A Recipe for Real Food

By Elsie, Contributing Writer

It's been a year since I got real with food. These past twelve months or so I've tackled many new recipes, and, in the process, have learned that the real food journey is, itself, like following a recipe. 

It's not a very precise recipe, and there's no specific formula, but in my mind the recipe for real food has perhaps four main components:

- Pleasure

- Curiosity 

- Patience

- Clean ingredients

I'm positive that food is meant to be enjoyed—when you eat it, when you prepare it, and even when you gather it. Especially when you eat it.  

But eating won't be as pleasurable if you aren't first bitten by curiosity. Curiosity might've killed one unfortunate cat, but in our case it's more likely to usher in a kaleidoscope of new flavors, textures, and methods. To delve into real food you have to be curious. You have to genuinely wonder “why does it matter if I soak my grains?”, “Does raw milk taste better than pasteurized?”, “Can I have a sweet tooth and still be loyal to Weston A. Price?”  

But eventually your musings over these things may turn to muddling, as you inundate yourself with recipes, processes, advice, make-overs, health benefits, etc., etc.... I'm sure that no real food writer is trying to overwhelm their readers.  

Many, many people advocate baby steps when approaching real food and offer tips to keep things simple.  

You're probably overwhelmed because you allowed yourself to be.  Slow down and savor the journey like you would a silky custard smothered in raspberries (or whatever berry you're most in love with).  

Making a switch to real food takes a tremendous amount of patience and perseverance, even if you didn't eat fast food every day before the change.  It will take patience to let the beans soak and the broth simmer and patience to let the new methods soak and simmer in your brain.

Apart from a proper mental attitude, when it comes to creating real food clean ingredients are the basic building blocks.  Pre-real food I dutifully read Nutrition Facts on all my food labels. But after learning more about fats and sugars and calories, I've discovered that the facts I really want to know are listed in the ingredients.  I started putting items back on the store shelves that included things like high fructose corn syrup, MSG, and hydrogenated oil.  

But I realized that sometimes when you eliminate all the questionable ingredients, you're left with something rather basic and probably not very tasty.  It might not be bad for you any more, but its sheer boringness might have you longing for processed sausage-and-egg toaster pastries all over again.  Avoiding bad ingredients may make you realize how much you depend on food chemists for flavor in your food.  

Consider the lowly bowl of oatmeal.  It's good for you and it's filling, but it's just not what you'd pick for your birthday breakfast.  Thankfully, for every unsavory ingredient that you've avoided by opting for oatmeal there are exponential possibilities to add flavor back in.  Top your oatmeal with raw honey, cinnamon, nutmeg, cherries, blueberries, sausage, mangoes, coconut milk, or maple syrup and you begin to get the idea: there's fun and freedom in following a real food recipe. 

Not only do alternatives offer an endless spectrum of flavor, but they give you an opportunity to amplify the nutrition.  There are many ways to substitute for some of the ingredients you might want to avoid most:

- Instead of eating sugar or artificial sweeteners, experiment with rapadura, molasses, fruit purees, maple syrup, raw honey (probably easier to get your hands on than raw milk!), and things that lend sweetness like cinnamon, nutmeg and coconut.  

- Instead of MSG, entice your taste buds with fresh herbs and spices like ginger, chipotle, pepper, cumin, and garlic.

- Instead of food made with hydrogenated oil, make your own with coconut oil, olive oil, butter, and animal fat.

- Instead of dyes, add color to meals with fruits and vegetables. 

Maybe sometimes you've felt like I did a year ago: restricted by how much you “can't” eat on a real food diet.  Forget it!  Start exploring ingredients and variety will rock your kitchen.  

Elsie loves to express herself through words and through culinary creations. The food she makes is a reflection of her experiences--whether the homemade comfort food of a happy childhood, the flair of Latin American cuisine borrowed from her family's time on the mission field, or the rich and hearty fare of restaurants and pubs she visited during her ramblings in Switzerland and Oxford. Elsie and her new husband Eric live in Michigan.The couple enjoys pursuing a simple, natural life.

Someday Elsie hopes to write books that reflect her experiences, but in the meantime she's discovered that her blog, Back to the Source, is the perfect venue for combining her love of words and of food.