Real Food Kitchen Tour: Life is a Melody

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Melody Brewer, author of Life is a Melody.

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: Life is a Melody

Me in our kitchen.

This week we travel to Tennessee to tour the kitchen of Melody Brewer, author of Life is a Melody.

Blog Name: Life is a Melody
Blog Author: Melody Brewer
Location: Columbia, TN
How Long Blogging: Since February 24th of this year
House or Apartment: Duplex
Size of Kitchen: 11.5′ x 12.5′
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: The fact that the ceiling is not yellow anymore! When we moved in, the walls and the ceiling were bright yellow. It was really overwhelming until we got the okay from our landlord to paint it white.
Things You Would Change: Where to start? My kitchen is far from ideal, but it’s special because it is the first one I have ever had. I would love to have more counter and cabinet space. Actually it would be great if my kitchen was bigger, so we could have room for a freezer.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: The juicer we are borrowing from my mother in law. It makes getting your veggies and fruits in each day SO much easier; plus, fresh juice tastes amazing! Other favorites include the food processor, my crockpot, and my cast iron skillets.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Not being able to buy more food in bulk (because of not having the space to store it), and learning how to adapt recipes in order to use more “real food’ ingredients. I’m new to the whole real food thing , so I’m still working really hard to use whole food ingredients when I cook. Also, I’d like to start soaking and fermenting things, but that’s difficult with the very limited counter space that I’ve got. I often find myself moving appliances to the top of the washer or to the living room in order to have more room to work on supper.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Garden Spaghetti – adapted from tasteofhome.com, it’s a white sauce noodle dish with fresh carrots, zucchini, and broccoli. Since my husband is more of a meat eater than I am, I also add chicken to the dish. It makes a great vegetarian meal, though.
Favorite Cookbooks: I guess I don’t really use cookbooks much. In fact, I don’t think I own any. I usually search the internet and jot down recipes I want to try, or set up the computer in the kitchen; then copy the ones we like to my binder. Most of my recipes come from Taste of Home’s website, but I’ve been eying several recipes on different blogs that I follow. Including some of yours.

Wide view of the kitchen. Yes, this is pretty much it. That is the stove, counter space, fridge, and all the cabinets except the two above the stove and fridge. Our table, though you can only see the top part of some chairs in this picture, is on the opposite side of the room.

Need more counter space

Food processor, juicer, espresso machine, superfood capsules. (Coffee on the weekend is one of our guilty pleasures.)

Cabinets

This is the top shelf of a plastic “cabinet” next to the dining room table. Cereal, apple cider vinegar, coconut oil, olive oil, raw local honey (which we are sadly almost out of), coconut sugar.

The Fridge

Top shelf: Filtered water, non homogenized milk from a local farm, leftovers, peanut butter, organic raspberry leaf tea, grassfed steak thawing out for supper. (Raspberry leaf tea sweetened with raw honey is one of our favorite beverages.) Rest of fridge: eggs, condiments, butter, fruit, veggies.

The Freezer

Berries and peaches, homemade chicken stock, veggies, organic sprouted grain bread, organic corn grits. (Love me some corn grits.:)) Oh, and the ice trays hold filtered water since we don’t have a filter for the ice maker.

Drying Oranges

Orange peels drying in the oven so I can make orange oil.

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 realfoodmedia 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.