Real Food Kitchen Tour: Food With Kid Appeal

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we will be touring the kitchen of Jenna Pepper, author of Food With Kid Appeal.

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: Food With Kid Appeal

Jenna Pepper and Family

This week we travel to the Houston, Texas to tour the kitchen of Jenna Pepper, author of Food With Kid Appeal.

Jenna is still learning how to grow good eaters and balance the food budget while still serving up tasty meals. Using her blog Food With Kid Appeal, she is on a mission to help America grow a healthy generation of kids.

Jenna is also our a Village Green Network blogger. We’re so excited to have her join the Village Green Network!

Blog Name: Food with Kid Appeal
Blog Author: Jenna Pepper
Location: Houston, TX
How Long Blogging: 4 years
House or Apartment: House
Size of Kitchen: 14×12
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: Gas stove, giant pantry, view out to the courtyard, when other people cook in it with me.
Things You Would Change About Your Kitchen: It is hard to maneuver when the dishwasher door is open. So when the dishes are being unloaded, no one else fits in the kitchen. I can’t reach the range vent switch without getting out a stool. I never use the microwave, I want to replace it with an appliance I would use, like a second oven.
Favorite Tools And Gadgets: Air-lock fermentation jars, stick blender/mini-chop, Cutco knives and toaster oven get used daily.
Biggest Challenge Cooking Real Food: Time and food allergies. Sports practice means short evenings at home two times a week. I’m having to make a lot of dinner concessions I don’t really want to make. I have one dairy/gluten allergic kiddo, so finding tasty things we can all eat, that can be prepared within time constraints is ubertricky. A busy deadline season means I can’t tinker with recipes or research ideas online as much as I’d like.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Either Sausage, Green Bean, Potato Skillet meal, or hamburger patties, garlic chive kefir mashed potatoes w/ gravy + local veg.
Favorite Cookbooks: I don’t really look at cookbooks anymore, I do most of my recipe hunting online. When I did use printed cookbooks, I loved the Williams Sonoma line of cookbooks. I also like the [easyazon-link asin=”1440511209″ locale=”us”]The Whole Family Cookbook by Michelle Stern[/easyazon-link]. At her core, Michelle is a real foodie and phenomenal food literacy educator.

This is where the growing good eaters happens. It’s also a pit stop for tiny lego men, who play on the table even when Gus and Rus are at school. I love all the natural light and view of courtyard.

Family Feeding Spot

This is the courtyard the kids play in while I cook. We’ve been known to take over the gazebo table for dinner or game night. We’re into zip-it and yahtzee at present.

Nice and dark on the floor of pantry, perfect place for kraut and veggie ferments. The plate catches any accidental spill-overs.

Coconut milk kefir

Real food refrigerator

Real knives for real food

View from cutting board counter

Messy real food pantry

Kiddo squash plant

Navel fig tree

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.