Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to San Francisco, California to tour the kitchen of Hannah Healy of the blog Healy Real Food Vegetarian.

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: Healy Real Food Vegetarian

I’m Hannah Healy from Healy Real Food Vegetarian. I live in San Francisco, CA with my boyfriend Victor and my little dog Lentil. My blog focuses on spreading the wisdom of traditional food and avoiding processed foods (including soy) as a vegetarian. I create lots of original recipes with real food ingredients like pasture raised eggs, grass fed butter, lacto-fermented vegetables, and raw milk. I also share informative articles and tips on living a real food lifestyle. It’s useful for meat-eaters and vegetarians alike!

Blog Name: Healy Real Food Vegetarian
Blog Author: Hannah Healy
Location: San Francisco, California
How Long Blogging: 6 months
House or Apartment: Apartment
Size of Kitchen: 7ft X 11ft
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I love that there’s a window in front of the kitchen sink so I can watch what’s going on in the neighborhood to combat the mind numbing boredom of doing dishes (did I mention I wish I had a dishwasher?)

Even though my kitchen is small I can still do everything a real foodie needs to do. It seems simple, but that’s not always possible! A year ago when I was living in Barcelona to teach ESL, I had a tiny kitchen in my apartment that must have been from the early 1900’s! There’s was no temperature gauge on the oven and I had to light the fire at the bottom of the oven by hand. I always had to estimate how long to bake something and check it every 5 minutes. So, remember to count your blessings!
Things You Would Change:Oh my, where do I start? Well, it would be a whole lot easier if my kitchen was much bigger with more counter space! My boyfriend Victor and I have to schedule separate times for us to be in the kitchen on weekday mornings because there’s not enough room for him to make his coffee and for me to make my breakfast at the same time. I would also love to have a bigger freezer. Freezing meals and prepared food saves so much time and money, but I can’t fit much in there! Oh yea, and I’d like a dishwasher!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: My food processor makes cooking much easier, so I’m so happy to have it. My food processor is probably 20 years old. My mom gave it to me in high school and it was already getting old then. It’s been chugging along ever since… pretty impressive huh? I use my cast iron pans just about every day. Do jars count as a tool? I love my jars for fermenting vegetables and storing grains, yogurt and kombucha.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Cleaning up afterwards. My boyfriend calls me a tornado cook. Our kitchen will start out nice and clean, then I’ll decide to cook something and the aftermath is like a tornado went through the kitchen… I’m working on it.
Current Family Favorite Meal: I love making frittatas, they are easy to whip up and serve as a nice hearty meal. Sprouted Curried Lentils are another big hit in our house. We also like to have roasted veggies with cheese.
Favorite Cookbooks: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon, Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz. I also have a soft spot for Ten Talents, It’s from the 60’s and is pretty outdated. I wouldn’t use a lot of recipes from it today considering they use a lot of soy, but it’s one of the first “real food” cookbooks that I saw when I was probably 14 and it taught me about sprouting grains and seeds and using natural sweeteners like honey.

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 Questions 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
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

In this post, I’ll share with you how I lost 10 pounds in a month with my FitBit. It’s easy, it’s fun, and the weight loss is pretty much effortless.

But first some background… A year ago, I decided to finally quit dieting. Dieting sucks. Nobody should ever have to diet. And most diets don’t work.

Like so many moms, I had been trying for years to lose the extra 30 pounds of baby fat after I had Kate in 2007. Over and over, I’d go on a restrictive diet, lose the weight, and then gain it all back and then some. (Read my post on Why I Ditched Low Carb.)

So from January until May 2012, I did Matt Stone’s RRARFing program which helped me to normalize my metabolism. I got my body temperature up to a steady 98.6, day in, day out. (You can read more about my experience with Matt Stone’s plan here.)

I didn’t worry about my weight — I just wanted to be healthy. And it worked. Since I got my body temperature up from the low 97s to 98.6, my energy is now through the roof, my insomnia is gone, and I jump out of bed when the sun comes up. I’m like my in-laws now (who I always used to joke had more energy than me). I run around all day and I have energy to spare.

When I was RRARFing, I asked Matt about exercise. He said, “Don’t exercise until you fantasize about it. I laughed and said, “That will NEVER happen!”

But lo and behold, it did happen. It took about 9 months. Around January of this year, I started thinking about how much I want to go skiing and swim laps and ride my bike. I wanted to go hiking and pick up the kettlebell. I just wanted to move and sweat!

So I started slow… just walking for a half hour in the morning. I worked up to an hour. And then I started doing the kettlebell and started swimming laps again.

Get Committed

One day in April, I woke up one morning and said to myself, I am ready to lose this extra 30 pounds.

You know, you can SAY you want to do something, and waffle around… but you’ll never actually do it until you are REALLY ready.

Finally, I was ready.

“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth that ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamed would have come his way. Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. Begin it now.” — W.H. Murray

So right there and then I committed to lose the weight. It wasn’t so much about losing the weight as it was about getting active and getting in shape. I wanted to be able to climb flights of stairs easily, lift heavy things and just get a lot more physical activity.

You see, I have the most sedentary job on the planet. I work on a computer 12-16 hours a day and I work from home. I don’t even have to walk from the parking lot to my office.

The Gamification of Exercise

Seems like most people have turned exercise into work these days. And it should be play! When we were kids, riding bikes and swimming and going on walks were all things we did for fun.

I have figured this out about myself: I am the type of person who doesn’t like to do anything unless it is fun. If it seems like work, it’s drudgery in my mind and I’ll do anything to avoid it. I’m the queen of procrastination! (Isn’t that funny, seeing how I am also a classic Type A Overachiever/Workaholic. I guess I’ve figured out how to make work fun! In my mind, it doesn’t feel like work.)

If I can make a game out of it, I’ll do it happily. With the FitBit, I can easily keep tabs on how much exercise I’m getting (or not getting). It motivates me to get more steps and be more active.

This is why I love the FitBit so much it turns getting in shape into a fun game.

How I Lost 10 Pounds in a Month with My FitBit

Here’s how I did it.

1. First of all, I got a Fitbit.

You can order one on Amazon. I got the Fitbit One which is easy to attach to your waistband, stick in a pocket, or wear on your ankle or wrist.

• Fitbit One Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Tracker, Black
• List Price: $99.95
• Price: $89.97
• Read Reviews

2. Next, I set my goal to walk 10,000 steps every day.

This is very hard for me to accomplish, since I am extremely sedentary. As I said, I typically work 80-100 hours per week sitting in front of a computer.

Since I got the FitBit, I know what my goal is so I get out and walk first thing in the morning. Because I’m watching those steps, I end up walking a lot longer — typically about an hour — so I can get my steps in.

I don’t make my goal every day. I’m not strict about it. I just do the best I can.

3. I also do other exercises. I ride my bike, and sometimes I swim laps.

My goal is to do 10 minutes of kettlebell every day. I don’t always make it but I do it as often as I can.

I tried to do 20 or 30 minutes of kettlebell but I didn’t like it. I get antsy after 15 minutes. I can do 10 minutes of anything, though. And 10 minutes of kettlebell per day equals 70 minutes per week — a little better than doing 3 20-minute sets per week. It works for me.

4. I also started eating less. On the dashboard on the FitBit website, you can select a level of calorie deficit that you want — from easy to hard. Then all you have to do is enter what you eat each day.

All you’re doing is trying to create a calorie deficit. My problem was I was eating a lot more and I had become a whole lot more sedentary since I started working from home. Looking back on it, when I had a corporate job, I was probably getting 3 or 4 times more exercise just from going to the office, going to meetings, etc. And I wasn’t cooking for a family (I was single) so I just didn’t eat as much.

I also got the Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale so I can automatically track my weight.

• Fitbit Aria Wi-Fi Smart Scale, White
• List Price: $129.95
• Price: $114.99
• Read Reviews

All you have to do is stand on the scale in the morning and it will track your weight and body fat — it syncs automatically with your FitBit dashboard on the website. (You don’t need to use the Aria scale — you can just enter your weight manually. It just makes it easier.)

I know, weight’s not everything — measurements are more important. But you can track those too in your FitBit dashboard.

I want to say that I don’t try to be perfect with this. I do find that I’m eating a lot less — and I’m not hungry.

What I Eat

I eat WHATEVER I want. I do not count calories or carbs. That NEVER works for me because I feel restricted and then I want to binge. And it’s not sustainable anyway. I don’t want to spend my life counting calories or avoiding foods I love. I eat what I love now, I just eat less of it.

All I do is enter what I eat into the FitBit dashboard but that is it. Then I just stay under the limit. At the end of the day, I know whether I can have a little ice cream or another glass of wine.

And this really motivates me to be more active. I don’t mind doing an extra 10 minutes of kettlebell if I know I can have another glass of wine and a couple chocolate chip cookies.

YES! Ten minutes of kettlebell will get you that. Kettlebell probably burns more calories than any other exercise. Even more than running. You burn 20 calories every minute doing kettlebell swings — so 10 minutes = 200 calories.

Again, it’s not about the weight loss, it’s about getting more active and getting in shape. For me, it helps to motivate me if I have a goal (10K steps a day) and I have a way to track it. Rewards help, too. You don’t have to cut out the desserts. If you are too strict with yourself, you’ll end up quitting. A chocolate chip cookie here and there is going to keep you in the game. This is not about being perfect — it’s about keeping your eyes on the prize long term.

Speaking of rewards, when I reach my goal and am back in my pre-baby jeans, I’m going to go on a shopping spree and buy all new clothes.

My Results

Since I started using my FitBit on April 9th (just 6 weeks ago), I have lost an inch on my bust, an inch on my waist, 3/4 of an inch on my hips, 1/2 inch on my arm, and 3/4 of an inch on my thigh. That’s a total of 4 inches.

I’ve officially lost 13 pounds since I started this on April 9th. That’s a steady 2 pounds per week. (I actually lost the first 10 pounds the first month.)

I’ve also lost 5.3% body fat. Hooray!

And I’m almost halfway toward my goal.

BEFORE
168 pounds

AFTER
155 pounds

BEFORE
Bust 39
Waist 32
Hips 42.75
Upper Arm 12.5
Upper Thigh 23.25

AFTER
Bust 38
Waist 31
Hips 42
Upper Arm 12
Upper Thigh 22.5

I promise to post my before and after pics in an upcoming post.

My New Treadmill Desk

As I write this, I’m walking on my new treadmill desk. Along with the FitBit, this is playing a HUGE role in my effort to get more active.

I got up this morning, made some coffee, got on the treadmill desk and started checking emails and checking things off my to do list. The next thing I know, it’s barely past 9 am and I’ve already logged over 6,000 steps. It takes me about 2.5 hours to get 10,000 steps walking at a slow pace — about 1.2 to 1.5 MPH.

Two and a half hours may seem like a long time to you, but it flies by when you are working. You’re going to be working anyway, why not work out at the same time?

I’ll be writing a whole ‘nother post about the treadmill desk so stay tuned.

I’ll also continue to post my progress on the blog.

Writing this post actually keeps me accountable so thanks everyone for reading!

Want to Join Me?

I was thinking we could do some kind of challenge… what do you guys think? Are you interested? If so, comment below and tell me what kind of challenge you think we should do… A FitBit challenge? Let me know — I’m up for it!

I’ve been blogging on Cheeseslave for 5 1/2 years now. I started in November of 2007. When I first started this blog, I just did it for myself, and to seek out other like-minded folks out on the internet. I had transitioned our family to “real food,” I felt pretty alone. Kate was a baby and most of the other moms I knew (from the moms group I started) were feeding their babies Cheerios and powdered infant formula.

I knew their had to be lots of other people out there who were into this way of eating, and I wanted to connect with them. And connect with you I did! Cheeseslave now has a readership of over 120,000 unique visitors per month.

A year after I started the blog, I started Village Green Network (formerly Real Food Media,) a blog network for blogs about healthy living. Our little blog network has grown to over 500 blogs and it supports our family. I feel blessed to be able to make a living spreading the word about real food and healthy living.

I’ll be honest, it’s been a lot of work to get VGN off the ground. A LOT of work! So much work, that I haven’t had the time I wanted to devote to my blog. I am always wishing I could blog more.

60 Posts in 60 Day Challenge

Yesterday on our VGN private forum, a couple of bloggers who are just starting out, Simple Paleo Life and Real Fit Mama, were chatting about how to get more traffic to their blogs. I told them they should blog more often (ideally 5-7 times per week) and somehow a crazy challenge was instigated: we all committed to writing 60 blog posts in 60 days. Since then we’ve had about 10 or 15 others commit to the challenge.

I initially said I’d do it just to show solidarity, but then I realized I really do want to get my blog traffic up. I want to get my message out to more people. My goal: over 200,000 unique visitors.

I also realized that I really want to get back to the freedom I had in the early days of blogging. If you go back and read my old posts, they were just about what I was doing, what I was eating, and yeah there were more formal posts — recipes and “how to” posts — but mostly it was just slices of my life.

I want to get back to that because (a) it’s a lot more fun and (b) does there has to be a b? If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing, and I want this blog to be fun! (Yes, educational, too, but FUN FIRST!)

Want to Join Us?

If you are a blogger, join our challenge! It starts today and ends July 17th. 60 posts in 60 days. And yes, you can start late and double up on some days. Guest posts, carnival posts, and giveaways are all A-OK.

If you are a healthy living blogger, click here to join VGN so you can chat with us on the forum and get encouragement.

Want to Help Me Meet My Goal?

Help me spread the word about Cheeseslave.

I need over 200,000 UNIQUE visitors per month — which means it doesn’t matter how often you read the blog — but how many people you tell about the blog.

Here are a few things you can do to help:

Follow me on Facebook.
Sign up for my weekly or daily newsletters (or both) to get email updates.
Share my posts on Facebook, Google+, Twitter and Pinterest (click the links at the top or bottom of the posts).

The more you share, the faster we’ll get there. My pledge to you: to post awesome content that you will want to share.

This is post number one — check! 59 more to go.

Thank you for reading! I love you guys!

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to Elgin, Texas to tour the kitchen of Kathy Block of the blog Granny’s Vital Vittles.

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: Granny’s Vital Vittles

Kathy in the kitchen

My name is Kathy I live just outside of Austin with my husband of 19 years Barry and youngest son Jake. I have another older son in college. We have two cats and about a dozen chickens.

Once upon a time we had a few milk goats and a large garden. We hope re-create that again in the near future.

And I have a confession… I’m a reluctant cook. I wasn’t born with a spoon in my hand. I didn’t cook alongside my Mama when I was growing up. I only really developed an interest in cooking as a young mother trying to find healthier food for my family. It’s been a long circuitous journey to learn both how to cook and what to cook with lots of mistakes and course corrections along the way.

I am still learning a lot about how to cook well. What to cook has become pretty clear in the past few years. And what I’ve learned through trial and error can help you and your family. If you’d like to learn more about my journey, you’ll find more details here about my “Real Food Conversion”.

Blog Name: Granny’s Vital Vittles
Blog Author: Kathy Block
Location: Elgin Texas, a suburban small town near Austin
How Long Blogging: 1 year
House or Apartment: House
Size of Kitchen: 8 x 10 feet
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: My husband and I redid this kitchen ourselves about 5 years ago so I love the color choices and cabinets! Our home was built in 1950 and hadn’t had much work done to it before we bought it. We’re renovating the entire house and the kitchen was about 10th on the list of things that had to be taken care of so when the time came we were definately ready. It was fun and a lot of work to take it back to the bare walls and floor and start over from stratch. We bought the cabinets from IKEA, filled up our truck and spent about 3 weekends putting together cabinets, handling the plumbing and wiring, and painting.
Things You Would Change: If you look closely at the pictures you’ll notice something very important is missing. The refrigerator! It is just a few steps outside the kitchen in the laundry/back entryway. This was the setup when we moved in and I had really hoped to get the fridge into the kitchen when we redid it. We planned to take out the pantry wall where the water heater and pantry is and fit it in there. Then we’d flank it with cabinets for storage. But the space was a bit too shallow requiring a high end shallow depth fridge that wasn’t in the budget. So moving the fridge is still on the renovation to-do list.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: I love my Bosch Universal, my handheld blender which I’ve had forever, my Cutco knives, and my cast iron cookware. And of course my Fido and Le Parfait jars … so handy! I was lucky enough to find a Diamant hand cranked grain mill used about 10 years ago. This is more ornamental to me than functional, but we used to use it a lot. I love the antique touch it gives our kitchen.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Arranging time for and remembering to actually do all the little steps leading up to a real food finished dish. I’ve worked out some habits that help a bunch and I’m adding to it all the time. And I’m lucky that my husband makes a big breakfast for us everyday! Affordability is always an issue for everyone our family included. Sometimes we can afford to do more and we gain ground and sometimes we can afford less but whatever level we’re at we’re still eating real food. And you might notice the microwave in the kitchen. That thing leaves our kitchen over my husbands dead body … I think he loves it more than me .v
Current Family Favorite Meal: Soups and stews are a big favorite here! Easy to make very nutritious. Egg dishes go over big too during times when we have lots of eggs. We keep a flock of hens so from time to time we are overrun.
Favorite Cookbooks: I love reading old-timey cookbooks. When I started my blog I was working thru a list of recipes from Mrs Dull’s “Southern Cooking“, an old southern favorite. I also love the “Joy of Cooking“ and I have several recipe compilations from old newspapers and magazines where many of the Grannys I knew as a kid got their recipe ideas from. I buy boxes of old recipes at antique stores for fun! You can learn so much about how the american diet has changed from these old sources. So many of the recipes in these books need little or no modification to make them real food recipes.

View of the kitchen

Crockpots and counters

Yardbirds

Cookbooks

Coop

Knife drawer

Dining area looking into the kitchen

Fermenting cupboard

Inside the fridge

Lentils

My pantry

Close up of the pantry

Pantry wall

Pot rack

Sauerkraut

Spices

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 Questions 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
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

Sorry I’m a little late this month — things have been crazy busy!

And now, to announce the winner of the Excalibur 9-Tray Dehydrator — a $219 value!

And the winner is…

Stacy M!

Congratulations, Stacy (msmendelsohn@…)!

Please contact me via email (annmarie at realfoodmedia dot com) with your mailing address so I can send you your prize.

Didn’t win? Don’t despair — check out this month’s giveaway — Giveaway: Lifetime Dual Compost Tumbler — $299 Value

Don’t Miss the Next Givewaway!

Make sure you’re signed up so you don’t miss any giveaway announcements.

Sign up for my Feedburner email updates (you’ll get an email every time I post) — this way you won’t miss the announcement for the next drawing:

Sign up for my monthly newsletter if you haven’t already — it’s required for entry in the drawings:

Note: for both of these email subscriptions, you can unsubscribe at any time. Your email address will only be used for CHEESESLAVE email updates and will not be sold or shared with anyone. Read our privacy policy here.

Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to Nashville, Tennessee to tour the kitchen of Shanna Mallon of the blog Food Loves Writing.

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: Food Loves Writing

Shanna with her husband Tim.

Since July 2010, Shanna has worked as a self-employed copywriter, mostly for clients still in Chicago, where she used to live. Tim works for a Nashville personal training studio, as well as for the occasional extra client here and there doing Web work or building custom WordPress sites (like this one). In our dreams, we own an entire orchard of fruit trees, live off the land and keep a personal retreat in the woods where people can come and eat and be nourished.

Blog Name: Food Loves Writing
Blog Author: Shanna Mallon
Location: Nashville, TN
How Long Blogging: 5 years
House or Apartment: House
Size of Kitchen: 100 square feet
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: Having a window above the sink! I am obsessed with natural light—it completely changes daily cooking.
Things You Would Change: If I’m really dreaming, the kitchen expands to accommodate a marble-topped island, the countertops become a gorgeous sealed high-quality wood, and there’s a white tile backsplash accenting it all.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: I love having a food processor and a Vitamix, both of which I use almost daily, along with the gorgeous set of Le Creuset cookware we received as wedding gifts. But I couldn’t talk about favorite gadgets without mentioning our enormous slow-churn gelato maker, imported from Italy, that’s so big we have to keep it in the guest room—it makes raw-milk ice cream sing.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Everybody knows it can be expensive to eat real food, as illogical as that may be. So our biggest challenges are maximizing the quality of our food while also looking for budget-friendly ways to do it. Also, because we eat such a produce-heavy diet, I go to the grocery store a lot!
Current Family Favorite Meal: Tim and I like simple things, so most nights we’re eating roasted vegetables as a main course: broccoli, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, or Brussels sprouts, chopped up and cooked with coconut oil. We also make a lot of soups—this tortilla one is a favorite—and salads, like this one, made with einkorn berries.
Favorite Cookbooks: So many! Lately I’m loving Dinner: A Love Story, The Sprouted Kitchen and, just for the beautiful inspiration inside, Jerusalem.

Shanna at the sink.

A view through the kitchen into the dining room.

Inside our fridge.

Stove area.

Counters and sink area.

Inside some of our cabinets.

Backdoor from the kitchen.

Wall canvases.

Shanna happy in the kitchen.

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 Questions 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
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

This month I’m giving away a Lifetime Dual Compost Tumbler — a $299 Value!

Lifetime Dual Compost Tumbler — $299 Value

I asked you all on Facebook what you wanted to win. You voted and the Lifetime Dual Compost Tumbler came out on top.

Now that it’s spring, I’m looking into buying a composter. I polled my readers on Facebook and this dual tumbling composter was the highest rated. I’ve used other composters before but I’m not consistent enough about turning it with a shovel. This way I can just go out when I’m watering my plants and give it a crank.

I hope the winner enjoys this composter as much as I think I will. Now I can stop throwing away all those table scraps and put them back into the soil where they belong.

Winning is Fun!

Giving away something every month gives more of my readers a chance to win more stuff.

I pay for these prizes myself. I choose them, based on your votes on Facebook, and I have them shipped direct to your door.

What’s the catch? Just one: sign up for my newsletter. In order to be eligible for the monthly prize drawings, you must be subscribed to my monthly newsletter. (Note: If you are not subscribed to my monthly newsletter when the winner is chosen, you will not be eligible to win.) As they say, you have to be in it to win it!

How to Enter to Win

If you want to enter to win, here’s what you have to do:

1. Click this link: Lifetime Dual Compost Tumbler

2. Then use the Rafflecopter widget below to enter.

3. Make sure you are signed up for my newsletter (enter your email address below). That entry is mandatory.

4. You can get a maximum of 5 extra entries for signing up for my email updates (enter email address below), following me on Facebook, following me on Pinterest, following me on Google+, and following me on Instagram.

5. You can get 10 extra entries — if you pin this on Pinterest! (See the rafflecopter widget for details.)

6. You can also get up to 10 extra entries for each friend you refer. (See the rafflecopter widget for details.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Already subscribed to my newsletter and email updates? It still counts as an entry! Just make sure you click the buttons in the Rafflecopter widget above.

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Good luck, everybody!

Questions? Comment below.

Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to New Mexico to tour the kitchen of Dr. Kaayla Daniel, The Naughty Nutritionist.™ www.drkaayladaniel.com

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: Dr. Kaayla Daniel

Dr. Kaayla Daniel, the Naughty Nutritionist

The Whole Soy Story: The Dark Side of America’s Favorite Health Food: A groundbreaking expose that tells the truth about soy that scientists know but that the soy industry has tried to suppress. Soy is not a health food, does not prevent disease and has not even been proven safe. Epidemiological, clinical and laboratory studies link soy to malnutrition, digestive problems, thyroid dysfunction, cognitive decline, reproductive disorders, even heart disease and cancer.


Dr. Kaayla Daniel is The Naughty Nutritionist because she outrageously and humorously debunks nutritional myths. She’s Vice President of the Weston A. Price Foundation, and an avid proponent of a Nourishing Traditions-style diet. Hard to believe it today, but Kaayla wasn’t always “too hot to handle.”

For years she struggled with fatigue, lethargy and malaise and tried to get well with every diet fad out there — Ayurveda, macrobiotics, food combining, live food veganism, juicing . . . She was only able to turn her health around when she discovered the Price-Pottenger Foundation. In 1999 she joined the Weston A. Price Foundation shortly after it was founded.

Blog Name: Dr. Kaayla Daniel, The Naughty Nutritionist
Blog Author: Dr. Kaayla Daniel
Location: New Mexico
How Long Blogging: Blogging for a couple years, been naughty just about forever.
House or Apartment: House
Size of Kitchen: 8 x 15
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: Preparing dinner while watching the sun set. The kitchen dates from the late 1940s with simple and solid cupboards. I’ve updated it with a sunny yellow Kohler sink and onyx-tile countertops, a Bosch stove and super quiet Bosch dishwasher.
Things You Would Change: Time for a new frig. The old tile floor is chipped and I fancy replacing it with wood or bamboo.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Crockpot, of course. Chartreuse spatulas for color, Fiestaware and Harlequin pitchers for good cheer, Jade plants for prosperity and refrigerator magnets for laughs. I definitely connect with “She saw no good reason to act her age” and my warning to all guys, “Honey, you couldn’t handle half of me!”
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Getting raw milk, butter and cream. Mine comes 700 miles from Texas through a “milk runner operation.”
Current Family Favorite Meal: Buttered bacon! Just kidding. Seriously, soups and stews, especially made with lamb shanks or oxtails. Nothing better in the winter, and they provide inspiration for the book I’m doing with Sally Fallon Morell Nourishing Broth.
Favorite Cookbooks: My Food Bible is Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon Morell. I’m also a big fan of Julia Child. Her old cooking shows are a hoot. I play all the DVDs and laugh and laugh. I also like the original high-fat version of The New Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen and The The Ayurvedic Cookbook by Amadea Morningstar. I’ve used them for 30 years. What’s different today is I tinker with all the recipes to include meat and bones!

Kaayla, Kyrie and Tara, a Siamese mix.

The Kitchen with onyx counters, Bosch stove, Fiestaware and jade plants.

How hot is your chile? The poster can intimidate some guys but is strictly educational, of course.

The Naughty Nutritionist plays the organ.

My stove and some miscellaneous utensils.

Lots of grass-fed meat, and, of course, bacon!

Kaayla and daughter Kyrie Rose with Dagny the cat.

My Albuquerque house in the spring.

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 Questions 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
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

Welcome to CHEESESLAVE Q and A!

On Sundays, I answer your questions. I’ll answer as many questions as I can each week. If I didn’t answer your question this week, please check back next week.

Be sure to sign up for my email updates so you never miss a post:

1. Question: Suggestions for Making Kefir?

I have a Soda Club Soda Maker that adds carbon dioxide under pressure to the liquid. It uses specially strong plastic bottles. Is it o.k. to make the kefir soda bubbly by using the Soda Club maker? Or maybe I should only use the soda club Bottles, but not use the Soda Club Soda Maker to add carbon dioxide bubbles?

Yours truly,
Chanie

Answer

Hi, I have no idea! You could certainly try it and see what happens.

2. Question: Advice on the GAPS Diet?

Hi Ann Marie,

Answer

Hi, Grant, I’m not a doctor so I really can’t answer your question. I’d search on Google for a GAPS diet practitioner.

3. Question: Help With Making Some Healthy, Good Tasting Peanut Butter?

Hello,

Patti

Answer

I have tried a few different kinds of red palm oil that tasted bad. I wonder if most of the red palm oils on the market are rancid.

There is only one red palm oil I have found that does not taste rancid. You can get it from Wilderness Family Naturals — you can find them in the VGN Marketplace.

Wilderness Family Naturals also sells expeller-pressed coconut oil, which has no coconut odor or flavor. I buy the 5-gallon buckets because coconut oil keeps for a long time, and I use it for lots of different things.

4. Question: Help With Adrenal Fatigue, Magnesium and Cravings?

Hey, Ann Marie:

Answer

Hi, Julia, I really can’t counsel you on your health issues as I am not a practitioner and I can’t diagnose or treat anything.

For me, when I was eating a more restricted diet (low-carb), I did have difficulty sleeping. After following Matt Stone’s Diet Recovery plan which included eating a lot more carbs and getting more rest and sleep. You can read about my experience here.

Many people find that eating a restricted diet actually CAUSES food intolerances that were not there before.

I wonder if your temperature is low — that’s common with restricted diets. You might want to read Matt’s book, Diet Recovery.

5. Question: Recipe for Chocolate-flavored Soda?

Hi Ann Marie,

Chanie

Answer

Hi, no I don’t.

Got a Question?

Please submit your questions to questions AT realfoodmedia dot com. I’ll answer your questions every Sunday in the order I receive them.

Thank you!

Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

People are always disappointed when they miss out on a good deal. You don’t want to miss this one!

We extended the VGN Spring E-book Bundle Sale one more day — you can still save until midnight Pacific tonight, Wed, April 24th (actually, it will actually go on a little longer since we won’t shut off the code until we wake up tomorrow on the West coast).

That’s 30 e-books from your favorite bloggers including Mommypotamus, Nourished Kitchen, Food Renegade, Matt Stone, The Healthy Home Economist, Holistic Squid, Butter Believer, Thank Your Body, DIY Natural, and many, many more.

Order Now!

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to get almost $500 worth of e-books for just $39.

Click here to order now.

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to Tennessee to tour the kitchen of Courtney Polivka of The Polivka Family

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: The Polivka Family

Courtney and her husband Frank.


Courtney is a designer, wanna-be-photographer, real food lover, doula, and fertility awareness advocate. But first and foremost, She is a wife, and to her, it is by far my favorite thing to be—and the most rewarding. She absolutely cannot wait to be a mother, as well.

Blog Name: The Polivka Family
Blog Author: Courtney Polivka
Location: Tennessee, soon to be Georgia
How Long Blogging: August 2012
House or Apartment: Small house
Size of Kitchen: 7 x 9 feet
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I like that it’s a 1940′s style kitchen, and I like the checkered floors and red walls.
Things You Would Change: Um, nearly everything! I can’t wait to move! Hopefully, we will have a bigger kitchen in Georgia (even if the decor is not as cute). We are renting right now, so not much I can do. But the counters are very shallow. It’s a good thing we don’t have a microwave! Also, the cabinets are so shallow that I can’t fit plates in them!! It’s crazy! I have to keep my pots and pans in another room, and our deep freezer is in another room, too. My spices are in yet another room (which is supposed to be the dining area, but we use as an office because we have no where else to put the desk)!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: My Vitamix, all my mason jars. I collected mason jars before I became a real foodie, so now I’m glad I get to use them all the time.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: One of my biggest challenges, I think, is figuring out what to make as the seasons change. But it only takes a week or so, and then I’m good. It’s like…when you transition from not wearing socks in the summer to wearing socks in the winter. It’s weird for like…a day. Then you’re good! The other challenge would be time. Cooking real food takes longer. Sometimes I’m forgetful and start something in the afternoon, then I need to set an alarm for 4am so I can turn it off or strain it, etc.
Current Family Favorite Meal: This is a tough one! We love everything we eat. Can I pick a few dishes that make up a full meal? For the entreé, tandoori butter chicken, with a side of aloo gobi and punjabi cabbage, with carrot halva for dessert!
Favorite Cookbooks: On my shelf, I have “Nourishing Traditions”. But I mostly read blogs for recipe ideas. In general, I don’t follow recipes. I seek out flavors and flavor combinations, and then try to make them come to life. If I find a recipe I think I’ll like, I’ll follow the recipe the first time, but I change it by the second time I make it!

Full view of my tiny kitchen.

I was in the middle of making chocolate for the chocolate peanut butter bananas, when I took these pictures, so my coconut oil is out.

From left to right, there is kefir fermenting, FCLO, an orange, grass-fed raw butter, cacao powder, vanilla, cocoa butter, seeds drying, grade b maple syrup, my glass water bottle, my sport Berkey, Cutco knives, Great Lakes grass-fed gelatin, & the compost. As I was taking pictures, my husband, Frank, said, “Wow, we really have a crunchy kitchen, don’t we?” Yup.

My pantry

Sink and tiny window. There is actually a brick wall a few feet from the window outside, so we only get light for a few hours a day. Bummer :/

My spice shelf that lives in the dining room/office area around the corner from the kitchen. It was Frank’s idea to organize them alphabetically, and I really like the way it looks!

Kombucha and pecans in the living room.

This is our utility room, where the rest of my kitchen lives. In the foreground, you’ll see the deep freezer next to the crate I use to pick up raw milk. Behind that is my 5 gallon bucket of coconut oil and the big white shelf that houses my canners, my 16 qt stock pot, more bulk ingredients for cosmetics, the ice-cream maker, the baking soda, and other random things. To the right, is the cabinet/counter I found on Craigslist to house my pots and pans. The last house we lived in actually didn’t have a counter in the kitchen, so we bought it then. But it’s certainly coming in handy now!!

The pans that are on the stove never get put away because I use them everyday. The double boiler is only out to make the chocolate. Also my free cheesy fruit painting rules!

Our Royal Berkey water filter. We finally broke down and bought it, once Frank saw I had almost stopped drinking water because the chlorine bothered me so badly. (I was going through a ton of raw milk instead!)

Lastly, I thought it would be fun to our fridge magnets.

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 Questions 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
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5

On Saturday, May 25th, people are taking to the streets to express their disgust and outrage for Monsanto, the multinational corporation that is poisoning our planet and ruining our food supply.

It’s time to take back our food. It’s time to March Against Monsanto.

I will be attending the March Against Monsanto event here in Los Angeles with our local Weston A. Price chapter.

There will be marches happening in every major U.S. city and around the world. 135 events in 18 countries and counting. So far, almost 15,000 people have RSVPd.

Will you join us?

March Against Monsanto: Saturday, May 25th

Here’s how to participate:

1. Click here to like the March Against Monsanto Facebook page.
2. Click here to RSVP to attend a march in your city or town on May 25th.
3. Use the Facebook RSVP page to invite your friends.
4. If you don’t see an event in your town, start one! Here’s the full event list.

Help Spread the Word

Please share this post on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest! If you have a blog, PLEASE blog about this.

Will You Attend?

Are you going? Comment below!