Step 9 – Prepare Your Own Food

Welcome to Domestic by Design! If this is your first time here, please start here.

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If you’ve missed steps 1-8  in our series, you can easily find them here!

If you’ve stayed with me this far, you are a trooper.   I want to commend you for enduring!  Your commitment is evidence of a genuine desire for change, and that change is happening!  Gaining knowledge is the second step to making change and you are doing great.  Step nine is one of the most crucial steps in your goal of consuming real, nourishing foods:  prepare your own food.  And actually, it involves a bit of review of what we have already covered.

Before we dive in, there may already be some laments rising up such as, “But it takes too much time!”  Or,  ”Store bought tastes so much better!”  I’ll just respond to them from the get go and say that, yes, preparing your own food does take more time than opening a can of soup and popping it in the microwave.  And I’ll also say that it is possible to make things taste better than what you can buy in the store.  Sure, there might be a little bit of a learning curve, but with some practice, your preparation of food will certainly taste better and take less time the longer you do it.  Somewhere along the way, you’ll probably invent a recipe or two!

We’ve already discussed MSG, GMOs, sugar and high fructose corn syrup, and yucky additives.  Later, we’ll discuss milk, meats, and grains.  Most “food” products in stores contain compromised components of these real foods and contain a lot of the bad ingredients such as MSG, GMOs, sugar, and high fructose corn syrup.  By preparing your food at home, you’ll be able to avoid all of these.

Most food that is pre-packaged is also processed, destroying most of the nutrients that would be found closer to its original state.  By preparing food at home, you control what is going into it and how processed it becomes.  I have no problem with “processing” food at home and in fact, it all is, even if you are just washing a piece of fruit.  Your processing probably won’t denature foods (unless you nuke ‘em in the microwave), only make them a bit more palatable than they may be in their rawest form (though many foods are wonderful this way!).

So what kind of foods am I talking about? Well, pretty much everything.

• Bread
• Tortillas
• Muffins
• Quick breads
• Dinner rolls and hamburger buns
• Cereals such as granola or oatmeal (and there are so many more options!)
• Chicken, beef, and vegetable broth
• Cream of Chicken, Mushroom, Celery Soups
• Cheeses
• Yogurt
• Pizza
• Salad dressings and other condiments
• The list goes on…

Don’t despair!  It’s not as hard as it sounds. There are so many resources online and on my own blog that will help walk you through the process of beginning to make these things at home.  At the end of the series, I’ll have a list of helpful resources where you can find recipes for many of these things, as well as the other ebook I’ve written, A Primer for Nutritious Homemade Recipes to Replace Unhealthy Food Products. (You’ll see that one and the 12 Steps book in my store soon!)

Preparing your own food at home will be one of the best, most helpful steps in transitioning to real foods that you can make.  Even if you’ve never considered yourself to be a good cook, you can learn how to prepare nourishing foods for your family!

Who wants to win a copy of my newest ebook, “A Primer for Healthy, Nutritious Alternatives to Unhealthy Food Products?” Just leave a comment below letting me know why you would like a copy!  Giveaway is open until Saturday at midnight.  I’ll announce the winner on Monday.