2011 came and went so fast. And for Nourished Kitchen, we reached more people this year than we’ve ever reached before and – chances are – you found the site this year (though I’ll always have a deep-seated love for those who’ve followed the site since its inception in 2007. You know who you are, and so do I.) Nourished Kitchen was named the top healthy food blog according to Babble, we launched our new searchable real food recipe database (lots more recipes to come on that), and – most importantly – several readers were empowered to take control of their cooking, their health and start getting real about their food. So here’s a few of the most popular posts from Nourished Kitchen in 2011.
Feeding you (and yours) with real food.
Ever know anyone who loves the idea of real food but has no clue how to make it happen. (Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?) And even long-time real food enthusiasts can fall into a rut, which is why so much of my time is spent developing recipes, testing recipes and retesting recipes (oh and then photographing recipes) to make sure they really really work (which is also why, incidentally, so many folks LOVE our meal plans as they provide loads of easy, well-tested real food recipes that don’t make it to the blog.) Meal plans, just so you know, are on 30% off through January 2nd if you enter coupon code SUPERSALE at checkout. We also unveiled the searchable real food recipe database this year.
most popular recipes from 2011
- Homemade Ketchup: People really dig the basics, it seems, and our lactofermented, homemade ketchup was the single most popular recipe posted in 2011. It’s good. Not too sweet, faintly spicy and loaded with beneficial bacteria. I also dispelled the myth that you can’t use vinegar in lactofermentation (A bit of raw vinegar doesn’t hurt, and sometimes helps. It’s all about quantity and proportion, folks).
- Old-fashioned Homemade Root Beer: This is one of my most loved and most cherished recipes and I was pleased to dig into my analytics to find that it is one of yours too. We ditch the synthetic root beer extracts and opt for herbs, roots, berries and flowers to make a very, very traditional root beer with a stunning flavor.
- Four Thieves Vinegar: My version is adapted from a very, very old recipe – one that is rumored to have kept graverobbers and thieves from falling victim to the bubonic plague. This post covers history, herbal wisdom and easy techniques.
- Other Popular Recipes from 2011: Dutch Baby Pancakes, Slowcooker Chicken Soup, Curried Lentil Soup, Creamed Collard Greens, Fermented Beets with Ginger and Flaugnarde with Roasted Berries
Teaching you the basics.
We also cover a lot of the basics, and while in past years taught you how to render lard and how to make water kefir and how to make raw milk yogurt, this year we taught you more real food basics and if you have an idea for a tutorial you’d like to see covered here, just leave it in the comments. And, if you look in the sidebar, you’ll see super simple guides for getting started on things like raw milk, bone broth and fermented foods (and I’ve got more to come).
most popular tutorials from 2011
- How to Make Coconut Milk: This tutorial teaches you how to make a fresh, raw coconut milk from a fresh, raw coconut and it is utterly divine. Plus you can save the leftover coconut meat, dehydrate it, grind it in a food processor and use it as coconut flour.
- The Easiest Bone Broth You’ll Make: This perpetual soup is enormously popular and has helped many, many real food lovers to better integrate bone broth into their daily diet.
- Building a Traditional Foods Pantry: How to stock your pantry including what to buy, where to buy it, how to store it and how to use it.
- Other Popular Tutorials from 2011: How to Make Sauerkraut, My Favorite Fats, Baking with Coconut Flour
Getting a little personal.
For a blogger whose life revolves around sharing, I have a hard time sharing much of myself. I’m not one to tell you about my life or my struggles. I tend to be more private. And while you might catch glimpses of my personal life in little recipes and stories (like this one on Christmas tree hunting or this one on mushrooming with my little boy or how we like to celebrate the first snow), in general, I keep to myself. So it was interesting to me to see that those few times I did share a little bit more about my family and me turned out to be some of the most popular and most shared posts on the site.
2011′s most popular posts (in which I share too much of me)
- My Story: Gluten Intolerance, Thyroid Disease, Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome: I talk about how good, real food and the transformation from a whole foods veg*n diet to one based on traditional foods has helped me in my recovery from autoimmune disease and polycystic ovarian syndrome.
- My Husband’s Story: Nutrition, Mental Illness, Chronic Pain: At my husband’s request, we shared his story of how traditional real foods helped him to recover from bipolar disorder and chronic pain.
- Mayan Chocolate Truffles: Well, technically, this is a recipe (and a good one, too). Yet, it is really a love story – describing how my husband and I fell in love and ran away for a week to Amsterdam where we married quietly and privately, on our own terms and to the sound of the bells of the Oudekerk.
- Other Popular Personal Stories from 2011: Ha! There isn’t any. Like I said, I don’t share too much about me. Perhaps I should?
One more thing (it’s homework for you)
Join the conversation by leaving a comment. Communication is a two-way street, and I’d love to know what your favorite posts from 2011 were. Tell me: what were the highlights of your year? And, most importantly, how can Nourished Kitchen serve you in 2012. What kind of recipes do you want to see? Would you like more tutorials? What are you struggling with?
What People Are Saying