What I Eat & Feed My Family

The long awaited breakdown.

Photo by roam in color on Unsplash

Background

Recently, my wife suggested that I write an article going through our diet and what we have in our kitchen. Based on the feedback from Substack readers, it seems there is quite a bit of interest.

Since radically altering my diet in an attempt to cure my “autoimmune” inflammatory bowel disease, the list of foods I eat has gotten considerably shorter…and to me seems rather banal. Even though I thoroughly enjoy eating these things.

How I Cured Inflammatory Bowel Disease.

But, it seems like people may benefit from getting a glimpse into our kitchen.

When I first began attempts to cure my illness, I adopted a carnivore-based elimination diet. After putting this disease into permanent remission (going on 3 years now), and with our growing family’s various needs, I had to reconsider our grocery list.

Moreover, as I’ve continued to expand my understanding of health with the help of our great ancestors, I’ve come to realize that any diet which focuses on one (or one group) of foods is probably incomplete.

The Carnivore Diet Is Incomplete.

Finally, keep in mind that the list you are about to read is based around a couple of parameters:

1. My wife and I have different temperaments and nutritional needs.

2. We also have 2 toddler who have different preferences and needs.

3. As time goes on, we are developing the skills we need to replace big-box store bought food with our own creations.

With that said, I hesitate to tell people that they should eat what I eat.

Instead, I like to focus on how to go about choosing and sourcing your food.

Choosing Your Food & Timing Meals

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Without further ado…

Breakfast

Most common items:

• Eggs

• Butter

• Smoked salmon - though this has become less common due to increasing cost and reduced quality, so we are currently looking for an alternative

• Avocado

• Sourdough bread

• Yogurt

• Honey & Bee Pollen

• Cacao nibs & coconut flakes

• Berries, Citrus fruits, Bananas

• Coffee (+/- milk)

There’s definitely going to be variation here, but these are the enduring ingredients we use.

Typically, our breakfast splits into two types: a light carb-rich breakfast, or a heavier fatty breakfast. We tend to cycle between these depending on mood, energy and season. For instance, in the hotter months we tend toward a cold, light, and fruity breakfast with yogurt, pollen, cacao and coconut.

Most recently, I found this delicious yogurt from White Mountain in Austin. As fresh and tarty as yogurt you can make yourself from some raw milk.

My wife recently started baking sourdough bread, and it has quickly become a staple in our house. Currently, I am of the thought to invest more in this enterprise with the hopes of added benefits to our health. For instance, freshly stone-milled flour from a heritage grain. A decent stone-mill will probably require a lot of upfront cost, and we’ll have to re-evaluate how likely it is we will make it worthwhile for our family. For now, we buy decent quality (and reasonably priced) flour, use good quality salt and spring water for the dough.

For those who know, I am huge proponent of raw milk. In prior years we went to great lengths to secure a source of raw milk for our son, and we will probably have to do something similar once the second boy weans off breastmilk. However, our current location has made it rather cumbersome to acquire raw milk, and for the time being we’ve made do with the following for our son:

…and for us:

The last thing I wanted to mention in this section is the eggs. There are those who go to great expense to find the Cadillac of pasture-raised eggs. We go to great effort to do this too, however…eggs have become stupidly expensive. Moreover, recent winter weather has impacted the yield from our local farmers. Our options at the moment are limited, but we don’t sweat it. Eggs can be of variable quality, especially big-box store eggs. But as long as you keep it local, it’s probably good enough.

Lunch

The second meal of the day tends to be our biggest, but also the most variable.

Most common items:

• Beef

• Deer

• Chicken

• An assortment of vegetables for protein-based dishes

• Pickled onions, cabbage, etc

• Broths (which we make, and then use to cook the protein in)

• White rice

• Pasta

• Buckwheat

Our meal typically consists of a protein and a starch. There are times when I will go purely protein for lunch and/or dinner, and usually my son will also take part in a meal like this. My wife, however, tends to want vegetables and/or starch in her meal for various reasons.

Buckwheat is amazing.

Pickled vegetables are useful digestives, probiotics, and cut through the heavier/fattier parts of the meal really well.

We haven’t yet gotten to making our own pasta dough, but with progress I imagine we will try to make this ourselves as well. Probably a bit more challenging than bread.

Recently, I started hunting…and with that our protein consumption has shifted away from beef and towards deer. Honestly, it’s gotten to the point that I can hardly tolerate the stench of store-bought beef. Very thankful for the clean and deep-red of fresh game meat. God willing, more of this to come.

With respect to the game meat, I process and butcher the animal myself. And, with a reasonably priced attachment for the kitchen mixer, we can make our own concoctions of ground meat. Well worth the investment.

Dinner

In the Western world, dinners tend to be major meals.

Not so much for us. Unless we go out for the odd dinner-date.

There aren’t any particular ingredients we use specifically for dinner. Our meal tends to be small…and if I’m working (overnight), I usually skip dinner altogether.

One of the most common things we eat in the evening are leftovers from lunch.

Sometimes I’ll fry up a piece of meat and share with the family.

Other times, it’s an assortment of cheeses with some wine.

Same goes for our boys. Maybe some fruit, or some leftovers. Definitely some milk to end their day.

So, in place of dinner ingredients, I’ll include some miscellaneous stuff that can be found in the fridge or pantry:

• Cheese

• Nuts

• Wine

• Dark chocolate

• Coconut oil, Olive oil, Ghee

Particularly important consideration is a source of water, and we tend to have some combination of flat & carbonated spring water: Mountain Valley and Topo Chico.

We also consume quite a bit of seafood, whether in the form of cooked fish, smoked salmon, sushi or oysters. Luckily, the area we live has decent quality seafood for a fair price - especially the oysters.

Bonus: Supplements

When the natural source is not readily available, or the food is relatively poor in certain nutrients, we turn to supplements.

Although our supplement cabinet is quite full from various things we’ve experimented with…there are a couple of things we take regularly.

• Glycine

• Taurine

• N-acetylcysteine

• Vitamin B3 (Niacin)

• Vitamin B1 (Thiamine)

• Methylene Blue

• Desiccated thyroid (infrequent)

• Magnesium chloride

• Creatine

Future Changes

There are some elements of our kitchen which I am less-than-happy with, but others I think we have gotten down quite nicely.

For instance, I would love to have a henhouse for our own eggs. It would also be great to have a steady source of fresh raw milk.

Since we are new in our current location, it’s taken some time to familiarize ourselves with what’s available and possible.

If you found this sort of information useful, drop a comment below letting me know what you liked or how I can improve for next time.

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