Real Food Kitchen Tour: Mama and Baby Love

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Stephanie Brandt Cornais, author of Mama and Baby Love.

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: Mama and Baby Love

Stephanie & daughter, Penelope

I love Stephanie Brandt Cornais’ blog, Mama and Baby Love. This week we get to tour her kitchen in Florida.

Want to learn how to cook traditional food in bulk and store in your freezer? Check out Stephanie’s brand new e-book, From Your Freezer To Your Family, Slow Cooker Freezer Recipes. (The page says “coming soon”, but you can order now.)

Blog Name: Mama and Baby Love
Blog Author: Stephanie Brandt Cornais
How Long Blogging: Since March, 2009
Location: Florida
House or Apartment: Two-story house
Size of Kitchen: um, medium? I could use some more space, but I am blessed.
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: It really is the heart of my home. Directly in the center. My daughter’s playroom is right next to it, so I can see her playing in there while I am in the kitchen. I like the layout, it’s got a good working, triangle layout.
Things You Would Change: I wish I had an island for more prep and counter space and a bigger fridge.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: I love my cast iron skillet, it was my grandmother’s and I can feel her love when I use it. And I am so in love with my slow cooker. I want to get like two more.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: At first, it was simply not understanding basic concepts, I had absolutely no cooking skills or foundation to start with, so those beginning steps were huge mountains for me. And now that I know all the things I should be doing, my biggest obstacle, is feeling guilty all the time. I may make chicken stock one week, but then not make any yogurt for my daughter’s smoothies and use store bought. I am constantly feeling like I am not “Real Foodie” enough, never perfect enough.
Current Family Favorite Meal: I think my goulash is our favorite right now.
Favorite Cookbooks: [easyazon-link asin=”0967089735″ locale=”us”]Nourishing Traditions[/easyazon-link], and [easyazon-link asin=”1579544193″ locale=”us”]Meals That Heal[/easyazon-link], of course. But I also have this folder of recipes that I have accumulated for years, from different people and magazines. I love using that as inspiration too. Oh and Pinterest. What did we even do before Pinterest?!

Bird's Eye Kitchen

This is what my kitchen looks like standing in my living room. My kitchen opens up to the living room nice. Pre-life-with-baby, I used to watch the Food Network from the kitchen while I was chopping or stirring. And it works great for entertaining, not that we do much of that anymore either!

Kitchen Sink

This is taken from the middle of my kitchen looking out into the living room. Before I went to take pictures for this post, I had a moment where I thought I should clean everything up real spick and span, but then I realized that was no fun at all, and you probably want to see the “real me” of this Real Food Kitchen!

Kitchen Table

Also taken from the center, looking out. You can see my beloved Learning Tower, it gets a lot of use by my 2 year old. And my kitchen table, with my Mac out and a bottle of kombucha. My kitchen table is my “office”.

Kitchen Counter

This side of the kitchen holds my supplements (in the little black bin), my cookbooks, my juicer, and some paper towels. I mostly use old cloth diapers inserts to wipe the counters, but I use paper to wipe up cooking grease.

Kitchen Counter

This corner gets a lot of action, but I like that it feels tucked away a bit. I can’t stand having things on my counter, one of my biggest beefs with Real Food cooking, is that there is always something cluttering up my counter! Anyway, today, I have dinner going in the slow cooker, beans soaking for tomorrow’s dinner and some lentils just starting the sprouting process. That’s a Brian Andreas painting on the wall — love it so much.

Spice Cabinet

On top of my little ferment/soak corner is my spice cabinet. I just organized it the other week and it makes me so happy!

Kitchen pantry

I also just recently organized my pantry. I always kept it pretty neat, but was tired of having to reorganize it every month, because it got so easy dishelved. I added these little $3 bins from the Container Store and it makes a huge difference. If you haven’t noticed, I am a bit OCD, and I love to see things all matchy-matchy, in a pretty little row. 🙂

Laundry Room

My laundry room is just off my kitchen and even though I love things in their place, the truth is my house is never perfect. There is always some project I am in the middle of and things are just out.

Flower vase

Another staple in my kitchen these days. My daughter is very into picking flowers for Mama right now, so anytime she is out side she comes back with flowers for me. Makes my heart break a little, I know this age will go by so fast.

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.