Real Food Kitchen Tour: Unmistakably Food

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Melissa Combs, author of Unmistakably Food.

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: Unmistakably Food

Melissa Making Jambalaya

This week we travel to Montana to visit the kitchen of Melissa Combs. And how cute is she!? She looks like Scarlett Johansson in that picture!

Melissa’s passion for real food is contagious. It really shows in her photos and in her blog.

I love the name of her blog. In other words, this isn’t fake, processed food, people. You can’t miss it!

Blog Name: Unmistakablyfood.com
Blog Author: Melissa (Missii) Combs
How Long Blogging Three Months!
Location: Great Falls, MT
House or Apartment: Apartment
Size of Kitchen: 7.5′ * 4.5′
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: It’s the perfect size for our small family and it has bright lighting which gives it a homey atmosphere. I’m thankful for the counter space, the dishwasher, the stove that is easy to clean, cupboard space, appliances that work, and the fact that there is no microwave!
Things You Would Change: I do not like the carpet on the floor or the white counter-tops! Very hard to keep clean! Most of all, I do not like the absence of raw milk in my kitchen. I have been on the waiting list to get it for several months and don’t know how long it will be!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: My Hamilton Beach crock pot from my husband Ryan! He somehow read my mind and knew I wanted one and got me one for Christmas! My ice-cream maker, my cast-iron grill pan and new set of Cuisinart cook-ware, my big bamboo cutting board and nice knives, my magic bullet blender, my juicer, and my spice rack with glass jars to store spices in. Everything on this list has been given to me by family as a gift, so I owe my kitchen to them! I also love my very small collection of glass jars for storing food.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Lack of access to most raw, grass-fed, or even full-fat dairy items. I am a dairy fanatic so this is difficult for me. I don’t like going without milk, sour cream, and of late, yogurt! Time, energy, and money constrains have been challenges. Probably the biggest challenge has been deciding which things to “cheat” on so that we can afford to buy other things top quality. Like buying regular chicken and produce so that we can afford grass-fed ground beef, pastured eggs and butter, and raw milk cheese to feed our baby! I think many people in our economy can relate to this.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Stuffed peppers with grass-fed ground beef, raw cheddar cheese, garlic, green onions, and lots of butter! Right now we are also loving our homemade eggnog with unfortunately conventional milk, but grass-fed cream, pastured egg yolks, organic maple syrup, vanilla and nutmeg!
Favorite Cookbooks: Whole-Grain Baking, and Homestyle Chicken (given to me by Ryan), and Food Lover’s Asian and Baker’s Chocolate (given to me by my mom and dad-in-law). The recipes that are not WAPF are easy to convert over!

Kitchen

My kitchen: small but homey. As you can see, I have gadgets lining the counter. All of them are gifts from family and I like to show them off!

Crock pot and Blender

[easyazon-link asin=”B001AO2PXK” locale=”us”]Hamilton Beach crock pot[/easyazon-link]: a Christmas gift from my husband! He also got me the big bamboo cutting board in the background. My mom and dad-in-law bought me the spice rack, my sister-in-law bought me the knives, and my grandma bought me the magic bullet blender. This comes in very handy for making baby food!

Stock

24/7 broth simmering in my new crock pot!

Prized Possessions

My beautiful ice cream maker (from my husband) and juicer (wedding gift from my family), two of my most prized possessions! Now if I could just get raw milk for the ice cream!

Hanging Utensils

My husband laughs at me for this, but it saves space and makes me feel like a real chef!

Top Shelves

Bottom Shelf

Natural Healers

I’m very proud of my medicine cabinet. You can see ancient minerals magnesium flakes, fermented cod liver oil, magnesium glycinate, adrenogen (adrenal support), bio-kult, echinacea (Bioforce,very potent), and Amerigel, a natural wound healer (it also clears up skin infections very quickly.)

More Chicken Stock!

Yogurt Delight

Yogurt in the making! I love all that yellow fatty goodness. Unfortunately I can’t get this pasteurized grass-fed milk anymore because it was pulled from the shelves so if I want to keep making yogurt, it will have to be with regular supermarket milk. What do you think? Should I give it up?

Bananas and coconuts, two things I like to keep around

Beautiful Eggs

Beautiful eggs from a local hutterite colony. The three of us go through 3-4 dozen a week!

Herb Garden

I like to have herbs in warm weather. I had these herb plants until the frost zapped them!

Lots of Oils

Homemade magnesium oil (thank you Ann Marie!), homemade ghee, and coconut oil.

My husband Ryan throwing in some seasoning!

Mama's Little Helper

My little helper! She likes to watch me cook and tries to grab everything!

How adorable!

Audrey Eating Christmas Dinner

Audrey Eating Egg Yolks

Eating her all time favorite food: pastured egg yolks

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.