Real Food: When to Buy and When to DIY
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So you want to nourish yourself and your family with real whole foods, free from harmful ingredients, but it sounds like a lot of work. You can’t spend every waking moment of your day in the kitchen, making every last meal, snack, and condiment from scratch.
I hear you.
My Real Food Story
When I began this real-food low-tox lifestyle several years ago, the landscape was sparse.
If I wanted mayonnaise or salad dressing without highly-processed oils, I had to make it myself.
If I wanted ketchup or bar-b-que sauce that wasn’t loaded with sugar, I had to make it myself.
If I wanted taco seasoning without fillers, I had to make it myself.
So I did.
And I went all in. I mean, allllll in.
Make our own condiments? Check.
Bake our own bread? Check.
Roast our own coffee? Check.
Make our own yogurt? Check.
It quickly spread into our personal care items, which is great. There’s a lot of harmful junk in those.
Make our own deodorant? Toothpaste? Body lotion? Check. Check. Check.
And then came the homesteading aspirations: Milk our own goat? Grow our own food? Keep our own bees?
We lived in a condo at the time, so all that wasn’t possible, but the yearning was real.
I was learning a ton, but I was losing sight of why I had gotten started in the first place.
My goal was to feel better by nourishing my body with real whole foods and by reducing the burden on my body by choosing products with low-to-no toxic ingredients. It was NOT to make and do every last thing myself, with my own hands.
Even so, it was fun. For a while.
Maybe you can imagine what happened.
I burned out.
And quit.
Then started again.
Then burned out. Quit. And started again.
Then...you get the idea.
Benefitting From Balance
Since then, I’ve realized that eating real, nourishing food doesn’t mean that I have to make every last thing myself.
Does it help to know a few tricks in the kitchen, and to develop routines for getting things done faster, easier, cheaper?
It sure does. I’ve developed my own tricks and routines over the years that have made eating real food so much simpler, and I’ll be breaking them down and sharing them on this site as we go.
But, eating real food can also mean being a savvy consumer who knows how to read labels and decides when it’s worth it to spend a little money on something that will make daily life a little bit easier.
Fortunately, as the concern for quality ingredients in our food has become top-of-mind for more and more people, more and more clean real-food products have become available in the marketplace. And the options are increasing every day.
The salad dressing, mayonnaise, and bbq sauce with zero sugar and zero weird oils that I used to make, I can now buy. I can even choose between a couple different brands. And let me tell you, I am happy to plunk down my money for them, because as much as I enjoy cooking (I really do!!), I enjoy doing other things too.
And these salad dressings, etc are good. I mean, if they weren’t good, it wouldn’t be worth it.
Now, most of what we eat is real-cooked-from-scratch-food, but we also enjoy some real-made-in-a-factory-food. And somewhere along the way, I developed a few principles that guide my choices and purchases as I decide when to buy and when to DIY.
When to Buy and When to DIY
My Guiding Principles
Does making it myself bring me joy?
Is it significantly cheaper/easier to DIY than it is to source?
Is there no suitable option in the marketplace?
Now, I don’t think through these principles with every item I buy/make, and I certainly didn’t just sit down one day and dream these principles up. At some point along the way, as I hopped on and off and back on and back off the hamster wheel of trying to make e.v.e.r.y.t.h.i.n.g. myself, and became exhausted, frustrated, and sometimes even resentful—these principles emerged. They now guide my subconscious as I develop meal plans, shop, and cook.
These principles guide my choices, and it’s become rather second nature. They fit well into our philosophy here at Wit & Wellness. We can live well and be well at the same time. We can do it without taking it too seriously, without driving ourselves (and others!) bananas. We can have fun while we’re at it.
This will all play out differently in your life than in mine.
Our shopping carts and pantry shelves will look different. And they should. We are different. What we need is different. What we want out of this is different. Our resources and priorities are different.
But if you are trying to do this real food lifestyle, and you feel you are burning out because it’s all so much, or maybe you want to eat more real food, but you don’t know how you’ll ever fit all that cooking from scratch into your current routine, I want to encourage you. Try looking at it through the lens of these principles, or develop some 0f your own that resonate with you.
Do what brings you joy. Do what makes sense for you and your family. Eating real food is not about nourishing your body only. It’s about nourishing the soul too. And if you’re stressed, overwhelmed, and not enjoying the process, then it isn’t working for you.
If you love making everything from scratch, go for it. But if making your own mayonnaise and ketchup doesn’t fill you up with joy or your lifestyle doesn’t allow for it, take a little bit of time to find a few great products that will make your life easier and more enjoyable as you cook at home and eat real food.
Practical Examples
It’ll look different for each of us, but here are a few examples of what how this plays out for me:
Making traditionally-fermented sourdough bread in my own kitchen:
Does it bring me joy? YESSSSS. So much joy. We don’t buy bread. Like, not ever.
Making my own mayonnaise with olive oil and eggs:
Does it bring me joy? Nope. None. at. All.
(I see all you make-your-own-mayo purists out there. And I hear you. And you can keep on emulsifying. I support your choice. But I stand by my own.)
There are a few real-food mayos I love and hop between, depending on availability and pricing. They are made with avocado oil, and free from all and any hydrogenated oils such as vegetable oil, soybean oil, etc. You can find them here, here, and here.
Bar-B-Que Sauce:
There’s no joy in making this, but there isn’t any pain either. We rarely use it, and when we do, it’s in a slow cooker/instant pot for pulled chicken or pulled pork, so I just make it right there in the pot before putting the meat in. If you want to keep a jar of BBQ sauce on hand, this Primal Kitchen BBQ Sauce is a good zero-sugar real food option.
A few more examples of what this looks like for me:
Things I could DIY but choose to BUY:
Salad dressings:
We love these salad dressings by Primal Kitchen. They contain only real food ingredients. They’re made with avocado oil, and are not partially cut with processed oils. This is a big way that brands cheat and deceive us—they say “Avocado Oil” or “Olive Oil” on the packaging, but if you read the ingredients, you’ll find that the dressing is cut with soybean or canola or other cheap oils.
Whole bean roasted coffee:
This one may seem a no brainer, but we got into roasting coffee once just for a fun curiosity-driven project. I quickly turned it into something we had to do. Kinda killed the fun. Anyway, now we buy high quality whole roasted beans by Fresh Ground Roast. We love what they are about.
Meat Sticks and Jerky:
Meat sticks and jerky are great to have on hand as snacks, especially with kids, and especially when on the go. Making your own jerky is popular hobby project right now, and we have some friends who enjoy playing around with it. But we’re happy to buy it ready made. Or to receive a home-made batch as a gift (wink-wink). Our favorites are these and these.
Things I could BUY but choose to DIY:
Yogurt:
It is so easy to make, and the savings in DIY-ing it is massive. Think 75% cheaper than store-bought yogurt.
Granola:
We don’t eat this often, but when we do, I usually make it. It’s cheaper, and I can control the ingredients.
Cocoa Mix:
We love a good cup of cocoa on a snowy day in winter, or any day really, but I don’t buy cocoa mix. Instead, we just stir cocoa powder together with warm milk and maple syrup. It’s gotta be one of the best foods on the planet.
Eating real food does mean spending some time in the kitchen, but it doesn’t have to be a life-sentence. These are just a few examples of how we negotiate this real food life in our home, so that we eat well, enjoy preparing food from scratch, but are not driven to madness by it.
If these principles resonate with you, let us know in the comments. Or let us know how you navigate the joy as well as the potential overwhelm that eating real food can bring.
For examples of helpful tools and real-food products, check out my Shopping Guide where I list some of the items we use every day.
