Real Food Kitchen Tour: The Leftover Queen

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 doing 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!

This Week’s Real Food Kitchen Tour:  Jenn, The Leftover Queen

This week, we’re featuring Jenn Campus.  Jenn has not one, but two blogs — The Leftover Queen and Got Goats? She and her husband also founded FoodieBlogroll.com.

Not only are they techie geniuses, they’re also quite handy on the farm. They share a homestead in Vermont with their family of goats, sheep and chickens.

Blog Name: The Leftover Queen and Got Goats?
Blog Author: Jenn Campus
How Long Blogging:  Almost 4 years
Location: Northern Vermont
House or Apartment: Homestead
Size of Kitchen: 14×12
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I love the wood beams, we live in a traditional log home and the beams make the kitchen so cozy and inviting. I also really like the layout, easy to manage and move around to work on various products at once! There is also a lot of light which I love and the windows open up to the barnyard, so I can keep an eye on the animals as I work in the kitchen!
Things You Would Change: I would love some updated appliances, like a gas stove and a bigger refrigerator!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Cast iron skillet, tagine, food processor, Berkey water filter, dishwasher, knives, glass mason jars
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Planning trips to local farms get ingredients to make sure I don’t run out of things
Current Family Favorite Meal: Fried eggs with local pastured sausage; grassfed beef steaks or burgers with oven fries; tagines.
Favorite Cookbooks: The Joy of Pickling: 250 Flavor-Packed Recipes for Vegetables and More from Garden or Market (Revised Edition) by Linda Ziedrich, Home Cheese Making: Recipes for 75 Delicious Cheeses by Ricki Carroll, The Primal Blueprint Cookbook: Primal, Low Carb, Paleo, Grain-Free, Dairy-Free and Gluten-Free by Mark Sisson, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon-Morell

Here are some photos of Jenn’s kitchen and homestead:

Jenn and Roberto only recently moved from Florida to Vermont. I was surprised when I heard that they wanted to leave the balmy, tropical weather of south Florida for the cold winters in Vermont. But they are happier than ever on their Vermont homestead!

This is Jenn’s husband, Roberto, and their goats, Astrid and Claire, with the new hay feeder they built.

Yes, they build everything! Together. Now that’s a sign of a healthy marriage, eh? They even put in their own wood floors.

Isn’t Jenn lucky to have such a handsome husband like Roberto? Yes, he is Latin, and yes, he has the accent to go with it. 🙂  Whoops! Shows how little I know. Jenn corrected me — Roberto is Italian, from Rome. Sorry, Roberto! No wonder you love food like you do!

Jenn is every bit as attractive, smart, and talented as Roberto is. I know because I’ve met them both in person. A gorgeous, bright, and brilliant couple!

And they are obviously both committed to sustainable farming and real food. Two peas in a pod.

Doesn’t that look idyllic? Who doesn’t want a log cabin in Vermont? Especially when it looks like that in the springtime.

Jenn writes:

“Top shelf: beans, granola, quinoa, oats
Middle shelf: dried fruits, nuts, sweeteners – raw honey, date syrup, and nut butters, coconut water
Bottom shelf: canned fishes, maple, baking chocolate and more dry beans (in the single malt sleeves – we recycle everything around here!!!)”

Jenn, that is so smart to use the containers the single malt Scottish whisky come in to store dried beans. I would have never thought of that!

Fermented pickles, fermented sauerkraut. Aren’t those pretty? Looks like something Martha Stewart would make — if she did traditional lacto-fermentation.

She had me at crème fraiche. On top of a homemade Scottish oatcake with some smoked salmon — heavenly!

I am a huge fan of limoncello, the Italian lemon liqueur. I got hooked in Rome a few years ago. I have never made it at home. I need Jenn to teach me!

Jenn writes: “I grind all my buckwheat and quinoa flour, which are the primary ones I use.” (She’s gluten-free.)

This is the Country Living Hand Grain Mill.

I really want one of these manual grain mills. Yeah, I have an electric grain mill already, but I want this one in case we ever have an emergency and don’t have power. Plus, it’s so cool looking!

Ahh, don’t you wish you lived next door to Jenn and Roberto? I do! I can imagine going over to their house for dinner and sitting around over a bottle of wine (or two) and a delicious meal, discussing raw milk politics, sustainable agriculture, blogging, and the real food revolution.

Jenn and Roberto, I hope one day I can visit your homestead. And I hope you will keep blogging, connecting online, and doing everything you do to promote sustainable farming and real food. You are an inspiration!

Check Out the Previous Real Food Kitchen Tour Posts

Real Food Kitchen Tour: Health Home & Happiness

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.