Real Food Kitchen Tour: Too Many Jars in My Kitchen!

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Mindy Hurd, author of Too Many Jars in My Kitchen!

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: Too Many Jars in My Kitchen!

Hard at work in my kitchen!

I think most of us who are living the traditional food lifestyle can relate to having “too many jars in our kitchens”! I certainly can! I never seem to have enough mason jars, and yet all my cupboards are full of them.

This week we travel to Boulder, Colorado to tour the kitchen of Mindy Hurd, author of Too Many Jars in My Kitchen!.

Blog Name: Too Many Jars in My Kitchen!

Blog Author: Mindy Hurd

How Long Blogging: Since July 2011, right when I started the GAPS diet

House or Apartment: Small condo (640 square feet) in the center of Boulder, Colorado. I live here with my husband, Kent, and our two dogs.

Size of Kitchen: About 8 ft x 7 ft

Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I love the open feeling it has and the somewhat decent amount of counter space available. We’ve lived in a few places that actually had quite a bit less space in the past! I also love that it opens right into our living room so it’s easy to chat with our guests while I’m making dinner.

Things You Would Change: I’d love a bigger space! In this current kitchen, we’d really like to remodel it completely. Our plan is for new appliances, cabinets, counter tops, sink, lowering the pass through to counter height, and moving the cabinets on the sink side back to face in to the kitchen. Of course, that’s probably not going to happen immediately!

Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Cuisinart food processor (found brand new in the box on Craigslist for almost half the retail price), Excalibur dehydrator (got a refurbished model on their site for a great discount), Cuisinart ice cream maker, immersion blender, and my new-to-me juicer (another great find on Craigslist).

Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: I think the hardest thing for me is staying on top of my menu planning. I can tend to slack off for a while and then I realize I’m all out of staples, like mayo, homemade GAPS-legal breads, stock, ferments, etc. Then it means a big cooking marathon to get all caught up again. I’m trying to get better at planning these items out so that I can stay on top of everything!

Current Family Favorite Meal: One of our favorites lately is roast beef with our favorite roasted veggies and soup on the side. It all makes a lot, which means leftovers. Also, roast beef is something I never used to like, but since making it using your recipe from the Reversing Food Allergies course, I have really loved it. I think it has made such a difference now that we use all real food. Homemade broth, lots of good fat, and real salt really improves the taste of meat!

Favorite Cookbooks: Nourishing Traditions is right up there. I also like to modify recipes from Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. Since being on GAPS, I tend to use more recipes from other blogs. They are so many great finds! I’ve also gotten a lot better at just coming up with my own dinner based on flavor combinations I’ve tried before. I used to be a strict recipe follower, so this is a huge shift for me!

Looking in

Looking into the kitchen from the living room. We’ve even managed to squeeze in a piano in our small space! Unfortunately, I keep our onions nearby and they can tend to shed peels on it at times.

Looking out

I love the open feel of my kitchen. I have a direct view into our living room and our large windows provide a nice view outside. It’s very handy when we have guests over and I’m busy in the kitchen. You can see my vegetable medley fermenting on the counter top.

My Faithful Helpers

Our dogs, Abby & Ashley, love to help me while I’m cooking in the kitchen. Actually, they are just always ready for handouts. These dogs love veggies, but they go crazy for raw liver!

My fridge always seems to be maxed out! You can see homemade kombucha, nut butters, some liver defrosting, whey, yogurt, and all sorts of veggies.

Since our kitchen isn’t quite large enough for everything, we make use of some space in our closet right next to the kitchen. You can see two large jars of kombucha fermenting on the top shelf and my beloved dehydrator in the back. All of the trays are out while I have some yogurt staying warm in there.

I use the space on top of the fridge for more pantry items. Homemade crispy nuts, dried fruit, navy beans, and storing some of my extra jars.

Wall Space

In a small kitchen, it’s important to make use of every inch! I love having my pots hanging up.

My 'Pantry'

I have one of our cupboards dedicated as our pantry. In here, I keep ghee, coconut oil, honey, canned goods, and tea. Plus, a few sourdough rye crackers for my hubby who is not on GAPS.

Kombucha Close Up

Delicious kombucha brewing away.

Crockpot Always Working

I have some yogurt dripping whey and, of course, my crock pot is almost always in constant use!

Spice Rack

I love my spice rack! It makes it really easy to grab whatever spice I need without digging in the cupboard.

Utilities

Our toaster oven gets used just about every day since we don’t own a microwave. I also love having my knives on the wall. It saves drawer space and they’re so easy to grab!

My cookbooks

Some of my favorite cookbooks.

We have dubbed this our kitchen annex, it’s actually the corner of our living room around the corner from the kitchen. When I told my hubby I wanted to put a freezer in our living room, he thought I was joking! I managed to sweeten the deal with the promise of a wine fridge.

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.

Photo credit: A warm welcome Project365(3) Day 10 by Keith Williamson, on Flickr and photos by Memories by Michelle