If there’s one person to thank for the phrase “urban forager,” it’s Leda Meredith. The words encompass her passion for the wild edible plants that grow in natural settings like parks and forests, but also between cracks in the sidewalk, in empty lots, and unrecognized, in your own garden. Leda dedicated years to teaching how to identify and eat these plants, with the goal of helping people to reduce their carbon footprint by consuming locally grown foods.
Here is our interview with Leda, where she defined herself as a locavore:
Interview With Locavore Expert Leda Meredith
Leda’s first career was as a brilliant professional dancer, a teacher of dance, and choreographer. She chose ethnobotany, the science of plants’ uses, as her second career, and earned certification in the field from the New York Botanical Garden. She had an honorary doctorate in fine arts for writing from La Universidad Leonardo da Vinci in El Salvador, and was granted Adelphi University’s Teaching Excellence Award.
In 2007, she decided to eat only food grown within a 250-mile radius from her home in Brooklyn, NY. The completed year of this experiment led to her first book, Botany, Ballet, & Dinner From Scratch: A Memoir With Recipes.
She led foraging tours and held food preservation workshops all over the world. Owing to her influence, thousands of people now consciously choose to protect the environment by buying and preserving locally sourced foods, or growing them.
Then there was Leda’s personal beauty and charm; her engaging enthusiasm for life and life’s good things; her wide-ranging intelligence and curiosity; her courage and sense of adventure.
She identified as a pagan. This is the grace she said over food:
“The energy you give me, I will turn into the actions of an honorable life. You will have no cause to be ashamed of being part of my bones. May your spirit travel in joy.”
Leda fought colonic cancer for a year. She died at home in San Juanillo, Costa Rica, where she and her husband, Richard Orbach, built a house. She is survived by Richard, and her mother, Penelope Colby. And by those many who deeply mourn her loss as a teacher and friend. I am one.
May her spirit travel in joy.
Leda Meredith wrote five important books:
• Northeast Foraging: 120 Wild and Flavorful Edibles From Beach Plums to Wineberries
• Preserving Everything: Can, Culture, Pickle, Freeze, Ferment, Dehydrate, Salt, Smoke, and Store Fruits, Vegetables, Meat, Milk, and More
• Botany, Ballet & Dinner From Scratch: A Memoir With Recipes
• The Forager’s Feast: How to Identify, Gather, and Prepare Wild Edibles
• The Locavore’s Handbook: The Busy Person’s Guide to Eating Local on a Budget
They are available on her author’s profile on Amazon.com.
