About Me

Pic by Julie Swanson©

I'm a stay at home mother to my two beautiful children. Two of my greatest enjoyments besides my family and developing my relationship with Christ, are taking time to pursue my artistic interests and spending time in the kitchen learning through trial and error about traditional methods of cooking and baking.

On the Food Side of Things

I grew up in a home with a mother who was health food conscious. She did her best to keep us away from overly processed food and sugary drinks.  I remember being 8 or 9 and already reading ingredient lists on bread packages to see if it had hydrogenated oil in it, if it did we knew mom wouldn't buy it. Those early lessons instilled in me a life long desire to eat healthy.

In college I went through a several year period of swearing of meat. I was never one to really crave meat and it sickened me to hear about what was done to the animals that were to feed us. However, after several years of doing a vegetarian diet, I was having health issues, like low iron and blood sugar problems. I found myself craving meat. That was probably about the time when I started learning through the grapevine about organic meat or better yet meat direct from the farmer and how the animals were often treated better and the meat was much healthier. Again I think my mom was instrumental in passing this information on to me and helping me recognize a need for a new diet. I weened meat back into my diet and started drinking organic milk and eating organic dairy.

Moving ahead a couple of years, I was trying to eat healthier. However, I never ate breakfast and instead would go straight to work, then I'd get so light headed that some time around mid-afternoon I'd take a break and go get a "healthy" blended fruit smoothie. I'd hardly be able to drink half of it before it made me feel sick and often even more dizzy.  Again, mom came to the rescue and told me the importance of eating a healthy breakfast filled with protein. This made some sense to me and I started eating eggs with different sides every morning before work. Wow, what a huge difference that made. Right from the get go, my energy went up and I didn't have the dizzy spells. After putting more protein in my diet I began to recognize that when I drank or ate something with too much sugar in it, even healthy sugar like a fruit smoothie, it would throw my sugar level off again and leave me feeling fatigued and sick. It was all about balance. 

Pic by Julie Swanson©

During my pregnancy with my son, I began reading up on what Sally Fallen and The Weston A. Price Foundation had to say on food, along with reading Maker's Diet by Rubin Jordan. I relied heavily on my natural intuition and what these people were saying made sense to me. Most importantly, I realized that God gave us the right food to eat and it wasn't until man started overly processing, overly fertilizing and turning the food industry into a profit industry that we became so unhealthy. Just do a little research and you'll see how many disease we have and how many of them have come about in the last 50 to 100 years. We are raising a sick nation.

Pic by Julie Swanson©

For the last two years, I have slowly been weeding out all pre-made foods, including bread, pasta, cereals, etc. This is a slow journey and not one you can just jump into all at once. It takes time, patience and education. Most importantly, you have to instill new habits into how you prepare food in your home. This is hard because we all have way to many things to do and can hardly justify spending too much time in the kitchen. You must decide which is more important. All the things on your "to do" list or feeding your family in the best way possible so they grow and stay healthy and strong. 

This blog is going to be covering recipes based off of traditional methods of cooking when possible along with making as much as possible from scratch. I do my best to always use organic and when possible, locally grown food. 

The Artist in ME!
Cooking is something I do every day, I have a family to feed and found that I LIKE TO EAT! However, that is hardly my only passion. Art plays a huge roll in my life as well. When time and creativity allows it, I spend what time I have painting, decorating and making items, like my son's train table. Although I sometimes go for months without working on my artwork, it's never too long before it takes over my thinking and I find myself pulling my paints back out. As I do things I'll also share those items on the blog. 

It's all about creativity in all areas of my life!