Leaves and Spices: A Cozy, Culinary Scavenger Hunt
Cozy up with a cookbook to hunt down ingredients and fill jars and bunches before the last page is reached in Leaves and Spices.
Time to take a slight detour into something that might not be a solo RPG, but certainly fits in the cozy realm! I stumbled across the publisher, StorySeamstress Games, in the midst of backing a crowdfunding project. In a very random search, I came across a fairly well-hidden solo bookmark RPG called Leaves and Spices. Hunt through a cookbook?! I was intrigued!
Game Overview
Game Name: Leaves and Spices
Publication Year: 2025
Designer: Amanda Kastner
Artist: Amanda Kastner
Publisher: StorySeamstress Games
Solo Mode: Designed for Solo (Included in the Base Game)
Using any cookbook of about 300-400 pages, the goal is to collect ingredients from the recipes. There are rules for moving ahead a certain number of pages, and it feels like a fun little scavenger hunt of a culinary nature! I grabbed the only giant cookbook at hand, ready for a little search.
Gathering Ingredients
How cute is this? The download includes this delightful illustration with blank labels on jars and bunches of herbs. This is it, though! Simple rules for a scavenger hunt.
The ingredients aren’t chosen at any point, but must be added based on what appears on a page. Something common might be easy to collect before the end… Maybe!
There are examples of spices and herbs to help identify them, and more are added as the cookbook’s end nears.
I wanted a simple and cozy activity, and this seemed quite perfect to occupy my time! Could I fill up this pantry?
The Very First Jar
Leave it to this cookbook to start off with a steak recipe… But a-ha! Salt counts as a spice, and I quickly labeled one of the larger capacity jars with it. I was on my way right away!
It took me a little bit to understand exactly what to do with pages that lacked recipes, yet it flowed easily enough.
And the decisions were minimal, yet important. Did I think this herb was going to be a little easier to find? What about this spice I rarely saw… Might it pop up again by end?
This was more of a scavenger hunt activity than a solo RPG, yet that didn’t diminish it in any way. I absolutely loved it!
Some Herbaceous Help
For a little more fun, I had my pocket edition of Herbaceous at hand to match up with a lot of the herbs. But wouldn’t you know it: This cookbook had its own spicy blend. Ha!
Surprisingly, mint showed up once and never made another appearance. And I was so sure there would be some more recipes that featured it. At least I had the tarragon covered!
The last few pages were a race and I checked the recipes a few extra times. So close! That was still a pretty full pantry.
My only lament is that I don’t have lengthy cookbooks… Maybe I’ll figure out how to play it with a shorter tome!
A Small Collection
I started out a little skeptical, yet quickly got very attached to my little spice jars and bunches of herbs. Paprika and cardamom seemed difficult to find, yet there they were!
Ramping up the units to fill near the end was helpful, too, although I was pretty successful at that point. Just can’t trust basil and mint to be readily available in this cookbook.
In a way, I felt like this gave a sort of flavor profile. It could easily change with a different starting page, but how fun!
Hunting for ingredients on each page was the sort of activity I didn’t think I would enjoy, yet it was a great time!
Making the Most of Seldomly Used Things
It’s probably pretty clear that I am not a master baker or cook, and only dabble from time to time. So any cookbooks are in my seldomly used category! Which is why I found it interesting that this little bookmark activity seemed so intriguing to me. I think it came down to being able to explore something I otherwise rarely look through, but also won’t part with.
Being able to do more with what’s already around is appealing. There is no added table space, and although I’m not going to pretend like this was akin to an all-encompassing solo RPG play, I had a lot of fun! The scavenger hunt aspect was awesome, and I thought the limitations and rules were excellent. Nothing complicated, yet not a guaranteed success.
Such a pretty idea! I love it when I stumble across random discoveries. At first, I really thought this was just going to be cozy due to the beautiful art, yet it had substance and offered me a very different kind of cookbook-related activity. So cool!
Unexpected Findings
Another side benefit to this culinary excursion was a glimpse at recipes I never saw before. Not that I use this cookbook that often, but I found some surprises.
A strawberry pepper icebox cake?! I marked the page, mostly because I was curious about that flavor profile. Might have to give this a whirl at some point to taste it.
I know of a few very old recipe books stored away… And I’m actually excited to hunt those down to play again someday!
All in all, this was a lovely experience that gave me a chance to interact with a cookbook in a way I never expected to.
Continue the Conversation
Have you had a chance to try out Leaves and Spices? Is there a cookbook you want to explore some more to discover its flavor profile? Sometimes, it’s amazing to find the creativity that exists around solo RPGs and adjacent, cozy activities. I never thought this would have been fun, yet I loved it! Can’t say the same about my cooking, but that’s another story. Ha!
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