Real Food Kitchen Tour: Dimes2Vines

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Dina-Marie Oswald, author of the Dimes2Vines blog.

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: Dimes2Vines

This week we travel to West Texas to tour the kitchen of Dina-Marie Oswald, author of Dimes2Vines.

Dina-Marie moved from lower Alabama 4 1/2 yrs ago to west Texas to start a vineyard. She left the “secure” corporate life for a simplified farming life where she, along with 7 of her 10 children, raise their own chickens, milk their own cow, and make their own cheese!

Dina-Marie is also one of our newest Real Food Media blogger. We’re so excited to have her join the Real Food Media blog network.

Blog Name: Dimes2Vines
Blog Author: Dina-Marie Oswald
Location: Brownfield, Texas
How Long Blogging: Two and a half years
House or Apartment: 1500 sq ft “basement” – We are building our house overlooking our 22 1/3 acre vineyard ourselves (literally). We moved into what will eventually be the basement in November 2011. Phase 2 of our building plan (the upstairs) will begin in October, after this year’s grape harvest.
Size of Kitchen: 15 x 17 feet (main kitchen area)
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: In one word – openness. The open shelves make everything accessible, easy to see and find. The kitchen is open to the dining area which is open to the living area. So, I never have to miss anything going on, and, with 7 of our 10 children still at home, believe me, there is always something going on!
Things You Would Change: I wish I had more counter space, but that will have to wait until we build the main kitchen upstairs. For now, I use our stone dining table when I need extra work space.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: I would have to say my Bosch mixer, my 5 and 10 gallon stock pots, garlic press, freezers and food processor. Reasons: Bosch mixer – I make our bread, baked goods and even use it to make butter from the cream our family milk cow gives; 5 and 10 gallon pots – we have a big family and they are wonderful to use for cooking, plus they are great for cheese-making (which I do several times a week thanks to Buttercup!); Garlic press – it makes using fresh garlic so easy and encourages me to get the health benefits from fresh garlic instead of being lazy and settling for garlic powder; Freezers – we have 3 which I fill with garden produce and our own pasture raised beef which we process ourselves; food processor – what a time saver! Without it homemade sauerkraut would be more difficult and time consuming.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Planning! Whether it is making sure I have the needed ingredients or having soaked the needed grain/nuts, I have found that I must plan ahead to make the most of our menus. We live 45 minutes away from markets which sell quality produce – I cannot just make a quick trip to pick up an ingredient which I forgot! I usually try to plan around what we have in the freezer which helps but does not provide for the fresh produce.
Current Family Favorite Meal: We just butchered our first steer (raised from a calf on pasture) so meat dishes are a definite hit. I had gone 30 years as a vegetarian due to meat allergies which were corrected through the GAPS diet. That being said, I have 30 years of meat eating to make up for! Spinach lasagna made with eggplant slices (in place of lasagna noodles), ground beef, tomato sauce and spinach is everyone’s favorite.
Favorite Cookbooks: [easyazon-link asin=”0967089735″ locale=”us”]Nourishing Traditions[/easyazon-link], [easyazon-link asin=”0615409318″ locale=”us”]Internal Bliss[/easyazon-link], Sue Gregg’s Eating Better Cookbooks, [easyazon-link asin=”1931498237″ locale=”us”]Wild Fermentation[/easyazon-link], [easyazon-link asin=”1580174647″ locale=”us”]Home Cheese Making[/easyazon-link], CheeseMaking at Home, and food bloggers have also become an invaluable resource!

My open kitchen

View from living room

View from kitchen

Pantry which will be the stairwell to upstairs

Apron rack and kegerator (homemade kombucha and beer on tap!)

Kombucha fermenting – two 4.75 gallons = 9.5 gallons!

Shredding cabbage for sauerkraut

Chickens sharing Emme’s treat

Vineyard July 2012

Aglianico Grapes August 2012

Check Out the Previous Real Food Kitchen Tour Posts

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 cheeseslave 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.

Photo credit: A warm welcome Project365(3) Day 10 by Keith Williamson, on Flickr and photos by Memories by Michelle