Real Food Kitchen Tour: Through My Kitchen Window

Welcome to another edition of the Real Food Kitchen Tour. This week, we travel to Dallas, Texas to tour the kitchen of Sara Thrash of the blog Through My Kitchen Window.

What’s a Real Foodie?

A “real foodie” is someone who cooks “traditional” food. We cook stuff from scratch using real ingredients, like raw milk, grass-fed beef, eggs from chickens that run around outdoors, whole grains, sourdough and yogurt starters, mineral-rich sea salt, and natural sweeteners like honey and real maple syrup.

We don’t use modern foods that are either fake, super-refined, or denatured. This includes modern vegetable oils like Crisco and margarine, soy milk, meat from factory farms, pasteurized milk from cows eating corn and soybeans, refined white flour, factory-made sweeteners like HFCS or even refined white sugar, or commercial yeast.

We believe in eating wholesome, nutrient-dense foods that come from nature. So we shop at farmer’s markets or buy direct from the farmer, or we grow food in our own backyards.

This Week’s Real Food Kitchen Tour: Through My Kitchen Window

Blog name: Through My Kitchen Window
Blog author: Sara Thrash
Location: North DFW Area (TX)
How long blogging: 1 year
House or apartment: House
Things I love about my kitchen: The space (in our last house we had a very small galley kitchen), the shape (U-shaped) and all of my DIY improvements. Over the last year and a half I have repainted the cabinets(twice), refurbished some high-end but very old bar stools, tiled the backsplash all by myself, and we had new counter tops put in. Made life a whole lot easier.
Things I would change: My pantry (it’s really small!), my electric stove, and -even though this isn’t really in the kitchen- my dining room. Our round table seats 4, 5, 6 in a pinch, but because of the layout of our house it looks a little out-of-place. I like entertaining, so my dream is swapping the living room and dining room and putting a big farmhouse-type table in what is now the living room that would seat 8 or 10 comfortably. It would make a nice extra prep area, too.
Favorite tools + gadgets: Augh, it’s so hard to decide!!! I absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE my Kitchenaid stand mixer. It’s about 10 years old, but I recently designed and created an entire dessert table -from scratch- for a close friend’s wedding (think 700 cookies and 2 cakes) and I swear that mixer was out every day for a month. I also love my hand mixer for smaller projects, and I find myself using a stick blender more and more. And good wooden spoons are always great, too. I love my green glass nesting bowls, they’re great for sourdough. If it outgrows one, I can transfer it to the next size up! My cast iron skillets are amazing- they were my great-grandmother’s. I’m hoping to build my collection, but I make do really well with the ones I have.
Biggest challenges cooking real food: Well, my budget. I’ve learned how to make certain things go far, and buying in bulk is a good idea since we have a second freezer. I plan our meals out week to week and I would like to say it saves some time and a bit of money. Oh, and my family. I’m in highschool and I pretty much run the house/do all the cooking. My dad’s job requires him to be out in the heat most of the time and it takes a toll, so it’s hard to find stuff to make that will be filling and nourishing at the same time. My mother loves to grow things but so far does not seem very willing to make many changes in the way we shop/eat. And my brother is just about the pickiest person I know! I’ve started baking bread from scratch, mostly sourdough, and soaking our nuts/beans before we use them. We’ve had kombucha SCOBYs for years, me and my dad drink that while my mom and brother drink kefir. We try and stock up on good meat and chicken and good butter when space and the budget allow, we have Black Copper Marans for eggs and we have a garden (we’re totally organic there, just not certified because that’s a mess). Oddly enough I don’t do much with that… My brother is a hunting maniac, so good venison is usually somewhere to be found in the weekly meal plan. I have struggled for about 7 months with a dairy allergy; it’s slowly improving (I can use butter galore and be fine) but we quit buying raw goats’ milk after I got sick because I’m the only one who drank it. I do raise goats, but not for milk. Also, I have to be very careful about what I eat because I have had acne since I was NINE. I finally got it under control but one mistaken bite and I break out. I also like to keep tabs on my weight because I’ve been the fat route and it wasn’t fun:/ But still, I LIVE for food! Cooking real food is so much more satisfying, and I have the time so why the heck not?!!!
Current favorite family meal: Um, we have several but I would have to say it’s probably venison steak with pan-fried or smashed potatoes, green beans with lemon and parsley, green salad with homemade honey-mustard vinaigrette, and fresh sourdough bread (like, literally RIGHT out of the oven and spackled with butter and sea salt) with apple tart for dessert. I kind of love butter:)

Favorite cookbooks: [easyazon-link asin=”0375413405″ locale=”us”]Mastering the Art of French Cooking[/easyazon-link], [easyazon-link asin=”1579654584″ locale=”us”]The Back in the Day Bakery Cookbook[/easyazon-link], [easyazon-link asin=”0967089735″ locale=”us”]Nourishing Traditions[/easyazon-link], [easyazon-link asin=”160358286X” locale=”us”]The Art of Fermentation[/easyazon-link], and [easyazon-link asin=”0143117432″ locale=”us”]The New Whole Foods Encyclopedia[/easyazon-link]. I love ’em all.

I have included some pictures of what’s going on in my kitchen, our backyard chickens, and one of my 10 Angora goats I raise for mohair.

Let Us Tour Your Kitchen

Are you a real foodie? Do you have a kitchen that you’d like to see featured on CHEESESLAVE?

Please email me at annmarie AT cheeseslave dot com. Either send me a link to a Flickr set or email me your photos (minimum of 5, but more is better). Note: Please send me LARGE photos. Minimum 610 width. If they’re too small, I can’t use them.

Oh, and please send the answers to the above questions (at the very top of this post).

As much as I’d love to include all the photos I receive, I can’t guarantee that I will use your photos in the series. I’m looking for creative, good quality photos.

Some ideas for photos:

• Show us what’s in your fridge or what’s fermenting on your counter
• Take some snaps of some of your favorite kitchen gadgets, or show us how you organize your spices
• Got backyard chickens? Send some pics!
• How about a lovely herb garden?
• Kids or pets are always cute!
• Try to include at least one photo of yourself, ideally in your kitchen

And no, you don’t have to have a blog to be included in the tour.