From-Scratch Cooking: Family Recipes, Honest Kitchen Moments,

There was a time when I relied on processed food and didn’t know much about cooking. But when I discovered cooking from scratch, something clicked. It not only saved us money, but we started eating better than ever. I found satisfaction in making wholesome meals for my family and learning from the wisdom of the past. But over time, I developed simple rhythms and habits that made from scratch cooking a natural part of our daily life. And here’s how it really looks. Behind every from scratch meal, a kitchen that looks like chaos at some point.

Well, I did say it was a realistic week of cooking. So, oh my gosh, this is a mess. Why there is a rubber band ball in my grains, I can only guess. In the middle of the mess, there’s something really beautiful happening. This video is a glimpse into that. Nourishing my family with simple from scratch meals, celebrating everyday life, and embracing the joy of a well-used, well-loved kitchen.

Kimoot Pizza Dough

I’m making a double batch of pizza dough right now, and I’m milling Kimoot wheat berries because I want to do a mostly kimoot flour pizza dough. Into the mixer. You’re going to do four cups of water and then four teaspoon of yeast. And that yeast just needs to sit for about 10 minutes to bloom. While I’m waiting for that, I wanted to make a healthy dessert to have on hand.

Healthy Vegan Chocolate Fudge Ice Cream

I found this recipe for a healthy vegan chocolate fudge ice cream, and I thought I would give it a try. Into the blender, I did 11 dates, a can of full fat coconut milk, half a cup of cream, and half a cup of whole milk, a/2 cup of peanut butter, 1/2 cup of cocoa powder, 2 tsps of vanilla extract, a pinch of salt, and then blend that up and pour it into your ice cream maker. Make sure the bowl is frozen solid. I just keep it in the freezer at all times so it’s ready to go. Turn that for about 20 to 25 minutes, and it turns into this thick and decadent, healthy ice cream treat.

Kimoot Pizza with Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

Tonight I’m making pizza. I really like this recipe, so I thought I would make it and share it with you guys. Now, I’m adding six cups of flour. I’m using up all my kimoot, which ended up being 3 and 1/2 cups. And the rest I’ll do allpurpose flour. An ancient grain, so it’s pretty healthy for you. And it tends to be a thirsty grain. So I noticed when I work with kimoot, I need to add extra water. And I also added extra oil. It’s still pretty dense, but hopefully later on it will soften up and rise and work great for pizza dough. I’m just pulling some honey oat sandwich bread out of the oven. I shared this recipe in a previous video. It uses freshly milled hard white wheat flour and oats. And I’m just always trying to keep the bread flowing in our house.

While I’m waiting for my dough to mix, I’m just doing some loads of laundry, hanging up clothes to dry. It’s a busy housework day. My dough has been kneading for about 15 minutes now. I’m going to give it a rest and go run my errands. I punched the dough down and now I’m taking it out. I’m just going to oil the bowl and then kind of shape it into a round shape and put it back in the bowl and let it rise until I’m ready for it, which will be about 45 minutes. This just helps the dough doesn’t stick and just helps it as it rises.

I really wanted to use up my garden red peppers and make roasted red pepper sauce, which we’ll use on the pizza, but also I use it in salmon rice bowls and other meals throughout the week. I’m going to roast these in the oven at 450 for about 20 minutes until they’re nice and charred. So, I’m just taking out the insides and having them. And I’m also going to add in some of my garden tomatoes just to add a little more tomato flavor to the sauce.

While that’s happening, I’m going to clear the area and put my homemade bread away and make room for my pizza dough. I’m going to divide this dough into two pieces and then shape it into a round shape and then let them rest while I prepare the sauce. I’m also going to get my pizza stone and put it in the oven so it can start to preheat while the peppers are finishing. And when the peppers are finished, I’ll turn the oven up to 500°. This is the recipe I’m going off of. I like this nutty roasted red pepper sauce from this Half-Baked Harvest cookbook. And as usual, I did modify this a little bit for our liking. The roasted red peppers turned out so beautiful. I think that it’s best if you roast them longer than 20 minutes and maybe at a little bit of a lower temperature, like 400. That will allow them to soften a bit more. But you want to put a lid or a plate over that bowl and just let the steam release the skins from the red peppers and we’ll remove those.

So this is a/2 cup of walnuts that I toasted quickly. And now I’m adding in two cloves of garlic, a4 cup of tomato paste, a teaspoon of smoked paprika, a4 teaspoon of cayenne pepper, a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, a tablespoon of honey, 1/4 teaspoon of salt, and about 1/4 cup of olive oil. Then you’re going to add in your roasted red peppers. I was having a little bit of a hard time getting the skin off, and I think that’s just because I was in a hurry, so I roasted it pretty quickly. and it didn’t sit as long as it needed to. But regardless, we ended up with this beautiful and tasty sauce.

For this pizza dough, I’m using a lot of semolina flour. And so, you want to put it on the bottom, like a good bit on the bottom here. And then, anytime it starts to stick, you just add more semolina flour. And then I’m going to put some Molina flour on this pizza peel and slide the whole thing into the oven onto the hot pizza stone. So the oven is set really high right now to like 500. Um and that’s how you want it. Nice and hot. And hopefully it will cook really fast. I’m going to go kind of light on the toppings so that the pizza cooks nicely.

Kimoot flour is just not as stretchy. It’s all sticking. Oh my gosh, this is a mess. You know, if you use allpurpose flour, you won’t have this problem, but I’m experimenting with kimoot, which just is making things a little more complicated for me. But I think it’s still going to be tasty and cook up well. It’s just a little harder to work with. It can’t slide. It’s not good. This is a disaster.

You know, it might not be my prettiest presentation, but in the end, the pizza turned out. You just got to get the toppings on there and be able to slide it onto the hot stone and you should be good to go. My husband and I are about to leave for a wedding, but we cannot resist having at least one slice because no one likes showing up to an event starving. That’s so good. Anything like professional. Who wants to give me a bite? I like how the bread is really Yeah, the bread is thick. It’s good. This is like professional, babe. and a rock. This pizza was on the breddier side, which isn’t my preference, but my husband and kids really liked it. All in all, it’s a pretty simple pizza dough recipe using just flour, salt, and water. And if you have a jar of pizza sauce lying around, this can become an easy weeknight dinner.

Salmon Rice Bowls with Pesto and Roasted Red Pepper Sauce

I’m not planning ahead of time, but just come dinner time, I’m taking out my camera and coming up with dinner on the fly. And so I decided to do salmon rice bowls here. Into the Instant Pot, I’m doing 2 cups of white rice and 2 and 1/2 cups of water and then a pinch of salt. And then I’m just going to put it on the white rice function in this Instant Pot. I really like this Instant Pot. I use it most for rice, dry beans, and stocks. I think it’s a great tool to have for a cooking from scratch type of kitchen. My inspiration for tonight’s dinner is the basil in my garden. It is growing so well. I have such an abundance of basil and so I thought a good way to use it up would be to make some homemade pesto.

Into the food processor, I did two cups of fresh basil, a handful of fresh parsley, a4 cup of walnuts, and then a/2 cup of pecorino ramano cheese, and then about a4 teaspoon of salt. You can also use pine nuts, but those are pretty expensive. And I usually have walnuts at home, and so I used walnuts. I’m going to pulse this up pretty good and scrape down the sides as needed. And once it looks pretty well chopped up, I’m going to slowly add a/2 cup of olive oil. My food processor has this function where it slowly drizzles the oil in, and that’s best. I’m also adding in half of a fresh lemon, just the juice, and just kind of adding to it as I go. I felt like it needed a little more salt, a little more lemon juice. So, feel free to taste it and adjust as desired. I’m going to set this to the side and put it in the fridge while I prepare the rest of dinner.

I fried some fresh oregano from my garden in some olive oil until it was nice and crispy. Don’t have a rhyme or reason as to why I did that other than I felt like it. And I just added it on top of the salmon. I don’t know if I probably should have just saved that for the end, but I am seasoning this salmon up with some garlic powder, smoked paprika, salt, pepper, and olive oil. And then I also added a little bit of honey cuz I thought that might add some caramelization. And I like working with salmon on nights when I just want something kind of easy so that I don’t have to thaw a big piece of meat. So, I usually have frozen salmon on hand for this reason, but I love working with fresh salmon when I have it. It is such a treat to cook fresh salmon. It’s so easy. You don’t have to thaw it. It takes flavor even better. But I like to use my air fryer for salmon. It gets it really well cooked, like flaky on the inside and crispy on the outside. I am making sure I don’t crowd it when I cook the salmon. I put about three fillets in at a time and cook it at 400 for about 10 minutes.

I also had this asparagus I wanted to make sure I used up. So, I decided I would toss it in some olive oil and some salt and then air fry those as well. I ended up realizing that I should probably cut them up into little pieces to add into the rice bowls. And so that’s what I did. I’m adding these to the air fryer. And I’m going to cook them at 385 for 8 to 10 minutes. For these bowls, I started with rice and then I added the salmon. The skin just peels off really nicely. And then I just added all the toppings that I thought would go well with it. I had some garden tomatoes, chopped those up. I added the airfried asparagus, some fresh avocado, and then of course, I added the pesto that I made and also the roasted red pepper sauce from the night before. This had so much flavor. I love making rice bowls in general. You can put your own spin on it. Sometimes we do an Asian style. Sometimes I try to make it like a sushi bowl. Other times we do chicken and rice. So all you need is a good piece of meat, a good sauce, some veggies, and some rice and you can put together a beautiful dinner.

Sourdough English Muffins and Homemade Yogurt

On this beautiful Monday morning, I was making yogurt. I’m heating up milk until just before boiling, keeping a close eye on it, and stirring it to prevent scorching on the bottom of the pan. Now I’m heating up ghee in a skillet and I’m about to cut out my English muffins. This is sourdough English muffins. And I made the dough the day before and pressed it flat in the pan the night before. So it’s been fermenting in the fridge overnight. And now I’m just going to cut it out and cook it on a hot skillet for a few minutes on each side. I’m filling up the sink with a bit of ice water because once the milk is finished, I’m going to put it in the sink to let it cool down quickly.

Now that my milk has cooled down, I’m adding about 1/4 cup of yogurt, Greek yogurt, into a little bowl. And then spooning in about 1/4 to 1/2 cup of that milk into the bowl. And I’ll whisk that up really well. The milk should be warm to the touch and no hotter when you add the yogurt because you don’t want to kill those live cultures in there. So, by adding a little bit of yogurt and mixing it really well, this is now allowing the whole pot of milk to turn into yogurt. Then, I’ll just put a lid on this, wrap it in some kitchen towels to keep it insulated, and leave it on the counter for the next 8 to 12 hours. I’m setting the milk near the stove since it tends to be a warmer area. And my sourdough English muffins turned out so good. This recipe is from the tartine bread book, which I talk about all the time. I linked that in the description. I’m going to pack half of this away in the freezer and the rest we’ll eat throughout the week.

Citrus Braised Pork Tacos

I’m going to make a slow braised pork recipe and this will cook all day in my oven and I don’t need to worry about it or fuss with it until dinner time. First I’m making my spice blend. So into a little bowl add 2 tsp of cumin, 2 tsp of oregano, a teaspoon of allspice, and a teaspoon of cinnamon. This is going to be a double recipe and it’s for citrus braised pork tacos. So, we’re going to put that to the side and now move on to chopping up some onions and garlic. I’m using two onions here and chopping it nice and finely and doing the same with a whole head of garlic because I like lots of garlic. What I’m doing right now is called misan pla, which is French for basically setting everything up ahead of time before you cook.

I’ve gotten so much better about this ever since I started my YouTube channel because being organized is so important when you’re filming and I love the impact it has had on my cooking. Having everything in its place and ready to go makes cooking so much more seamless and fun. So now I’m dealing with this big giant hunk of meat. I bought pork shoulder from Costco and it comes in a two pack. So I’m breaking it down. For one of them, I’m cutting them into one to two inch chunks. And then the other one, I’m cutting into two pieces, setting it in a freezer ziploc bag, and putting those in the freezer for another time. I had so much meat here that I realized I was going to need a bigger pan in order to season it up. It’s great to have lots of baking sheets for moments like this. So, this is about 7 lb of meat. Once I have trimmed it a bit, I’m seasoning it with 3 teaspoons or 1 tbsp of salt. and a little bit of pepper just to give that meat a little bit of extra boost before it goes in the pan.

So now I’m going to sauté in some avocado oil the onions until those are browned and softened for about 5 to 8 minutes. So now we’re going to build on to this base, this flavor base for the brazing of our meat. So add in your seasoning and give that about 30 seconds for those flavors to bloom. Add in your garlic and then do the same thing. And then after that, add in a whole can of tomato paste. And just give it a stir and let the flavors kind of develop and cook just a little bit. Maybe 30 seconds to a minute. And then you’re going to add in 3 cups of water. And it’s going to start looking like something here.

Now add the juice and zest of three oranges, which of course I went ahead and juiced and zested beforehand and I had it ready to go. So it was super seamless when I was cooking, which is so much fun. Now those colors are looking so beautiful. It’s starting to simmer. I’m going to add 3 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar and then 3 tablespoon of worishure sauce. I’ve been told by my subscribers that that’s how you say it. But I’m also noticing from different people that it’s pronounced differently in different countries. So, take it or leave it. I added in a/2 teaspoon of pepper and 10 whole bay leaves.

Yes, I know that’s a lot, but this is the recipe. Now, add in all of your meat. It’s going to be a lot, so it’s going to take me a minute here. I think my favorite part about this recipe is that you don’t need to sear the meat. It’s great just plopping it in there. And because we’re going to put it in the oven uncovered for 3 to 4 hours, that meat will brown and develop a crust the way we want. So that’s the beauty of brazing meat low and slow.

This is going into a 300° oven for the next 3 to 4 hours. When you come back to it later in the day, it should be nicely browned and fork tender. Before I shred the meat, I’m going to strain off some of this fat. This pork that I used did have a lot of fat in it, so you want to try to get rid of some of that. And then you take a potato masher and just start mashing. and the meat will very easily, just barely touching it, it will fall apart. And if it looks like there’s a lot of liquid in the pot, just know it will all start to incorporate. And then we’re going to turn on the heat, and this will reduce down and turn into a thicker sauce. Don’t forget to fish out those bay leaves. And while this is heating up and reducing down, I’m going to work on a side salad.

I’m using whatever lettuces I have on hand. And then I have this jalapeno ranch that we made a couple days ago. And I added a little bit of honey to it. I don’t know why. I just thought it needed to be sweetened a little. And then I also added some fresh corn. And this ended up being just a perfect salad. We serve this on the side with the tacos and then also inside the taco cuz I like to add a little crunch. I like to toast my tortillas either on a skillet or right over an open flame until they are charred and a little crispy. Just before serving, you can add another 2 tablespoon of distilled white vinegar. And then you’re ready to serve up your tacos. These citrus brazed pork tacos are so flavorful. The meat obviously is the star of the show. And then you just top it with some fresh garnishes. I have some quick pickled red onions here that I made. I just put some sliced red onions in mostly apple cider vinegar and then some water and about a/ teaspoon of salt. You can also add a little bit of sugar to that jar if you like them on the sweeter side.

This was super delicious. And since I did a double batch, we had so much meat. And so we basically just had tacos for the rest of the week. And no one had any complaints about it.

Homemade Granola

When I was a new homemaker and learning everything from scratch, I discovered this blog post from the kitchen on how to make great granola every time. I have referenced this blog post so many times over the years. And so now I’m finally saving it to my recipe app. This is just one of those recipes I keep coming back to time and time again, and so I want to share it with you. It’s really a great formula for any kind of granola that you’d like. You start off with three cups of old-fashioned rolled oats and then 2 and 1/2 cups of nuts and seeds of choice. I’m doing a cup of slithered almonds and then a scant cup of chopped up walnuts. And then I’m going to finish it off with about a/2 cup of pumpkin seeds and then 3 tablespoon of ground flax seed. Now you’re going to add a teaspoon and a half of salt. I think that salt level really brings out the flavor. And then a teaspoon of cinnamon. And then also a/2 teaspoon of cardamom. I feel like I only have cardamom in my house because of this recipe.

And then you’re going to do a/2 cup of olive oil. Believe it or not, olive oil is such a good oil for this granola. And then a/2 cup of maple syrup. Now I’m adding a teaspoon of vanilla extract or vanilla bean paste. And then I’m also adding an egg white. This is not in the recipe, but when you add an egg white, it adds some extra crunch. It makes your granola a little bit more like clusters, which I like, and it also adds a bit more protein. So, mix in your wet ingredients with your dry ingredients. Everything should be nicely coated and looking wet. If it looks overly wet, just keep adding a little bit more dry ingredients until it looks about right. It should be fairly wet, but not soaking wet.

On a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper, spread out your granola so that it’s nice and thin so all of the granola can get evenly brown. This is going to go into a 300° oven on the middle rack and set a timer for 15 minutes. Then come back and give it all a flip. Try not to disturb it too much. And then put it back in for another 15 minutes or so. Sometimes it looks to me like it’s browned, but it’s just the oven light. So, I check on it and then sometimes it stays in the oven a little longer. And then once it looks evenly browned and golden, it’s ready. It does burn a little quickly if you don’t keep an eye on it. So, definitely set your timers and don’t forget about it.

Well, I did say it was a realistic week of cooking, so this is realistic for you. We’ve got a mess. And that is just part of life. So good. I hope you enjoyed spending some time in the kitchen with me as I cooked from scratch for my family of six. This is all stuff that I learned when I was a new homemaker. I didn’t know how to do any of this stuff and I’ve really enjoyed learning over the years. Cooking from scratch is something that has brought me a lot of joy, and I hope that my videos provide a resource for you as you’re learning and wanting to explore more of your skills in the kitchen. Not only does it save you a lot of money, but you end up eating healthier and it just provides so much satisfaction and the food is tastier.