Cooking From Scratch: Your First Step to a more Traditional and Natural Home

We’ve probably all been there. Our beloved pet falls ill, we take them to the vet, the vet suggests first changing their diet, so we immediately run out and buy new dog or cat food. And often, we see a change in that animal. The new diet has reversed all of the existing issues!

The next week we become fed up with the sluggish feeling, the aches and pains, the brain fog- so we head to our primary care office. After talking and general bloodwork panels, the physician recommends… you guessed it- changing our diet. This conversation goes a little differently than the chat at the vet, though. And understandably so! We don’t eat the same thing every day like our dogs and cats. We have a social life. Our needs aren’t as straight-forward. But why are we so hesitant to do so? Well, food is emotional. It’s social. It’s personal. There is much more effort involved in changing our own diets, but we know if we could just do it, it would be so worth it!

In this post, I will address some health benefits of cooking from scratch, why it’s a wonderful starting place for building homesteading and homemaking skills, and some tips and resources for starting today.

Cooking for Health

In my post, 10 Skills You Can Learn Before You Have a Homestead, I mentioned that “healthy” is different for each person- based on metabolic needs, lifestyle, allergies and intolerances, and even preferences! Personally, I don’t think it’s mentally healthy to force myself to eat broccoli and unseasoned chicken and rice every meal. Of course there are some general rules about diet- like having a good balance and wide variety of carbohydrates, proteins, and fats, and receiving micronutrients from foods as well.

In my time working in the medical field, I was working at a family medicine clinic. That meant we performed many annual physicals every single day. That also meant we called each patient with lab results. And the overwhelming majority received the yearly advice to change their diet due to any number of reasons- Hypertension, high cholesterol, and elevated A1C just to name a few.

In my research I was intrigued by the fact that while rates of hypertension and diabetes have risen, the rates of poor cholesterol levels has decreased in recent years. I did find that it is mostly due to cholesterol-lowering drugs to improve management, but that brings me back to my original point. If I have to buy groceries and cholesterol medication, I’d personally just rather buy different groceries and avoid any possible side effects of daily prescription medication use.

Could we possibly combat the rise in many of these conditions simply by slowing down and putting a bit more time into our meals? I, personally, hold that belief.

So what difference does it actually make to cook from scratch? Well, many prepackaged and pre-prepared foods include preservatives, excessive amounts of salt, sugar, fats, and seed oils to make them more palatable. And while I do agree that those things taste delightfully rich, I would much rather be able to adjust any number of those things to my taste and personal health needs.

Some examples might include:

• Mac and Cheese made with nutritional yeast, cottage cheese, protein pasta, and a few other ingredients, making it much more protein-packed than traditional boxed macaroni and cheese
• Fresh green beans, salted to taste and cooked to preference rather than canned green beans that have been soaked in massive amounts of salt as a preservative
• Homemade bread made with unbleached flour and without any preservatives or seed oils
• Homemade chicken pot pie (my favorite) with much less salt than frozen ones
• Muffins, cupcakes, cookies, and other treats made with your favorite flour, butter, milk, and sweetener rather than what the companies choose for you.

In many cases, you can take your already favorite meals and adjust them to make them fit your needs and desires! The possibilities are endless when cooking at home.

From-Scratch Cooking as a Homemaking Launchpad

With our eating habits being so extremely central to our health, and lifestyle, it is an easy and affordable first step to take. In some cases, you might even save some major cash! You probably have most everything you need to get started making changes, even if you’ve never peeled a potato in your life.

Learning to cook from scratch allows you to get a better feel for what you may want to grow in a garden one day, or whether you might want a dairy cow in the future. It’s also a great skill to have before you begin canning, getting to know your family’s flavor preferences, and what you would like and need to have stocked regularly. My husband and I use chicken broth like crazy for rice, soups, and potatoes, so we keep that pretty consistently.

On the note of chicken broth… you can also begin making your own when you cook from scratch! Save your vegetable scraps for vegetable broth, and throw in a chicken carcass or feet (usually cheap from the store or local butcher) to make chicken broth. If you don’t have a great need for chicken broth, you might take advantage of the scraps to start a compost for a future garden or give them to a friend with chickens- they would love them!

Once you’re more confident making meals from scratch, you might find yourself itching to make sandwich bread or sourdough, and even your own cheese!

So, while you may not seem a huge change in your grocery bill, you’d be surprised how much more bang you’ll get for your buck between composting, making broth, feeding chickens, and maybe even losing the monthly cost of daily prescription meds!

Where to Start

With the vast expanse of the internet, a quick Google or YouTube search could result in blog posts or video tutorials on ‘how to hold a knife properly’, ‘what does it even mean to sauté’, and ‘folding it in’. The best advice I can give is to start with a simple meal and take it slow. Maybe pancakes or waffles, as they don’t require any chopping and are a pretty simple and well-loved meal.

Personally, I grew up in a home that blended cooking from scratch and quick dinners, so I learned a few things from my mother, and I took a culinary class in high school to learn some of the ‘finer’ things. My recipe collection is bigger than I’m sure I need, but nowhere near as large as I’d like. I rely heavily on blog posts, Pinterest pins, YouTube videos, TikTok recipes, and I love thrifted and gifted cookbooks.

From-scratch cooking can be manageable and affordable, and can change the health and lifestyle of your family dramatically! I know I’ve found a love for cooking and love the challenge that comes with each new recipe. If you have any favorite resources for recipes or cooking tips, share them in the comments section of this post. We could all improve in some way, and I’d love to keep learning along with you all.

Before you go, make sure you follow me on social media for even more content between posts.

Until next time,

Rebekah

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