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 planning 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!
Real Food Kitchen Tour: Cara of Health, Home & Happiness
This week, we’re starting with Cara from the Health, Home, & Happiness blog. She lives in Montana with her husband and two littles. Her daughter is on the autism spectrum, so their family is on the GAPS diet.
Blog Name: Health, Home, & Happiness
Blog Author: Cara Faus
How Long Blogging: One year about food; 3 or so years about crafts at http://naturalfamilycrafts.com
Location: Billings, Montana
House or Apartment: Townhouse in a 4-plex, but each unit is owned individually so it’s not really like an apartment complex.
Size of Kitchen: Oh goodness, it’s a hallway with some appliances around it; 10×12 minus the closet and mechanical chase that take up a good portion of it, so about 110 square feet.
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I love that it has lots of sunlight, and nice big cupboards, a dishwasher that works well, the smooth top range that occasionally gets used as more counter space, and a garbage disposal.
Things You Would Change: Because it’s more of a hallway than a room, two people really can’t work at the same time without running into each other. I’d love to look out into the living room.
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Food processor, stand mixer, good knives, DISHWASHER, water filter.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Planning ahead — making sure I source the best quality ingredients for the price, menu planning, soaking/sprouting/culturing before I need to use something.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Scrambled eggs, beef sausage, Hollandaise sauce, biscuits.
Favorite Cookbooks: Nourishing Traditions
Here are some photos of Cara’s kitchen:
This area of the counter is where I usually take my food pictures
Cara writes: “This is where I do most of my mixing/chopping/cooking. We don’t normally use paper towels; the people who were here before us left a big package of them.”
Looking into my kitchen
Cara uses food coloring to turn daisies pink. (This is the only use for food coloring in her kitchen.)
Sink
Lots of light!
Cara writes: “I love that this house has lots of light, we’ve lived in a townhouse with a similar layout, but it didn’t have nearly as many windows. This one is much more cheerful!”
Children's kitchen
Cara writes: “Their kitchen is set up right next to mine, and they come in and out sharing their creations (and stealing mine!) often.”
Baking cupboard
I’m consistently amazed by Cara’s ability to make so many yummy-looking baked goods, considering that she and her family are completely grain-free. (Click here to read about her Grain-free Menu Plan.)
Grain-free, sugar-free cupcakes
Excalibur dehydrator
Cara writes: “For the summer the dehydrator stays down in the basement so it doesn’t heat up the house. In the winter I’ll move it up to the upstairs.”
Ferments
That’s a real GAPS fridge! My fridge shelves are so crowded with condiments and olives and STUFF. I love the simplicity of these mason jars.
Curing Olives
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).
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 Cara at Health, Home & Happiness
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5
{ 40 comments… read them below or add one }
ooohh, love the series! i love looking in other people’s houses and love real foodies!! thanks!
NIce simple kitchen. Proof that you don’t have to have a huge kitchen or a lot of gadgets or appliances to cook well. You are very well organized. I like the light in your kitchen, too, Cara. I too have a small kitchen, but the light makes up for a lot of things. Let there be light!
I am sending pics in this week! What a great idea!
Loved all the light in Cara’s kitchen- so wonderful!
Yay!
I love Cara’s blog! Nice to see around her kitchen. I loved all the GAPs party nibbles laid out in the cupcake pic.
I know — deviled eggs — yum!
Thanks Ann Marie! And I should admit that these pictures were taken fairly soon after we moved in- my kitchen isn’t always this clean
Though I do like to keep it pretty clean and organized since it’s way more functional that way!
It’s so tidy and cute! I think when you have a small space, it’s even more important to keep it clean and organized.
I’m not so good at that but seeing other people’s clean kitchens help get me excited to tidy up my own!
Wonderful! Love Cara’s kitchen and how well she does with a small space. You’ve inspired me to do a little kitchen tour myself. We’ll see how it turns out. I may send it to you Ann Marie.
Yes, please send it to me, Tara! I’d love to feature you!
I do think that is the beauty of Cara’s kitchen — the fact that it is so small and yet she produces so much fantastic food. If she can do what she does in her small kitchen, anyone can!
This is an awesome series! I DO love seeing other people’s kitchens! So much fun!
I am inspired to send some stuff your way! 
Oh, Jenn, please do!
You have a great kitchen and beautiful home — I know people would love to see your new homestead.
Woo hoo — I just checked my mail and I see your email. Thank you! The photos are beautiful. You will be next!
Oh am so glad you are doing this series! We just recently moved to a different house and have pondered what a kitchen geared toward ‘real food’ – Nourishing Traditions style would look like, how it would be organized, what gear it would be equipped with, or what materials are preferred. The typical kitchen planning talks about things like a ‘baking area’–but how about a ‘fermentation station’? A sprouting station? The traditional foods that we want to go back to were made in sometimes almost non-existent kitchens. So I guess we should be grateful for what we have–I’d just like to know how to adapt it–or what adaptions need to be made. How does one storage divide up–is there a bigger need to handle fresh foods (an extra refrigerator?) perhaps than grain staples? Maybe I need to swap and put my kitchen aide in storage to give my food dehydrator a more accessible spot. Or how about a juicer? Or recycling? Loved the pix in the Real Butter tour of the reusable grocery bags! Anyone have vermicomposting handy to the kitchen–or any other type of recycling? The work flow–a system for collecting items for broth or stew perhaps–bring on the ideas!!
My current kitchen is smaller than my last one and like so many of our historical predecessors we can make do on less but would also love to see the wonderful splurges one can make that would enhance an NT food prep lifestyle. My sister has a whole cupboard with her Retsel mill set up. She has an expanded ‘mud room’ inside the back entry where her daughter brings in milk from the cow and they make cheese and a place to wash of the food they raise. She has lots of counter space–her kitchen is also geared to feeding a large family. Her seriously huge garden is right outside the patio door.
Since the traditional foods that nourish and inspire us come from all over the world–would love to see kitchens–or spaces used for food prep from all over the world too. The Russian story about the ‘babushka’ and kombucha talked about crocks of it all lined up on a shelf.
Am hoping your series can be like the one over at ThePerfectPantry.com where there was an initial series for a year or so on ‘other peoples pantries’ (one a week) but when you go to that section there are 158 pantries! And at one point I had looked through all of them (one gal had a collection of over 12 sea salts)!
This should be exciting and inspiring–thanks!
Thanks, Rosyjo,
Yes, that is why I want to do this series — I hope it will give us all ideas and inspiration!
I *love* this idea! Do lots and lots! I’ll volunteer, but first I have to take pictures.
OK great!
PLUS, you can tell she uses quality eggs! Look how orange the filling is!
I can’t help but notice the reused Bubblies jar. We do that in my house too! I just finished up some of their bread and butter pickles, going to use the jar as an “asparagus house” in the refridgerator. I like to use leftover jars to store homemade nut butters, condiments, nuts and loose teas. We have a big jar fetish!! Whenever we finish a jar of nut butter or sourkraut from the store we wash, soak, scrape off the label and reuse! It’s great!!
I like this series. Makes me want to show off my/my mom’s kitchen
Do it!
I am excited about this series! When do we get to see your kitchen, AnnMarie?
I will post mine in a couple weeks. Have to clean it up first!
lol that is exactly why I won’t be sending my pics in….well that and I live in an apartment so nit real exciting, it would be about one picture
But you’d see lots of jars of fermenting veggies on top of my fridge !!
Oh my, I do love looking into other peoples homes, especially their kitchens. I get some kind of inspiration from it… do you? Love the light and the open cupboard was a nice view… makes me want to go tidy mine up and take some photos too.
I do have a nice kitchen, actually I have two because mom has an apartment in the house and she does no cooking whatsoever. It’s very small but it gives me a second refrigerator, sink and stove/oven, albeit downstairs. Mine is bigger but still lacking in work and storage space and I haven’t even begun to explore the realm of fermenting vegetables. I only do kombucha so far and it takes up more than it’s share of counter space!
I would love to design a real working kitchen for real food preparation because honestly, kitchens of the last 80 years or so are quite insufficient when it comes to prep table room, cool and warm areas, etc… But we make do with what we have and I am amazed at how much CAN be done in less-than-ideal kitchens.
I’m a little unclear… are you asking for tours of kitchens strictly from fellow bloggers or just anyone?
@Bebe
I agree — modern kitchens are not so great. Right now we have a microwave above our range and I hate it! I need a vent! But people don’t cook with fats anymore — it’s all teflon pans. So people don’t need vents anymore — and most people use their microwave more than they use their stove.
We never use our microwave.
In my next kitchen, I will not have a microwave, and I will have a very good range and a decent vent!
Anyone can participate in the series — you don’t have to be a blogger!
I can’t guarantee that I will include everyone — but I want to make it open to everyone, not just bloggers.
Yup, not a fan of most houses’ kitchens! It’s almost like it’s an afterthought shoved off in a corner!
I hate the microwaves over BOTH stoves! The first thing on my agenda for the kitchen(s) is removing those microwaves and replacing them with the best vents/range hoods I can afford. Guess why I hate mine so bad? I got a huge canner to do salmon every season and it doesn’t fit on either stove because of those d@?!:& microwaves. I had to use the propane burner that came with our turkey fryer setup… although my husband kept me company outside where we also drank wine and swatted mosquitoes till nearly midnight
!
@Bebe That is so fun! You have a good husband. Where do you live?
Alaska… so at least it was light for our late night fish processing party!
Love it! Thanks for sharing, Cara & for doing this Ann Marie.
perfect timing – we are in the early planning stages of a kitchen remodel. I’m keeping a post-it note tacked on a cabinet so everytime I think of something I’d like to have I write it down. Fermentation station is a biggie! Sourdough, kefir, kombucha, lacto-fermented stuff – it gets very crowded on the counters! I’m very interested to find out how people carve out spaces for things like grain mills, constant-brew kombucha canisters, dehydrators, etc. My deep freeze is on the porch – a big no-no in Florida summers! But where else do you keep those monsters?
I keep my chest freezer in the garage. But it doesn’t get too hot here.
Cara’s kitchen is so lovely. Love the pink daisies idea! And the Grain-free, sugar-free cupcakes seems incredible delicious. Can I ask for the recipe?
I don’t think the cupcakes are on her blog but the frosting recipe is:
http://www.healthhomehappy.com/2010/10/simple-meringue-frosting-refined-sugar-free.html
Lovely! This is so practical and encouraging! Thanks, Cara (and Ann Marie) for sharing.
I love this idea!!!! You have the best ideas! I hope to send you some pictures soon!!!!! Yipee skippeeeeee! I can’t wait to jump into others kitchens!
awe….. I LOVE cara’s blog, it’s nice to see her featured ! I can relate to the small kitchen….someday hopefully I can have a nice big open kitchen, for now it’s an apartment and it doesn’t even have a full size fridge !!!!!!!
Curing olives…love that photo!
all those fermented foods look so good!
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