Introducing the Real Food Forager Blog

Jill Tieman, the Suburban Food Forager

The Wise Traditions Conference session on Social Media inspired a lot of Weston A. Price members to start blogging their passion. Today, we meet one of them.

Why I Blog Real Food

by Guest Blogger, Dr. Jill Tieman, Realfoodforager.com

I am a real food forager. I admit it. Not the kind that that rummages around in the forest. Oh no. You wouldn’t catch me getting my hands dirty or, heaven forbid, touch a worm. Yuk! No, I am a modern day, suburban real food forager.  Even before I discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation and found out what good nutrition really was, I spent a lot of time seeking out the very best quality food for myself and for my family.

Similarly, I will still go to one store for the freshest produce, another store for the healthiest eggs and another store for grass-fed meat. If the first store doesn’t have good produce, or it is not organic, I know of yet another store to visit for that one necessary item. You get the picture. After a while I realized that I had to consolidate my foraging, if not in the interest of my sanity, at least in the interest of going green.

Foraging on the Great South Bay, in Suffolk County New York is easy. It is a suburban environment with plenty of conventional super markets, as well as a Whole Foods, a Wild by Nature, a Trader Joe’s and two smaller local health food stores, all within a 20 mile radius. Shopping is great.

I have also learned to buy in bulk when I can, in order to save money, time and gasoline, and to have enough staples in the house that will last, should a blizzard hit, and I get the urge to bake or cook while I am  confined inside.  I’ve also learned how to forage online for the specialty items necessary for traditional cooking as well as the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and the GAPS diet. You can find some resources for these items on the Real Food Forager resources page.

However, I have found that the very best quality foods comes directly from the farmer and that is why I founded The Great South Bay Chapter of the Weston A Price Foundation, with my co-leader, Rita. Through a great deal of effort, Rita organized and created a buyer’s club with a local farmer for fresh dairy, eggs and grassfed meats, as well as a Community Sponsored Agriculture (CSA) group with a local organic farmer. Now, she has opened a store, Rita’s Real Food.

Farm to consumer food is by far a win-win situation for all involved. It allows the farmer to directly sell to consumers and get a higher price for his/her goods. It allows the consumer to buy the highest quality and freshest possible products at reasonable prices. And equally as important, it cuts down on fossil fuel usage as well as pollution by eliminating shipping across the country.

As a Clinical Nutritionist/Chiropractor with a specialty in SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) and GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome), I found myself giving Weston Price Foundation, SCD or GAPS style advice again and again.

When I first discovered the work of Weston Price, Sally Fallon’s wonderful book Nourishing Traditions, and the Weston Price Foundation, I felt like I had come home. I felt that this is what nutrition REALLY is all about. It became clear to me that I needed a way to get this dietary information to people in a usable and concise outline without having to repeat myself again and again. I realized that if I used the format of a blog, it could reach a lot of people and also allow us to have a dialog.

Importantly, I can now refer people to my blog for the details they will need to be successful on these various diets. As a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader, it is also my goal to reach as many people as possible through my Real Food Forager blog in order to help them achieve vibrant health in our modern world.

My Real Food Forager blog will feature recipes that are gluten- and grain-free, dairy-free, sucrose-, starch-, and soy-free and appropriate for the SCD and GAPS diets. Head over my blog to find out about the dangers in our commercial food supply and their implications to our health, what good nutrition really is, and how to follow these restricted diets and still eat like a king!

Dr. Jill Tieman, the Real Food Forager

Dr. Jill Tieman is a Clinical Nutritionist/Chiropractor in Suffolk County, New York, with a  specialty in SCD (Specific Carbohydrate Diet) and GAPS (Gut and Psychology Syndrome) as well as Chapter Leader of the Great South Bay Chapter of the Weston Price Foundation. She is passionate about teaching people to heal themselves through real, nutrient dense and traditional foods.

At this past WAPF conference she learned about blogging and realized that this was a great way to use technology to communicate this critical information to consumers.

Hartkeisonline.com did a post that sent a YouTube video into orbit, about Jill’s co-chapter leader, Rita, and her battle with the school system over vaccines:  Are Parents Losing their Grip?

This post is part of the Real Food Wednesday blog carnival, click on over to Kelly the Kitchen Kop for more real food foraging!