I love food. In the healthiest way. It's not my main source of comfort, though it is comforting. It's not my main source of joy, though I do find joy in it. And it's not something I feel enslaved to at all, though I'm very thankful for the freedom it gives me.
There are so many deep feelings that go into the fact that I love food. And it's for the love of food that I would love for you all to be able to experience this same love. My love of food was born out of conviction, hard work, dedication, and the fulfillment of that work.
If my love of food and my own journey can be inspiring, then that's all I could hope for with this podcast. We are all on a journey, we are all at some point in our personal process, and hopefully, we're all just moving towards “better.”
It's why I share things like how to eat real food (and where to start), or the kitchen tools that are helpful for a homestead kitchen, and even how to grow a garden from grocery store food.
We're all at different places, so if teaching you how to make a basic spatchcock chicken with some potatoes, or an easy chicken and dumpling recipe helps you start making from-scratch meals, then I'm here for it!
Lending Language
I'm a big believer in “lending language.” Have you ever had that moment where you've felt some way, but just couldn't put into words what it was to describe it to someone else? Then, someone else comes along and describes it in a way that matches your feelings exactly. They've just lent you the language for what you've been feeling.
That's something that I feel privileged to get to do here in the gardening realm on YouTube, Facebook, this blog, and other social media platforms. If you've read any of my Lovely Words blog posts (or followed my @thewooedwordsmith Instagram account), you know I have a love of words and communication through them.
That being said, I love food. Early on when Asher was a baby he had some pretty severe food sensitivities. Through his needs, my eyes were opened to the brokenness of our food system.
Through my crash course in learning about food, ingredients, etc., I realized the importance of the localization of food. This is how my love of gardening and raising our own food was born.
I hope you'll join me in this podcast as I discuss the following…
In This Episode
- Meal planning – Don't be misled, our family eats plenty of sandwiches (and tomato sandwiches with homemade mayo are on constant rotation during tomato season). Not every meal is planned perfectly and cooked from scratch. But I do have a love affair with cookbooks. In fact, I happen to have an entire bookshelf full of them. There's never a lack of inspiration when it comes to cooking.
- Cooking from scratch – It's my opinion that knowing how to cook from scratch, turning individual ingredients into a meal, is where so many people get hung up. They want to grow a garden, but then don't know what to do with the food once it's grown.
- Match your appetite to your convictions – Please don't misunderstand me. I'm not saying you need to change everything overnight. It's impossible to realize our food system is broken and the next year be growing 100% of your own food. Change happens with a series of tiny choices day in and day out. These tiny changes add up to big changes. Sometimes these changes take us to a place where we're uncomfortable, and that's OK, too!
- The love of food – Over the years I have fallen in love with food. There's something so incredible about taking an egg out of the nest box and cracking it into a cast iron pan. Cooking it in the lard that came from the pig you butchered last February. And then sprinkling giant flaky salt over the top of that egg and watching the yolk spill out like sunshine. Come on! Doesn't that make you so excited about your food? You can learn more about raising backyard egg-laying chickens here.
- Connecting with your food – The simplicity of food that comes from a homestead is what makes it so beautiful. We have such an appreciation for simplicity. Because, while eating it, we can remember the process of getting that food onto our plates. It's so romantic when you think about it all!
- Store-bought tomatoes taste like disappointment – You've heard me say this before, and you may laugh at this. But I consider it disrespectful for me to eat a store-bought tomato, grown across the country, picked green, shipped hundreds of miles to my local grocery store where I could purchase it after it's been sitting on the shelf for two weeks. The flavorless end result is a far cry from one grown in the garden. There's simply no comparison to picking a vine-ripened tomato, still warm from the sunshine, that I started from seed and tended to for months. It would be a disservice for you to make brown butter tomatoes or my roasted tomato salsa with a store-bought tomato and call that recipe delicious. That's why I share how to plant tomatoes, how to prune tomatoes, how to get rid of tomato hornworms, the difference between determinant and indeterminant tomatoes, how to treat tomato blight.
- Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – This is the book by Barbara Kingsolver that really changed my mindset on the food I eat and purchase from the store. It's helped teach me the value of being involved in the process.
- Find your inspiration – No matter where you are in your journey of growing or sourcing food, find what it is that inspires you. There's a restaurant that Miah and I have been to that only serves things locally grown and in season. Their menu is constantly rotating. When I go there, I'm thinking about the foods grown in my own garden. I find inspiration for cooking that food when I get home.
