
real heal. Do you know where your food comes from?
Did it grow nearby or thousands of miles away? There
(00:26):
are so many tasty and safe foods growing right in
our communities. Eating local not only helps our bodies heal,
but also helps our ecosystems thrive. In this episode, I
sit down with my collogists and forager Gabrielle Serberville, who
you may know from TikTok as Chaotic Forager. We talk
about all the goodies that can grow in your local environment,
(00:48):
how foraging can create a closer connection to your community,
and believe it or not, how growing your own food
can be easier and healthier than shopping at a grocery store. So,
without further do, let's get into the real heal. Gabrielle,
you have such a unique relationship with your ecosystems. And
(01:11):
before we get into all of that, what you tell
me about you? Yeah, I am a wild food educator,
mushroom fanatic. I guess you could say I'm a grad
student and I spend a lot of time just out
in forests, trying to understand them better. So I'm just
going to get right into it. I think that a
(01:32):
lot of people don't really realize just how healing it
can be to eat the food that grows naturally right
in their backyard, essentially maybe two hundred miles from where
they live. And I'm excited to talk to you because
you have a special perspective on that. And so can
you tell us about your relationship with your own local
(01:53):
ecosystem and how it feeds you and how you feed
it in return? Oh my gosh, I love this question.
I moved here, not that not that long ago, just
a couple of years ago. And where I live in Kalamazoo, Michigan,
which is like it sounds like a nothing town and
it's so not. There's just so much beauty around here.
There's so much nature, there's so much biodiversity. Uh, and
(02:16):
it's just in these little pockets. And so when I
moved here, I just started walking. I just started walking
and checking out what was growing around me, walking around
the neighborhood, walking through the wooded areas. And you really
start to pick up on the personality of a place
when you do that. And the way that things change
over time, So like I love visiting the same places
(02:37):
over and over and over again because they are always different.
Ecosystems are living, breathing things that were part of So
the more time you spend in the same place, the
more beautiful it gets. And then just when it comes
to food, like there's just this beautiful reciprocity that happens
when you're eating from the places that are near to you.
(02:57):
You start to develop this really special connection with place,
and it makes you want to care for place more.
It makes you want to care for that tree that
feeds you, that that log that provides you with mushrooms,
that all of beauty that's around you. You want to
keep it beautiful and you want to make it more beautiful.
So I find that, like I go through these cycles
(03:19):
of giving and taking with the place that I live.
I participating in permaculture during the colder months when I'm
not taking as much, and I'm participating in like eating
the gifts that nature provides during the warmer months. And
because I live in a place with distinguishable seasons, It's
a really nice way to just exist in the world.
(03:42):
When do would you say this awakening happened for you,
Was it when you moved to Michigan, this first idea
of taking in the beauty and then knowing that you
wanted to protect it and appreciate it. Where did that
start for you? Did start recently or was that ingrained
in you as a little person. Yeah, that started for
me in childhood. When I was five years old, my
face only moved to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania and
(04:04):
we were surrounded by blueberry bushes. I didn't know it
when I was little, but a neighbor pointed the mountain said, oh,
that's food, you can eat that um, And I think
at that point I was just just fascinated by the
fact that not just food, but like really amazing perfect
food grew in my backyard. And I would track the
(04:24):
way that the blueberry bushes developed. So I would go
out and I would look for the first flowers in
the spring, and I would wait for the flowers to
turn to green berries, and then just wait and wait
and keep going out to the same trees over and
over until I could finally pick berries and I could
finally eat them. And it was so much of my
(04:45):
creative imagination was just it revolved around the natural cycle
of food, growing, eating food, and then winter. You just
reminded me of when I was a little girl. There
was BlackBerry bushes just three houses down and my mom
would take us when we would walk the dogs, and
(05:06):
we would just pick blackberries endlessly. I mean they were massive.
It almost took up a whole lot of a home.
And I remember the same thing, just feeling so happy
that you could pick something and put it in your mouth.
And I've done that with my son to at my home.
His favorite fruit was blueberries, so I grew six blueberry
(05:26):
bushes out right in front. And because I love permaculture,
which I want to talk to you about more, the
idea of having it as you walk in the door,
so you can grab it conveniently and you'll see it
all the time. Right, The fun we had. Now he's ten,
he's not as interested, sadly, but he'll come back. But
but that's fun we had picking blueberries every single season,
(05:46):
and you know, watching him pick his food and eat it,
I just think it's so wonderful. So I'm with you
on that. Yeah, it's so human just to like take
something and put it directly in your mouth with no middleman.
Uh And the food that grows around you is just
so nutritionally dense compared to the food that you can
buy in a grocery store. It's just a really beautiful thing. Yeah.
(06:11):
So when you're out foraging and you've said that it
connects you to a time and a place in a
way that nothing else does. Can you tell me about
the journey? So at first you had this experience with
blueberries when you were little, and then now here you
are back in Michigan. When was the sort of awakening
that this is something you need to put all your
attention on and make you sort of an activist about it.
(06:34):
What was the problem you saw and the thing you
were trying to solve? Essentially, I think that the more
I learned about wild food in my mid twenties, the
more I realized how much people didn't know about wild food.
And I've realized that I was cooking with things that
most people never talk about or taste. You know. I
(06:55):
would go to before I started foraging for things like
I would go to the grocery store for things like onions,
and now I pick wild onions that are so much,
so much better and so much tastier and growing everywhere
because they're invasive, but like, most people don't even know
that that's there. Most people don't know that they can
(07:17):
walk into their backyard and pick allia and vinali and
use it and eat it. And it's amazing. And I
especially found that with mushrooms, and specifically the fear of
mushrooms that a lot of Americans have. You know, there
are many cultures where mushrooms are like hunting your own
mushrooms is is just a thing you do. I mean,
(07:37):
if you go to Eastern Europe, if you go somewhere
in like Poland or or Hungry, everybody goes out to
the forest after it rains to pick their mushrooms. And
people don't like grocery store mushrooms. But then uh certainly
like places like Japan and China, where mushrooms are just
a much bigger part of person's diet. And then you
come to the US and here most people have only
(08:00):
ever tried one kind of mushroom and decided they either
like or hate it. And most people think that if
you pick and eat wild mushrooms, you'll probably die, which
is which is something that I try to educate about
because there are just so many amazing fungi that grow
in the places where most of us live, that people
(08:23):
walk right past, people don't even know that they're there.
So let's start with mushrooms. Mushrooms are delicious, and I
love all kinds of mushrooms. But because of the fear
that people have that they're going to pick the wrong one,
how does is there a simple education to know how
to pick the mushrooms that are good? In the mushroom,
(08:43):
I mean chantral mushrooms don't look the same, you know,
or morals? And what's my other favorite? Mattaki? I love
my Mattaki's oyster mushrooms. I mean I make oyster mushroom
tacos all the time. They're so delicious. But are you
going out into your hiking area to find them or
where are you getting your those mushrooms? Yeah? I hike.
(09:05):
I Actually all of the mushrooms that you just mentioned,
our mushrooms that I forage here in Michigan, every single
one is something that I find here. Uh So, I walk,
I I visit, I visit parks, I visit little forests
around here, I visit bogs. There are tons of places
that I go. But regarding the question about like is
there a simple education. I think there is. I think
(09:28):
that learning a few anatomical features of different fun I
can really help. I usually recommend the people start with
mushrooms that don't have lookalikes. So most people are concerned
when they start mushroom hunting. Oh, I'm gonna like pick
the wrong mushroom because I'm going to pick a look alike.
But you know, you can safely hunt for things like
(09:49):
puffball mushrooms if you know a few things about puffballs.
If you know that you only eat things that are
pure white on the inside, you only eat them if
you don't see the outline of another mushroom in side.
That's pretty simple. They're pretty easy to see when you're
out in the woods, and they don't grow everywhere. They're
pretty common here in the Midwest and like east of
(10:10):
the Great Plains. But there are things that are like
pretty safe to forage for, you know, Sean trills. They
have a couple of lookalikes. But there are also some
things that you can learn to help you identify them.
You know, they have a very distinct smell. They smell
kind of like a like a stone fruit, like an
apricot that you can peel them like string cheese, and
(10:32):
they're white on the inside. They're like a beautiful golden
orange color. And you can sort of learn some things
about where they grow to help you identify further. So
there are good things that you can learn, and it
doesn't have to be everything you know. You can learn
three or four mushrooms really really well and forage them
with confidence. And are you having to go off the
(10:55):
beaten path on your hikes because I don't see mushrooms
growing on my hicks and I'm in the woods. Sometimes
they do, um I often do. I find a lot
of mushrooms growing in areas with like a lot of
dead wood, mushrooms like decaying things. Typically I find mushrooms
in places with really old trees. So when I'm looking
(11:18):
for mushrooms, I'm not usually looking at the ground, I'm
looking at the trees. I'm looking at the landscape, the ecology.
Is there a water source nearby? What does the ground
feel like under my feet? And I find that that
helps me a lot more than trying to pick a
mushroom out of the forest. You're saying if there is
(11:38):
a water source like a stream or something, that's a
good indication. And then there's also dead wood from a
like dead trees that that would be a prime spot.
It can be. It really depends on the mushroom, which
is the hard thing to kind of get across sometimes
when you're trying to teach people about mushrooms, like, um,
there's no one answer. The place that I'm going to
go to look for chantrells is to be very different
(12:00):
from the place that I go to look for a morrel. Uh.
And the time of year is going to marry too. Yeah,
you know, right now, I could go out and hunt
for oyster mushrooms and I would look for decaying would
I would look for hardwood. I would look for places
that get kind of wet and gross, and that's where
I would find them. You know, I would go to
(12:22):
a bog I would go to I would go to
a fan that would go to somewhere like that. But
that's going to be different from the places I'm going
to go look for my chicken of the woods. If
(12:46):
I was listening right now, I might be itching to go,
like I want to go right now, but I don't
know how to start. You know. I go on a
walk every day with my dogs, or I go on
a walk every day with my friends or I'm walking around,
how do I begin to figure out how to find
food while I'm walking? Oh my god, I love this question.
So the thing that I usually tell people is, don't
(13:06):
go like deep in the woods to go find food.
To start, like, find things on your walk, find things
if you if you don't know what they are, then
like that's the place to start. Like start with your
own curiosity, go like what is that tree? And there
are definitely tools that can help you, starting with like
getting a good local guide and a good national guide
(13:29):
I've found is really helpful for mushrooms. Apps can be helpful.
I don't recommend that you use an app to identify
your food, but it can be a really good way
to sort of narrow down what you're looking at so
that you can cross reference in a book. There are
also a ton of online groups that help people. Not
everybody has access to classes and things. I know I didn't.
I couldn't afford it, so I spent a lot of
(13:51):
time just hanging out in Facebook groups for foragers. There
are I think foraging groups for almost every state in
the US. There are international foraging groups that I'm part of,
and there are so many knowledgeable people there who offer
their services for free. Um. I mean I see world
renowned mycologists answering questions in Facebook forums all the time
(14:14):
for people. Uh, And you're gonna get a little bit
of training on like the things that people need to
see in order to identify things, and that's also going
to help you in your own personal identification journeys. I
started out in Facebook groups. I found a mushroom and
I didn't know what it was, and I took a
bunch of pictures and uploaded them to Facebook and somebody
helped me. Somebody was kind, and it was able to
(14:37):
like work around the fact that I didn't give them
like everything they needed, and I was able to get
an answer to my question. And I learned a ton
in that process, and it spurred me on to learn more.
You know, Facebook groups can sometimes be places for people
to just be jerks and to show off, but more
often than not, there are really kind people who are
(15:00):
really happy to get to just info dump about the
things that they love. And you can use that to
your advantage, Like, please use that to your advantage. So
can you talk a little bit about or can we
talk together about I think for me. My greatest concern, well,
not my greatest concern, but one of my many concerns
is that we're using too much energy and resources to
(15:23):
live our lives, and we want to minimize that as
much as possible so that we can live the healthiest,
most glorious lives and spread that for future generations. And so,
you know, the way I shop is I grow my food.
That's my first shopping spree. I grow my own food,
and I go to the farmer's market, my local farmers market,
(15:44):
and I'm friends with all my farmers. I've known Vicki
for twenty years or something, and you know, I know
that she's got the greatest oranges, and she's just basically
bears godmother at this point. She's just so sweet. But
and then there's Jimmy, who has the great plants, and
then there's the special lettuce lady, And like, you know,
you have your people that you just trust and know
that they're going to have the emmiest food. My garden first,
(16:05):
farmer's market second. And then sometimes I play around with
boxes you know that come like imperfect foods or you know,
CSA boxes things like that. I have to say, I
have foraged in my life, but it's not a part
of my shopping room. Like it's not how I acquire
my food on the on the daily or on the weekly.
So I just wanted to talk to you more about
why that's so important and why should people care about
(16:29):
getting their food locally. That's a really great question. I
think that it is very very hard in modern society
to develop community, and specifically to develop community within like
the place where you live. I know that when I
go to my farmer's market, because if I think for
my farmer's market, some of my farmer's market purchases are
(16:49):
things that were probably foraged. But I like supporting the
people who do that. I know that I'm getting food
that is way more nutritionally dense because it has not
made a lot journey to get there. A lot of
it was probably picked that morning. I know that I
can get like bread that was baked just a few
doors down from where I live, and I get to
(17:11):
know the people who do that, And I love that
you brought that up, because it's all about people, right,
It's about getting to form those relationships and feel that
just like intense warmth of eating something that was produced
so lovingly so close to you, and it's a way
that we do this, like this mutual support. You know,
(17:34):
I'm paying my farmer and he's getting to produce more food.
He's caring for the place where we live. I'm caring
for the place where we live, and I think that's
an amazing thing. And the further away the more steps
you add in between the producer and the consumer, the
less our food matters to us. I may not feel
(17:57):
as bad if I end up having to throw away
something that I bought at a grocery store as I
would feel if I threw away something that I picked
myself or that I bought from one of these farmers
that I knew put love and care into it. And
it's also a good way to reduce the amount of
human suffering that goes into your food, like factory farming
(18:19):
and the human injustices that happen on large farms where
migrant workers are picking your food for nothing and being
horribly abused in the process and not given places to
relieve themselves, which produces just like more problems with the
food that we get. You know, the number of listeria
outbreaks that we end up with every years is just abhorrent,
(18:44):
and a lot of that is because of the horrible
conditions that we're putting people in in order to keep
getting food in our grocery stores. It just it makes
you more connected to what you're eating, It makes you
care about it more, It makes you waste less when
you're getting is closer to you. M hm. You were
talking about the farmer's market, and I was just wanting
(19:05):
to add that I'm Jewish and my son was really
excited about being Jewish and he wanted to go check
out Hebrew schools and the only one we could get
to go to was on the Sunday. But the problem
was we are already found our temple. Our temple was
our Farmer's market, and so you know, every week we'd
say should we go to should we go to the
(19:25):
Sunday school and check it out, or should we go
to our the farmer's market. And every week consistently we
both were like farmers market because it is our community.
We know everyone there. It's such a primal act to
go collect your food, meet with people in a It's
a place that we know, and we go back every
Sunday and then you come home and you sort of
(19:46):
prepare food for the week, and it's just you know,
so in a way, my farmer's market is my church,
you know, and just like yoga is my church, although
I don't go enough, but it's it's really really you know,
I feel so rooted and connected to yourself and your community.
It's such a powerful thing. Clearly you're passionate about this.
(20:25):
Do you have a concern or a dream for the world.
Is there something that you really want to fix that
you have your eye on. I think it comes back
to that moment where I realized that people didn't know
things that I thought maybe they should. This knowledge of
what is growing around us was not special knowledge even
(20:48):
a hundred years ago, and certainly isn't special knowledge in
places in other places today where people rely on the
land to provide their food. What I see is a
world where we lean into the things that are already here,
the things that we want to see, and where we
(21:09):
take more control over the food that we eat in
a real way. You know. I run into more people
now that are interested in foraging than I ever have
in my entire life. And what foraging does is it
just develops this huge appreciation for the place where you are,
and there's something so valuable about that that can't even
(21:31):
be properly described until somebody gets that bug, until somebody
finds themselves out in the woods and they recognize something.
I see this with kids all the time, you know.
I I run into kids on the trail sometimes and
I'll give them little free trail lessons because I love
getting to teach kids this ancestral knowledge and seeing them
(21:52):
recognize something and that light go off is just indescribably
wonderful because I know that that child is going to
grow up and they're always going to know what that
plant is, or they're always going to know what that
mushroom is, and it breeds this familiarity, it breeds this
this conversation with environment. It's so important. I wonder if
(22:14):
a lot of people are thinking right now, oh my god,
that sounds so inconvenient all of this, and so I
wonder if you can speak to really is it inconvenient?
And what does convenience really mean in the big picture?
How do you put value where it belongs? Really? Yeah,
And I'm going to be really interested to hear what
(22:34):
you have to say about this too, because we both
live lives where our food comes from interesting places. I
guess that I would counter that idea. I don't think
it's inconvenient. I get so much out of this. I
find it inconvenient to go to a grocery store. I
find it inconvenient to go somewhere and have my selection
(22:58):
of food already laid out for me, food that may
be coming from far away, that maybe doesn't taste that great,
maybe it's prepackaged. Maybe I don't need as much as
I have to buy in order to h like, make
that purchase. I find it incredibly convenient to walk down
the block and go pick berries. I find it really
(23:21):
convenient to grow chicken of the woods on a log
not that far from where I live, so I can
just go pick it whenever I want. That's all incredibly convenient.
I'm like, I'm making my work so much easier for me.
Maybe that's like kind of lazy of me. I don't
want to get in the car and drive to the
grocery store, but I get so much like I'm getting outside,
(23:43):
I'm getting to I'm running into my neighbors. I'm eating
things that I feel like I worked for, like that
I directly worked for, And that's incredibly valuable. And I
felt the same way when I've grown my own food,
and like going to the grocery sort of pick up
tomatoes is not an enjoyable experience. It takes time, the
(24:05):
tomatoes are never good for some reason, and then you
get back home and you still have to cook them.
But then you could go outside to your beautiful garden
with gorgeous sun ripened tomatoes and eat a few on
the way back, and that is a holistically wonderful experience.
Talking about tomatoes, there's this little girl that comes over
(24:27):
to my house sometimes and she really doesn't like vegetables,
and her mom is trying, but you know, isn't eating
that well either, so not able to So when she
comes over to my house, her mom's like, do whatever,
just put to the magic. And so I take her
into the garden and we were making us we're gonna
make a big salad together, and she I have a
video of this on my Instagram and on my YouTube
because it's the cutest thing ever, her little face picking tomatoes.
(24:50):
She could not believe what the taste of these tomatoes was,
and she just kept going more, Can I have more?
Can I have more? And we never made it back
to the kitchen with the tomatoes. I don't think, because
they just all got eaten in the garden and it
was so sweet and like what you were saying, when
you see their little eyes wake up to what food
can be. When she's at my house, she's eating kale
(25:11):
and bok choi and all kinds of delicious things that
she's not eating at home, and she's just delighting in
them and devouring them. And um, I mean, I made
them a plate of greens. This is also on my YouTube.
I made a plate of greens, and within I made
it too small. I made a bunch of greens, and
I guess that wasn't enough. These children ate it in
(25:32):
two seconds flat. I couldn't even get a bite. So
it's really amazing what we can do and how that
affects them. And yeah, I mean when it's cold, I
don't love going into my garden, so I don't tend
to do as much gardening in the winter because it's
just my thing, Like I'd rather go to the farmer's
market then and be with my community and be all
dressed warm, and but in the summertime and the spring,
(25:54):
I'm all about my garden and we think these things
are convenient, and they're not. They harm us in the
long runs. So all of my food choices, like you said,
give me so much joy. It gives me so much
joy to go to the farmer's market to think about
what I want to eat based on what I see, like, oh,
those little turnips, those little white turnips that look so
(26:17):
fantastic at the farmer's market. Then I'm like, I want turnips.
What's weird to want turnups? But you want them because
they look so beautiful. Or you see a celery route
growing and you go that big bulb and you go,
I want that. You know, so I don't find it
inconvenient at all, But it does take reprioritizing. You will
reap the rewards of that tenfold that little effort that
(26:40):
you put in planning the week before. You know what,
I would actually really like to eat healthy this week.
Here's what I need to do that. Here's some inspiration
from some wherever. You want to find your recipes from books.
I have great books, websites, whatever, you can go to
pull those recipes and start preparing so that you're ahead
of the game and then you feel so good. So yes,
(27:01):
I agree with you, it's not inconvenient. It's inconvenient to
be sick, not feel good, disconnected and afraid. Those things
are very inconvenient, and we spend too much time in
those states. Yeah, And it is like there's so much
nuance to that conversation because there are so many people
(27:22):
who are just struggling to get by. I mean, I
have spend there. It is hard, and it's really hard
when somebody else owns the vast majority of your time
and you're just struggling to like, you know, not my situation,
but like you're struggling to just like get your kids
to school and get food in them and hope that
you get to eat too at some point during your day.
(27:45):
And like, there are systemic things that need to happen
so that we can take better care of ourselves. Um.
There are massive changes that need to be made, and
part of that comes back to empowering communities to take
care of each other, um, and empowering communities to do
that through food, to do that, through caring for one another,
(28:07):
to do that through like services being available locally. And
I think that that's just really important to add because
it can be such a privilege to like eat the
way that you and I do, like we get to
choose that, and not everybody does. A lot of people
have so many choices in their lives made for them
by their job, by their daycare, by the government, that um,
(28:33):
that they don't get to make a lot of those choices.
And so I think just focusing on like the free
or very cheap ways that you can do that, um,
even if it comes down to, like, hey, let's sponsor
some community garden plots for people to be able to
grow some of their own food if they can't afford that, Like,
there are some really good ways to help your community
through that kind of mutual aid. And uh, and I
(28:55):
really encourage people who have the means to do that.
I think what you said is beautiful. And I would
add that people who grow food outside of their doors
for people so that they can walk by and take
like you're taking, you know, just take what they need
is a really beautiful thing. I would also say that
the concept of privilege with food, remember that originally back
(29:20):
in the day, the healthiest people on the planet where
the the common man, not the royalty, because they ate beans,
rice and vegetables. And so yes, we have to empower
people and educate people. But I think there are a
lot of people who are who do have privilege but
still don't know how to eat well. So I'm speaking
(29:41):
to them. And then there are people, I mean, there's
loads of those, so many of those. And then there
are people who are really just trying to survive, and
I totally get that. And the people that are really
trying to survive, I just want to remind them that
McDonald's is not the answer. It might be cheap and
it might be quick, but if you can just back
to your roots and make something that your heritage taught
(30:03):
you to make, you will find that it's cheap, it
satiates you, and it's delicious, and therefore it doesn't have
to take so much time and it doesn't have to
be so fancy. And so if we can help inspire
and educate as much as we can, it's a good thing.
My goodness, this was such a good conversation. I'm so
(30:24):
glad I got to speak with you. I really enjoyed it.
You inspired me, and I'm just grateful that you're doing
what you're doing. Thank you so much, Gabrielle, Thank you
so much for having me. This is just so much
fun and I just love how you're approaching this topic
not just in your own life, but it sounds like
in the lives of a lot of people. Thank you.
(30:49):
To dig deeper into this episodes, topic and resources, visit
the kind life dot com. The Real Heal is an
I Heart Radio production made in partnership with Frequency Media.
I'm your host. Alicia Silverstone from I Heart Radio are
managing producer is Lindsay Hoffman from Frequency Media. Michelle Corey
(31:11):
is our executive producer, jordan's Rizzieri is our producer, and
Imani Leonard and Laura Boyman are our associate producers. Sydney
Evans is our dialogue editor, and Claire bit of Gary
Curtis is our mixer and sound designer. This podcast is
available on the I Heart Radio app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
(31:33):
Google Podcasts, and wherever podcasts are found.
What is it really gonna take to heal ourselves, our communities,
and our planet. I'm Alicia Silverstone, and this is the
real heal. Do you know where your food comes from?
Did it grow nearby or thousands of miles away? There
(00:26):
are so many tasty and safe foods growing right in
our communities. Eating local not only helps our bodies heal,
but also helps our ecosystems thrive. In this episode, I
sit down with my collogists and forager Gabrielle Serberville, who
you may know from TikTok as Chaotic Forager. We talk
about all the goodies that can grow in your local environment,
(00:48):
how foraging can create a closer connection to your community,
and believe it or not, how growing your own food
can be easier and healthier than shopping at a grocery store. So,
without further do, let's get into the real heal. Gabrielle,
you have such a unique relationship with your ecosystems. And
(01:11):
before we get into all of that, what you tell
me about you? Yeah, I am a wild food educator,
mushroom fanatic. I guess you could say I'm a grad
student and I spend a lot of time just out
in forests, trying to understand them better. So I'm just
going to get right into it. I think that a
(01:32):
lot of people don't really realize just how healing it
can be to eat the food that grows naturally right
in their backyard, essentially maybe two hundred miles from where
they live. And I'm excited to talk to you because
you have a special perspective on that. And so can
you tell us about your relationship with your own local
(01:53):
ecosystem and how it feeds you and how you feed
it in return? Oh my gosh, I love this question.
I moved here, not that not that long ago, just
a couple of years ago. And where I live in Kalamazoo, Michigan,
which is like it sounds like a nothing town and
it's so not. There's just so much beauty around here.
There's so much nature, there's so much biodiversity. Uh, and
(02:16):
it's just in these little pockets. And so when I
moved here, I just started walking. I just started walking
and checking out what was growing around me, walking around
the neighborhood, walking through the wooded areas. And you really
start to pick up on the personality of a place
when you do that. And the way that things change
over time, So like I love visiting the same places
(02:37):
over and over and over again because they are always different.
Ecosystems are living, breathing things that were part of So
the more time you spend in the same place, the
more beautiful it gets. And then just when it comes
to food, like there's just this beautiful reciprocity that happens
when you're eating from the places that are near to you.
(02:57):
You start to develop this really special connection with place,
and it makes you want to care for place more.
It makes you want to care for that tree that
feeds you, that that log that provides you with mushrooms,
that all of beauty that's around you. You want to
keep it beautiful and you want to make it more beautiful.
So I find that, like I go through these cycles
(03:19):
of giving and taking with the place that I live.
I participating in permaculture during the colder months when I'm
not taking as much, and I'm participating in like eating
the gifts that nature provides during the warmer months. And
because I live in a place with distinguishable seasons, It's
a really nice way to just exist in the world.
(03:42):
When do would you say this awakening happened for you,
Was it when you moved to Michigan, this first idea
of taking in the beauty and then knowing that you
wanted to protect it and appreciate it. Where did that
start for you? Did start recently or was that ingrained
in you as a little person. Yeah, that started for
me in childhood. When I was five years old, my
face only moved to the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania and
(04:04):
we were surrounded by blueberry bushes. I didn't know it
when I was little, but a neighbor pointed the mountain said, oh,
that's food, you can eat that um, And I think
at that point I was just just fascinated by the
fact that not just food, but like really amazing perfect
food grew in my backyard. And I would track the
(04:24):
way that the blueberry bushes developed. So I would go
out and I would look for the first flowers in
the spring, and I would wait for the flowers to
turn to green berries, and then just wait and wait
and keep going out to the same trees over and
over until I could finally pick berries and I could
finally eat them. And it was so much of my
(04:45):
creative imagination was just it revolved around the natural cycle
of food, growing, eating food, and then winter. You just
reminded me of when I was a little girl. There
was BlackBerry bushes just three houses down and my mom
would take us when we would walk the dogs, and
(05:06):
we would just pick blackberries endlessly. I mean they were massive.
It almost took up a whole lot of a home.
And I remember the same thing, just feeling so happy
that you could pick something and put it in your mouth.
And I've done that with my son to at my home.
His favorite fruit was blueberries, so I grew six blueberry
(05:26):
bushes out right in front. And because I love permaculture,
which I want to talk to you about more, the
idea of having it as you walk in the door,
so you can grab it conveniently and you'll see it
all the time. Right, The fun we had. Now he's ten,
he's not as interested, sadly, but he'll come back. But
but that's fun we had picking blueberries every single season,
(05:46):
and you know, watching him pick his food and eat it,
I just think it's so wonderful. So I'm with you
on that. Yeah, it's so human just to like take
something and put it directly in your mouth with no middleman.
Uh And the food that grows around you is just
so nutritionally dense compared to the food that you can
buy in a grocery store. It's just a really beautiful thing. Yeah.
(06:11):
So when you're out foraging and you've said that it
connects you to a time and a place in a
way that nothing else does. Can you tell me about
the journey? So at first you had this experience with
blueberries when you were little, and then now here you
are back in Michigan. When was the sort of awakening
that this is something you need to put all your
attention on and make you sort of an activist about it.
(06:34):
What was the problem you saw and the thing you
were trying to solve? Essentially, I think that the more
I learned about wild food in my mid twenties, the
more I realized how much people didn't know about wild food.
And I've realized that I was cooking with things that
most people never talk about or taste. You know. I
(06:55):
would go to before I started foraging for things like
I would go to the grocery store for things like onions,
and now I pick wild onions that are so much,
so much better and so much tastier and growing everywhere
because they're invasive, but like, most people don't even know
that that's there. Most people don't know that they can
(07:17):
walk into their backyard and pick allia and vinali and
use it and eat it. And it's amazing. And I
especially found that with mushrooms, and specifically the fear of
mushrooms that a lot of Americans have. You know, there
are many cultures where mushrooms are like hunting your own
mushrooms is is just a thing you do. I mean,
(07:37):
if you go to Eastern Europe, if you go somewhere
in like Poland or or Hungry, everybody goes out to
the forest after it rains to pick their mushrooms. And
people don't like grocery store mushrooms. But then uh certainly
like places like Japan and China, where mushrooms are just
a much bigger part of person's diet. And then you
come to the US and here most people have only
(08:00):
ever tried one kind of mushroom and decided they either
like or hate it. And most people think that if
you pick and eat wild mushrooms, you'll probably die, which
is which is something that I try to educate about
because there are just so many amazing fungi that grow
in the places where most of us live, that people
(08:23):
walk right past, people don't even know that they're there.
So let's start with mushrooms. Mushrooms are delicious, and I
love all kinds of mushrooms. But because of the fear
that people have that they're going to pick the wrong one,
how does is there a simple education to know how
to pick the mushrooms that are good? In the mushroom,
(08:43):
I mean chantral mushrooms don't look the same, you know,
or morals? And what's my other favorite? Mattaki? I love
my Mattaki's oyster mushrooms. I mean I make oyster mushroom
tacos all the time. They're so delicious. But are you
going out into your hiking area to find them or
where are you getting your those mushrooms? Yeah? I hike.
(09:05):
I Actually all of the mushrooms that you just mentioned,
our mushrooms that I forage here in Michigan, every single
one is something that I find here. Uh So, I walk,
I I visit, I visit parks, I visit little forests
around here, I visit bogs. There are tons of places
that I go. But regarding the question about like is
there a simple education. I think there is. I think
(09:28):
that learning a few anatomical features of different fun I
can really help. I usually recommend the people start with
mushrooms that don't have lookalikes. So most people are concerned
when they start mushroom hunting. Oh, I'm gonna like pick
the wrong mushroom because I'm going to pick a look alike.
But you know, you can safely hunt for things like
(09:49):
puffball mushrooms if you know a few things about puffballs.
If you know that you only eat things that are
pure white on the inside, you only eat them if
you don't see the outline of another mushroom in side.
That's pretty simple. They're pretty easy to see when you're
out in the woods, and they don't grow everywhere. They're
pretty common here in the Midwest and like east of
(10:10):
the Great Plains. But there are things that are like
pretty safe to forage for, you know, Sean trills. They
have a couple of lookalikes. But there are also some
things that you can learn to help you identify them.
You know, they have a very distinct smell. They smell
kind of like a like a stone fruit, like an
apricot that you can peel them like string cheese, and
(10:32):
they're white on the inside. They're like a beautiful golden
orange color. And you can sort of learn some things
about where they grow to help you identify further. So
there are good things that you can learn, and it
doesn't have to be everything you know. You can learn
three or four mushrooms really really well and forage them
with confidence. And are you having to go off the
(10:55):
beaten path on your hikes because I don't see mushrooms
growing on my hicks and I'm in the woods. Sometimes
they do, um I often do. I find a lot
of mushrooms growing in areas with like a lot of
dead wood, mushrooms like decaying things. Typically I find mushrooms
in places with really old trees. So when I'm looking
(11:18):
for mushrooms, I'm not usually looking at the ground, I'm
looking at the trees. I'm looking at the landscape, the ecology.
Is there a water source nearby? What does the ground
feel like under my feet? And I find that that
helps me a lot more than trying to pick a
mushroom out of the forest. You're saying if there is
(11:38):
a water source like a stream or something, that's a
good indication. And then there's also dead wood from a
like dead trees that that would be a prime spot.
It can be. It really depends on the mushroom, which
is the hard thing to kind of get across sometimes
when you're trying to teach people about mushrooms, like, um,
there's no one answer. The place that I'm going to
go to look for chantrells is to be very different
(12:00):
from the place that I go to look for a morrel. Uh.
And the time of year is going to marry too. Yeah,
you know, right now, I could go out and hunt
for oyster mushrooms and I would look for decaying would
I would look for hardwood. I would look for places
that get kind of wet and gross, and that's where
I would find them. You know, I would go to
(12:22):
a bog I would go to I would go to
a fan that would go to somewhere like that. But
that's going to be different from the places I'm going
to go look for my chicken of the woods. If
(12:46):
I was listening right now, I might be itching to go,
like I want to go right now, but I don't
know how to start. You know. I go on a
walk every day with my dogs, or I go on
a walk every day with my friends or I'm walking around,
how do I begin to figure out how to find
food while I'm walking? Oh my god, I love this question.
So the thing that I usually tell people is, don't
(13:06):
go like deep in the woods to go find food.
To start, like, find things on your walk, find things
if you if you don't know what they are, then
like that's the place to start. Like start with your
own curiosity, go like what is that tree? And there
are definitely tools that can help you, starting with like
getting a good local guide and a good national guide
(13:29):
I've found is really helpful for mushrooms. Apps can be helpful.
I don't recommend that you use an app to identify
your food, but it can be a really good way
to sort of narrow down what you're looking at so
that you can cross reference in a book. There are
also a ton of online groups that help people. Not
everybody has access to classes and things. I know I didn't.
I couldn't afford it, so I spent a lot of
(13:51):
time just hanging out in Facebook groups for foragers. There
are I think foraging groups for almost every state in
the US. There are international foraging groups that I'm part of,
and there are so many knowledgeable people there who offer
their services for free. Um. I mean I see world
renowned mycologists answering questions in Facebook forums all the time
(14:14):
for people. Uh, And you're gonna get a little bit
of training on like the things that people need to
see in order to identify things, and that's also going
to help you in your own personal identification journeys. I
started out in Facebook groups. I found a mushroom and
I didn't know what it was, and I took a
bunch of pictures and uploaded them to Facebook and somebody
helped me. Somebody was kind, and it was able to
(14:37):
like work around the fact that I didn't give them
like everything they needed, and I was able to get
an answer to my question. And I learned a ton
in that process, and it spurred me on to learn more.
You know, Facebook groups can sometimes be places for people
to just be jerks and to show off, but more
often than not, there are really kind people who are
(15:00):
really happy to get to just info dump about the
things that they love. And you can use that to
your advantage, Like, please use that to your advantage. So
can you talk a little bit about or can we
talk together about I think for me. My greatest concern, well,
not my greatest concern, but one of my many concerns
is that we're using too much energy and resources to
(15:23):
live our lives, and we want to minimize that as
much as possible so that we can live the healthiest,
most glorious lives and spread that for future generations. And so,
you know, the way I shop is I grow my food.
That's my first shopping spree. I grow my own food,
and I go to the farmer's market, my local farmers market,
(15:44):
and I'm friends with all my farmers. I've known Vicki
for twenty years or something, and you know, I know
that she's got the greatest oranges, and she's just basically
bears godmother at this point. She's just so sweet. But
and then there's Jimmy, who has the great plants, and
then there's the special lettuce lady, And like, you know,
you have your people that you just trust and know
that they're going to have the emmiest food. My garden first,
(16:05):
farmer's market second. And then sometimes I play around with
boxes you know that come like imperfect foods or you know,
CSA boxes things like that. I have to say, I
have foraged in my life, but it's not a part
of my shopping room. Like it's not how I acquire
my food on the on the daily or on the weekly.
So I just wanted to talk to you more about
why that's so important and why should people care about
(16:29):
getting their food locally. That's a really great question. I
think that it is very very hard in modern society
to develop community, and specifically to develop community within like
the place where you live. I know that when I
go to my farmer's market, because if I think for
my farmer's market, some of my farmer's market purchases are
(16:49):
things that were probably foraged. But I like supporting the
people who do that. I know that I'm getting food
that is way more nutritionally dense because it has not
made a lot journey to get there. A lot of
it was probably picked that morning. I know that I
can get like bread that was baked just a few
doors down from where I live, and I get to
(17:11):
know the people who do that, And I love that
you brought that up, because it's all about people, right,
It's about getting to form those relationships and feel that
just like intense warmth of eating something that was produced
so lovingly so close to you, and it's a way
that we do this, like this mutual support. You know,
(17:34):
I'm paying my farmer and he's getting to produce more food.
He's caring for the place where we live. I'm caring
for the place where we live, and I think that's
an amazing thing. And the further away the more steps
you add in between the producer and the consumer, the
less our food matters to us. I may not feel
(17:57):
as bad if I end up having to throw away
something that I bought at a grocery store as I
would feel if I threw away something that I picked
myself or that I bought from one of these farmers
that I knew put love and care into it. And
it's also a good way to reduce the amount of
human suffering that goes into your food, like factory farming
(18:19):
and the human injustices that happen on large farms where
migrant workers are picking your food for nothing and being
horribly abused in the process and not given places to
relieve themselves, which produces just like more problems with the
food that we get. You know, the number of listeria
outbreaks that we end up with every years is just abhorrent,
(18:44):
and a lot of that is because of the horrible
conditions that we're putting people in in order to keep
getting food in our grocery stores. It just it makes
you more connected to what you're eating, It makes you
care about it more, It makes you waste less when
you're getting is closer to you. M hm. You were
talking about the farmer's market, and I was just wanting
(19:05):
to add that I'm Jewish and my son was really
excited about being Jewish and he wanted to go check
out Hebrew schools and the only one we could get
to go to was on the Sunday. But the problem
was we are already found our temple. Our temple was
our Farmer's market, and so you know, every week we'd
say should we go to should we go to the
(19:25):
Sunday school and check it out, or should we go
to our the farmer's market. And every week consistently we
both were like farmers market because it is our community.
We know everyone there. It's such a primal act to
go collect your food, meet with people in a It's
a place that we know, and we go back every
Sunday and then you come home and you sort of
(19:46):
prepare food for the week, and it's just you know,
so in a way, my farmer's market is my church,
you know, and just like yoga is my church, although
I don't go enough, but it's it's really really you know,
I feel so rooted and connected to yourself and your community.
It's such a powerful thing. Clearly you're passionate about this.
(20:25):
Do you have a concern or a dream for the world.
Is there something that you really want to fix that
you have your eye on. I think it comes back
to that moment where I realized that people didn't know
things that I thought maybe they should. This knowledge of
what is growing around us was not special knowledge even
(20:48):
a hundred years ago, and certainly isn't special knowledge in
places in other places today where people rely on the
land to provide their food. What I see is a
world where we lean into the things that are already here,
the things that we want to see, and where we
(21:09):
take more control over the food that we eat in
a real way. You know. I run into more people
now that are interested in foraging than I ever have
in my entire life. And what foraging does is it
just develops this huge appreciation for the place where you are,
and there's something so valuable about that that can't even
(21:31):
be properly described until somebody gets that bug, until somebody
finds themselves out in the woods and they recognize something.
I see this with kids all the time, you know.
I I run into kids on the trail sometimes and
I'll give them little free trail lessons because I love
getting to teach kids this ancestral knowledge and seeing them
(21:52):
recognize something and that light go off is just indescribably
wonderful because I know that that child is going to
grow up and they're always going to know what that
plant is, or they're always going to know what that
mushroom is, and it breeds this familiarity, it breeds this
this conversation with environment. It's so important. I wonder if
(22:14):
a lot of people are thinking right now, oh my god,
that sounds so inconvenient all of this, and so I
wonder if you can speak to really is it inconvenient?
And what does convenience really mean in the big picture?
How do you put value where it belongs? Really? Yeah,
And I'm going to be really interested to hear what
(22:34):
you have to say about this too, because we both
live lives where our food comes from interesting places. I
guess that I would counter that idea. I don't think
it's inconvenient. I get so much out of this. I
find it inconvenient to go to a grocery store. I
find it inconvenient to go somewhere and have my selection
(22:58):
of food already laid out for me, food that may
be coming from far away, that maybe doesn't taste that great,
maybe it's prepackaged. Maybe I don't need as much as
I have to buy in order to h like, make
that purchase. I find it incredibly convenient to walk down
the block and go pick berries. I find it really
(23:21):
convenient to grow chicken of the woods on a log
not that far from where I live, so I can
just go pick it whenever I want. That's all incredibly convenient.
I'm like, I'm making my work so much easier for me.
Maybe that's like kind of lazy of me. I don't
want to get in the car and drive to the
grocery store, but I get so much like I'm getting outside,
(23:43):
I'm getting to I'm running into my neighbors. I'm eating
things that I feel like I worked for, like that
I directly worked for, And that's incredibly valuable. And I
felt the same way when I've grown my own food,
and like going to the grocery sort of pick up
tomatoes is not an enjoyable experience. It takes time, the
(24:05):
tomatoes are never good for some reason, and then you
get back home and you still have to cook them.
But then you could go outside to your beautiful garden
with gorgeous sun ripened tomatoes and eat a few on
the way back, and that is a holistically wonderful experience.
Talking about tomatoes, there's this little girl that comes over
(24:27):
to my house sometimes and she really doesn't like vegetables,
and her mom is trying, but you know, isn't eating
that well either, so not able to So when she
comes over to my house, her mom's like, do whatever,
just put to the magic. And so I take her
into the garden and we were making us we're gonna
make a big salad together, and she I have a
video of this on my Instagram and on my YouTube
because it's the cutest thing ever, her little face picking tomatoes.
(24:50):
She could not believe what the taste of these tomatoes was,
and she just kept going more, Can I have more?
Can I have more? And we never made it back
to the kitchen with the tomatoes. I don't think, because
they just all got eaten in the garden and it
was so sweet and like what you were saying, when
you see their little eyes wake up to what food
can be. When she's at my house, she's eating kale
(25:11):
and bok choi and all kinds of delicious things that
she's not eating at home, and she's just delighting in
them and devouring them. And um, I mean, I made
them a plate of greens. This is also on my YouTube.
I made a plate of greens, and within I made
it too small. I made a bunch of greens, and
I guess that wasn't enough. These children ate it in
(25:32):
two seconds flat. I couldn't even get a bite. So
it's really amazing what we can do and how that
affects them. And yeah, I mean when it's cold, I
don't love going into my garden, so I don't tend
to do as much gardening in the winter because it's
just my thing, Like I'd rather go to the farmer's
market then and be with my community and be all
dressed warm, and but in the summertime and the spring,
(25:54):
I'm all about my garden and we think these things
are convenient, and they're not. They harm us in the
long runs. So all of my food choices, like you said,
give me so much joy. It gives me so much
joy to go to the farmer's market to think about
what I want to eat based on what I see, like, oh,
those little turnips, those little white turnips that look so
(26:17):
fantastic at the farmer's market. Then I'm like, I want turnips.
What's weird to want turnups? But you want them because
they look so beautiful. Or you see a celery route
growing and you go that big bulb and you go,
I want that. You know, so I don't find it
inconvenient at all, But it does take reprioritizing. You will
reap the rewards of that tenfold that little effort that
(26:40):
you put in planning the week before. You know what,
I would actually really like to eat healthy this week.
Here's what I need to do that. Here's some inspiration
from some wherever. You want to find your recipes from books.
I have great books, websites, whatever, you can go to
pull those recipes and start preparing so that you're ahead
of the game and then you feel so good. So yes,
(27:01):
I agree with you, it's not inconvenient. It's inconvenient to
be sick, not feel good, disconnected and afraid. Those things
are very inconvenient, and we spend too much time in
those states. Yeah, And it is like there's so much
nuance to that conversation because there are so many people
(27:22):
who are just struggling to get by. I mean, I
have spend there. It is hard, and it's really hard
when somebody else owns the vast majority of your time
and you're just struggling to like, you know, not my situation,
but like you're struggling to just like get your kids
to school and get food in them and hope that
you get to eat too at some point during your day.
(27:45):
And like, there are systemic things that need to happen
so that we can take better care of ourselves. Um.
There are massive changes that need to be made, and
part of that comes back to empowering communities to take
care of each other, um, and empowering communities to do
that through food, to do that, through caring for one another,
(28:07):
to do that through like services being available locally. And
I think that that's just really important to add because
it can be such a privilege to like eat the
way that you and I do, like we get to
choose that, and not everybody does. A lot of people
have so many choices in their lives made for them
by their job, by their daycare, by the government, that um,
(28:33):
that they don't get to make a lot of those choices.
And so I think just focusing on like the free
or very cheap ways that you can do that, um,
even if it comes down to, like, hey, let's sponsor
some community garden plots for people to be able to
grow some of their own food if they can't afford that, Like,
there are some really good ways to help your community
through that kind of mutual aid. And uh, and I
(28:55):
really encourage people who have the means to do that.
I think what you said is beautiful. And I would
add that people who grow food outside of their doors
for people so that they can walk by and take
like you're taking, you know, just take what they need
is a really beautiful thing. I would also say that
the concept of privilege with food, remember that originally back
(29:20):
in the day, the healthiest people on the planet where
the the common man, not the royalty, because they ate beans,
rice and vegetables. And so yes, we have to empower
people and educate people. But I think there are a
lot of people who are who do have privilege but
still don't know how to eat well. So I'm speaking
(29:41):
to them. And then there are people, I mean, there's
loads of those, so many of those. And then there
are people who are really just trying to survive, and
I totally get that. And the people that are really
trying to survive, I just want to remind them that
McDonald's is not the answer. It might be cheap and
it might be quick, but if you can just back
to your roots and make something that your heritage taught
(30:03):
you to make, you will find that it's cheap, it
satiates you, and it's delicious, and therefore it doesn't have
to take so much time and it doesn't have to
be so fancy. And so if we can help inspire
and educate as much as we can, it's a good thing.
My goodness, this was such a good conversation. I'm so
(30:24):
glad I got to speak with you. I really enjoyed it.
You inspired me, and I'm just grateful that you're doing
what you're doing. Thank you so much, Gabrielle, Thank you
so much for having me. This is just so much
fun and I just love how you're approaching this topic
not just in your own life, but it sounds like
in the lives of a lot of people. Thank you.
(30:49):
To dig deeper into this episodes, topic and resources, visit
the kind life dot com. The Real Heal is an
I Heart Radio production made in partnership with Frequency Media.
I'm your host. Alicia Silverstone from I Heart Radio are
managing producer is Lindsay Hoffman from Frequency Media. Michelle Corey
(31:11):
is our executive producer, jordan's Rizzieri is our producer, and
Imani Leonard and Laura Boyman are our associate producers. Sydney
Evans is our dialogue editor, and Claire bit of Gary
Curtis is our mixer and sound designer. This podcast is
available on the I Heart Radio app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
(31:33):
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