Real Food Kitchen Tour: McKenzie McCarty

by Ann Marie Michaels on August 28, 2012

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week we’re featuring the kitchen of McKenzie McCarty.

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: McKenzie McCarty

This week we travel to Seattle, Washington to tour the kitchen of McKenzie McCarty.

Kenzie is married to Josh, and mama to two cute kitties!

Blog Name: I don’t have a blog.
Blog Author: McKenzie
Location: Seattle, Washington
House or Apartment: Renting a house
Size of Kitchen: 9ft x 21ft
Things You Love About Your Kitchen: I thought I would hate a galley style kitchen, but I love it! I love that there is lots of counter space, and we have tons of storage. I love our convection oven and I really enjoy our gas stove, I feel quite spoiled with my appliances.
Things You Would Change: We need a bigger freezer (or just space for a second freezer). I absolutely hate our blue tile countertops, crumbs get stuck in the grout. Yuck!
Favorite Tools & Gadgets: Cuisinart food processor (great for making mayo and larabars), cast iron skillets, the master blender-vita mix, glass jars, and my beloved red kitchen aid. Also a dry erase marker to write dates and contents on glass jars.
Biggest Challenges Cooking Real Food: Making healthy snacks and grab and go type foods that we could eat in the car, we love fruit but it gets old.
Current Family Favorite Meal: Simple Summer Succotash from Riddlelove, a forever favorite of ours is marinated skirt steak, green beans, and mashed potatoes with lots of butter, garlic and crème fraiche. Steak Friday is very common for us.
Favorite Cookbooks: Nourishing Traditions (of course!) also lots of recipes from my real foodie Mom. I tend to get most of my basic recepies like mayo, salad dressings and chicken stock from Nourishing Traditions. But for meals I search the blogosphere.

Lovely blue (not so much!)

Our seriously retro convection oven and microwave.

The baking corner, my pinterest inspired measuring cup hooks.

Coffee counter, the habit my husband can’t break (or just won’t)

The baking corner, I’m such a fan of having all the equipment and ingredients all in the same corner makes baking much faster.

Oats soaking the night away (I remembered today, yay!), creme frachie, and water kefir.

Homemade pizza, with yogurt dough crust and raw cheese, my hubs loves this one!

Chicken Stock, I make 1 batch every 2 weeks for our family of 2.

Glass jars to store food from the bulk section at the grocery store.

Inside the fridge, not too crazy. Raw milk, water kefir, whey, homemade mayo, homemade strawberry freezer jam, sprouted bread.

The freezer on the other hand is pure insanity! I freeze the raw milk because we live about an hour and a half away from the creamery where I buy it, so when we make a trip I load up!

Pantry, this is our first house with a pantry so I love the storage it offers.

Menu board, another pinterest inspired idea.

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

{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }

maggie August 28, 2012 at 4:50 AM

Love the menu board! I need to do this – my hubs and I end up eating really similar food all week, which probably contributes to our desire to eat out on weekends And I actually think the blue tile is really cute, but I can definitely see how it would be awful to clean. Ease of cleaning is so important when you are figuring out how to design a kitchen / bathroom / anything really.

DaNelle Wolford August 28, 2012 at 7:39 AM

I LOVE reading about people like me! It inspires me to keep going and gives me some new ideas. I love how you store everything in jars on your window sill!

DaNelle recently posted…Copycat PF Changs Lettuce Wraps Recipe

Alicia August 28, 2012 at 9:32 AM

Cute! Nice to see another Seattleite. I also live there and run a raw milk (and cream) drop at my house in Ravenna…if that’s not too far for you we’re always open for more participants. Beats driving a long time and having to freeze your milk. Let me know if you’d be interested.

McKenzie August 29, 2012 at 7:13 PM

My parents live in the town where we pick up our milk, so it’s not that much of a hassle. Also a half gallon is only $3.50. How much is your raw cream?

SS August 29, 2012 at 10:57 PM

I pay twice that for raw milk, but it’s available every week at the U-district farmer’s market on 50th and University. 100% grassfed meat and dairy products. I think they’re also at the Ballard market, if ever you don’t feel like driving so far.

Alicia August 30, 2012 at 10:28 PM

Maybe you want to try the drop since it’s also weekly and sounds like it’s less! I’m just a volunteer in coordinating but like getting new participants.

Alicia August 30, 2012 at 10:28 PM: Realized email wasn’t listed…ravennamilk at gmail if interested.

Reply

Alicia August 30, 2012 at 10:26 PM

The cream is $4.65 for a pint and $8.60 for a quart. Half gallons are $4.30 and gallons are $8.30. Weekly drop.

Jessica@EarlyEndeavors August 28, 2012 at 1:47 PM

So fun! Saw the same raw milk we get in their fridge. Fernwood Creamery is right down the road from our house and a truly lovely farm.

Jennifer August 29, 2012 at 2:19 PM

Thanks for sharing your kitchen with us. I also like the tile, but hate cleaning, so I would end up not liking it too.

I also want to comment on the milk. It looks like you just have it in a half gallon wide mouth canning jar. Do you ever have trouble with the jar breaking or does the cream at the top keep it somehow flexible enough? I need to freeze some, but don’t care for plastic jugs and it uses a lot of straight sided pint jars to freeze a gallon of milk!

McKenzie August 29, 2012 at 7:10 PM: Jennifer,

If you pour out a little of the milk before freezing, when the milk expands in the freezer the jars won’t crack. All that to say there have been times I’ve forgotten to pour out some milk and the jars have literally exploded in the freezer! It makes for a huge mess.

McKenzie

Reply

Annie August 30, 2012 at 11:39 AM

Hi McKenzie,

Enjoyed Your great kitchen.
I do like the look of your tile., It looks like you spend some time having it look so nice.

Your Pizza looks Yummy.
Would you please share your Pizza yogurt dough crust ?
Does this type of pizza dough get thick, or can it be thin?

Thanks for sharing,
Annie

McKenzie August 30, 2012 at 7:29 PM

The yogurt dough crust is out of Nourishing Traditions.
1/2 C Whole Plain Yogurt
1/2 C Butter
1 3/4 C Wheat Flour
1 t Salt

Cream butter and yogurt, add in flour and salt. Leave in a warm spot for 12-24 hours. Roll out and bake for 20 mins at 350 without toppings, then add toppings and bake again.

This crust definitely requires a fork. It’s thin yet dense. It’s nothing like regular pizza dough, but it’s very good and flavorful.

Annie September 1, 2012 at 10:50 PM: McKenzie,
Thanks for the Pizza dough recipe..I’m going to make it.
I do have the Nourishing Traditions book.
I should have taken a look in there!!

Thanks Again,
Annie

Reply

Dina-Marie @ Dimes2Vines August 31, 2012 at 7:20 PM

I really like the pinterest ideas you have done – the menu board and measuring cups/spoons are great! Thanks for sharing your neat kitchen with us!

Real Food Kitchen Tour: McKenzie McCarty

What’s a Real Foodie?

This Week’s Real Food Kitchen Tour: McKenzie McCarty

Check Out the Previous Real Food Kitchen Tour Posts

Let Us Tour Your Kitchen

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