Real Food Kitchen Tour: Eating My Vegetables

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring Jen Pagano, author of Eating My Vegetables.

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: Eating My Vegetables

Making dinner even with a cranky toddler and a six month pregnant belly!

This week we travel to Missouri to tour Jen Pagano’s kitchen. With one toddler and one on the way, Jen is feeding her family a GAPS diet.

Blog Name: Eating My Vegetables
Blog Author: Jen Pagano
How Long Blogging: year and a half
Location: Missouri
House or Apartment: 1.5 story house
Size of Kitchen: 13×8 + breakfast area
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I love how easy it is to maneuver and have multiple people working in it at once. My husband can wash dishes while I cook and he isn’t constantly in my way! We remodeled this house with a friend, so I got to design the whole kitchen and even open up a wall to the living room. We even lucked out with really high end cabinets on clearance. With the fridge, stove and sink positioned as they are, I never go more than a couple steps to grab things that I need, and the counter space means I can have multiple projects going at once! I also got to add a pantry right off the kitchen that holds a ton of items, including my appliances. Only a few bulk items have to go downstairs.
Things You Would Change: Add a big skylight, make it more square, and put in short counters so my daughter can have her own cooking area. Oh, and the yet-to-be-added tile backsplash. It is technically an alley kitchen – so it is still a little tricky when I have people over for cooking classes, but it still feels pretty open and I love the storage space.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: My Henkels knife set and big pile of cutting boards, a food processor that can handle anything, and my garage sale ice cream maker. I love the so-called basic stuff – like gas fires, a fridge that works, wood spoons…
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Planning, following my instincts, and not getting so distracted by all these foodie blogs that I forget to cook for myself!
Current Family Favorite Meal: Herby cream of chicken soup or fried chicken and squash fries. My daughter is on full GAPS, and she loves pink lentil curry. Although once we have more milk, I think she would live on kefir!
Favorite Cookbooks: I have quite a few but I must admit that I mostly use other bloggers recipes or just google for inspiration. I got a fantastic program that holds my (hundreds!) of recipes and I can tag them, search by ingredients, and add pictures, links and variations all in the same slot. Whenever I “create” something that turns out fantastic, I can note it down to make again later!

Shallow shelves

There are additional shallow shelves my hubby added to the sides for extracts and supplements. It’s amazing having such a huge pantry.

Breakfast area

The breakfast area is where our little family eats most of the time. The little salt shaker is regularly refilled with real salt, of course.

FIRE!

I love my cast iron grates, skillets, and all my tools close at hand.

Wonderful big sink

The really big sink is wonderful for cleaning the big stock pots. Compost bucket sits nearby.

Packed fridge, as usual

Frog and seashells

My frog keeps my fabulous glass straws safe, and the seashells are serving dishes for fancy desserts.

Sitting pretty Snoopy

Good ol’ Snoopy modeling the seats at the island, per my daughter’s instruction.

My menu plan dry erase board, a real life saver

It must be a new month as it is waiting for me to fill it up!

Kitchen staples

Bamboo spoons, crispy seeds and nuts, sprouting “cookie” jar, and dried veggies.

A nice reminder over my stove

My little girl eating some yummy beef marrow and fat!

Always a lot going on in my kitchen – the blue towel on top of the fridge hides my kombucha which I just started. Broth is going in the crock pot. Kefir is soaking up the warmth nearby. I love the space!

Spices & kombucha.

2/3rds of my spices on lazy susans, and lots of glass jars. This cabinet is more empty now that I’m making kombucha and freezing broth for when baby is born.

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

Print.

{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }

Meghan March 6, 2012 at 10:19 AM

I love your kitchen! You have so much counter space and cabinet space.

Amanda Iden Howell March 6, 2012 at 10:29 AM

I love it! This gives me ideas as I move more into real foods.

Doina March 6, 2012 at 10:43 AM

That was a great tour. You have a very beautiful kitchen. I love that dry-erase board for meal planning. Where did you get that or did you make it yourself?

Jen March 6, 2012 at 11:33 AM: I think I found it at Target

Frances March 6, 2012 at 10:44 AM

nice wrap!

Charlotte March 6, 2012 at 10:49 AM

I get nostalgic when i see a baby in a wrap (looks like a didymos – great colour), my babywearing days are over (I think, lol). Sounds like you have a good many to go – didn’t realise at first you had another in the belly! Great kitchen, looks all very organised.

City Share March 6, 2012 at 11:37 AM

I love that menu plan dry erase board. It’s elegant. Such a great idea. It’s always fun to see inside other people’s kitchens.

Molly March 6, 2012 at 3:55 PM

Your daughter is adorable. Great kitchen. Nice design.

Melissa @ Unmistakablyfood March 6, 2012 at 6:44 PM

Your daughter is beautiful! I am curious, what is the name of the program you use for your recipes? I inevitably loose all mine!

Jen March 6, 2012 at 7:07 PM: It’s a handy program called Journler. Unfortunately, I don’t think you can get it anymore, but I imagine there are similar programs. You create “entries” which can contain links, photos, text, tables, etc. and are completely searchable. The entries can also exist in multiple folders, or you can create smart folders that sort by tags on the entries. So I can tag things as ‘snacks’ or ‘desserts.’ I love that you can flag or color code them too.

I’d encourage you to search and see what you can find!

Bonnie March 6, 2012 at 7:53 PM

What program do you use to keep track of your recipes? That is such a great idea. I get about 30 items on an average grocery-getting trip and having a program would really help. Thanks in advance.