RoseGoddessBliss.com

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?

“Electric Foods are the most important component of healing. They make the body alkaline. These are all foods that are able to grow in the wild.”
-Annie and Dr. David Jubb, Secrets of an Alkaline Body: The New Science of Colloidal Biology

“Wild food connects you immediately to the land. Eating wild food growing in your area acclimates you to the environment . . . Wild fruits are the sustenance of the immortals. Fruit has tremendous spiritual power. The more natural (non-hybridized) the fruit is, the greater its spiritual value”
-David Wolfe, Sunfood Diet Success System

Enjoy!