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Happy New Year!! This is one of my favorite holidays because of the renewed sense of hope and excitement it gives me for all the adventures I choose to have and goals I choose to accomplish. In celebration, I have included a video of a drink made out of juniper berries (which are in season now), called smreka. This drink is from Bosnia and is surprisingly tasty. It could make a great new year toasting drink for those who are not into alcohol, like myself.

However you enjoy your new year I hope it is blissful, whether you are partying with friends or staying home and keeping it low key like we are this year. Tonight we will be making new year’s resolutions, watching a holiday movie, toasting with kombucha, and sealing 2012 with a midnight kiss. If you are into making new year’s resolutions like we are, check out this post I did 2 years ago. It’s all about how to set the perfect goals for yourself and keep them, inspired by my sister’s adorable dog Chula.

Talk to you in 2012! Our best year yet!

P.S. Apparently my kitchen has bad lighting. I apologize about that to all you artistically minded people. See this post for more bad lighting footage

I am really enjoying all the wild greens growing on my land right now. Filaree, dandelion, chickweed, curly dock, and hedge parsley are in season here in Texas. Can you believe wild food has on average 10 times more nutrition than conventional food?! And it’s free! And it’s tasty! And it gets us out of the house, giving us fresh air and a meditative mind! I really have no excuse not to have at least one wild salad a day. I usually do

Freshly picked wild greens ready to make into a salad or green smoothie

If I wanted to go the extra mile I could even add some wild pecans and black walnuts to my salad. Now that would be WILD!

What do you like to put in your wild salad?

Hackberries are in season! Woo Hoo!! These are one of my most favorite wild foods. During late fall and all through the winter you will find me drinking hackberry milk 3-4 times a week for breakfast! Breakfast of champions I tell you! I am always experimenting with my superfood drinks, adding a little of this and a dash of that. Sometimes this results in a beverage which requires me to plug my nose and chug it down as fast as possible. Other times my experiments result in the most delectible delight and for a moment I fancy myself a culinary genius! Recently I created a hackberry milk which tastes so much like egg nog, only with double the nutrition and without the gut bomb effect. Try it! You just might LOVE it!

Try it fancy

Or try it casual. Either way it ROCKS!

Holiday Hackberry Nog:
1 cup wild foraged hackberries
4 cups warm rooibos tea
2 Tbsp. raw honey (or sweetener of choice)
1 Tbsp. organic non-gmo soy lecithin
1 Tbsp. coconut oil
2 cloves
3 shakes cinnamon
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
big pinch sea salt

Add rooibos tea and hackberries to high speed blender. Blend on high for 1-2 minutes. Strain and add liquid back into blender. Add in remaining ingredients and blend well, until creamy. Pour into mugs and sprinkle nutmeg on top. Voila! Best Holiday Nog EVER!!

Sometimes I add 2 tsp. of medicinal mushrooms to the mix, but this tends to change the flavor, so I don’t recommend it if you are a beginner

Happy Holidays!

P.S. For all you breastfeeding moms, this drink is great for replenishing your milk supply!

Hi Y’all! I hope your Thanksgiving weekend was FABULOUS, filled with family, fun, and good food! I love that we have a holiday which reminds us to appreciate our life and gives us an excuse to throw a party for our family and friends. There truly is so much to be grateful for. Every breath we take is a gift. And as Cicero stated, “gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues, but the parent of all the others.” When I stop to ponder on all the blessings I have, I become deeply emotional and humble. There is no way I can be jealous, selfish, or complaining when I am in a state of gratitude.

In honor of Thanksgiving I thought I would do a food blog. It’s been a while. This video was taken a few months ago when I wrote my day in the life of a blissful mama post. It is a how to on making a yummy drink out of sumac berries. I know, I know, they are out of season, but hey, it gives you something to look forward to in the spring. In springtime you can munch on young sumac shoots and in the summer you can enjoy this delicious sumac-ade…

Thank you for being AWESOME! There is no one else in the world exactly like you!
Love,

P.S. If you had a raw/vegan Thanksgiving, please let me know what you had! We had a vegan pizza from the book Thrive and also some raw cranberry sauce and a delicious salad with pomegranates and nuts. Yum!!

This morning we went to pick up some raw goat butter in Oak Cliff, with no ideal we were about to embark on an awesome urban foraging adventure! On our way there, David required to go potty so we stopped by a gas station to take him. We walked to a hidden spot behind the building and, to our great delight, we found 3 wild plum trees!! These beautiful trees had dropped hundreds of ripe fruit. We just had to stop and enjoy some. They tasted DELICIOUS!! There is a certain depth of flavor which wild foods posses that cultivated store bought varieties don’t. David loved grabbing them off the ground and putting them in his mouth. We collected over 100 of them for eating, pickling, and making jam.

Wild plum tree

David foraging for plums. This photo was taken after we collected most of them off the ground

When we reached Urban Acres, we found a HUGE patch of purslane. The biggest patch I have seen so far! David and I had a few leaves. After we picked up our butter and a few other items, we went to a park in Richardson where we used to live. This is the same park where I recorded my persimmon foraging video. We ate several yummy ripe persimmons and collected more for later. I also had some dandelion leaves as there were several dandelion patches. David was asleep for part of the time. After he woke we pushed him on the swings.

David enjoying the park swing. Notice the evidence of persimmon eating around his mouth

Feeling the foraging vibe, we decided to make yet another stop on our way home. We visited Bryan’s work which has persimmons, hackberries, and lots of other wild food surrounding it. David picked his own hackberries and persimmon off the trees. He also pointed these trees out to us as we passed by. Amazing!! He already knows how to identify them! It is easy for small children to do this as they have photographic memories.

Bryan and David picking hackberries

Our final stop was at Whole Foods, where we did a different kind of urban foraging: one in which you pay for your food and it’s not as local or freshly picked. Oh well, this is what we do until we create our abundant forest garden/space of love, supplying us with all we require. We went home and I took a blissful nap with David.

The End

P.S. Do you urban forage?

Ok, so I know spring is almost over, but I thought I would post this anyway. I made a video of a few edible spring flowers which go well in salads, as a garnish, or just eaten plain. If it is true that “you are what you eat,” why not increase your beauty by eating one of the most beautiful things in nature… flowers!

In any case, eating flowers will add more beauty to your meal and more color to your foraging adventures;)
bon appetite!

P.S. Please forgive me for some of the blurry video parts… apparently I had a dirty lens on my flip camera. Oh, and forgive me for the horrible haircut LOL I will go to a more upscale salon next time!

Have you ever tried elm seeds? If not, you are in for a big treat!! To me they taste a bit like sunflower seeds. Below I have posted a spontaneous video my friend Rami and my husband Bryan made on Elm seeds…

All Elm Tree seeds are edible as far as I know. During the spring you can harvest American, Slippery, and Siberian Elm seeds and during the fall you can harvest from the Chinese and Cedar Elm. In our video we were harvesting from the American Elm.

Happy Foraging!

Hackberries are so amazing!! They have fat, protein, carbohydrates, and tons of vitamins and minerals, making them a complete meal in and of themselves. Hackberry trees are prevalent throughout most of the United States. Therefore, they are an important fruit to know about for anyone who is committed to health, interested in survival skills, or desires to make wild food a large part of their diet. Below I have posted my hackberry foraging adventure and a recipe for a yummy drink you can make from your harvest…

As promised, here is a photo of what hackberry leaves (or sugarberry in our case) look like…

Sugarberry leaves have a unique appearance, making them easy to recognize. Usually you will find galls on them. Sometimes hackberries are called the “nettle tree” because it’s leaves bear a superficial resemblance to the leaves of stinging nettle.

Happy Foraging!

There is something so exhilarating about knowing how to forage for your own food. When you know enough edible plants you start to feel confident that no matter what happens to our societal structure, you will always have something to eat. Today’s video is to show you how you can make a yummy wild salad from foods growing right in your backyard…

Stay tuned into my blog for more sustainable living videos:) Now that winter is complete, it is time to do some serious wild food foraging and gardening!!
Live in Bliss,

Here is a fun video I recorded of my chickweed foraging adventure:) I also included a yummy raw recipe for you. The awesome thing about chickweed is it can survive cold weather, making it an excellent herb to consume in the winter!

Benefits of Chickweed:

• Like most wild food it is super high in vitamins and minerals (Iron, Copper, Manganese, Magnesium, Zinc, Potassium, Vitamin C and A). It is higher in iron and zinc than any domesticated green. Zinc and Iron are especially important for those who choose to be vegetarian
• Helps maintain healthy weight (contains saponins, which may help to bind fats and remove them from the body)
• Nourishing for the lungs
• Helps carry off cellular debris through our lymph system and it also helps clean out and clean up cysts
• Great for drawing out infections and soothing pain (excellent herb to add in your homemade salves and oil infusions)
• Great remedy for eye problems (sties, conjunctivitis, pink eye, etc.)

Here is a picture of a chickweed flower. Notice how it has only five petals yet looks as if it has ten

Enjoy your Best Health EVER!