REAL FOOD WEDNESDAYS (I'm Late on the Draw, but here's my contribution!)

Last week, Kelly the Kitchen Kop hosted Real Food Wednesday's: Rookie Tips from YOU!, and my life was CRAZY...... so I'm finally getting around to my contribution.

Kelly wanted us to share our Rookie Tips, or the things we would share with someone who is beginning their path to Real Food. I'm not sure that I can really "rank" mine in "order"...... so, instead, I'm going to post a succinct (hopefully!) list of ways to get started, mostly stemming from my own experience of getting off of processed, convenience and fast foods.

Rookie Tip #1:
Check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon from the Library, or buy it, and just START reading the introduction. Don't go through the recipes, or you'll feel OVERWHELMED. Rather, just read the introduction (80 pages in itself!), begin to digest the info, then skim through the book - read the individual introductions to each of the chapters, skim through the side bars, and don't forget my favorite feature of the book, the "Know Your Product" mini-quiz's. You'll find them scattered throughout the book in the sidebars, with an "ingredient label" and you have to guess the product! The answers are in the appendix. DON'T read the recipes yet - just reading what I outlined above will give you an amazing education on what is really healthy, what is REALLY good for us and how our bodies REALLY need and use real food.

Rookie Tip #2:
Start learning ***how*** to cook from scratch. I don't care if you're still buying all your groceries at the mega-grocery chain... just start buying real, whole food ingredients and learn how to make meals from those ingredients from scratch. Some helpful books you can find at nearly every library are: The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, Whole Foods for the Whole Family, anything by Julia Child, etc. If you go to the library and just peruse the cookbook aisle, you'll be amazed at how many good cookbooks you can find. This is probably the biggest learning curve for most people: knowing what to do with the whole food ingredients they bring home! This takes time, and you need to start small. Don't be dismayed - once you start working on the learning curve, you'll pick things up with increasing momentum.

Rookie Tip #3:
Once you are FAMILIAR with whole foods (meats, whole milk real dairy - no processed cheese please!, produce, real whole grains like brown rice, real oatmeal, real whole wheat), then start branching out to find local, naturally produced sources of food. Honestly - if you try to tackle both learning how to cook from scratch AND searching out local sources of food, you'll be extremely overwhelmed.

Rookie Tip #4:
With regards to transitioning to a Nourishing Traditions style of eating, I will tell you the steps that we took. A) Change the fats to real and natural fats. Get rid of margarine, liquid oils, spreads, etc. We switched to butter, coconut oil, lard, some extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, and we ate the naturally occuring fats in our meats. B) Make stocks regularly and incorporate them into as many dishes as you can. We eat homemade soups very regularly, and I use stocks when making rice, or cooking lentils. C) Research and search out a source for raw milk. Read Nourishing Traditions and www.realmilk.com for information to get you started. D) Search out local sources of grass-fed sources of beef, pastured poultry, eggs from pastured poultry, and pork from pastured hogs. We no longer buy *any* of our meats from a store, they all come directly from one of 3 local farms that we give our business to. E) From here, you can determine where you want to go, and how much of the Nourishing Traditions philosophy you want to incorporate. By this time, you have probably ventured deep into the Nourishing Traditions book, and are comfortable with many of the recipes. It's only a matter of time now!

Rookie Tip #5:
Don't be discouraged or feel guilty. We are all in different parts of the nation, and have different food sources available. Arm yourself with sound information, then just do the best you can with what you have. Even a few small changes will make a big difference in your health!

Lastly, I'd like to give yet another unsolicited testimonial. When I first started reading Nourishing Traditions, I thought it was a bunch of hogwash. Seriously - I was *supposed* to eat BUTTER?????? I was a huge skeptic. However, I hung in there, and did a ton of research on my own. I read study after study after study, journal article after journal article - and I became CONVINCED to try this. We made steps A-D that I outlined above, and the results have been astounding: No cavities in any of the children or adults in over 4 years; a total of 2 rounds of antibiotics that needed to be prescribed over the last 4 years - all 5 of us included (!); my children's digestive issues (mainly frequent stomach aches) have DISAPPEARED; our skin has cleared up remarkably; we are all extremely healthy, and ***rarely*** go to the doctor; my Seasonal Affective Disorder has been a non-issue the last 2 winters; my hairdresser tells me that I have the healthiest hair of any of her clients; none of us are on any medications whatsoever; we are simply strong, healthy and happy! (And - when I got serious with my own NT diet - I lost 30 pounds!) If you go to the Weston Price website, you will find testimonial after testimonial after testimonial. You'll find a link to their site in the sidebar of my blog. It really is a great way to live!