Reason to Drink Raw Milk #1:
Raw milk is a living food.
Unlike pasteurized and ultra-high-temperature (UHT) pasteurized milk, raw milk is a living food.  Several of milk’s natural components including beneficial bacteria, food enzymes, natural vitamins and immunoglobulins are heat-sensitive.  These health-promoting components of natural, raw milk are destroyed by heating and therefore not present in pasteurized or UHT milk.  Indeed, most foods – milk included – provide best nutrition when consumed in a raw or minimally cooked state.  While heating milk doesn’t change the mineral composition to any great degree, …

It’s time for July’s Clean Your Plate Recipe Challenge at Nourished Kitchen! As a reminder: each month I’ll provide you with a single, nourishing ingredient and it’s your job to develop a wholesome recipe that best showcases that ingredient.
But before we get started in July, we need to finish up June!  In June we showcased the natural sweetener honey (check out this post to learn more about natural sweeteners and how to use them).  With a handful of wonderful entries, we had a 3-way tie!  So let’s get that settled …

Sunday is market day and it starts very, very early.  My husband rises at about 5:30, makes breakfast and packs up his truck.  I wake a little later, get our child ready for the day and pack my car and we head down to town together.  From there, we unpack the vehicles and unload everything onto the street: signs, paperwork, goods for our popular free tent, tables, brochures and promotional materials, first aid kits, camera and other assorted odds and ends.  We mark the street, direct traffic, network with vendors …

Zaletti are a mildly sweet Venetian cookie studded with rum-soaked currants.  Mildly sweet and perfectly crumbly, zaletti are a pleasant dolci reminiscent of shortbread.  I first stumbled across these charming Italian cookies while reading In Late Winter We Ate Pears by Deirdre Heekin and Caleb Barber – a charming memoir that follows two honeymooners through an enchanting journey that winds through Italy’s countryside  as they experience the rich flavors and history of real Italian cooking.
Heekin’s and Barber’s can only be described as simply charming.  Anything more would derail the gentle …

Beef stock – especially homemade beef stock is remarkably easy to prepare especially using this tried-and-true classic beef stock recipe.  You don’t need purchased beef base to prepare a decent beef stock any more than you need those hateful little granules of chicken bouillon to prepare a chicken stock.  Just a lazy Saturday around the house, some soup bones and vegetable scraps are all that this beef stock recipe requires.
While we mostly use roast chicken stock in our home, from time to time we mix it up by also preparing …

It’s time to vote for your favorite recipe for the firs month of the Clean Your Plate Challenge hosted here at Nourished Kitchen.  We have some lovely entries for the first month of the challenge, and I definitely found a few kinks to work out as we progress to next month’s challenge.  The goal of the Clean Your Plate Challenge is to encourage creativity in the kitchen – incorporating wholesome, natural foods while highlighting one special ingredient each month.  This month, our special ingredient was honey – delicious, sweet and …

You may have noticed the lack of posts over the last week or so, but rest assured – while I may have neglected to send out new recipes or other goodies – it’s for good reason.  Any spare glimpse of a moment has been otherwise preoccupied with growing our little market.  The work begins early and ends late as we mark the street, meet the summer’s growers, bakers, ranchers and artists.

So, early on Sunday morning the street looked empty and quiet as the first few vendors began arriving to set …

Don’t forget!  It’s the Clean Your Plate Challenge time.  Please submit your best honey recipe to the Clean Your Plate Recipe Challenge hosted here at Nourished Kitchen.  Entries are currently open and voting will begin on Saturday the 20th! And the winner will be announced on July 1st when we also announce July’s special ingredient. June’s winner receives a 22-oz jar of my favorite wildflower honey!
June’s challenge focuses on honey – a beautiful and natural sweetener.  Want to participate?  Visit the June Clean Your Plate Challenge and submit a link …

Ah … food blogs.  I admit it.  I am an addict.  I must subscribe to over a hundred food blogs.  I love them.  The ideas.  The beautiful photography.  The luscious recipes.  More than that, though, I love that all these real food lovers have come together in a medium that can bring the real and traditional foods community together while simultaneously bringing awareness to the importance of real foods, traditional foods and sustainable agriculture.
Sure, we all know (or we all should know) Cheeseslave, Kelly the Kitchen Kop, Nourishing Gourmet and …

If you’ve read Nourished Kitchen for a while, you know about my love and enthusiasm for high quality local and traditional foods.  Real food.  Vibrant organic fennel.  Flavorful berries.  Wild-caught salmon.  Fresh raw butter and fresh raw cream.  What you don’t know, however, is that while my belly may rumble the traditional foods of my ancestors, my heart trembles for the modern (design, that is).  Those clean sleek lines.  The vibrant and often stark colors.   That’s why I am thrilled to have teamed up with AllModern.com in this giveaway for …