Real Food Kitchen Tour: How To Heal a Cowboy

Ann Marie Michaels -

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we travel to Orange, California to tour the kitchen of Katie Bertino, author of the blog How to Heal a Cowboy (no longer online).

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: How To Heal a Cowboy

My real food business is The Healthy Cowboy Kitchen – we sell organic, gluten-free, REAL food at local farmer’s markets in Orange County, California. Here’s a glimpse of my commercial business kitchen and my home kitchen as well.

Name: Katie Bertino
Blog: How To Heal A Cowboy
Location: Orange, California
How Long Blogging: Off and on for about three years
House or Apartment: We are renting a house
Size of Kitchen: about 13’ x 13’
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: Home: that is it roomy and bright, especially for a home that’s almost 100 years old (it’s had some
improvements made thank goodness!) Business: that it’s close to home and I have a good amount of storage
Things You Would Change: Home: I would love someone on “stand-by” to hand wash all my dishes. Oh, the time I would save. Business: I would love someone on “stand by” to hand wash all my dishes. Oh, the time I would save 😉 …and that I didn’t have to share it with anyone else – there are three businesses that work in my commercial kitchen.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Home: my Shun knives which are always extra sharp, cast iron cookware, food processor, and my big walnut cutting board. Business: stainless steel tables, huge stock pot, and big ol’ dehydrator.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Home: having time to cook for my family AND all my great customers. I recently had to start doing my farmer’s markets every other week because it was just too much. Business: it’s an incredibly expensive and time-consuming business to run – the cost of all organic, real food ingredients, permits, kitchen rent, insurances, and on and on. It is rewarding in a lot of ways, but I think I make about $5 an hour when all is said and done. I’m shooting for minimum wage next year 😉
Current Family Favorite Meal: Home family: Hubs and I have been eating a lot of sausage lately, home-made ice cream with Amish cream (that’s all the time), and we actually love to BBQ so pastured pulled pork and baby back ribs have been making appearances frequently. Business family: our grass-fed beef chili sells out before the markets start, strawberry mint and pineapple Serrano kombucha go quick, and any soups we offer always sell out.
Favorite Cookbooks: The Science of Good Cooking (Cook’s Illustrated Cookbooks), The Locavore’s Kitchen: A Cook’s Guide to Seasonal Eating and Preserving, Williams-Sonoma Comfort Food: Warm and Homey, Rich and Hearty. I do a lot of research on the internet when I’m creating recipes and I also have a big stack of magazine cut-outs that I’ve collected during the years.

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.