In 2012, I embarked on a mission to make one new food from scratch each month. It was quite an adventure, and ever since, I have loved trying my hand at making new foods from time to time.
Not gonna lie. Sometimes, it’s really difficult – like puff pastry! Yikes!
But more often, it’s far easier than I would imagine.
Like when I had a hankering for nachos. Usually, I would just spread some chips on a baking sheet, shred cheese over the top, and pop it in the oven to melt.
But sometimes, I really crave that creamy dipping type of cheese.
Now, the nacho cheese available in jars at the store isn’t something I want in my body. One brand has more partially hydrogenated soybean oil and modified food starch than it had actual cheese! Yellow 5 & 6 and MSG are just a few more ingredients to avoid.
So instead, I did a quick internet search for a from-scratch recipe and found “5 Minute Nacho Cheese Sauce” at budgetbytes.com. I especially love the tips for success and options for switching up the recipe!
I made some minor modifications and came up with this, which is about right for a single serving:
– 1 Tbs. butter
– 1 Tbs. flour
– 1/2 c. milk (I used 2%)
– 3 oz. sharp cheddar cheese, shredded (it’s what I had)
– pinch of black pepper infused pink himalayan sea salt
– sprinkle of chili powder
You start with a roux – melt the butter and stir in the flour for a minute or so until it's cooked. Add the milk and whisk until the mixture has thickened. I've found that I need to cook on a bit higher heat to get this done. It will take forever on low to medium heat.
Last, stir in the cheese until melted and season. See? Simple!
Scoop it up with some minimal ingredients chips or go all out and top it with all the things.
I'm not going to claim it's healthy, but at least it's avoiding the artificial crap found in the jarred cheese.
And it absolutely satisfies my nacho cheese cravings and tastes so much better than my memories of the store bought version! Just another item I will be making myself from now on!
Is there a food you’ve discovered is better homemade than store-bought? Please share your recipe in the comments and inspire us!
Is there something you want to try? I'm happy to share a recipe if I have one!
It’s hard to say exactly when my natural health journey began.
What I consider the first “official” step was making foods from scratch, which seems almost poetic somehow.
I believe it was in 2011 when the news broke about the ingredients in the bread at a certain sandwich chain – ingredients that were also found in yoga mats.
Should anything in a yoga mat be in my sandwich? My thought was “no!”
That led to what was probably the first real step I took toward living more naturally – knowing what was going into the food I was consuming.
In 2012, I made a resolution to make one new food item from scratch each month.
I started with bread. Looking back, it probably wasn’t the easiest place to begin, but probably in part due to the fact that it’s the item which had inspired this mission in the first place, it seemed like a logical starting point for me.
It may not be as pretty as store-bought bread, but it tastes much better, and I can feel good about what’s in it!
I learned about yeast and proofing and different types of flours, and I realized that it wasn’t as difficult as I had anticipated. Sure, it took time – a lot of it! But much of it was time waiting for the dough to rise, and I could work on other things while I waited. I could only bake bread on days I didn’t work, but if you’ve ever eaten homemade bread fresh out of the oven, you know that it’s well worth it!
My other adventures that year included other bread items, such as burger buns, pita bread, and pizza crust, as well as things like peanut butter cups, jam, and more.
My advice if you’d like to take on making food from scratch? Start with what interests you, so you’ll be more likely to stick with it. For me, it was bread, crazy as that seems. For you, it might be something simpler, and that’s fantastic! Wherever you feel led to begin, start there. But don’t be afraid to try something more difficult. It’s all a journey, and what matters is the lessons you learn along the way.
If you'd like to start baking your own bread, this was the first recipe I tried, and it's still my base that I play around with.
And if you'd like to learn more about simple – and not as simple – swap-outs for common toxins, we talk about stuff like that all the time in my free Facebook group.
If you haven't heard of Misfits Market, it's a subscription service for groceries. They reroute items rejected by grocery stores for whatever reason – this might be a potato that's smaller than ideal or an apple that's a funny shape. Nothing wrong with them, but stores only want the most perfect specimens.
When I started with Misfits a few years ago, it was strictly organic produce, but it has expanded to include all kinds of groceries now, including meat, dairy, snacks, and pantry items.
I got produce boxes every other week for about six months before I had to cancel it. Long story short, I lived in South Dakota (where they didn't deliver to at the time) and worked in Minnesota (where they did), so I had boxes sent to the office. But delivery started becoming erratic, and I wasn't in the office every day, so I cancelled the service in spring of 2021. I was very sad!
Fast forward to last week. I really only go to the grocery store every 3-4 weeks, but I would run out of produce between trips. I checked to see if Misfits had started delivery to South Dakota yet, and they had!
So I ordered a box of all organic produce, especially items that are more difficult to find organic here in the dead of winter in northeastern South Dakota. I focused on some items included on the "Dirty Dozen" list of produce with the most pesticide residue – like strawberries, apples, and bell peppers that I want to be sure to buy organic.
My Produce Box
My box arrived right on schedule, and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality. The produce I got back in 2021 would often be obviously "imperfect" in some way – nothing inedible, just funny-looking.
This box, though, was nearly perfect. I got:
- 1 nice big pineapple
- 2 avocados that are still green and a few days from ripe
- 2 mangoes – maybe smaller than "normal" mangoes
- 3 bulbs of garlic
- A bag of Honeycrisp apples with no imperfections
- A bunch (three stalks) of perfect broccoli
- 1 big cauliflower that had only the most minimal brown spots
- A bag of perfect carrots
- 3 perfect romaine hearts
- A package of almost perfect strawberries – just a few a little underripe
- A bag of mini sweet peppers - a couple small ones and a couple curvy ones
All that near-perfect organic produce was around $60, counting shipping.
How I'm Using It
Now, if you're like me and want to use a produce box to make healthier food choices, here's where Misfits is great.
First, I wash it (I wash all produce I eat the skin of, even if I grew it in my own garden), and then, I peel/chop/cut everything that will keep that way.
So I left the pineapple, mangoes, avocados, and apples alone, but I cut the broccoli and cauliflower into florets. I cut the ends off the carrots and peeled them. I shredded the lettuce into bite-sized pieces, and I topped and cut the strawberries into quarters.
Taking the time to do this means I have everything ready to use when throwing together a meal, and most important (for me at least), I'm only getting the cutting board, knife, and peeler dirty once.
To use it, my goal is simply to use something from the box in each meal. This gets me constantly thinking about how to incorporate veggies and fruits into meals.
The day after I got the box, I had an apple with peanut butter for breakfast. For lunch, I made a salad with romaine, cauliflower, and carrots and topped it with some leftover chicken-bacon-ranch mixture from our wraps the evening before. I snacked on strawberries. And for supper, I roasted broccoli, peppers, carrots, cauliflower, and cabbage (which I already had) and tossed it all into some mac and cheese.
Voila! I went from hardly eating any fruits and veggies the previous several days to getting all those great nutrients.
Can You Benefit from Misfits Market?
If you're in the same boat as me and need a little inspiration to eat more fresh produce or if you have limited access to organic produce in your area, Misfits Market might be a good fit for you.
If you're ready to give Misfits Market a try, feel free to use my code: COOKWME-VF3YHB – it will get you and me both $10 off.
Questions You May Have
Since I have found the Misfits Market website to be incredibly frustrating, I'm going to answer a few of the questions I had and save you the digging around I had to do.
What kind of produce do they have?
This was one of my biggest concerns. I didn't want to sign up and find out they had a very limited selection, but I was surprised. I have gotten all the vegetables common to a small town in the upper Midwest, plus other items that are a bit more "exotic" or seasonal, depending on where you live – like mangoes, bok choy, multi-colored carrots, and more.
They won't have all items all the time, but there has always been an ample selection for me to choose from. No complaints on that score.
What does the subscription cost?
As of this writing, in March 2023, there are two subscription plans – $35-40 a week and $40-45 a week. It appears that for both of them, you must order a minimum of $49 per box.
I can't explain that. It makes no sense to me, but that's what I'm seeing. I'm only vouching for their produce. Their website has never impressed me.
There are taxes and shipping charges, too. My first box ended up being $66.00.
Can I skip weeks?
Yes, it's easy to skip weeks. In fact, all you have to do is not fill your cart up to the $49 minimum.
Be careful with this since they do automatically add some items to your cart. For my second box, it was about $10 short of that $49, but I can't guarantee that there wouldn't be enough to reach your minimum and process. You're probably safer to go in and request to skip a box.
Am I guaranteed to get everything I order?
No, items go out of stock and get removed from your box. I had zucchini on my order, but when the box shipped, I received a notification that the zucchini wasn't included, and I was not charged for it.
This doesn't bother me, but if you're absolutely counting on receiving an item, it could be inconvenient.
Is Misfits Market really cheaper than buying at the store?
I don't have access to a lot of organic produce, and I don't pay all that much attention to produce prices at the store, but I paid $5.53 for 2 pounds of Misfits Honeycrisp apples, and I think they're $7+ for organic at my store. I also paid $1.37 for a pound of carrots, and I believe conventional carrots are around 99 cents a pound at the store. These savings are offset by the shipping charges, but then, the convenience of having it delivered to your door is worth something, too.
Overall, if you're accustomed to buying conventional produce, you're not going to save money, and there may not even be a huge difference on organic once you factor in shipping, but if you're like me, expanding your choices for organic produce and having it delivered adds value beyond the price.
If you have a question I haven't answered, feel free to ask. I'll do my best to answer.
And if you're ready to order your first Misfits Market box, check out my code up above to get a discount.
Canned cream of chicken (or mushroom or celery or whatever) soup really has an unappealing look and feel coming out of the can. I think we all know that!
But how much do you know about what's really important – the ingredients that are in that can?
Our health and how we feel depend on what we're putting in and on our bodies, so let's investigate that cream of something soup.
