When I got married 13 years ago, I knew NOTHING about cooking. I had to figure out how to grocery shop, read recipes, and figure out how to make a boxed lasagna. I had a lot of learning to do. 

Over the years I slowly started piecing it together and at about the time I was pregnant with my first set of twins (who are nearly 10 now), I started investigating what it means to eat healthy. 

But I was SO overwhelmed. 

We've tried juicing, keto and Whole30, basing our meals off salads, and so much more. I picked up tidbits here and there. 

But it still always felt so overwhelming and hard to stick to a particular way of eating and to remember all the rules. 

Slowly and surely, I started learning how to cook though. I learned how to cook from scratch, what healthy flours are, and most importantly...

I learned to just cook real, whole foods, the way our great-great grandparents would have eaten. 

What you can order with this one of a kind cookbook, is more akin to your great-grandmother’s notes and recipes of what she liked to do in her kitchen as opposed to a cookbook from a master chef trained at the very best culinary school. 

I’m just a busy mom. Trying to figure out what it means to cook healthy food that my family enjoys. 

And I want to pass along this practical knowledge I've cultivated over the past 10 years plus our family favorite easy go to recipes! From my bulk pantry to yours :) 

THIS is so much more than a cookbook. 

It's a guide. A guide for learning how to cook from scratch. A guide for building a build pantry, buying real food, saving boat loads of money in the process, learning new family favorite recipes, getting your kitchen in order, and more. 

Here's the wonderful secret of this cookbook: Cooking from scratch is really not that hard. It doesn't have to consume all your time, it certainly doesn't have to be expensive, and guess what? It can be the best food you've ever eaten! And my goal is to share with you how to do it. 

 I make a lot of simple, comfort food. But with a healthy twist! You don't have to uproot all the food your family has ever eaten and switch to kale salads and freshly squeezed cucumber juice for 3 meals a day with some seaweed chips as a snack. I mean, you can if you want. 

But with 7 boys in my family, it would not go well. We are a meat and potatoes kind of family. We enjoy homemade pumpkin pie with raw whipped cream sweetened with maple syrup to top it. We have healthy, whole grain DELICIOUS bread with most meals. And we die for some good Mexican or a tasty lasagna...but made with real, whole ingredients. 

You can still eat and serve the foods you love for your family! You are just going to learn how to cut out all the processed junk, sugar, fake chemicals, and how to cook real, whole foods. 

My goal of this cookbook isn't to make your kitchen look exactly like mine. My goal is to give you the tools to design a kitchen that works for YOUR family with your own unique tastes, preferences, and allergies. 

Your family might not be able to eat gluten, or you have a child who is sensitive to dairy, or you want to work on incorporating more kale salads and freshly pressed cucumber juice. ;) 

That's great! But if you don't know how to convert recipes that have butter and milk to non-dairy alternatives, you are going to struggle a bit more. If you have to remove all gluten from your diet, but have been relying on expensive store bought gluten free items, you will quickly hit your food budget and go over! 

So this all begs the question: What do we put on our plates? What does it mean to eat like our ancestors did? How do you cook without processed foods in every pantry? And also, why would we want to? 

As we dive into individual ingredients, I want you to think of Ma Ingalls. The mom in Little House on the Prairie. She was born in 1865 and the beloved books and tv series is based off a real family with a real Ma Ingalls at the heart. 

She lived and cooked off the prairie, going to town maybe a couple of times a year. So what did Ma cook for her family? Down to earth, hearty meals made out of real food. 

She made soup and bone broth from whole chickens, potato sides, and cast iron bread to drip. They drank raw milk from their cow and baked fresh apple pies. They sweetened their treats with maple syrup or raw honey. And they thrived! 

Why did they thrive? Because they ate real food. Yes, they used some white sugar here or there. But they didn't have sugar hidden in every single canned or processed food they reached for. Yes, they ate good, whole grain carbs. But they didn't have maltodextrin or RED40 tucked into every single treat. They balanced occasional treats with a diet based on real foods and what a difference that makes! 

They ate good, real food that nourished their family. This is the way Ma Ingall's mother, grandmother, and great grandmother would have eaten. And we would do well to take note of their simple, delicious meals. 

Let's take a note out of our great-great grandmother's recipes books, going back before the 50-60's that invented the beginning of TV dinners and processed foods. I'm ALL for tips and hacks that make our lives easier. I'm all for stopping out to eat every once in a while and practicing the 80/20 rule (We eat well 80% of the time and don't worry about the final 20%). 

I have to feed my family within a very real budget which is being squeezed by inflation and rising food costs. I have to be realistic with my time as a busy homeschooling mom of 7 kids (one of whom is currently 3 months old). I can't source (or afford) the very highest quality of everything. 

6 Main Recipe Categories

I've broken the recipe portion up into 6 handy categories.

1. Muffins: A whole category for muffins because once you made healthy, protein loaded muffins, you'll start making them every week.
2. Breakfasts: Simple, hearty, & delicious ways to start your day.
3. Breads: The heart of this cookbook. Lots of simple bread baking with different grains.
4. Sides: Snacks, sides to serve with dinner, and more. In this section you'll find very interesting ways to hide beans in lots of things ;)
5. Dinner: You'll learn some fabulous new family favorite dinners that you can pull right out of your pantry
6. Desserts: healthy, delicious show stoppers! 

101 from scratch, real food recipes that are tested family favorites and EASY!

I can't go a day on Instagram sharing our family's routines, without multiple messages from people asking for my recipes. 

Why? Well it's certainly not because I'm a fabulous food blogger (I loathe taking photos of food lol). It's not because I'm a world class trained chef creating gourmet meals. And it's not because I'm a insta-famous celebrity. 

It's because so many of us are desperate to figure out how to feed our family with whole foods AND be able to pay the bills. 

It's because we want to master or kitchens without becoming slaves to our kitchens. 

This cookbook will focus on healthy & delicious recipes to be sure. But more importantly, recipes that are quick & easy!!

A video tutorial for every single recipe

Here is where this cookbook guide get's very unique and very exciting. Included with each and every recipe, is a video tutorial showing you how to make it. 🤯

Guess what? Making homemade bagels is actually very easy and not nearly as time consuming as you think. But reading a recipe might still feel very overwhelming. So here's all you'll have to do. 

1) Open up your smart phone camera. 2) Hold the camera over the QR code on each recipe and 3) bam! It automatically pulls up the link to watch that specific recipes video/video tutorial. 

Bigger recipes like bagels will have a full video walkthrough tutorial where I teach you how to make them. Easy recipes, like 10 minute muffins, will just have a quick overview video showing you the steps involved. 

Sometimes, you just need to see someone make it for it to make sense. And sometimes, like with bagels, you really need a hands on tutorial. 

We are including ALL of these extra videos & materials completely free 😱😍

A guide to grains & healthy flours

This might be the most overwhelming part of it all. Learning what grains are healthy, what grains work well for what kinds of foods, and the best sources for flour that don't break the bank. 

As I shared above, a huge part of this cookbook is to teach you how to cook with the grains your family loves. I personally use spelt a lot, but you don't need to. Throughout the cookbook you will be experimenting and learning what YOUR family loves! 

Hint hint: You do NOT have to own a grain mill to get everything out of this cookbook. I will share alternatives, where to buy healthy flour, and dive deep into those discussions. However, I WILL try to convince you throughout this section why you eventually want a grain mill. So fair warning on that 😆

A guide to bulk pantry basics: choosing dried beans, sourcing bulk, real food ingredients, storage, and more

Do you know how to cook dried beans? Do you know what lentils are used for? Can you make brown rice that tastes divine? What about amaranth, barley, millet, or chia seeds? 

When you learn how to cut out processed and packaged foods from your diet and cook from a bulk pantry, it will change the way you run your kitchen. 

Cooking this way means you get the most delicious food, for the lowest cost, AND are building up emergency food as you go. Can you live for 6+ months off the food in your pantry right now? Probably not. But when you build up a bulk pantry that you use for everyday cooking, it suddenly becomes easy! 

This section will teach you all about dried goods! 

Jami's kitchen essentials

You don't need any fancy kitchen equipment to use this cookbook! But building up some great tools in your kitchen can aid your goals. I am a big fan of strategically using kitchen tools to accomplish more in your kitchen! 

This section will break down all my favorite tools to use, ways to get them used or cheaper, and my personal order of priority in getting them.