Honouring our bodies and the land is what our food choices are based on. You could call our diet Paleo, although we do consume some cultured, raw, grass-fed dairy now and then. You could say we eat a diet similar to the Weston A Price approach, but we don't eat grains or legumes (soaked or not, they are not meant to be in our bodies). We shun processed, neolithic pretend foodstuffs in favour of whole foods, eaten as seasonably as possible.
All of our animal products come directly from the farmer (as do our veggies, seasonally). We have three big chest freezers to store our meat and poultry. Buying in bulk is necessary with our family. We have five hearty eaters and without the cost savings we get by buying sides and wholes of our animal meat, we just wouldn't be able to eat as healthy as we do.
If you were to peek in my fridge right now, you would see glass jars of home rendered bison tallow, lard, ghee, and butter. There's also jars of homemade, fermented veggies of all types, having done their bubbly business in the cupboard, they now sit in the fridge, waiting to be eaten. There might be a mason jar or two with homemade kefir or yoghurt. Our dairy, if and when we get it, also comes from pastured, organic cows. In the back corner, there's a tower of the pastured eggs I get from our wonderful egg farmer. She raises her chickens on pasture, letting them run around outside to eat bugs and grass. The layers are supplemented with organic feed, free of soy, using herring as a protein source. I buy 15 dozen at a time. Aside from that, my fridge is exploding with veggies. They literally fall out when I open the door. The only veggies you won't find in there are nightshades. My autoimmune condition means nightshades are a no-no for me due to their inflammatory effects.
In my cupboards.. well, they're pretty bare. I have some extra virgin, unrefined, organic coconut oil by the bucket full. I also have some organic, unrefined, red palm oil (my current favourite to drizzle on everything). There's some organic coconut flakes and shavings, a couple jars of fruit that I dried in the summer, some olives from a friend that has his own grove in Greece, and there's some canned sardines and extra virgin, organic olive oil. Oh, and the spices! Lots and lots of spices and good quality sea or rock salt.
Never mind reading your ingredient labels, I say we shouldn't have food with ingredient labels on it. Period.
Put it all together and you have what we eat on a daily basis. I'm a firm believer in quality. Quality food comes from farmers that are raising their animals and growing their produce with a focus on doing what is right, not what is easy or cheap. The practices required for this type of farming is labour intensive with no real financial payoff for the extra time and energy required. When you have quality food, there's little that needs to be done to make it delicious. A beautiful grass-fed roast, braised in a low oven for a few hours, served with a side of whatever local veggies are in season, drizzled with some ghee or palm oil is a beautiful thing.
And that's pretty much it - what we eat every day. We have some meat from an animal that lived its life the way that it was meant to, in the sunshine and grass. We have some veggies, cooked in all sorts of different ways, there's a side of fermented veggies or a cultured drink for their probiotic contribution, and we have plenty of good fat. Our kids have eaten this way for years. They are brilliant, healthy, powerful people. The patriarch of our tribe is a lean, well muscled, powerful man, 5'10", 210lbs. I've never seen him without a full set of visible abs. And me? I'm the matriarch, the head honcho if you will (shhh...), I lift and run and feel pretty darn good for a girl who's supposed to have a debilitating autoimmune disease.
Eat well. Move. Love.
