New Year, Ancient Foods: Food, Foraging & Mythology With Lori McCarthy and Felicity Roberts
In this four-part lecture series, explore celebrations, festivities, and culinary traditions from around the world that accompany the beginning of the year.
Course Description
We’re approaching the time for silence and stillness in the Wheel of the Year. Here in Newfoundland, that means we’re in the midst of the dead of winter, when nature barely seems to take a breath. But buried beneath the ice and snow, the life force of the Earth is bubbling and swelling in preparation for the cycle of life and growth to start again.
Over the course of four sessions, we’ll explore how folks around the globe celebrate this time of year through the lens of food and festivities—with a particular focus on wild and staple foods. Along the way, we'll learn a variety of artisanal and practical culinary skills, from using salt to preserve and flavor food to making flour from barks and seeds. We’ll cover a few foraging basics as well, and will have some fun crafting seasonal cocktails and casting the occasional spell.
Syllabus at a Glance
There are four total sessions included in this purchase, each lasting for 1.5 hours on four consecutive Tuesdays beginning January 19.
Session 1 (Tuesday, 1/19, 5:30–7 PM ET): Smoke: Divination and preservation
Session 2 (Tuesday, 1/26, 5:30–7 PM ET): Salt: Sacred, savory, sustaining
Session 3 (Tuesday, 2/2, 5:30–7 PM ET): Lunar New Year: Celebrating stirrings of spring
Session 4 (Tuesday, 2/9, 5:30–7 PM ET): Sea: Subconscious and sustenance
Atlas Obscura Online Courses
Our online courses offer opportunities for participants to emerge with new skills, knowledge, connections, and perspectives through multi-session classes designed and taught by expert instructors. Courses can take one of two forms: Seminars are intimate, interactive classes—capped at nine to 25 students—exploring topics and crafts through discussion, workshops, assignments, and in-class activities. We also offer lecture series that can be attended live, or viewed via a recording that will be shared within 72 hours after each session airs. Class recordings for lecture series will be available with a temporary password for up to two weeks following the final session of the course.
To learn more about our current course offerings, please visit www.atlasobscura.com/online-courses.
For answers to commonly asked questions, check out our FAQ page here.
Once registered, you’ll receive a confirmation email from Eventbrite that will provide access to each class meeting. Please save the confirmation email as you’ll use it to access your course via Zoom on each scheduled date and time.
Lori is a chef, outdoor educator, forager, hunter, and the founder-operator of Codsounds, a highly regarded culinary excursion company. She has been featured on CNN and many national and international publications. Special culinary skills include cooking over open fire, fermentation, and the butchering and curing of meats. She is dedicated to documenting and preserving traditional foods. You can follow her at @eatitwild and @codsounds.
Felicity is an herbalist, urban farmer, food and cocktail writer, textile artist and passionate home cook who gets excited about discovering simple, low tech, and environmentally friendly ways to grow, gather, and prepare food. Her knowledge of Newfoundland's landscape and foods is matched by an eclectic knowledge base acquired from a decade spent hitchhiking, farming, and cooking around North America with notable stops in British Columbia, Texas, and Maine. She has been featured on NPR and is an Atlas Obscura trip guide.
This lecture series is designed so students can participate live or watch a recording after each session airs. Sessions will take place live over Zoom, with dedicated Q&A segments for students to ask questions via video or chat. Within 72 hours after each session airs, we will email all enrolled students a recording of the session, which they can watch using a temporary password for up to two weeks after the course concludes.
In most cases, instructors will use Google Classroom to communicate with students outside of class. While students aren’t required to use Google Classroom, instructors will be using this platform to post resources, discussion questions, and assignments, when applicable.