Well, ultimately, if you are here you probably know us, given that we are using this strictly for our friends and family. But maybe you don’t know why we are so obsessed with food, or how we became as crazy as we are about ingredients. Maybe you are curious about our history with cooking, or what our “qualifications” are. Or maybe you are just bored and need something to doom scroll – so here we go!
Lets start with why we are obsessed with food and ingredients. Really it’s pretty simple. It’s our health. We both want to live as long as possible in the best condition possible. We want to feel energetic, strong, and to have the best “brain power” we can hope for (as parents of small kids that is a little limited…) And ultimately we know that fuel is what ultimately contributes to all of this. Every person is different and their bodies are different. So we aren’t here to say “this diet is best” or “these macros are best” or really to give any dietary advice at all. You need to do what works best for you. What we are here to do is to make sure that whatever we use to fuel our bodies is grown and sourced without ugly additives or ingredients that are known to be bad for your body. Through our own experiences we’ve realized that if you try to eat healthy, but those “health” foods are full of chemical compounds used to mass produce food at a low cost, you are going to feel terrible. That defeats the purpose of healthy eating! So we are committed to using ingredients that are as close to their natural state as possible. This includes using meats from our own animals that we raise or hunt, milk from our dairy goats, and organic ingredients whenever possible. We also avoid seed oils, but that is a story for another time.
So what are our qualifications? Well… none! Only that we care about what we eat, both because we want it to be healthy and we want it to taste good. Both of us LOVE food. So we want to make sure it is doing it’s job (fueling us) and is also enjoyable. The way we’ve done this is through lots and lots (and LOTS) of research, trial and error, and HOURS of hands on experience.
I (Nicole) was raised with pretty good cooks. As a kid I ate pretty darn well, and my mom in particular knew how turn just about any ingredients into a meal. The problem? I didn’t pay attention. At all. I was busy riding horses, going to school, and overall just being a kid who always assumed good food would be available. And then I moved out on my own…and realized that that is NOT true! On top of it, eating was EXPENSIVE! Ultimately it took years of asking my parents, researching on my own, and testing recipes to figure out how to eat. Eating on a budget was a big part of my life. Then I realized that eating cheap was probably not the only factor – I gained weight, I was always tired, my hormone panels were a mess. So then I had to figure out how to eat healthy as cheap as possible. Again, not the only factor – I may have been healthy on paper, but I was still ingesting things that weren’t necessarily the best for me. So, back to the drawing board, this time with Ryan, and our current style of cooking and eating was born.
Growing up Ryan was that kid that would eat just about anything – and a TON of it. He (and his brother) were like black holes. They literally couldn’t get enough to eat. They were very expensive to feed, simply because of quantity. And finances were a factor for Ryan for a long time. Learning how to eat cheap was the ONLY way to survive. It wasn’t until the last 10 years or so that he really started figuring out how to make good food – in every aspect of the word. There are things that Ryan is absolutely the specialist about. Biscuits, smoked meats, pie crust, steak, and ultimately anything that sounds hard is right up his alley. So what makes him good at the complicated stuff? Ultimately – research. He’s a computer geek, his main calling currently is as an AI developer and a large AI company. But when he gets it in his mind to make something food related he uses all of his skill at research and making technology work for him to get it done. That research also powers our knowledge of what sneaky ingredients in our food really shouldn’t be there – and why they shouldn’t.
So who are we, anyway? I’m a stay at home mom, raising two completely wild boys. Ryan is a very high level software engineer currently working in AI. And we have teamed up and joined the “homesteading cult”, where we raise our own animals, process them, have a garden, and make as many things from scratch as possible. We love food, we love to cook, and we want to share that with our friends. We are happy to share as much of our knowledge as we can, which we will happily do in person any time! But we will also expand the blog with some of the things we’ve learned. We’re glad you’re here to share in this with us, and we hope it helps you too!
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