Mothers day is only a week away.   So here’s Nourished Kitchen picks for traditional foods-loving and nourished moms.   Tired of celebrating mothers day with gooey cards and grocery store carnations?   Leave this post casually open on the screen, or, for you less-subtle types: email the link to your partners.

Equipment for a Nourished Kitchen

Yogurt Maker

Euro-cuisine Yogurt Maker with Glass Jars: If you regularly make yogurt for your family, or if you anticipate regularly making yogurt for your family, you should consider picking up a yogurt maker.   It makes yogurt making so, remarkably, easy and clean.   The temperature remains constant and all you have to do is mix the milk with starter and pour it into the individual containers.   I like this yogurt maker in particular because the containers are glass instead of plastic, so you needn’t worry about chemicals leaching into your family’s food.   It’s available on Amazon for $39.95.

5-tray Deluxe Excalibur Dehydrator: Excalibur dehydrators are widely considered to be the best dehydrators on the market. Dehydrating enables you to preserve the summer harvest without overcooking your food through modern food preservation methods like canning.   This allows you to keep much of the fresh food’s nutrients intact.   While this particular dehydrator is on my wish list, we’ve used our dehydrator for drying grains after sprouting, making beef jerky and drying apples, pears and tomatoes for snacks.   You can purchase this dehydrator at Cultures for Health for $189.95 and it comes with a book on preserving.

Ice Cream Maker

Cuisinart 1- ½ Quart Ice Cream Maker: Everyone needs a little treat now and then, and that treat is ice cream in our house.     With fresh raw cream, fresh raw whole milk, fresh pastured egg yolks, a touch of honey and plenty of fresh fruit you can make an unbelievably delicious ice cream that is also real food-friendly. Try this recipe for Really Raw Ice Cream with Wildflower Honey and Blackberries from my healthy recipe files or this recipe for frozen yogurt at Cultures for Health.   At any rate, this ice cream maker is automatic and makes small 1- ½ quart batches.   You can purchase it from Amazon for $46.95

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KitchenAid Mixer

KitchenAid 5-quart Mixer: I purchased my   KitchenAid mixer in college and I swear that I’ve used it every single day since.   It is an integral and critical component of our kitchen.   We use it for obvious things like mixing batters for citrus coconut madeleines and other healthy sweet things and desserts and for sprouted grain breads, but we also use it for mixing up my classic meatloaf and making homemade mayonnaise.   It really does get used every day.   You can purchase this mixer from Amazon at $239.99 and you can even pick a color that’ll match your kitchen.

Kim Chi Maker

Kimchi Maker: If you’ve read Nourished Kitchen for any length of time you know how much I value probiotic-rich foods like real sauerkraut, real kimchi and other vegetable ferments.   If you don’t, check out these posts: fermented food and the benefits of lactic acid fermentation and Real Pickles.   Simply put, they are an essential aspect of a healthy diet. You need to eat them and regularly.   We try to eat at least one fermented food at every meal: yogurt with breakfast, kombucha with a snack, sauerrüben with supper and so on.   You can even check out my recipes for real sauerkraut and Moroccan-preserved lemons.   Since fermented foods comprise such a large portion of our diet, we need an easy way to prepare them and we use these kimchi makers from the Raw Diet store.     We actually liked the first one we purchased so much that we bought a second since.   The ferments come out perfectly every single time and the instructions are easy to use.   You can purchase a kimchi maker for $24.97, a seriously good deal.

Foods for a Nourished Kitchen

Yogurt & Sourdough Starters: If you can’t drop down for the big items listed above, you can always pick up some yogurt and sourdough starter cultures at a much better price.   Plus, if properly cared for, these starters will self-perpetuate.   In essence, if you keep them alive and healthy with regular re-culturing, you’ll always have access to fresh yogurt or sourdough bread or kombucha or dairy kefir or water kefir or any number of delicious, probiotic-rich foods. You can purchase starter cultures at Cultures for Health where prices range from $9.99 to   $16.99.

Sprouted Grain Flours: If you can’t afford the time to sprout, dry and grind your own sprouted grain flours or if you can’t afford the equipment it takes to sprout your own flours, buying sprouted grain flour presents an excellent alternative.   I recently had the pleasure of trying Shiloh Farms Essential Eating ® organic sprouted grain flours and they are phenomenal.   Plus, they’re much, much better than the sprouted grain flours I make at home.   The bread bakes beautifully.   Not sure how to use sprouted grain flours?   Try these recipes from my healthy recipe files: maple pecan pie with sprouted spelt crust, sprouted grain crêpes, sprouted spelt & maple shortbread.   If you choose to eat grain, eating sprouted grain is your best option as it’s easier to digest and is more nutrient-dense than standard whole-grain flours.   You can try out Shiloh Farms Essential Eating ® organic sprouted spelt   flour for $9.19 for a 2-lb bag or buy it in bulk.

Coconut Oil

Organic Coconut Oil: Coconut oil is a fantastic addition to your pantry and we use it in a lot of our dishes.   It’s a remarkably healthy fat replete with lauric acid which is an immune booster.   It’s also fantastic as a skincare product with a natural SPF of 5.   Here’s some info from the Nourished Kitchen archives outlining just why you should include coconut oil in your diet: Fats for Cooking & Fats to Eat Uncooked or check out these recipes that use coconut oil: Soft Tacos with Halibut & Beef, Baked Oats, Roasted Butternut Squash, Apple & Quince Mash.   We use Nutiva coconut oil to the exclusion of others.   It is reasonably priced, great cooking, good for cosmetic uses and has a wonderful subtle coconut flavor.   You can pick up Nutiva organic coconut oil for as little as $11.99

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Services for a Nourished Kitchen

Menu Mailers Subscription: If ever there’s a gift fitting mother’s day, this is it – a subscription service that will plan out healthy meals for your family.   It’s hard to take the time to plan out meals and shopping lists based on healthy, seasonal foods.   Especially if you’re new to traditional foods, it’s also difficult to plan out to do lists.   If you’re having lentil soup on Friday, when do you start soaking the lentils?   If you’re planning sourdough pancakes, when do you soak the flour? CookingTF.com’s service helps to plan healthy meals for your family and it comes with a seasonal produce list.   You can try the service for a month for as little as $5.40 or get a full-year subscription for $46.80.   Use this link to take advantage of a 10% discount. Banner image courtesy of Garrison Photo and SXC.