When I first left the college dorms for my own apartment, my aunt and mother took me to a handful of kitchen supply shops to buy a few starter pieces as housewarming gifts. They were inexpensive simple items like a hand-held grater, some cheap knives, a can opener, a whisk and a dish or two.
Cooking has always been important to me. And, later, I scrimped and saved my way through summers nannying and working at coffee bars (I make a mean macchiato, folks.). At the end of the summer, I had saved a little over a hundred dollars in spending money that wasn’t earmarked for anything else. And, I walked into a department store and made my first real investment in my kitchen: a shiny red stand mixer that was 75% off. And that mixer still sits on my countertop, used nearly every day, even now that it’s fifteen years later.
Equipping My Traditional Foods Kitchen
Later yet, I married, started a family with my husband and fell in love with the traditional foods movement – a movement marked by wholesome foods like real butter, grass-fed meats, raw dairy, sourdough breads, fermented vegetables and minimally processed sweeteners for that last touch of goodness.
Nontoxic Cookware and Bakeware
And as the way I cooked evolved to celebrate culinary heritage and old-fashioned cookery, so, too did my kitchen’s needs. Gone were the nonstick, teflon-coated pans. In came cast iron and enameled cast iron (read why I fell in love with enameled cast iron here). As time and budget allowed, I slowly replaced other items in my kitchen as well. Plastic and nylon utensils became bamboo and stainless steel utensils. Stoneware, cast iron and glass replaced our nonstick muffin tins, Bundt pans and cake pans. (I still have yet to find a decent madeleine pan to replace my nonstick pan, so if you know of where to find one drop me a line in the comments.)
Flip-top Bottles for All Those Home Brews
During this time, my husband and I gave up soft drinks for the most part (we never drank too many of them, really) and in case our own home-brewed, fermented beverages like Beet Kvass, Water Kefir, Cinnamon Spice Kombucha, Authentic Homemade Root Beer and Ginger Beer. So while we had fewer plastic bottles to toss in the recycling bin, we instead needed to pick up several flip-top bottles to store our home brews.
And just so you know, I still indulge, from time to time in a Reed’s Ginger Beer or a China Cola from the health food store. There is no perfection in my home, either.
A Thousand and One Glass Jars
And one more thing: I invested in what seems like thousands of glass jars. Know the feeling? Glass jars to hold our ferments once their finished fermenting in the big stoneware crocks. Little jars to hold our organic spices. Big jars to hold grains and pulses. Medium jars to hold nuts and seeds.
Investing in Crocks and Grain Mills
And, eventually, we scrimped and saved (just as I did with that first purchase of my shiny red stand mixer), for a grain mill to grind our grains fresh for bread making, and for big Polish-style stoneware fermentation crocks to put up the gallons of homemade sauerkraut, easy kimchi, true sour pickles and hot pink jalapeno garlic sauerkraut I make each year. These are far from a necessity, even in a traditional foods kitchen, but are a nice investment to make as your budget allows and your interest commands.
How to Prioritize Kitchen Investments
So if you’re looking to equip your kitchen with the items that help to make cooking traditional foods just a little bit easier, it’s worthwhile to go about it slowly: one item at a time. First, place a priority on replacing cheap, nonstick cookware and bakeware with heirloom-quality alternatives like cast iron, enameled cast iron, stoneware and glass. Replace plastic spatulas, spoons and turners, which are apt to melt if kept too close to the heat, with bamboo or stainless steel.
And you can pick up this kit from our partner MightyNest which includes a few starter items like a cast iron skillet, flip-top bottle, glass jars, bamboo cooking utensils as well as my cookbook. It’s a lovely gift for yourself, or for someone who means a lot to you. Check out the package here. (P.S. They give 15% of every order to a school of your choice! Hello!)
Hi, thanks for the lovely post. I’ve mostly made the transition myself, but am working on helping my sister switch her kitchen over. We, however, homeschool. Does this exclude us from the giveaway?
Thanks,
Amanda
No, you can absolutely participate. I believe Annie from MightyNest will pop in and let you know howthe $100 school donation will work in the event you win.
My kitchen isn’t completely turned over yet, but it sounds like I’m heading in the right direction! I’d really love to start replacing my pots next with copper ones, but that will take a lot of time saving up.
I think I’m entered in the contest — there’s no way to log out or see if it took, but I can’t “complete” the entry because I have no facebook or pinterest accounts …
Thanks! 🙂
Thank you for the opportunity on this giveaway. I got your book for myself last week and my older daughter and I have been bookmarking everything. Were I to win, the book and cast iron pan will be saved for when she moves out. I still have my Grampa’s cast iron, she and her baby sister can fight over it when I’m gone. 🙂
I also wanted to take the opportunity to thank you for your blog. I’m new to the traditional foods movement and this site is such an inspiration. Like a lot of other people, I have my own list of health issues, but I’m noticing I just feel better eating this way. Still have a long way to go, but you have made it so much easier.
Have a great day!!
Always enjoy reading your blog and would love to be entered!
Love your blog, encouragement, and useful information. I am just beginning on the traditional foods path. Feeling so wonderful so far. Thanks again for all the useful info and support! Love that Mighty Nest donates to schools, the amount is astonishing! ~ Sarah
Thanks so much for this post. I am always trying to find more ways to eat better to improve our health.
What do you do when you have a wrist condition that makes it next to impossible to use something as heavy as cast iron? I don’t even bother to consider it since I know I couldn’t lift it on a regular basis. My wrists are one of the frustrations in my life to the point where the first thing I consider is the weight, before style or quality. I’m the queen of cheep silverware. 🙂
I sympathize with you about your wrists. I have what I hope is a temporary tendonitis problem in my right wrist/arm and am currently in the same position as you I think. But my left wrist is okay so I am able to lift a heavy pan or pot with my left just balancing with my right and not putting any weight on the wrist. Cast Iron is certainly the most versatile but you might at least get a heavier pan like a good grade of stainless steel. I use my dessert fork and spoon to eat with these days – the large ones like the soup spoon are just too heavy. When we have guests I just give everyone else the large ones so I didn’t have to get lighter weight flatware. (funny how we still want to call it silver ware when most of it is stainless steel these days)
Consider All-Clad. It’s heavy, durable, and well made, but lighter than cast iron. The stainless steel coating means that it’s non-reactive, and you don’t get the boost of iron from cooking in them. But it is high-quality stuff that distributes heat well. The smooth surface isn’t truly non-stick, but it’s comparable to a well-seasoned cast iron pan in that regard.
The first thing I’d do is get rid of the cheap knives and replace them with good ones — even before I started replacing the non-stick, el-cheapo pans. I started to cook a lot more once I had decent prep tools. You don’t need the $2,000, 15-piece set with the butcher block. A six or eight inch chef’s knife, and a decent boning knife are all you really need. Add a good honing steel and a diamond sharpener, and you’re probably going to be able to get away for less than $300.
This looks like an awesome way to get a fresh start! Hope we get it!
Any suggestions for cookie sheets and / or rimmed “jellyroll” pans? Its one of last things I have to switch out. That and muffin tins and waffle iron which planning to go cast iron. Stainless cooking sheets seem impossible to find quality and from my research sounds like they don’t work very well either. My current ones are commercial aluminized steel. Help!
I love my Pampered Chef large bar pan. They’re a little pricey, but excellent quality stoneware and have a 3 year warranty.
Count me in!
I also have a nonstick Madeleine pan; I feel like it’s so old and well-used (it’s a present from my sister) that most of the “bad stuff” has worn off. Or so I tell myself; ) I ordered some cod liver oil from the company you purchase yours from after reading your blog about it, thank you! I am hoping to cook and feed my almost 3.5 year-old son so well that he won’t need braces or glasses. I’d love to win a copy of your cookbook and the kitchen set. Thank you for all that you do!
Wow what a beautiful set up! I have been wanting to try the bees wrap for a while. I, ummmm…. have directions pinned to make some. haha
I JUST bought another cast a skillet that is RED enamel on the outside. LOOOOVE it! And put a second in layaway for my hubby to get for Christmas! Just trying to make life easy for him. Christmas sneaks up on him. Every. Single. Year.
Jenny, I finally got your cookbook! Just before I moved from California to Utah to become caretaker for my parents. And boy, does their kitchen ever need an overhaul! I’m going to recruit my siblings to go in on a new set of pots and pans for our parents. They have an ancient, formerly nonstick set that now lacks the coating, meaning they’v probably been ingesting it all these years. I was a kid living at home when they bought that set! Ugh! But I noticed you didn’t mention stainless steel cookware. I know some people worry about nickel leaching from it, but that always seemed far-fetched to me. What do you think? My mom is 85 and recovering from an automobile accident, and there’s no way she could deal with a bunch of cast iron pans. Though I’ll be doing all the cooking for the time being, she hopes to be able to do so again in the future. Also, I have seen some stainless-steel cookware with ceramic lining, which is free of the usual suspects like PFOA and all the others. And it will even work on an induction stove, which is what Mom has. Do you have any opinions on ceramic-coated cookware? Thanks, Jeanmarie
There is a cast iron mini-cornstick pan that could be close to madeleine shape at http://www.lodgemfg.com/seasoned-cast-iron/bakeware.
That starter set is beautiful and I love that my local elementary school (the one I went to!) can benefit too, if I were to win. <3 I've only been poking around the site a few days now, but as a huuuuge apple/cinnamon fan, I know I have to try your apple cinnamon pancakes and the sourdough rye crepe with cinnamon apple recipes! Thanks for sharing all these inspiring and delicious foods with us.
Thanks for sharing your kitchen, a picture is worth a thousand words. Thanks for the giveaway.
Great information on your site! Have your cookbook and get your blog posts in a newsletter. Great giveaway too! Hope I win!
I am slowly converting items in my kitchen to safer alternatives. Thanks to Nourishing Traditions I’ve been on this food journey for 3 years and have found wonderful blog communities like this one.
Thank you for the opportunity to win such a wonderful prize! Oh, the things to be fermented in those containers…
What an awesome giveaway! We have been turning our kitchen into a more “natural”, from scratch foodie place!
I have a great started collection of glass bottles & mason jars..most of which are used this year due to an awesome harvest of fruits, veggies and herbs. I am currently making “scratch” AVC from apple peelings/cores…brew baby brew!!
We raise our own chickens for meat & eggs, turkeys and will be getting rabbits in the spring. We are also learning all we can to invest in Bee Keeping. We can not live without them.
We are loving this way of life and everything that it gives back!! Thank you for this opportunity to add to our ever-positive-changing life..it all starts in the kitchen!! -Danielle
Basically all of the things in the giveaway kit are my favorites.