Real Food Kitchen Tour: Hollywood Homestead

Ann Marie Michaels -

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to Los Angeles, California to tour the kitchen of Sylvie McCracken, author of the blog Hollywood Homestead.

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: Hollywood Homestead

Blog Name:  Hollywood Homestead
Blog Author: Sylvie McCracken
How Long Blogging: 7 months
Location: Los Angeles, California
House or Apartment: House (renting)
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: The natural light, the wall oven, the amount of counter space
Things You Would Change: I’d take out the built in microwave, and put in a double oven. I don’t like an awkwardly placed island and the mediocre quality of the cabinets. I’d put in a HUGE fridge!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Breville tea kettle, Cuisinart food processor, Le Creuset baking dish, dehydator, crockpot, continuous brewer for kombucha and a zillion mason jars!
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Because we have the only table and chairs in the kitchen, the space feels a bit cramped and having more than one person in the kitchen at a time is difficult.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Lamb shoulder roast in the slow cooker. Or anything in the slow cooker, really.
Favorite Cookbooks: The ones we use regularly these days are [easyazon-link asin=”1936608758″ locale=”us”]Practical Paleo: A Customized Approach to Health and a Whole-Foods Lifestyle[/easyazon-link] and [easyazon-link asin=”1937994074″ locale=”us”]The Paleo Slow Cooker: Healthy, Gluten-free Meals the Easy Way[/easyazon-link].

We don’t bake very often but love our occasional gluten free paleo treats!
We’re kombucha addicts! Here is a gallon of kombucha plus a SCOBY hotel full of babies.
Of course we had to get the largest water filter for our family of five. That’s or kombucha continuous brewer in the corner. We have booch on tap!
Our crockpot is always plugged in. If it’s not making dinner, it’s busy bubbling away with bone broth.
We may or may not be tea addicts 😉
More ferments in progress plus a close up of our continuous brewer.
Our freezer with “liver pills” in the making.
Our commercial freezer full of pastured meats from our local farmers.

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