Food

This is what its all about really!  We are doing all this work because we want some control over what we eat and the chemicals and processes used to produce it.  My view of food is: the simpler the better.  We eat very little processed food and we are always trying to reduce that further. How did I get started with real food??

My definition of real food is: 

• lots of fresh, organic, locally grown (or at the least, grown in Australia) produce
• producing as much of what we eat as we can on our own property - and eating what we grow
• free-range pasture fed meat and eggs
• minimal sugar (particularly fructose), natural sweeteners - rapadura and honey
• good fats and oils - olive oil, butter, tallow/lard
• natural unprocessed salt
• soaked, sprouted and fermented grains, especially bread
• If I have to buy something, then it must contain only ingredients that I recognise, although these days I make most of our food from scratch

Some great references are:

Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats (Sally Fallon) - for my chapter reviews see here

Sweet Poison and The Sweet Poison Quit Plan (David Gillespie) - more here on strategies to reduce sugar.  And more recently, Toxic Oil and Eat Real Food.

Making a meal of it - book review

Nutritionism - a book review

Whole Larder Love - book review

Cooked - Michael Pollan - Book review

Food Inc - movie review

I recommended a few other books in my book store as well.

Apart from growing veges, keeping chickens for eggs and meat, keeping steers for meat and cows for milk, we also shop at our local farmers market, swap food through our local permaculture group and make a few other things ourselves:

• making beer
• growing sprouts
• milk products
• homemade stock
• fermented vegetables (sauerkraut, pickles, lemon and ginger ale)
• soup (pea and ham, tomato)
• low sugar real food deserts
• various breakfast ideas

For all my real food posts, click here, and join in the discussion.