Girl Gone Domestic

Chicken Stock, Sourdough Starter, Kombucha

This is my kitchen counter lately (of course this is a little more posed).  There is always something fermenting, proofing, simmering, soaking, cooling, ect.  I’ve gotten used to it, I used to have a HUGE pet peeve about cluttered counters, that is until I read and decided to try Nourishing Traditions. I bought this book when I had hit an all time low in my health and energy and an all time high in my weight.  Four months later, after doing an internal cleanse, starting to excercise again, and turning my eating habits upside down, I had lost nearly 40 lbs.  I had found a new satisfying way to eat and with it a new way to live.  It is a way of life.  And it takes work and planning and counter space.  I love cooking this way and feeding my family this way, it feels good being in control of what we consume.  I know exactly what my family is eating when I cook for them.  Nothing explains this feeling better than a quote from MFK Fisher in her book The Gastronomical Me:

“The stove, the bins, the cupboards, I had learned forever, make an inviolable throne room.  From them I ruled; temporarily I controlled.  I felt powerful and I loved that feeling.

I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”

This post has been a part of Kelly the Kitchen Kop’s Real Food Wednesday and Food Renegade’s Fight Back Friday.