All the steps are laid out now end to end so we can get a good look at them? In my very first post on The Granny Plan I suggested this little plan was something of an experiment. Something that we could work on together. I’ve had a quite a bit of feedback over the past 12 weeks indicating what was helpful, what was not, what absolutely didn’t work and what was an outstanding success. My plan today is to share that with you along with my future plans for The Granny Plan!

Lovin’ that Baby-Steppin!

Nearly unamimously everyone liked the absolute smallness of the steps in the first half of The Granny Plan. Just a few emailed me to let me know that it was either a little too slow or something they knew already. For those folks now that the whole plan is published you can just speed it up a bit if your circumstances permit. I caution everyone to do this only after some real reflection though. Make sure it’s because you genuinely can handle a faster pace. Say you live alone, or have a lot of free time. Then you can probably go along faster without hiccups. Make sure too that you have genuinely mastered practicing the step before you move on.

Toward the end I began to hear that we were moving too fast, taking too large of steps. I think this is due to the generality of the final steps. It’s easy to think in too big of chunks to get done in a week for some of these even though each one asks you to only begin the step during that week. I’m planning to release a version of The Granny Plan as a book this summer! It will have much much more detail along with some worksheets I think. That should help clear up any confusion on this score .

But for some we really are moving along at too brisk a pace. If you have a lot of kids, or are taking care of someone who is elderly or ill, or have a demanding job with odd hours, or you yourself are sick you will need to move a little slower than one habit a week. I’d suggest slowing it down by an extra week, see how things go. The main thing is too ensure you have the new habit firmly before you move on.

Things to Work On

Other than issues with the pace of the course I’ve received some good feedback on the clarity of the final steps. Interest in The Granny Plan did drop-off somewhat toward the end which I’d attribute to this. Your feedback has been heard loud and clear ! In the book release there will be considerably more detail on these steps! It was difficult to go into the depth needed to elaborate in just a short blog post … a book is a much clearer way to share these .

Thank You to Everyone Who Participated!

Your help has been invaluable to me. Together we have knocked out a rock solid step by step plan to help bring newbies on-board with a real food lifestyle. Together we all make a real difference!

Anything else you’d like to share? Did you make good progress? Did the steps stick with you after the week for the step was past? Anything you wish I had covered?

Just Getting Started?

Links to the rest of the series:

• Getting Started
• Step 1: It All Starts With Buttered Carrots …
• Step 2: Our First Main Dish
• Step 3: Clean As You Go
• Step 4: Feed Yourself First
• Step 5: Eliminate One Fake Food
• Step 6: What Can I Improve in 15 Minutes?
• Step 7: Begin Work on a Real Food Project
• Step 8: Start Building a Real Food Pantry
• Step 9: Do You Have Kitchen Gaps?
• Step 10: List Your Routines
• Step 11: Expand Your Real Food Knowledge
• Step 12: Find Your Real Food Tribe

Danish Dough Mixing Whisks
"This little tool is one of those super cheap kitchen items that makes life so much easier. If you are mixing doughs by hand from time to time pick one of these up. "
Check out Danish Dough Mixing Whisks on Amazon >

Just a quick note this morning to let everyone know that my kitchen tour is online on Cheeseslave’s site! This is so exciting! If you’ve ever been curious to see my kitchen now is your chance! Lots of pics of my pantry, equipment, refrigerator, chickens and coop and more .

Granny’s Vital Vittles Real Food Kitchen Tour

Today we are going over the final step in The Granny Plan! Yaaaayyy!!! It’s been a wild 12 weeks and we’ve come from the very most basic kitchen routines to handling complex kitchen projects. We’ve gone from 0 to 100 mph in just 3 short months! Give yourself a well deserved pat on the back for persisting and making it all the way thru the whole plan! Our final step is the little piece of the puzzle that helps give these habits stickiness. And know I don’t mean like honey sticky, I mean habits-that-stick kind of stickiness.

Find Your Real Food Tribe

Our final routine is one of connecting with others that share your interest in real food. It’s really hard to go it alone forever in doing something so totally different from what everyone else does. Gradually loneliness and pressure from the crowd will start to wear you down. You need the help and support a real food tribe can give you! You need people around who will congratulate you on your latest recipe. People who will help you when you can’t seem to locate a good source for milk. People who understand how it feels to swim against the tide. People you can commiserate with. Those people will be your own personal tribe, a wellspring of support for any difficulties you encounter while making the switch.

Real Life vs. Online Tribes

Really there is no vs. here ’cause you will probably want to have both if you can find it. My own main support for eating real food comes from my real food tribe of the Village Green Network Bloggers, the most knowledgeable and supportive group of gals anyone could wish for! And the best part is each one of them helps and supports their own tribe of readers who can share their questions and concerns on their Facebook pages. Instant community for you! My own Facebook tribe gets together daily to share tips, tricks, concerns, victories and setbacks. We have a lot of fun and learn a lot too … I’d love for you to join us by liking my Facebook page … then you can be part of the fun too!

Real life tribes are a bit tougher for all of us. Some are lucky enough to live near a very active WAPF chapter, others participate in a Paleo group or the Slow Food movement. Some are able to make a few good local friends by commenting on various bloggers Facebook pages and learning who amongst the readers are close by. Or you may be blessed with some of your friends or family taking a strong interest in changing to real food.

Wherever you can find a real food friend find them and quick! Their help and support can really make all the difference, adding joy to what could become a chore without them. What would we all do without our friends?

Do this week:

• Like my Facebook page and begin reading the various questions and comments.
• Pick a few other bloggers Facebook pages to follow too.
• Just listen for awhile and check out the tips and resources others share. Or dive right in and share some yourself if you feel ready.
• Check out the Weston Price local chapter finder to see if there is a group near you. If so give the leader a call and see what activities they may have planned.

And to review the prior weeks to-dos:

This week we are:

• Step 1 – Making buttered veggies every night.
• Step 2 – Making a simple main dish five nights a week.
• Step 3 – Clean up the kitchen as you go.
• Step 4 – Taking care of ourselves by noticing times when you could be resting if you choose, keeping broth on hand and taking our cod liver oil .
• Step 5 – Finding another fake food in your kitchen and working out a plan to replace it.
• Step 6 – Continue working on a list of short 15-minute things we can do to improve our diet.
• Step 7 – Doing the next step of our Real Food Project.
• Step 8 – Continue to build your real food pantry.
• Step 9 – Ponder any further adjustments needed for your specific circumstances.
• Step 10 – Review your list of routines.
• Step 11 – Do your next bit of real food reading.
• Step 12 – Getting started with your online and real life communities.

And We Are Done!

Are we done with learning about the ins-and-outs of real food? Not by a long shot! But we are done learning the basic habits and routines that will give structure and body to our efforts to feed ourselves and our families well. Continue to practice these habits and you’ll find your skill and knowledge deepening. Then one day you’ll find someone is asking you all the questions and you have all the answers! You’ll find that you have in fact become a Modern Day Granny Woman!

What do you think of The Granny Plan now that you’ve completed all the steps? Anything you would add? Anything you’d leave out? Don’t be shy, let me know what you think in the comments below.

Just Getting Started?

This post is part of a series. It’s important to start with the first post and work your way thru step by step. If you’d like to get a general overview of where we’re going with “The Granny Plan” you can subscribe to my blog post update list and you’ll be able to download “10 Steps to Cooking Like a Modern Day Granny”. We’ll be very loosely following the steps in that booklet, adding and taking away as it feels right. There are a few steps I plan to change up, but I’ll leave that as a surprise .

Links to the rest of the series:

• Getting Started
• Step 1: It All Starts With Buttered Carrots …
• Step 2: Our First Main Dish
• Step 3: Clean As You Go
• Step 4: Feed Yourself First
• Step 5: Eliminate One Fake Food
• Step 6: What Can I Improve in 15 Minutes?
• Step 7: Begin Work on a Real Food Project
• Step 8: Start Building a Real Food Pantry
• Step 9: Do You Have Kitchen Gaps?
• Step 10: List Your Routines
• Step 11: Expand Your Real Food Knowledge
• Step 12: Find Your Real Food Tribe

Bread and Crackers
"Bread and crackers made without all the nasties like PUFA hydrogenated oils and preservatives."
Check out Bread and Crackers on Village Green Marketplace >

Welcome to Scratch Cookin’ Tuesday here at Granny’s Vital Vittles! This is a real food carnival where those who blog about real food issues come together to link up their popular posts and their favorite “from scratch” recipes.

Feel free to link up your real food recipe posts, your take on real food news, your opinions on real food and health related matters, and issues related to small scale farming and local food. Can’t wait to see what everyone links!

Guidelines for Participating

• Please link up your blog post using the Linky Tools widget below. If you are posting a recipe, only Real Food recipes are permitted please! This means no processed food ingredients with the possible of exception of unbleached white flour and some sugar as concessions to Grandma’s cooking. Please no Velveeta, Crisco, canned soups, Jello, evaporated milk or Bisquick, no soy or margarine. Posts that do not qualify as Real Food will be deleted.
• Always link to the URL of your blog post and not your home page.
• Don’t forget to link to this post from your blog post and leave a comment.

So here we go! Let’s link!

This is the next to the last step of The Granny Plan! We have come so far over the past 3 months! Making plans and doing them, lots of meals made and kitchens cleaned. We have new plans for projects we want to tackle and have eliminated many toxic processed foods from our cupboards! So what’s left to do? It feels like all the wheels are in motion and the only thing to do is keep on keepin’ on. We’ll continue to work on getting more real food into our lives with our projects and 15 minute tasks. At this stage of the game it’s mostly about refinements. Refining and building your knowledge of what good food is.

Refining Your Real Food Knowledge

After 3 months you may be working with a simple framework of understanding what real food really is. Or maybe not! Maybe you started The Granny Plan after extensive and deep study of the best real food books and websites. Either way there is always room to grow in your knowledge of what good wholesome food is and how to make it affordable and delectable.

The toxic food environment we live in is ever changing with new additives, new GMO products, labeling law changes and new food sources coming up all the time. Keeping up with it all requires an ongoing commitment to following the food news. It’s not really a one time deal where you learn and it stays the same forever.

Make Reading a Routine Part of your Week

You’re probably already spending some part of you time reading all the real food blogs to keep up with the latest in the real food news. Maybe you have some of the staple books on your shelf like Nourishing Traditions, Eat Fat, Lose Fat and The Art of Fermentation. I have all of these but really, how much time have I devoted to really diving in and getting more from them? Not enough I think to really take away all these great books have to offer!

Think About Your Food Knowledge Shortcomings

If you’re anything like me you’ll want to read the same kinds of stuff every time. Probably this kind of reading is about things you’re already strong in. Say, in my case I love reading about saving money and resources for finding real food. As for what I’m not strong in, say pure raw cooking skill, well that always gets shortchanged . I’m always saying that I’ll spend more time reviewing my cookbooks but it always seems to be last. I’m committing to making it first! Whenever I devote time to learning more about what I’m less skilled and less interested in it always pays off.

Do this week:

• Add a short reading time to your routine list. However much time you can set aside and will enjoy.
• Do your first weeks reading.

And to review the prior weeks to-dos:

This week we are:

• Step 1 – Making buttered veggies every night.
• Step 2 – Making a simple main dish five nights a week.
• Step 3 – Clean up the kitchen as you go.
• Step 4 – Taking care of ourselves by noticing times when you could be resting if you chose, keeping broth on hand and taking our cod liver oil .
• Step 5 – Finding another fake food in your kitchen and working out a plan to replace it.
• Step 6 – Continue working on a list of short 15-minute things we can do to improve our diet.
• Step 7 – Doing the next step of our Real Food Project.
• Step 8 – Continue to build your real food pantry.
• Step 9 – Ponder any further adjustments needed for your specific circumstances.
• Step 10 – Review your list of routines.
• Step 11 – Do your first weeks reading.

Just About There!

With this week it’s been 11 weeks of new habit forming! Wondering what comes next? Oh, I have some more goodies in store to help you work through The Granny Plan in your own way and time. Looking forward to sharing it with you!

What kind of reading do you like to do? What kind do you find that you avoid? What are your strengths as far as real food knowledge goes? How about weaknesses?

Just Getting Started?

This post is part of a series. It’s important to start with the first post and work your way thru step by step. If you’d like to get a general overview of where we’re going with “The Granny Plan” you can subscribe to my blog post update list and you’ll be able to download “10 Steps to Cooking Like a Modern Day Granny”. We’ll be very loosely following the steps in that booklet, adding and taking away as it feels right. There are a few steps I plan to change up, but I’ll leave that as a surprise .

Links to the rest of the series:

• Getting Started
• Step 1: It All Starts With Buttered Carrots …
• Step 2: Our First Main Dish
• Step 3: Clean As You Go
• Step 4: Feed Yourself First
• Step 5: Eliminate One Fake Food
• Step 6: What Can I Improve in 15 Minutes?
• Step 7: Begin Work on a Real Food Project
• Step 8: Start Building a Real Food Pantry
• Step 9: Do You Have Kitchen Gaps?
• Step 10: List Your Routines

Nuts, Nut Butters and Seeds
"Sources for nuts, peanut butter and assorted nut butters and seeds."
Check out Nuts, Nut Butters and Seeds on Village Green Marketplace >

This post is shared at Made by You Monday, Homestead Barnhop, Weekend Gourmet, Thank Goodness It’s Monday and Make Your Own Monday, Fat Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, The Gathering Spot, The Polivka Family, Anti-Procrastination Tuesday, Hearth and Soul, TALU Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Fresh Foods Linkup, Cast Party Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, Tasty Traditions, Thank Your Body Thursday, Link Love, Old Fashioned Friday, Sustainable Living Linkup and Fresh Bites Friday.

It’s time again for another months Crazy Quilt of Love! Man, has this month whipped past me! Seems like it was just yesterday I was working on last months links. April has been a rather tough month for our family. My Mother suffered a minor stroke and I spent a week at my parent’s home helping her during her recovery. She is doing very well now. Thank you to all for your prayers and well wishes!

I haven’t had a lot of time this month for reading so my list is a bit shorter than usual. Enjoy!

On Taking Care of Yourself

Sleep – Sleep is HUGE in improving your health! Really, this cannot be overstated. If you’re having sleep issues you should check out this post on naturally increasing your melatonin. Melatonin is key to a good nights rest.

Hair Care – Are you sick of paying outrageous prices for shampoo that is loaded with chemical additives? Me too! This post from Our Heritage of Health shares some ideas from the past on doing without shampoo.

Dry Skin – This recipe for bag balm, or beef tallow balm is a real lifesaver. A commercial version of this is a big seller at the local feed store. Great help for hands that do hard work!

Salt – I tend to forget for some reason how many people still think salt is the devil when it comes to healthy eating. Not the case at all! Salt is necessary and vital to health. Wars have been fought over access to it. It’s that vital. You can learn more about it in this post is salt really bad for you?

Transitioning to Real Food – We have a kindred spirit here in this post on how to eat real food. Real Food Eater is another believer in the baby step plan to getting more and more real food into your family’s life!

Ingredients

Love posts about individual ingredients! I think they really help clear away some of the fog by focusing in detail on the pros and cons, ins and outs of just one thing. I haven’t written one of these for a while but now that The Granny Plan series is finishing up I hope to get a one or two out in the coming weeks. In the meantime you can check out my ingredients page as well as these awesome ingredient posts!

Almond Flour – In the real food world you’ll see a lot of recipes calling for almond flour. And I mean a lot! Why is that and is almond flour something you should strongly consider as a replacement for wheat flour? I tend to think not. My gut feel is to stick with the traditional ingredients unless I have a very compelling reason to switch like food allergy. They have a long history of providing good nutrition and are usually the least expensive options. Empowered Sustenance lays out a detailed case for moderation in the use of almond flour that I’m in agreement with.

If you’re looking to keep food costs under control you may be considering adding a vegetarian meal or two to the weekly roundup at your house. Hannah at Healy Real Food Vegetarian shares this post with us on several vegetarian foods that are highly processed that she would never eat. It’s a good primer on what to avoid when putting together real food vegetarian dishes.

Easy-Living Granny Style

Chickens – I’m always amazed when people think chickens are vegetarians! In fact chickens will eat just about anything smaller than them and even bigger critters if they’ll hold still long enough . Check out this post on what exactly do chickens eat?

Dog Care – This is true for cats as well, though I suspect cats don’t like it as well as dogs do. Cod liver oil is the best supplement for your dog.

Cooking less – Great tips here on how to reduce your time in the kitchen!

Recipes – These little butter treats are just pure genius! So easy to make and great for kids. And Homemade Mommy shares this easy method to make cultured butter a delicious change from sweet butter.

What did you find that you loved in April?

Water Purification
"Equipment to help purify your water."
Check out Water Purification on Village Green Marketplace >

Welcome to Scratch Cookin’ Tuesday here at Granny’s Vital Vittles! This is a real food carnival where those who blog about real food issues come together to link up their popular posts and their favorite “from scratch” recipes.

Feel free to link up your real food recipe posts, your take on real food news, your opinions on real food and health related matters, and issues related to small scale farming and local food. Can’t wait to see what everyone links!

Guidelines for Participating

• Please link up your blog post using the Linky Tools widget below. If you are posting a recipe, only Real Food recipes are permitted please! This means no processed food ingredients with the possible of exception of unbleached white flour and some sugar as concessions to Grandma’s cooking. Please no Velveeta, Crisco, canned soups, Jello, evaporated milk or Bisquick, no soy or margarine. Posts that do not qualify as Real Food will be deleted.
• Always link to the URL of your blog post and not your home page.
• Don’t forget to link to this post from your blog post and leave a comment.

So here we go! Let’s link!

As of last week we now have LOTS of things going on everyday, don’t we? Shopping, making meals, special projects, supplements, etc. It’s beginning to feel kinda unwieldy isn’t it? So this week we’re going to work on making sure we have the all the things we are doing noted down somewhere where you’ll see them often. So this step short and sweet .

Too many things to keep track of in your head

We’ve reached the point where keeping up with everything that needs to be done in The Granny Plan is getting difficult to keep in mind as you go thru your day. What we need now is a way of having the things we need to be doing brought to mind right at the time we can do them. Something that will remind us of each day’s task as it comes up but not burden us with reviewing the whole list each time we look at it.

Pick your Tool

Simple lists are one way to go. Up till now we’ve been keeping track of a few of The Granny Plan steps with lists … lists of project steps and lists of 15 minute tasks. Works out pretty well for things that only happen once. But it tends to breakdown a bit when you have things that need to be done once a week or every month … recurring tasks, you know?

Then there are index cards. Cards are great at keeping just the tasks you need to do right now in front of you. You don’t need to see the entire list of to-do’s which can be pretty overwhelming at times. The Sidetracked Home Executives describe their index card system in this book on housekeeping, but it could easily apply to real food cooking too!

I use paper lists for just a few things really. Mostly when I’m at the very beginning of a very large project I’ll write out the steps on paper mostly just to help me think . For everyday tasks I prefer software to help me out since scheduling recurring tasks is so enormously helpful. Remember the Milk is easy to use and free! I’ve used it from time to time. There is Google Tasks too. Right now I’m using OmniFocus to help.

Any of these tools will get you to a pretty good place organization wise. Since I’m something of an organizer geek I love to play with them, compare features and switch from time to time. Unless your like me though it’s best to pick one and stick with it. If you switch too much you lose all of the time-saving benefits of the list to spending time figuring out how to use the tool. So pick something that makes sense to you and stay with it.

Do this week:

• Review a few tool prospects for keeping your list of routines.
• Enter all your routines into the most promising one this week.
• Plan on reviewing your lists every week.

And to review the prior weeks to-dos:

This week we are:

• Step 1 – Making buttered veggies every night.
• Step 2 – Making a simple main dish five nights a week.
• Step 3 – Clean up the kitchen as you go.
• Step 4 – Taking care of ourselves by noticing times when you could be resting if you chose, keeping broth on hand and taking our cod liver oil .
• Step 5 – Finding another fake food in your kitchen and working out a plan to replace it.
• Step 6 – Continue working on a list of short 15-minute things we can do to improve our diet.
• Step 7 – Doing the next step of our Real Food Project.
• Step 8 – Continue to build your real food pantry.
• Step 9 – Ponder any further adjustments needed for your specific circumstances.
• Step 10 – Make a list of all your routines using the most promising tool you find.

Are You Feeling Like a Granny Woman?

With this week it’s been 10 weeks of new habit forming! Do you feel like a Modern Day Granny Woman With all this great new stuff happening in the kitchen I imagine you do! Share any cool tools you find to help with listing all these new routines so you’ll be reminded of the days tasks in the comments below.

Just Getting Started?

This post is part of a series. It’s important to start with the first post and work your way thru step by step. If you’d like to get a general overview of where we’re going with “The Granny Plan” you can subscribe to my blog post update list and you’ll be able to download “10 Steps to Cooking Like a Modern Day Granny”. We’ll be very loosely following the steps in that booklet, adding and taking away as it feels right. There are a few steps I plan to change up, but I’ll leave that as a surprise .

Links to the rest of the series:

• Getting Started
• Step 1: It All Starts With Buttered Carrots …
• Step 2: Our First Main Dish
• Step 3: Clean As You Go
• Step 4: Feed Yourself First
• Step 5: Eliminate One Fake Food
• Step 6: What Can I Improve in 15 Minutes?
• Step 7: Begin Work on a Real Food Project
• Step 8: Start Building a Real Food Pantry
• Step 9: Do You Have Kitchen Gaps?
• Step 10: List Your Routines

Bormioli Rocco Fido Jars
"Great for fermenting and general storage. I use these and Le Parfait jars exclusively as my fermentation vessels. I also have quite a few doing duty storing things like rice, dried beans, spices, etc."
Check out Bormioli Rocco Fido Jars on Amazon >

This post is shared at Sunday School, Made By You Monday, Homestead Barn Hop, Thank Goodness It’s Monday, Fat Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, The Gathering Spot, Family Table Tuesday, Anti-Procrastination Tuesday, Hearth and Soul, TALU Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesday, Works for Me Wednesday, Whole Foods Wednesday, Cast Party Wednesday, Simple Lives Thursday, Tasty Traditions and Well Fed Wednesday.

Welcome to Scratch Cookin’ Tuesday here at Granny’s Vital Vittles! This is a real food carnival where those who blog about real food issues come together to link up their popular posts and their favorite “from scratch” recipes.

Feel free to link up your real food recipe posts, your take on real food news, your opinions on real food and health related matters, and issues related to small scale farming and local food. Can’t wait to see what everyone links!

Guidelines for Participating

• Please link up your blog post using the Linky Tools widget below. If you are posting a recipe, only Real Food recipes are permitted please! This means no processed food ingredients with the possible of exception of unbleached white flour and some sugar as concessions to Grandma’s cooking. Please no Velveeta, Crisco, canned soups, Jello, evaporated milk or Bisquick, no soy or margarine. Posts that do not qualify as Real Food will be deleted.
• Always link to the URL of your blog post and not your home page.
• Don’t forget to link to this post from your blog post and leave a comment.

So here we go! Let’s link!

We’ve come very far in “The Granny Plan” over the past couple of months! In the beginning there was just you and your kitchen in whatever shape it was in. You have systematically brought some structure and routine to your kitchen … I’m really happy for you and so proud! Now that we are working our way toward the end of the series we need to consider any kitchen gaps.

What are Kitchen Gaps?

Since this is a program that is structured very generally to fit everyone there are bound to be gaps. Things that apply to you and your family and nobody else really. For instance, suppose someone in your home has diabetes or a severe food allergy. Then the food coming out of your kitchen will need to be adjusted for your situation. Maybe there are some adjustments to your pantry or your routine for cooking meals.

Or say you have a shift job. You work 12 hour days 4 days on 3 days off. Or your spouse does. You most likely can’t or don’t want to cook much on those days. If so then you’ll need to work out a plan that allows you to pre-prepare food for the days you have to work a lot. Or if you have a long commute. You’ll want to adjust to allow for quick breakfasts and easy to carry lunches that don’t skimp on the nutrition.

Or say it’s you that is sick. If you’re already ill with a chronic ailment you’ll want to approach The Granny Plan at your own pace. And you’ll need to make adjustments to help deal with any bad days where you just can’t get much done. Cooking ahead a bit when you have a good day is helpful, for instance. Making freezer meals works out well.

Let’s Check for Gaps

At any point in reading The Granny Plan have you thought “Well, that’s nice for others but not for me”? These spots are where you’ll find gaps. Take a few minutes to review the past week’s steps. Go back to the first step and review taking note of anytime you think, “I can’t do that because of X”. Write it down so you don’t forget.

Consider everything you’ve written down point by point. Ask yourself these questions:

• Is my “not for me” feeling legit? – Please don’t be offended by this one ! We all have our own little ways of fooling ourselves when there is something we just don’t feel like doing or have a task to do that we simply hate doing.
• Does this task really apply to me and my situation? – Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe you live alone and taking care of yourself is job one right now. So the task of “Feeding Yourself First” is kinda a no-brainer for you. Maybe your’s or your spouses work schedule is random and just weird. Maybe making dinner every day isn’t really going to work when you don’t know that you’ll be home. Maybe planning to make double batches of something for dinner one day and freezing the leftovers for dinner on some unknown wild schedule day works better for you.
• If it does apply but still feels kinda off consider what adjustment you could make. – You’ll want to come up with a slightly different way to accomplish the intended goal. Say veggies for dinner, our very first task. Let’s pretend you have a die-hard veggie hater and let’s say for fun that it’s your husband . If you start out serving veggies with his nightly pizza and beer you believe he will think you’ve flipped you lid and will henceforth resist any and all efforts to change the family diet. So maybe you work on the veggies a little later and instead start on coming up with some man-hunger satisfying dishes to tempt him from the Dominoes pizza. Later once he’s used to the main dishes you can add some vegetable sides and see if he’ll try them.

Consider any Dietary Special Needs

If you need to think about this one you know it far better than I do . You’ve probably been thinking all along of ways to adjust for your dietary needs. In this step just pause and reflect on all the instances where you thought of some adjustment that needs to be made and take note of it.

Do this week:

• Review all the steps in The Granny Plan keeping an eye out for any little itch to make an adjustment. Write them down.
• Review your list using the questions above. Think thru any options you may have. Write them down.
• Add you adjustments to your project list. Decide on the the first task toward accomplishing it and do that task.

This week we are:

• Step 1 – Making buttered veggies every night.
• Step 2 – Making a simple main dish five nights a week.
• Step 3 – Clean up the kitchen as you go.
• Step 4 – Taking care of ourselves by noticing times when you could be resting if you chose, keeping broth on hand and taking our cod liver oil .
• Step 5 – Finding another fake food in your kitchen and working out a plan to replace it.
• Step 6 – Continue working on a list of short 15-minute things we can do to improve our diet. Come up with a new one every day. Act on them whenever you like.
• Step 7 – Doing the next step of our Real Food Project.
• Step 8 – Starting to build a real food pantry.
• Step 9 – Think thru any adjustments needed for your circumstances.

You’ve come a long way baby!

Just 3 more steps to go and you’ll be a proud graduate of The Granny Plan! Tell us what adjustments you know you’ll need to make in the comments below.

Just Getting Started?

This post is part of a series. It’s important to start with the first post and work your way thru step by step. If you’d like to get a general overview of where we’re going with “The Granny Plan” you can subscribe to my blog post update list and you’ll be able to download “10 Steps to Cooking Like a Modern Day Granny”. We’ll be very loosely following the steps in that booklet, adding and taking away as it feels right. There are a few steps I plan to change up, but I’ll leave that as a surprise .

Links to the rest of the series:

• Getting Started
• Step 1: It All Starts With Buttered Carrots …
• Step 2: Our First Main Dish
• Step 3: Clean As You Go
• Step 4: Feed Yourself First
• Step 5: Eliminate One Fake Food
• Step 6: What Can I Improve in 15 Minutes?
• Step 7: Begin Work on a Real Food Project
• Step 8: Start Building a Real Food Pantry
• Step 9: Do You Have Kitchen Gaps?
• Step 10: List Your Routines

The Art of Fermentation
"This is not one of those cookbooks you buy for the nice pictures and keep on your coffee table. This is a project manual. Fermentation is something you have to experience to understand, and Katz give you absolutely everything you need to get started. "
Check out The Art of Fermentation on Amazon >

This post is shared at Sunday School, Made by You Monday, Homestead Barnhop, Make your Own Monday, Fat Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, The Gathering Spot, Family Table Tuesday, TALU Tuesday, Real Food Wednesday, Party Wave Wednesday, Works for me Wednesday, Whole Foods Wednesday, Wednesday Fresh Foods Linkup, Simple Lives Thursday, Tasty Traditions, Thank Your Body Thursday and Well Fed Wednesday.