My Top 20 Favorites List
Do you ever wonder what other people buy? Don’t worry, I can’t tell who buys what, but I can tell what people buy when they click over to Amazon from my site. I was happy to see that most of the items on this list truly seem to reflect what my blog is all about: REAL FOOD! And I love knowing that what you read here motivates you to learn more. I don’t think the item in the number one spot will surprise you…
THANK YOU
A big thank you to anyone who has shopped at Amazon through my site. If you feel you’ve benefited from my blog, either by learning more about traditional nutritious foods, or in finding new recipes or meal ideas, I hope you’ll consider Christmas shopping that way. It all costs the same for you no matter how you enter, but I’ll get a small commission.
Here are the top 20 sellers through my site at Amazon so far in 2009:
20. The Crazy Makers: How the Food Industry Is Destroying Our Brains and Harming Our Children
19. Fireproof
18. The Maker's Diet
17. The Vegetarian Myth: Food, Justice, and Sustainability
16. Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods
15. The Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook: Healthy Cooking & Good Living with Pasture Raised Foods
14. The Real Food Revival
13. Nutrition and Physical Degeneration – While this one isn’t the easiest to read, it’s definitely one you should add to your list. You’ll love finding out what foods so greatly impacted the health of those in the cultures Dr. Price studied.
12. French Women Don't Get Fat
11. No Greater Love
10. The 6-Week Cure for the Middle-Aged Middle: The Simple Plan to Flatten Your Belly Fast!
9. The Untold Story of Milk, Revised and Updated: The History, Politics and Science of Nature's Perfect Food: Raw Milk from Pasture-Fed Cows
8. Fat Head DVD
7. Cure Tooth Decay: Heal And Prevent Cavities With Nutrition – It’s not surprising that this topic would grab the attention of so many readers, since it is often what initially draws people to the Real Food movement.
6. Cuisinart 2-Quart Automatic Frozen Yogurt, Sorbet, and Ice Cream Maker
5. Expeller Pressed Coconut Oil
4. Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats – Don’t you love the politically incorrect title? 🙂 This one was written by none other than Sally Fallon & Mary Enig, so you know it’s good.
3. Real Food for Mother and Baby: The Fertility Diet, Eating for Two, and Baby's First Foods
2. Real Food: What to Eat and Why – A super clear and easy-to-read book on the basics of Real Food. This book would be a great gift for beginners.
1. Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats – Surprised? Neither was I. Mine has stains, worn pages and notes written all over it. It’s not only recipes, but it’s also like an encyclopedia. It is well-loved and an absolute must-have for those learning about traditional foods for the first time as I was…and still am.
The Diaper Diaries says
Thanks for the list. I am slowly, ever so slowly inching towards reading them 🙂
Anna says
I use Shannon Hayes’ Grassfed Gourmet Cookbook all the time. I know she’s a kindred spirit, as I’ve met her. Turns out, my dad had known Shannon and her parents for many years! It’s a small world indeed. She interviewed my dad for her Ph.D. thesis when he was active in urban renewal issues in my hometown (he was a proponent of planning for Farmer’s Markets in urban downtown spaces).
Shannon’s parents have a pasture-based poly-cultural farm in the “breadbasket of the American Revolution” only 40 miles from where I grew up. Her dad is retired from an SUNY agriculture college. She knows her stuff!
Shannon also has another great meat book that I also use all the time when cooking outdoors, The Farmer and the Grill, which is not available on Amazon. This book can be purchased via Shannon’s website, http://www.grassfedcooking.com .
Soli says
On the subject of canned fish, I’ve had good experience so far with King Oscar brand sardines. Just had a tin in olive oil last week and it was extremely delicious, and the oil didn’t taste wrong. And I am pretty sensitive now to variation in olive oil.
Michael says
Paula,
Thanks. I thought that is what you probably meant. I don’t know if the olive oil is “fake” just that it is the cheapest of the variety which is poor food even when bought as a stand alone product. It has been many years since I looked at this so whether they use olive oil that has been “stretched” with other oils I don’t know at the moment.
The best way is to buy water packed. I haven’t seen it for awhile but at one time you could buy sardines in their own oil. Maybe some esoteric online retailer offers such a product these days.
Paula says
Michael, they will not ship to Alaska. Thats the problem. Or Hawaii for that matter.
We were just trying to get those kinds of seafood, even the ones in water through Amazon, because the stores up here only stock ones in cottenseed or soy oil.
Do you have proof that the olive oil is fake in any of the brands?
Paula
Michael says
Hi, Paula
I’m not sure what you mean by not shipping food products. I’ve had a number of people order coconut milk (and even ghee) via my site using Amazon. If they don’t ship it why would they advertise it? Or do you mean something different?
By the way, I wouldn’t eat any fish canned in olive oil. The food is real but the oil definitely is not. 🙂
Paula says
I have to say it. Amazon is wonderful and horrible at the same time.
I live in the state of Alaska.
Did you know that they refuse to ship food products, and any item that has a warrenty?
We tried to order REAL sardines, oysters and clams, packed in olive oil, but no, that is not allowed!!!!!
Sighhhh……
They are great for ordering books though :o)
Paula
Soli says
Oooh, thank you for letting me know that Kelly, I was unaware!
The recipe I use for my standard bread is the first one in the sourdough book I mentioned above. It called for white flour but I just use regular whole wheat and the breads are consistently delicious and everyone loves them. Not to mention being impressed since they are sourdough.
To be fair I am also an admitted great baker and have a very good natural hand with it. Still follow recipes but they never fail me.
KitchenKop says
Soli, you mentioned up a bit in the comments that you don’t use sprouted flour for your sourdoughs yet, but you actually wouldn’t want to because a true sourdough breaks down the phytic acid and partially digests the grain as it ferments. You can use your sprouted flour for other stuff. 🙂
It’s the whole grain sourdough I’d REALLY like to figure out. All I want is a good loaf that is soft on the inside, a bit chewy on the outside, and that cuts up well for sandwiches… It drives me crazy that it’s been so tricky to figure that out. I have new starters waiting to try that CFH sent me a while back, but since I almost burned the house down with the last starter, I haven’t been ready to go at it again. (https://kellythekitchenkop.com/2009/06/real-food-mishaps-real-food-wednesday.html) Dang, that was way back in June, guess I’d better get back to my experimenting.
Kelly
Soli says
No, nothing yet but I will keep an eye out. What I should do is pester my relatives in Sweden and see if they know anything.
Oh, and in my travels today (I work in a library), I just spied this: Free For All: Fixing School Food In America by Janet Poppendieck. I doubt it will cover TF style nutrition but right now I’d be thrilled if fast food were not in schools. Still kills me that at my niece’s pre-school, the lunches they offer (if parents want to pay and not pack food for their kids) is almost always a branded fast food.
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS says
Soli – I have that one – got it from CFH too. 🙂 (Along with the NE starter.) I don’t want to bash that booklet because I have learned much from it – but still I’m looking for traditional whole-grain sourdough recipes and ideas in a comprehensive book. Have you heard of anything like that? Thanks for your help. 🙂
Soli says
Wardeh, gotcha. The one I mentioned is Baking with Sourdough by Sara Pitzer, published by Storey Publishing. I need to go through the publisher’s site because I recall seeing some other interesting items available.
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS says
I have been successfully using sourdough – I know you can do it, Kelly! I know what it feels like to bomb and then have to wait awhile before you have the gumption to try again. 🙂 I think I messed up my sourdough question. What I wanted was a book recommendation, but it came out sounding like I wanted a bread recipe. Oops! I was hoping you’d have a book suggestion on sourdough – I would like to read more about it and get more ideas of its uses – but in a traditional ways.
Elizabeth from The Nourished Life says
You know, I never even heard of the Fat Head DVD? I just put in our Netflix queue. I’d love to see some media attention that’s not so focused on low-fat! I love when I can force my family to absorb good information about food through movies – since I can’t get them to sit down with Nourishing Traditions for hours at a time like me. 😉
Soli says
On the sourdough, I got a New England dry starter from Cultures for Health earlier this year and it’s still going strong. When you get the kit it comes with a little booklet on sourdough breads, including the traditional fermenting method.
Incidentally, for getting sourdough, when I visited my best friend earlier this year (right after getting my culture and starting to make it), we played science experiment to see if we could catch wild yeast in her house. Oh yes we did indeed, and that pint jar was just too small even after sitting for only 24 hours the first time. Probably helps that it was late May in Florida so the heat helped. Then we had to explain to her husband that the jar in the fridge was NOT hooch. (He works as a prison guard.) Her culture is still going strong as well. Though I confess we both still work with conventional flour and not sprouted. I like King Arthur flour.
KitchenKop says
Wardeh, I had a few bombs a while back and haven’t gotten the motivation to try sourdough bread again. But I WILL, I reeeeally want to master it!
Kelly
Wardeh @ GNOWFGLINS says
Fun to read this list! I haven’t not read some of the books on your list, so thanks for mentioning them! I have been wanting to read “The Devil’s In The Milk” (not sure I got it right) – did that book make it on the list at all of what people buy? Also, do you have a recommendation for a traditional sourdough bread? So many sourdough books I thumb through at the book store feature short rises, white flour, and/or addition of commercial yeast.
Jen says
Interesting… thanks for sharing this. I just did some major Christmas shopping at Amazon, and clicked over from your site before ordering. It’s mostly for my 2 year old son, so none of it is real food related. 🙂