Real Food Kitchen Tour: Cracking An Egg With One Hand

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Meg Dickey, author of Cracking an Egg with One Hand.

What’s a Real Foodie?

A “real foodie” is someone who cooks “traditional” food. We cook stuff from scratch using real ingredients, like raw milk, grass-fed beef, eggs from chickens that run around outdoors, whole grains, sourdough and yogurt starters, mineral-rich sea salt, and natural sweeteners like honey and real maple syrup.

We don’t use modern foods that are either fake, super-refined, or denatured. This includes modern vegetable oils like Crisco and margarine, soy milk, meat from factory farms, pasteurized milk from cows eating corn and soybeans, refined white flour, factory-made sweeteners like HFCS or even refined white sugar, or commercial yeast.

We believe in eating wholesome, nutrient-dense foods that come from nature. So we shop at farmer’s markets or buy direct from the farmer, or we grow food in our own backyards.

This Week’s Real Food Kitchen Tour: Cracking An Egg With One Hand

This week I’m featuring Meg Dickey and her family. They live in Fresno, California, home of Organic Pastures, the biggest raw milk dairy in the state (and I believe in the country).

I love Meg’s kitchen! It reminds me a lot of my grandma’s kitchen in Ohio. Grandma Ruth passed away last year and she is greatly missed. Whenever I think about her, I think about her kitchen.

Over the years, her kitchen was a respite for me, as well as my brother and sister, my cousins, and our husbands, wives and children. Grandma was always cooking something yummy, and if she wasn’t, there was something good to snack on while you shared a laugh and lots of hugs.

In all those years, I loved the fact that my grandma never changed a single thing in her kitchen (it was exactly the same since they built the house in 1976). To me, a homey, well-used kitchen says love.

Blog Name: Cracking an Egg with One Hand, so named because I was standing at the stove one day, attempting to make breakfast while nursing an infant and had to learn quickly how to crack an egg with one hand! To me, it symbolizes the balance between eating well, and raising our children well.
Blog Author: Meg Dickey
How Long Blogging: Since 2006. Really trying to stay on top of blogging: 2009.
Location: Fresno, CA
House or Apartment: Neither! We live in a 40 ft. park model trailer… it makes taking our life with us easier when we move.
Size of Kitchen: 6 x 8 feet. Yup, you read that right.
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: Yes, I love how small it is!  It keeps everything right at my fingertips, plus, it’s a great motivation for keeping things clean!
Things You Would Change: Only two things — I’d so much rather have a window over the stove than a microwave! And a larger stove/oven — I can’t fit a few of my sheets and pans in the oven!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets:  My “antique” Magic Mill grinder! It was a wedding present from my father, who had restored and renovated it.  It does everything from a pastry flour grind to a coarse cereal. Perfect!
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Places to keep it! We have a chest freezer, extra fridge, and a pantry area (where I store my bulk herbs) that are in an outdoor storage area. But everything else has to get eaten pretty quickly!
Current Family Favorite Meal: Grass-fed beef roast — doesn’t matter if I braise it in red wine, simmer in our homemade spaghetti sauce, or just toss it in with potatoes; we never have leftovers of roast!
Favorite Cookbooks: Nourishing Traditions
gives me really great starting points for most of the things I cook.  When I want to feel “gourmet”, I browse through Ren’s blog, Edible Aria — it’s gorgeous, and everything I’ve tried turns out fantastic.

Here are some photos of Meg’s kitchen (her comments are in italics).

“Here’s our latest haul from the garden & farmer’s market.  I also keep my cultured veggies, tinctures (that’s catnip on the left), and herbal vinegars & oils I’m infusing here, to take advantage of the sun through the window.”

A perfect still life! I’m sure it doesn’t stay still for long, though.

“Cutting board, compost bucket, utensil holder, and teapots.  We drink a lot of herbal tea… often.”

“I’m making cheese today (raw milk feta), hence the stockpot with thermometer. My mortar & pestle get a lot of use too, since I rarely have the time to go grab my food processor out of the storage room!”

Yum! I love feta cheese. I’d love to try making raw milk feta one of these days. I bet it’s fabulous.

I also love how you are able to get so much mileage out of such a small kitchen. Very impressive!

“I have a daily schedule for the kiddos, a household schedule for keeping track of what needs to be done each day, and then a reminder list for myself, in case I have a spare minute and can’t think of what to do!”

Love the lists! I want to be that organized.

“I’m the only cook, so when I’m not prepared, the whole house & budget suffers!  During the winter, I add our two daily snacks to the meal plan, too, but during the summer, it’s just whatever fruit + cheese happens to be around.”

“My kombucha (this batch is a green/black blend with mango & chili — smells divine!) & water kefir (which will be a lemon/hibiscus blend tomorrow). I know, you’re not supposed to ferment them next to each other, but if I run out of room down below, up it goes!”

“This is where my cookbooks hang out, and the menus are planned according to the large calendar above it. [Also, please note the 50 lb bag of organic oatmeal, and numerous 1/2 gallon mason jars for milk. We store where we can!”

Oh, man, I love the calendar! Having a visual like that seems like it would really you be more organized.

Check Out the Previous Real Food Kitchen Tour Posts

Real Food Kitchen Tour: Yolks, Kefir & Gristle
Real Food Kitchen Tour: The Okparaeke Family
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Holistic Kid
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Artistta
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Nourished & Nurtured
Real Food Kitchen Tour: May All Seasons Be Sweet to Thee
Real Food Kitchen Tour: The Horting Family
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Hybrid Rasta Mama
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Granola Mom 4 God
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Real Food Devotee
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Real Food Forager
Real Food Kitchen Tour: The Leftover Queen
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Health Home & Happiness

Let Us Tour Your Kitchen

Are you a real foodie? Do you have a kitchen that you’d like to see featured on CHEESESLAVE?

Please email me at annmarie AT realfoodmedia dot com. Either send me a link to a Flickr set or email me your photos (minimum of 5, but more is better). Note: Please send me LARGE photos. Minimum 610 width. If they’re too small, I can’t use them.

Oh, and please send the answers to the above questions (at the very top of this post).

As much as I’d love to include all the photos I receive, I can’t guarantee that I will use your photos in the series. I’m looking for creative, good quality photos.

Some ideas for photos:

• Show us what’s in your fridge or what’s fermenting on your counter
• Take some snaps of some of your favorite kitchen gadgets, or show us how you organize your spices
• Got backyard chickens? Send some pics!
• How about a lovely herb garden?
• Kids or pets are always cute!
• Try to include at least one photo of yourself, ideally in your kitchen

And no, you don’t have to have a blog to be included in the tour.