Blogged in the USA
On any given day, you’ll find Marie Viljoen trekking through a New York City park or up in the Catskills foraging for wild ingredients, tending native edible elderberry and common milkweed in her own urban garden, or working on recipes for her @66squarefeet Instagram page or her next cookbook. Her second book, Forage Harvest Feast with an impressive 400 recipes for 40 wild edible plants, will be on shelves later this year.
Across the States, in a quaint town in the Deep South where deer-hunting and bass-fishing are popular pastimes, Dale Gray is snapping pics of the homey food she cooks and styles for her Instagram page @thedaleyplate, which had 85 000 followers at the time of writing. Her photographs, paired with engaging, warmly told stories about her everyday life and South African childhood, have made her feed a popular food nerd pit stop.
Dale grew up in Wellington in the Western Cape and, after completing a degree in social work at Stellenbosch, left for South Korea to teach English (and be a greater financial support to her mother and sisters). “My employer saw that I had a love for cooking and offered me the position of culinary instructor. I worked 10-hour days teaching basic cooking skills to children
