Foraging Wild Edibles in Poland- With Lots of Pictures!

Having never stepped foot in Poland before, I assumed that going there, I might recognize one or two different edible plants, and maybe do a drop of foraging. I was not expecting to recognize most of the plants there, with them being things I regularly forage locally, or plants I'm familiar with even if I didn't forage them myself.

Here's just some of the many, many, many edible plants I saw in Poland. I saw the vast majority of them the the first day in Poland, in the Jastkow village in the countryside outside Lublin, but saw very many wild edibles in the city of Lublin, proper, as well as in Warsaw.

When I first was being driven from the airport to the rural airbnb where I was staying at, at around 3 in the morning, I saw these giant leaves growing all along the sides of the country road. I couldn't identify them 100% because it was dark and the speed in which we were driving, but I saw that it was absolutely the most common plant I could find in the countryside. I suspected it was a type of dock/sorrel/rumex species, but decided to check it out better in the morning.

When I had a chance to walk and bike through the country side, I took a better look at this plant and saw that it was not dock, but rather horseradish!

Tuna Tartare with Capers on Beet Carpaccio Recipe- Paleo and Delicious

The other day I was looking for a fancy dish to make for a nice meal, but didn't want to spend too much money on it, saw some beets in my fridge and capers I'd just foraged, and got inspired to make this dish, tuna tartare with foraged capers and sow thistle capers on beet carpaccio. I first saw my friend Ben make a dish similar to this; his plating was an inspiration for mine.
Carpaccio is a dish invented in the 1950s and originally made with paper thin slices of beef topped with olive oil, lemon juice or vinegar, and salt, and more recently people have started making meatless versions of it out of beets.
Tartare is typically made from raw meat or fish, onions, capers, and seasonings, and is similar to the raw fish ceviche.

When I made this dish, my entire family was in love, and the dish itself, despite its fancy appearance, was relatively easy to make and quite frugal. Tuna steaks, I'm sure you're thinking, are not remotely frugal, but if you compare the price per pound with canned tuna, tuna steaks typically work out to be significantly cheaper. I used just one tuna steak for this recipe and stretched it with lots of capers and onions and it was enough to serve as an appetizer for our entire family. The fish in this recipe cost me about a dollar, the beets about 35 cents, the onion was free, and the rest of the ingredients were so insignificant in terms of cost- a fancy appetizer like this for under $1.50, approximately the price of a can of chunk light tuna locally, definitely a frugal dish, even factoring in the tuna steak.
If you want to do a more fish heavy dish, and not have such a high onion to tuna ratio, you're welcome to do so, it will just increase the cost, and it tasted fishy and delicious enough like this, so I wouldn't change anything.

In terms of safety and raw fish, I'd suggest you do your own research about what types of tuna that you can locally buy are safe to eat raw. Sushi grade tuna would work, for example.

I used a combination of homemade foraged pickled capers and sow thistle capers (recipe in my book Penniless Foodie in the Wild, now available in Kindle version as well as print, on Amazon) in my recipe, but you can use store bought pickled capers or any mock capers, or a combination thereof in this recipe.

If you want to keep this vegan and/or lower the costs, you can simply make the beet carpaccio, thinly slice a raw onion and scatter it on the beets along with capers, before adding the rest of the toppings, and it tastes delicious and looks beautiful, albeit a little less so, that way as well.

Tuna Tartare with Capers on Beet Carpaccio Recipe- Paleo and Delicious

Homemade Egg Free Hollandaise Sauce Recipe- Paleo, Vegan, and Delicious

Foraged asparagus with vegan hollandaise

My 9 year old son Lee sometimes asks me "Mommy, how do you come up with all your recipe ideas?" and I tell him, more often than not I get inspired by recipes I see on the net or elsewhere. I don't usually make recipes as I find them, because of food sensitivities and monetary constraints. Some recipes I am especially proud of, as I figured them out from start to finish, not basing them off any or even multiple other recipes, but entirely out of my head.
My vegan, flax seed based mayonnaise is one of those recipes that I figured out entirely on my own, and it is really an amazing one, with the exact texture and taste of egg based mayonnaise (unlike most vegan mayonnaise recipes whose texture leaves much to be desired).

When I was lucky enough to be able to forage a bunch of asparagus (something I rarely eat, as they are ridiculously overpriced here, and wild ones don't grow so frequently where I live), I wanted to serve them in the most delicious way possible, that would let their flavor shine (and not be hidden in a quiche or soup) while adding something to bring its flavor up a notch. Cliched though it is, I decided to serve my asparagus with hollandaise sauce.
Or my version of it anyhow.

I'm not a vegan by a long shot, but unfortunately I've got a sensitivity to most dairy and eggs. I've tried my way around it, tried duck eggs instead of chicken eggs, but I can't eat them either. And even ghee, which is clarified butter, with the milk protein removed, something many dairy intollerant people are able to have, makes me react, unfortunately. So the classic hollandaise sauce, made from egg yolks and butter is out for me. But that didn't mean I wanted to give up on it.

A Frugal Girls Mini Vacation

I just got back from a great trip with my mom and two sisters, Violet and Lizzy. We moved abroad when my little sister Lizzy was only 6, and Violet and I moved out of the house right around then. We realized that we girls never really did trips together, and Violet had the idea to go on a hiking trip/mini vacation with the three girls and our mom, and we had an awesome time. 

It was frugal and fun and just hit the spot.

Violet wanted to go to this specific water hike that is very famous, and is a rite of passage, of sorts, for locals, as it something a large percent do growing up here, which we never did since we only came at a later stage.

We left yesterday afternoon, came back yesterday night. 

Entire cost of the trip? 

$25 per person plus groceries.

Penniless Foodie in the Wild: Adaptable Recipes for Foragers and Frugalistas is Now Out!!!

Awesome news to share with y'all!!! My new cookbook, Penniless Foodie in the Wild,  Adaptable Recipes for Foragers and Frugalistas, is finally out and available on Amazon!

This has been a work in progress for months (or years, depending on how you look at it), and I'm really excited by it.

It's not a foraging ID book, but that is in the works. Its not even just for foragers- those with no interest in venturing out into the wild will also enjoy this food- it's just low cost good food that can be made with wild edibles or things from the grocery store.

Here's what the blurb at the back of the book says:

Foraging Wild Swiss Chard or Sea Beet in my Backyard!

I love Swiss chard but it's not so cheap to buy locally. I mean it's not a fortune but it's more than I'd like to pay for a leafy green. In my home growing up we grew Swiss chard in our garden and enjoyed it. When married and in our first home, the one with a garden and chickens, my mom gave me some Swiss chard to transplant into my yard and it grew wonderfully giving us a regular supply of yummy greens. But then we moved and the Swiss chard was no more as we has no yard.

Image my excitement when I found out that there is a wild Swiss chard relative, the ancestor of beets and chard, called sea beet, growing locally! It pretty much looks identical to store bought Swiss chard, only growing in the wild. Though native to the coasts of Europe, Northern Africa, and Southern Asia, it now grows in many other parts of the world. It's scientific name, beta vulgaris maritima, meaning common beet sea references the fact that it's originally a coastal plant.

Unfortunately though, while it grows in other parts of my country in large quantities, in my city, I guess because we're not near the sea, I've only ever seen it in two different places. One of those places is near my husband's work, in the part of the  city that is nearest to my town... and that same plant has been growing there for years. But just one plant. I would go back and pick some and then come another time to pick some more. But that was the only place I could forage it. I wouldn't even tell anyone about that plant because I was afraid that  someone else would get there first and there's be nothing for me... I thought of it as 'my Swiss chard plant'.

Vietnamese Scallion Oil Recipe -- Mo Hanh -- Easy, Paleo, Vegan, Allergy Friendly

There has been a request for some super simple recipes here, which is why I'll share this one, even though it seems quite silly to me to share something so simple. But as people said when I shared my fried banana post, even if its not something complicated, it may be something that others wouldn't have thought to do, so why not share?

Last night I wanted to make a Korean style dinner, because I had leftover Korean cucumber salad, and ready fermented wild mustard, carrot, and fennel kimchi (which came out awesomely, by the way), and a bunch of wild salsify greens that I wanted to cook up. I figured that to go with the theme, I'd make them Korean style (recipe/method to come soon).
For lunch I had been super lazy and just threw a batch of chicken wings into the oven to roast, not even salting or spicing it whatsoever, just 100% plain. Recently I'd read about a scallion oil garnish that sounded good, so I threw together my own batch and topped the plain chicken wings with that. It was divine, and completed the Korean theme!

Or so I thought...

Because when I tried to go back and find that recipe on Maangchi.com, my go to source for delicious Korean recipes, I couldn't find it. And then remembered that I had originally seen it on VietWorldKitchen.com, My chicken wings were Vietnamese then, not Korean. Though, cooking Korean foods a lot, and being familiar with their various commonly used ingredients and many of their recipes, I wouldn't be surprised to find scallion oil in a Korean kitchen, albeit with a different name than Mo Hanh.

Mo Hanh might have specific recipes in some places, but this is more a general idea than an exact recipe, because proportions don't matter so much.

Paleo Update, and Insane Foraging and Extreme Frugal Food Shopping

I feel like those reading my blog for a while think I'm so inconsistent, and terrible with follow through, because I can't count how many times I said I'd do something... and then fell off the bandwagon. But I think that's life, and especially when there are a lot of things going on, its hard to keep doing what you'd intended on doing, even more so when those things are challenging.

Why am I bringing that up? Because Paleo. It wasn't that long ago that I wrote about having been off Paleo and how it made me exhausted, and that's why I was going back on...  Guess what? I did go back on Paleo and I did have much more energy, but then in the last two months I've been so insanely busy with everything related to my book, and life in general, that I went back to shortcuts in food preparation, and despite it being a relatively healthy diet (not counting the junk I was eating... though that wasn't too frequent), it was heavy on non Paleo foods like rice and lentils. This past week I've been crazy exhausted beyond belief, falling asleep every night at 8 or 9 pm, crashing. That is not me, and the last time I felt that perpetually exhausted was when I was in my first trimester of pregnancy with Anneliese and eating gluten since that was all I could keep down, so I knew something was not right. (No, not pregnant.) People were trying to tell me that it was just that I ran myself down, that I've been working so hard with everything book related that I have to give my body time to recover, but I knew it wasn't just that.

I knew it was diet.

And so, I decided that I would go back to Paleo. I have to. Not half-heartedly this time. It isn't worth it. I may think I'm saving time and energy and money by making only one meal for the entire family, a non Paleo but frugal meal, and eat that together with the family, but if that means that I end up being more exhausted and having much less energy and sleeping 4 more hours every night, that's not much of a time saver- I may be spending less time on food prep but I have fewer hours in my day available period, because I'm wasting my time sleeping. (And yes, sleeping is a waste in this situation, because its not that my body actually needs those hours of sleep, but rather that I'm hurting my body and making it need to recover.) I end up wasting more time because then I have fewer hours available in my day...  

Even from a frugality perspective it isn't worthwhile, also because I know I can make Paleo meals extremely frugally (I have a post on that coming up very soon, I hope), And with less energy, I can just do the bare basics to take care of my home and my family and can't find any energy to work to make money, so even financially these "money saving" things set me back.

Since Friday I've been strictly Paleo once more. Its a night and day difference in terms of energy. Instead of feeling like a sluggish sloth who wants to catch as many winks as possible, I feel bursting with energy even after doing supposedly physically taxing things, and even at times like now when I am running on only 4 hours of sleep. When I'm sharing my Paleo meals, people are asking me how I find the time and energy to make such meals, but what they don't get is... I really can't afford not to. Its an investment into my health and well being that is really, really worthwhile. 

A few things happen, though, that make me slip and not end up sticking to Paleo. One of those is when everyone has a treat or special food to eat, and I just have plain and boring foods. I decided that I wasn't going to set myself up for failure, and I'd make sure to be prepared. When I made my family sushi (a super easy cheater sushi-post on that up soon-since I made this on Friday, when I still was running low on energy since my new regime's effect hadn't had a chance to kick in yet) I made sure to make myself a Paleo approved sushi plate, so I wouldn't be tempted to cheat. I made my daughter a birthday cake, and was able to hold myself back from eating that because I made myself a Paleo crumble and a Paleo cheesecake, so I wouldn't feel like I was missing out. In short, I can't just make nice things for everyone else and then do nothing nice for myself, and then expect myself to hold strong and not cheat. Whole 30 diets talk against this type of thing exactly, but if anything, this, more than anything, makes the case why incorporating SWYPO foods is a good technique to make Paleo a lifestyle that is sustainable in the long run.

Another thing that makes me fall back to non Paleo eating is when my fridge is mostly empty, or at least without a lot of variety, and I have no back up Paleo approved foods in the pantry and I'm hungry. I have energy to cook two sets of meals when I can let my creativity run free and know I'll come up with some terrific foods, but when I don't have many options with which to prepare food. I get uninspired and then non Paleo food, even plain white rice, seems so good and tempting. 

I knew, therefore, that the first order of business if I wanted to do this properly and stick with it is to make sure my house is filled with plenty of varied produce (and animal protein, but that's for another trip). So yesterday I decided to fill my fridge frugally, and take the time to nourish my soul as well. 

I went to the city to stock up on produce, with the goal being to eventually head over to the open air market. Before that, though, I went to a nature reserve in the city, walking distance from my bus into town, with the goal of foraging some unique and special veggies. In my town. I can forage, but I'm a little bored of what we have here right now, and I can't find as much variety or things close together, and I knew this nature reserve was special. There's a stream in it, which meant there was a chance to get some watercress (not any other natural body of water remotely near my house that I can get to easily), but even if not, I knew there would be plenty of great things there that I could use to fill my fridge.

I didn't leave disappointed. While I struck out on the watercress (I found a tiny amount, which I left to grow), for the first time in my life (despite looking so many times, and sporadically finding a few stalks), I managed to find a large amount of wild asparagus. I adore asparagus, but it costs so much money locally (a bunch this size costs around $10) that I can't bring myself to buy it. Finding that asparagus just made my day!

Our Urban Homestead's Kitchen Today

I feel like a real homesteader, you know, those farm wives that are all self sufficient and do everything themselves from raising their own food to transforming it to something that will feed their family for long periods of time, etc... all entirely from scratch. Though we don't live on a farm, what we have is definitely a little suburban homestead, and today I homesteaded to an extreme.

It started off this morning when I went in to the city to refill my pantry that was getting bare. I foraged a bunch and got some great things, and then after that, went to the farmers market and got a bunch more things very frugally. Details on that will be in tomorrow's post hopefully...

But ever since I got home, I've been non stop taking care of all the produce that I brought home.

I first cleared off my counters enough so I could take pictures of my haul on the counters, and then had to clean out the refrigerator to make room for everything in it that I brought home. I took out the stuff that, unfortunately, I let spoil. Other leftovers I combined to make supper for the family (leftover rice and leftover lentil soup, with the addition of some tomato paste, became rice with lentil sauce, and I served that with cabbage salad made from a cabbage about to go off). I found a Paleo meat dish and had that for my supper (more on me and paleo vs my family, hopefully in tomorrow's post as well.)

I then sorted out my fridge and put like with like, and then found room to fit everything in my fridge that I bought. Well, almost. I took out some produce from my fridge that needed to be cooked or otherwise it would go bad...

I had some beets, radishes, fennel, and hot peppers.

Raw Nettle or Spinach Pesto Recipe- Vegan, Paleo, and Cheap

Nettle pesto on spiralized zucchini

I almost feel silly sharing a recipe for pesto here made with wild greens, because it seems like, other than scrambled or in a salad, pesto is just about the most common way that people prepare wild greens. But the thing is, pesto is yummy when made right, but if not made correctly, with the right proportions, can taste bad. For that reason, I wanted to share this recipe for homemade pesto, without any parmesan cheese or nutritional yeast, that tastes great, and works for both paleo and vegan diets and anything else in between.

Feel free to use this pesto as you would a standard pesto recipe, on pizza, pasta, as a sandwich spread, on fish or chicken, on spiralized veggies, as a topping on potatoes or sweet potatoes, or anything else that comes to mind. (For more ideas, see this post on 50 things to do with pesto.) I just went simple and put it on gluten free spaghetti for my family, and on spiralized zucchini and baked sweet potato wedges for myself.

While I make this with nettles, it also works well with spinach leaves, lambsquarters, chickweed, or any other non bitter leaf with a relatively mild flavor.

If you're concerned about making this pesto with raw nettles, as they have stingers that can hurt you, note that while cooking gets rid of the stingers, blending up the nettle has the same affect and you don't have to worry about getting stung from the finished product. Handle the leaves carefully (gloves help) before putting in the food processor to avoid the sting.

Raw Nettle or Spinach Pesto Recipe- Vegan, Paleo, and Cheap

Working Hard, Foraging and Cooking Up a Storm

Musakhan chicken dish, made with foraged sumac

Dear wonderful readers,
I haven't gone anywhere.
Nope, just been super duper busy.
My final everything for my cookbook is due on March 6, and that includes all the photography which I am having professionally done...

Foraging Salsify or Goatsbeard- Delicious Wild Edible

When people first hear about foraging from me, a response I typically get is "Oh, so you eat grass?" I've noticed that most people who aren't immersed in the world of wild plants sees large swaths of green and instead of noticing different plants, they just see a green blur, which they dub grass.
I explain to them that no, I don't eat grass, as I'm not a ruminant and therefore my body cannot digest the cellulose in the grass. However, there are some plants that look like grass that I do forage, but no, they aren't actually grass.
Salsify is one of those plants that looks so much like grass that for the first 5 years I was foraging regularly, I didn't know how to identify it, especially not at its early stages of growth, the time most ideal for picking it. Now that I do know how to identify it, I see it everywhere and it has transformed into my absolute favorite foraged plant. (Ok, perhaps a slight exaggeration- I also absolutely adore redbud and wild chard and purslane- salsify ties with them.)

Salsify, also known as goatsbeard, Jerusalem star, and oyster plant, is known in Latin as tragopogon. Originating in Europe and Asia, and with a long history of cultivation (it was even mentioned by Pliny the Elder, who died in the Pompeii eruption in ancient Rome!) it now grows wild in most of the world. Even non foragers have often heard of salsify as there is a cultivated variety sold in the grocery store. There are a few different varieties of salsify, each slightly different but with the same general properties, and all edible.
If picked at the right stage, salsify is a yummy root vegetable, but the greens and flower buds can also be eaten, but more on that in a bit.

My Mini Makeshift Edible Garden

In our old apartment, the first one we had when we got married, we had a yard, and much of the time we didn't make too much use of it (to get to the yard you had to walk through one of the bedrooms). Eventually we got chickens and rabbits and that was fun, but no gardening- the yard was just filled with weeds that, at that time, and I didn't know those weeds were edible, predominantly. 

We had considered a vegetable garden and fruit trees for a while, but since we never knew how long we'd actually be staying at that place, we didn't want to invest the time and money on something if we would possibly just leave it behind. After a few years of a dirt and weed filled yard, we eventually made a vegetable garden where we grew tomatoes and swiss chard, and attempted a passionfruit vine and luffa vine (but those died) but wouldn't you know- that's when we ended up moving, after a few months of our veggie garden, and into an apartment with no yard, no dirt, etc... where we were for the next five years.

In our years in our teeny tiny apartment, I tried to see what gardening I could do, tried window boxes many times, but it's really not the same, because many things can't grow in window boxes because there isn't enough room, and because we barely had room for window boxes as is. We grew kale for a point, and mint, and purslane and aloe vera, tried tomatoes and zucchini and herbs and potatoes and sweet potatoes, but they all flopped for one reason or another. I wanted to garden, but knew that trying to get a green thumb working with window boxes only wasn't helping my cause.

One thing I looked forward to the most with our brand new home that we bought was the yard; I have such plans on my own veggie garden, square foot gardening in the front, a wild edibles yard in the back, and maybe a fruit tree or two. But since we moved here mid-November, we have had so much to do that a garden wasn't the first priority. Building a square foot garden takes time- from building the wood frames to getting the soil to buying the seeds, etc... We still haven't built a bookshelf for the kids' bedroom, so if we build anything right now, it's that. The square foot garden will have to wait.

However, despite that, I did manage to do something to appeal to my "growing my own food" desire. Bit by bit I've been growing food in our yard, so right now we have a mini makeshift edible garden.

Green Meatballs in Creamed Greens Recipe- Frugal, Paleo, Egg Free, Dairy Free and Delicious

When people hear meatballs, typically what comes to mind is beef meatballs in tomato sauce, over pasta. If you're from other parts of the world, Swedish meatballs in a cream sauce may be their first association.
But as a forager and frugalista, not to mention someone who likes to change things up a lot in the kitchen, I don't generally make the typical meatballs. Sometimes I do, yes, but more often than not I make my meatballs with ground chicken or ground turkey, since I am able to buy it at a fraction of the cost of ground meat where I live.
I'm always looking for new and different ways to use greens in my kitchen, since foraging in my area (and most areas) is predominantly leafy greens of various shapes and sizes, and it gets boring to eat greens the same way ad nauseum.

Green meatballs in homemade tomato sauce, over homemade gluten free soba noodles

A few years back, I thought that instead of the bread crumbs or ground vegetables or other fillers people add to meatballs to both stretch them out and make them more moist, since I had such an abundance of greens, why not add them into my meatballs? Ever since doing that, I realized how amazing that combination was. Added bonus- you get foods in funky new colors- bright green meatballs replacing the typical brown. Remember back in the day when Heinz put out ketchup in a variety of colors, including green ketchup? Green meatballs are exciting and different in a similar way to that green ketchup, and I even got my girls, who typically aren't so into greens (wild or not), to really love this dish, so much so that despite the huge amount that I made, there were no leftovers.

These green meatballs taste amazing as is, and can be eaten without any sauce at all, but I made them even better by combining them with a sauce made from creamed greens, and served over oven baked spiralized sweet potato "noodles" for myself and over rice for the kids. Simply amazing. The best part- this meal was not only frugal and delicious, it was paleo, egg free, dairy free, healthy, making my body feel great.

I've included the recipes for both the green meatballs, which can be served with whatever sauce you like, and the creamed greens, which can be served both with or without meatballs (either green ones or standard meatballs), and over whatever you like, whether grains, pasta, potatoes, etc...

I couldn't recommend these recipes more highly.

I used a combination of nettles and chickweed for my meatballs, and wild swiss chard/wild beet greens for my creamed sauce, but the greens you use are up to you. You can use any non bitter greens for the meatballs, foraged or store bought, such as kale, spinach, mallow, milk thistle, hollyhocks, etc... For the sauce, you can use any greens you'd like, even bitter ones- just make sure to de-bitter them first if using bitter ones (chop and either soak them in boiling water or bring to a boil for a few minutes, depending on their bitterness).

My wild swiss chard. Like regular chard, only smaller. And free,

Just a note: depending on preference, you can either blend up your onion in the food processor or not. However, if you do blend them instead of mincing them well, they will make your meatballs more watery and therefore harder to shape into perfect circles, and they will need to be boiled, not baked. Though this recipe does call for boiling the meatballs, if you just use chopped onions instead of minced, and you see the meatball mixture is firm enough to shape into balls, feel free to bake them instead.

Green Meatballs in Creamed Greens Recipe- Frugal, Paleo, Egg Free, Dairy Free and Delicious

My Completely Free Grocery "Shopping" Trip- Foraging and Salvaging

I just had a conversation with my publisher about my cover photography for my book, and what we want on it, as well as the photography for within the book, and then I realized that I don't have the ingredients needed to make all these foraged items, and to get them, I'd have to go into the city to go to a park there to forage. So I did.

I was there with a ticking clock- I arrived only 2 hours before sunset, and wanted to make sure I got enough of what I needed in time to make it back to civilization (and electric lights) before it got dark.

I had a long walk, and then got to the park and came home with a giant bag of goodies! Usually when I forage, it is mainly greens, and greens don't tend to be so heavy, but what I foraged certainly was heavy enough to feel it!

Surviving or Thriving on a Budget... What Is The Difference?

My super frugal grocery shops- for me a pleasure, for others,
 just barely surviving

Today I got into a discussion with someone who is familiar with my blog, and I was mentioning to her about how the focus of my blog is about living as well as one can within their means, however small, and not just doing what you need to survive. The tag line of this blog is and always has been "A Rich Life on a Minimum Wage" and I feel my life and my blog live up to that.

This person, however, said that she felt my blog was more surviving, not thriving, since I talk about family cloth, dumpster diving, and getting free chicken frames and such.

Hence this post.

Because I need to explain something that, I feel, is the essence of my approach to life and finances and frugality. 

Frugality is not one size fits all. In any way, shape or form.

Not only does everyone have a different financial situation, you can have two people with the exact same income, and frugality for each of them would look different.

Why is that?

I Got a Book Deal!

Not the cover we'll be using in the end

I've been sitting on this news for a while already, until everything was set in stone and it was a done deal, but now I can finally share... my book, Penniless Foodie in the Wild, my adaptable cookbook suitable for foragers and frugalistas alike... is not going to be self published like I originally planned! I had tried to upload it to Amazon to be available to download it in the kindle store as an ebook, and then do it as a print book self publishing... but I was having technical issues and I wasn't able to upload it.

So while I was trying to figure out the technical issues to be able to upload it, I got contacted by a publishing company offering me a book deal, and they'll be publishing this book, a print and ebook version, and I'm really excited about this one!

To be honest, I hadn't bothered with even looking for a publishing company, was just going to self publish, since I know how much heartache and heartbreak people have when trying to find agents to represent them, and then trying to find publishing companies to be willing to accept their book, and I had no interest in going through that. But this company contacted me, simply based on my blog (the best resume as a writer is a successful blog!) so I got to do things the official way, without the heartache and headache involved.

I have to finish all the last details for the book within the next month, including getting the professional photography finished (and, of course, that means foraging the ingredients and making the various dishes to be photographed), so I assume I'll be busy busy busy getting that done... but I'm really hoping that this book will be out, in print, by the time the foraging season gets into full gear in the US!

I just had to share the good news!

Sweet Potato and Greens Cakes Recipe- Paleo, Vegan, Gluten Free, with Foraged Ingredients

A few years back, if you asked me what was the best way to serve bitter greens (as a large percentage of wild greens are), I would have told you with fried onions, lemon and garlic. Don't get me wrong- it tastes delicious that way, but I've since come up with an even more winning combination- sweet potatoes with bitter greens. And if it is creamy, even better!

I made this dish with wild mustard greens and cream sauce with sweet potatoes a bit back, and since then have tried to combine the flavors whenever possible, since it tastes so good. Recently I made a dish for my family with potatoes and sow thistle (recipe to come soon), but since I can't eat white potatoes, decided to make these sweet potato cakes for myself. They were so delicious, quite possibly my favorite way I've ever eaten wild greens, and if not that, then way up there. Everyone in the family loved these, including my kids who generally make a fuss over eating cooked greens.

These sweet potato and greens cakes are vegan, paleo, allergy friendly (unless you're allergic to all nuts and seeds), gluten free, and not too hard to make. I made mine with foraged greens- wild mustard and a bit of sow thistle, but you can use any greens you want for this, whether foraged or store bought, and bitter greens or mild ones.

Everything about these sweet potato and greens cakes is perfection. Saying I highly recommend this recipe would be an understatement.

Sweet Potato and Greens Cakes Recipe- Paleo, Vegan, Gluten Free, with Foraged Ingredients

Back to Paleo and Hopefully Back to Myself

Today's Paleo lunch.

From the beginning of November, pretty much, possibly a bit earlier (October perhaps), my life has been a little crazy. First there was the moving date that we had up in the air, not knowing when our new home would be ready. Then simultaneously I was working to finish up my book. Once that was finished, it was back to the packing yet not knowing exactly when we were moving. Then moving, unpacking, and putting our house together, then doing construction on our rental unit and then trying to rent it out, then preparations for my brother's wedding, and now we're dealing with major damage and leaks in our new apartment, and between all that, my family has been sick three times.

If you can imagine, things have been going a little nuts around here and my stress levels have been increased to the point where I'm constantly snapping at people, and I'm beyond exhausted. Between the crazy times I've had lulls where nothing is going on for a few days, and even then, I'm just really not myself, extremely wiped out, even though there is nothing going on in my life and the only thing keeping me "busy" is watching movies. It doesn't make sense that I'm so exhausted (the last time I felt like this was when I was in my first trimester of pregnancy, and I'm not pregnant), so I've been trying to figure out the cause of this all, because I need to have some sense of normalcy back, and to be fully functioning, and not this zombie like existance that I've been feeling like for the past few months, for my sanity and for the sake of my family. Yes, it started out because things were genuinely hectic, but I've had hectic in my life before and it didn't get to this extreme level, where I feel on the verge of collapse.

I was doing a lot of thinking, and I think I may have figured out it out.

The last time I genuinely felt this awful was 5 years ago when I was pregnant with Anneliese and all I was eating was dairy and gluten- I barely functioned. When I cut dairy and gluten out, I finally was back to myself. I know diet can have an extreme affect on me physically and emotionally as well.

For the past many months, because of all the craziness in my life, I've been trying to find shortcuts to make things easier, and the biggest shortcuts I took were in the kitchen. I've not only completely ditched the Paleo diet that I was doing so well on- nearly every meal was rice based, and I know rice makes me tired- I've also been eating pure junk when I've had a hankering for treats (no, Skittles and chemical filled non dairy ice cream and msg filled flavored Doritos and soda are not acceptable treats, no matter what diet you're on). I'm also not eating enough vegetables, etc... I started this because I was exhausted, but because of that, I kept on being even more exhausted and couldn't seem to be getting out of this rut- it was a bad cycle...

But on Friday I decided to take the bull by the horns and say that no matter how exhausted I am, I need to fix my diet, and make more of an effort to eat in a way that strengthens my body instead of hurting it. (Forget the scale- I have no idea what I weigh now- I know I gained, but that is the least of my concerns. My health is.)

The Amazing Back to Basics Living Bundle is Live Now!

The sale of the Back to Basics bundle has begun! The following ebooks and e-courses are valued at $814.94, but for the next week (and not a second more!) you can buy all of these for only $29.97, including my brand new book, Penniless Foodie in the Wild- an adaptable cookbook whose delicious international recipes can be made with foraged plants or store bought plants, whatever you have in your house, and adaptable to many different specialty diets, all on a strict budget.

Here's a list of the amazing ebooks and courses you get as part of this bundle. Additionally, there are some great coupons and discounts you get on a bunch of natural living and homesteading related products when you get your bundle.

The books I am most excited about are:
Easy Paleo Instant Pot Recipes- because I love my pressure cooker!
The Broke Bladesmith- because knife making seems really cool!
30 Essential Oil Recipes for DIY Beauty and Skin Care- because I have essential oils in the house but often I'm not sure what to use and for what and how.
The Swiss Hills Guide To Cheesemaking- because it has a recipe for Brie in it!!! and I'm addicted to that stuff, and it costs a fortune here, and I've long been looking for how to make my own Brie!
A Cabin Full Of Food- because nearly 1000 recipes???
Get Growing- because I'm not experienced with  gardening and want to start a garden soon.
Natural Beauty From Head To Toe- because homemade perfume and makeup? Bring it on!
One Second After the Lights Go Out- because I am curious about the topic- would I have what it takes to manage if the power went out long term?
The Organized And Efficient House Spouse and How to Get Organized- because I'm anything but, and really need to learn these skills.

These are all ebooks, because it is not possible to give print books this low of a price.

And here is the complete list: