Real Food Kitchen Tour: Health, Home & Happiness

For a long time now, I’ve been wanting to do a Real Food Kitchen Tour series. I was so inspired by the Kitchen Tour on Use Real Butter, I thought it would be neat to do a kitchen tour with real foodies.

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.

The Real Food Kitchen Tour

In the coming months, I’m planning a series of posts touring real food kitchens. We’re currently looking for a new house to move into and I want to get inspired by your kitchens.

I’m also just curious. Don’t you love seeing other people’s kitchens? I do!

Real Food Kitchen Tour: Cara of Health, Home & Happiness

This week, we’re starting with Cara from the Health, Home, & Happiness blog.  She lives in Montana with her husband and two littles. Her daughter is on the autism spectrum, so their family is on the GAPS diet.

Blog Name: Health, Home, & Happiness
Blog Author: Cara Faus
How Long Blogging:  One year about food; 3 or so years about crafts at https://naturalfamilycrafts.com
Location: Billings, Montana
House or Apartment: Townhouse in a 4-plex, but each unit is owned individually so it’s not really like an apartment complex.
Size of Kitchen: Oh goodness, it’s a hallway with some appliances around it; 10×12 minus the closet and mechanical chase that take up a good portion of it, so about 110 square feet.
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I love that it has lots of sunlight, and nice big cupboards, a dishwasher that works well, the smooth top range that occasionally gets used as more counter space, and a garbage disposal.
Things You Would Change: Because it’s more of a hallway than a room, two people really can’t work at the same time without running into each other. I’d love to look out into the living room.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Food processor, stand mixer, good knives, DISHWASHER, water filter.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Planning ahead — making sure I source the best quality ingredients for the price, menu planning, soaking/sprouting/culturing before I need to use something.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Scrambled eggs, beef sausage, Hollandaise sauce, biscuits.
Favorite Cookbooks: Nourishing Traditions and Joy of Cooking for the basics.

Here are some photos of Cara’s kitchen:

Cara writes: “This is where I do most of my mixing/chopping/cooking. We don’t normally use paper towels; the people who were here before us left a big package of them.”

Cara uses food coloring to turn daisies pink. (This is the only use for food coloring in her kitchen.)

Cara writes: “I love that this house has lots of light, we’ve lived in a townhouse with a similar layout, but it didn’t have nearly as many windows. This one is much more cheerful!”

Cara writes: “Their kitchen is set up right next to mine, and they come in and out sharing their creations (and stealing mine!) often.”

I’m consistently amazed by Cara’s ability to make so many yummy-looking baked goods, considering that she and her family are completely grain-free. (Click here to read about her Grain-free Menu Plan.)

Cara writes: “For the summer the dehydrator stays down in the basement so it doesn’t heat up the house. In the winter I’ll move it up to the upstairs.”

That’s a real GAPS fridge! My fridge shelves are so crowded with condiments and olives and STUFF. I love the simplicity of these mason jars.

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).

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.