Living With Less means Cooking With Less

It breaks my heart to see people struggling to eat. It’s a world wide problem that will only get worse. Too many people competing for the limited resources left. So what can we on a individual level do do protect ourselves? Start a vegetable garden! Turn you lawn into a farm or your balcony into a container garden.

Victory Gardens + Wartime Recipes for dieting on pinterest.

Yannis Behrakis foto of people standing in line at Syndtagma Square, Athens hoping to get some free onions

One of the best selling books in Greece right now is Eleni Nikolaidou’s Starvation Recipes, made up of recipes and survival tips used by Greeks during the occupation of the second world war. Raisins, olives, wild greens, and rationed bread became the nation’s staples against mass starvation that claimed an estimated 300,000 lives.

Suggestions from the book: No Meat? Push an eggplant through the grinder instead. Chew your food long enough for your stomach to feel full. And don’t forget to sweep crumbs off your table and into a jar.

Rock bottom? Greece gets the lowest credit rating in the world. Again (foto Nikolas Giakoumidis/AP)

Some frugal recipes:

Horta/wild greens: Boiled Leafy Greens + Wild Greens with Fried Eggs.

Roasted Sweet Onions with Mint

Onions: Roasted Sweet Onions with Mint + Caramelized Onion Dip Recipe + French Onion Soup.

Stale bread recipes: Bruschetta + Ribollita (bread and vegetable soup) + Panzanella, Tuscan bread salad recipe.

Refried Beans (frijoles refritos) + Wartime Cauliflower Cheese with Bacon + Beets and Greens Curry with Chickpeas + Orange Couscous Salad.

Stinging weeds: Blanche Vaughan’s nettle ravioli

Stinging nettle or common nettle, Urtica dioica, is a herbaceous perennial flowering plant we generally consider a weed to pull. The plant has many hollow stinging hairs called trichomes on its leaves and stems, which act like hypodermic needles that inject histamine and other chemicals that produce a stinging sensation when contacted by humans and other animals. The plant has a long history of use as a medicine and as a food source.

Foraging: URBAN FORAGING GUIDE [PDF].

Imagine having to feed your children cookies made from mud…