Articles by Kristen Michaelis CNC

Kristen Michaelis CNC is a published author and teacher. She's created a general nutrition curriculum used by classrooms around the US and written Beautiful Babies -- a book on nutrition for fertility, pregnancy, and breastfeeding that premiered at #1 on Amazon in its category, beating out What to Expect When You're Expecting.

Re-Cultivating Our Sense of Taste

I remember when Hot Pockets made me salivate. And ranch flavored Pringles potato chips. They don’t anymore.

If you’re at all like me, you grew up eating the standard American diet. In her own small way, your mom probably tried to make “healthy” food choices. In my home, that looked like skim milk, low-fat salad dressings, and chicken — lots of chicken. But we still ate sandwiches starring American cheese and soybean oil mayonnaise, still poured corn syrup over our white-flour pancakes, and drank just about as much Coke as our hearts desired.

Making the transition into eating according to more traditional food ways required not only a perspective altering change in what is and is not considered healthy food, but it also required re-training my taste buds so that the good food actually tasted good — so that it made me salivate.

Stackable Sprout Garden

My kids think sprouting is fun. When I first started sprouting, I was sprouting wheat berries in order to dry them and grind them into a flour that I could use to make bread. I eventually gave up making the bread, mostly out of laziness. If properly preparing grains was so much work, was it really worth all the effort? Maybe yes, maybe no. If it were up to me, I probably wouldn’t bother with grains at all. But, I have kids. They still like their sandwiches. So, I do buy a couple of loaves of sprouted grain bread from the grocery store per month.

Then I started exploring all the other kinds of sprouts: sprouts for gardening, sprouts for salads, sprouts for stir fries. They’re a cheap vegetable, easily grown all year indoors and with limited space, and surprisingly nutritious.

Today, I’m pleased to announce a giveaway from one of my sponsors, Julie at Cultures for Health. Julie has graciously decided to give one of my lucky readers a 3-Tray Stackable Sprout Garden!

A Sneak Peak at Wardeh’s E-Course

Earlier this week, I wrote about the exciting new online course in the basics of how to prepare traditional foods. Your response has been overwhelming. Nearly two hundred of you have already signed up for the course!

For those of you still wondering if the 14 weeks of interactive learning is worth the shockingly low price, Wardeh’s released a new sneak peek at one of her videos from the class. (And no, that’s not just sales copy. The classes are less than $10 each — far less than you would pay at your local community college.) Check out the video below:

GIVEAWAY Winner & 15% Off Coupon

First, let me say THANK YOU to all the people who participated in this giveaway! And next, I want to thank Holly Hickman, the wonderful lady whose research gave life to the Healthy Eats Here! restaurant guide. Without her generosity, this Valentine’s Day giveaway wouldn’t have happened.

Now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the WINNER!

Fight Back Friday February 12th

Welcome to yet another Fight Back Friday! Today we’re bringing together another collection of recipes, tips, anecdotes, and testimonies from members of the Real Food Revolution.

Who are they? Why, they’re the Food Renegades. You know who you are — lovers of SOLE (Sustainable, Organic, Local, and Ethical) food, traditional food, primal food, REAL food, the list goes on. I believe that by joining together, our influence can grow, and we can change the way America (and the industrialized world) eats!

So, let’s have some fun.

It’s the Junk Food Commercials

Remember all those studies that show a direct correlation between the number of hours kids watch TV and their weight? The conclusions of these studies all warn that too much television leads to an all too sedentary life, which leads to obesity.

Well. Today a study was released which concluded that it’s not the hours of TV, but the number of junk food commercials! Oh, those savvy junk food marketers. Did you know that by the time a child is 5 years old, they have seen an average of more than 4,000 television commercials for food annually? During Saturday morning cartoons, children see an average of one food ad every five minutes! And up to 95 percent of those ads are for junk foods.

Heirloom Poultry, I Love You

“Chicken doesn’t taste like chicken anymore.” So goes the common refrain of people older and wiser than me, people who grew up eating chicken before the advent of the industrial chicken farm. I was born in the late 70s and did all my growing up in the 80s. By then, chicken was pretty standard.

Up until a few years ago, I didn’t know what the old-timers were talking about. Then I tasted my first pastured chicken, an Americauna. What hit me was a totally different chicken dining experience. Oh, I could tell that it was chicken. But the similarities ended there. The chicken actually tasted happy. I kid you not.

Introducing an E-Course in Traditional Foods Preparation

Preparing Real Food can be daunting. If you’ve never baked a loaf of bread, how are you supposed to suddenly master making sourdough or using sprouted grains? What if you’ve never made yogurt, cheese, or sauerkraut? Let’s say you decide to tackle one of these tasks, now what? Where do you go from there?

Books like Nourishing Traditions can be overwhelming. There’s just too much to practically change all at once. How do you know where to start?

That’s why I’m so excited to introduce you to a new online course developed by fellow blogger Wardeh Harmon.

GIVEAWAY: Healthy Eats Here! Restaurant Guide

If you’re at all like me, you like it when other people cook. Don’t get me wrong, I *love* cooking, but after creating 3 Real Food meals a day for my entire family, it’s nice to take a break and eat out. But does that break really have to come at the cost of delicious, Real Food? Particularly on a special day like Valentine’s Day?

Holly Hickman believes it doesn’t. In her travel-intensive career, Holly has spent years accumulating research on places to dine out that source their foods well. Recently, she compiled a killer dining guide to restaurants all across the U.S. You want restaurants sourcing humanely raised meats, organic vegetables, and foods from local farmers? Holly’s guide has them.

Fight Back Friday February 5th

Welcome to yet another Fight Back Friday! Today we’re bringing together another collection of recipes, tips, anecdotes, and testimonies from members of the Real Food Revolution.

So, let’s have some fun.