Recipes

Chili is one of our family’s favorite meals. It does not take long to assemble the ingredients, but it does take a couple hours to simmer on the stove. Plan to cook it on a day that you will be around the house for 3-4 hours. You can make this chili with any ground meat, but I Iike the flavor ground pork adds. Remember that all ground meat is not created equal so get it from a source you can trust.

Tacos and taco salads are one of our favorite meals. We usually do tacos at least once per month. We prepare extras so that we have leftovers during the week for lunch or for a quicker meal on those hectic days when the kids have extracurricular activities like piano lessons, sports etc. The problem with most taco seasonings is that they contain lots of MSGs, added salts, and other processed chemicals that are not good for us. Finding healthy alternatives in local grocery stores is difficult, so I purchase organic taco seasoning with no added fillers in 16-24oz containers and keep it in our pantry. I prefer fresh, locally grown leaf lettuces, but they are hard to find. So leaf lettuces in grocery stores work well, but most of the time Romaine lettuce is the most nutritious lettuce that we can find consistently. From what I understand, Iceberg lettuce contains very little nutrition compared to romaine and leaf lettuces, plus tastes bland to me. In the absence of fresh tomatoes, I use salsa. Read the label carefully, many salsas contain added sugars, avoid them. Also, if you cannot pronounce the ingredients on the label or if you do not know what they are, find a better salsa. I prefer ground pork for tacos, but any healthy ground meat will work. In terms of health benefits, I use either pasture raised ground pork or our grass finished beef. Ground turkey is an option, but only if it is pasture raised with non-gmo feed supplements. In my opinion, conventionally raised turkey is not a healthier alternative to pasture raised pork or grass-finished beef.

You can make some of the healthies, most flavorful, homemade stock and broth from healthy, pastured animals. This guide is very adaptable and we encourage you to use whatever ingredients that you have on hand. Save your skins and peels from onions and use them in this recipe as well. Gather all the ingredients that you are going to use and then use any one of the three methods to cook the stock.  

This dish makes wonderful tacos in a different way than you may be familiar with. A 4-5 pound bone in roast should easily provide a family of five with enough meat for two meals with tacos. It is a great way to stretch that food dollar out and have left overs. It is also a healthy meal with no processed foods, lots of fresh vegetables, and is very easy to prepare and flexible. We use a cast iron, Dutch oven, but you can also use a slow cooker and instant pot. We added some instructions below to adapt it.

This is an easy recipe to prepare and can be cooked in a couple hours. It is very adaptable to a variety of herbs and spices. It pairs well with carrots, fresh steamed broccoli, or other fresh vegetables to make an extremely healthy meal. We encourage you to use pastured chicken and healthy butter and oil.