Crunchy Stewardship

Real-Bread Revolution: The Healing Power of Homemade Bread

• Katie Jones & Chrissy Rombach • Season 1 • Episode 4

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In this episode of Crunchy Stewardship, cousins Katie Fiola Jones and Chrissy Rombach discuss their journey into bread making and its surprising health benefits. Chrissy shares her experience with grinding wheat berries and how transitioning to homemade bread has significantly improved her gut health. The conversation expands to the broader topic of whole foods versus processed foods, touching on synthetic vitamins, food intolerances, and the pitfalls of manufactured nutrition. They offer practical tips for listeners to start making their food from scratch and emphasize the importance of intentionality in holistic living. Join their Facebook group, 'Crunchy Christian Mamas on a Budget,' to share recipes and continue the discussion.


Episode Takeaway:

Consider the ingredients in the bread and other processed foods you consume. Could making your own bread with freshly ground, quality wheat be a beneficial step towards better gut health and overall well-being?


Chapters: 

00:00 Welcome to Crunchy Stewardship

00:58 Our Passion For Bread

02:22 Chrissy's Bread Journey

04:04 The Benefits of Freshly Milled Wheat

08:07 Understanding Wheat & Flour

14:43 Exploring Gluten Free Diets

22:41 Homemade Ice Cream Adventures

25:15 Financial Decisions with Healthy Choices

33:50 Encouragement and Takeaways



Mentioned in this Episode:


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FREE How to Afford Non-Toxic Living Workbook: https://crunchystewardship.com/how-to-afford-non-toxic-living



Katie:

Hey, and welcome to Crunchy Stewardship. My name is Katie Fiola Jones.

Chrissy:

And my name is Chrissy Rombach. We are two cousins who are passionate about learning and and sharing knowledge to equip others to steward their spiritual, mental, physical, and financial health In order to honor God In every aspect of their lives.

Katie:

our podcast, we are taking a deep dive into what it means to steward our lives as God originally intended for us with the resources that God has given us. We will look at topics like food, medicine, finances, mental health, and lots more through a natural lens with a biblical foundation. So in today's episode, we are going to be talking about bread. And it's funny when we were coming up with a topic today to talk about. Both Chrissy and I really love making bread. I think maybe Chrissy more so but I think this episode is actually a very natural one for us to have because when Chrissy and I were first, Kind of talking about what we wanted to do with our podcast, or even just before we were talking about having a podcast in general. One of the conversations you and I had was all about bread, and I very vividly remember sitting on your parents' back patio about bread, and you were explaining to me how you now grind your own wheat berries and make bread

Chrissy:

I do.

Katie:

walk with our whole family, and you and I talked about bread for so long, and how grinding your own berries now has been like this wonderful treasure for you and your gut health even.

Chrissy:

It is, I, I'm very much in the camp that bread has healed my gut you will not hear anybody else make that claim.

Katie:

I feel talks about how

Chrissy:

how

Katie:

bread is ruining their gut and, and everybody like some sort of gluten intolerance yeah. chrissy, why don't you just share with everybody about your bread making and wheat berries and all the funness.

Chrissy:

Absolutely. So the process started right around the time my husband and I got married in 2022. we were trying our best, honestly, it was a one of our first steps in saving money. So I eat bread very regularly. I've always loved bread. you know, my breakfast usually would consist of eggs and toast and my lunch would generally consist of a sandwich, and that has kind of always been how I made my breakfast and lunch and my husband and I were looking at ways to cut down our spending and. I thought of the idea of making bread instead of buying bread. Now buying bread, it cost us about$4 a loaf. Um, with the brands that we bought, I thought I was buying a little bit of a healthier brand. then I looked at the ingredients and realized that I was wrong. It was not actually all that healthier, nonetheless, we looked at the price of making bread by just buying the raw ingredients and with regular flour from the grocery store. This was before our wheat grinding even started, with buying the raw ingredients to make bread instead of purchasing bread from the grocery store, it saved us. A dollar and a half per loaf. And so we decided, you know what? Let's just go ahead and buy it. Make start making our own bread because. Just to save money. You know, my husband was working, uh, kind of a hybrid job at the time, and so he could make bread easily at home. I was still a student and so I was in and outta the house frequently, Um, so we started that. It was working great. My gut originally loved it. It was doing fantastic. I felt better. I had more energy. I was less bloated. It was overall really good. And then about a year later we had moved to North Carolina and I was having a conversation with one of my patient's family members, and he was telling me that him and his wife have been milling their own wheat to make their bread at home with fresh ground wheat for 30 years. And I looked at this woman's medical history and she had nothing like hypertension.

Katie:

actually find this really fascinating'cause you and I have had a lot of conversations about the that you see at the hospital. And how so many of them come into the hospital and all they want is to be slapped with some kind of medication because that's what they think healthcare is. So it's actually very intriguing to me that your kind of crunchy journey also was propelled by somebody that you encountered in the hospital as a patient, this seems so counter to all of the other patients that you have dealt with. So, that's really kind of fascinating

Chrissy:

Now, mind you, she was not in the hospital because she was actually sick, she had a hip replacement. So, my patient's husband, he went home that night and he actually, copied a paper in their like recipe book and gave me a copy of their bread recipe that they use for their whole wheat bread, and then gave me a link on Amazon to buy this wheat mill. It's a countertop sized wheat grinder that they've been using for 30 years. And I went home, I told Max all about it. and he thought it was a great idea. So we did the math again with. Buying the wheat berries instead of flour. It came back to about the same price as buying that loaf of bread from the grocery store, you know,$3.50,$4.00 a loaf. and we buy the wheat berries, actually funny enough off of Amazon in 25 pound bags. And so they're very large. They last a long time. we only have to buy them like every three months or so. So the initial upfront cost was a little bit higher since we had to buy the wheat grinder also. But once we started milling our own wheat and then using that flour to make the bread, my gut health improved tremendously again. Now mind you, at this point in my health journey, I was still eating Chick-fil-A probably three times a month. That obviously was not helping with my gut health, but I was suddenly able to tolerate going to Chick-fil-A

Katie:

more

Chrissy:

so than I was before. Before, changing the wheat in our bread, I would go to Chick-fil-A for dinner and really not have energy to do anything else for the rest of the night. And I'd be hungry again before bed. And then after changing the wheat in our bread, then I was able to go to Chick-fil-A and afterwards, didn't feel nearly as bloated and, didn't feel like the sluggish effects that I usually felt from going to Chick-fil-A. Now, is it still good for me? No. Does it still give me tachycardia? Yes. But, I was convinced that the wheats that we had been using in our bread had fortified my gut so that I was more able to tolerate the crap food when I ate the crap food. And so I was really curious as to why exactly that is. And I did a little bit of research into why when I take the whole wheat berry and grind it up, why do I feel so much better? You know, I've always heard like whole wheat bread is so much better for, you always want to eat wheat, but it doesn't taste that good. So I never wanted to eat it, you know? So looking at it, I think we mentioned this in a previous episode, but we'll talk through it again. When wheat is harvested, it is taken off the stem, so to say, and the part of the wheat that we actually eat is called the berry. So in a wheat berry, wheat berries have anatomy just as every other plant, animal, thing has anatomy. So there's three main pieces to the anatomy of a wheat berry. There is the germ, which is like if you're thinking of an egg, it's kind of like the yolk, the endosperm, which is kind of like the white of an egg. And the bran, which is kind of the shell of the egg if you are thinking of it in an egg idea. So what happens is when the wheat berry is ground, it exposes that germ. The yolk part of the eggs, so to say, to oxygen, and when that is exposed to oxygen, it immediately starts to oxidize and starts to lose its nutritional value. So once a wheat berry is ground up, that germ that holds all of the nutrients in this wheat berry starts to go bad. And it only has a shelf life of just a couple days unless it's frozen. So, big food companies knew about this, and so in order to create flour and to create bread that was going to be able to stay on the shelves in a grocery store for longer than three days, they had to figure out a way to improve shelf life. So they took out the germ from the wheat that they ground and then bleached the rest of it. So when you buy flour from the grocery store, you are getting merely just the endosperm of the wheat berry, which is pretty much kind of just filler. There's no nutritional content to it, and they realized that, you know it, it's crazy they do something and then they realize the effects of that thing and so they, they do something else. It's a cascade of interventions and so there next intervention to fix this problem that they had created by taking out the germ was not to put the germ back into. The wheat because then they'd be stuck with the original problem of not having a shelf life. So they decided to fortify the flour with synthetic vitamins and minerals. So when you are reading an ingredients list and you see fortified, enriched white non bleached flour or whatever, you know. That is them saying, we took all of the nutrients out of this original whole food, and we put synthetic versions of those nutrients back in in order to make it look better. And then they'll have a list of those synthetic versions that they put back in, such as niacin, reduced iron, thiamine, mononitrate, riboflavin, and folic acid.

Katie:

like, I think it sounds like a good idea. Like, oh, they fortified It It with these vitamins and things like that. But from what I've learned is that these like synthetic vitamins and minerals or whatever, are not as bioavailable for us to actually absorb into our systems. And so it's like, cool, you might be getting them, but you're not benefiting from them in general because we need the actual vitamins and minerals and nutrients from. Actual whole Foods because they're more bioavailable for our bodies to absorb and benefit from. So it's like anyone's like, why? Why is that not good if it's fortified with these synthetic vitamins? Well, your body can't actually use them as easily as they can use the true source of these vitamins and minerals and nutrients

Chrissy:

Yeah. So that's very true and I am a walking testament to the fact that the natural sources of these vitamins and minerals are definitely, the way to go. And so I'm one of the only people that you'll hear saying that bread healed my gut.

Katie:

Because you wonder okay, I'm eating all this fortified foods. Like if you see something like, Cheerios is a great example. Our foster daughter, who actually just moved from our home. I don't know if you knew that Chrissy,

Chrissy:

Oh no, I didn't.

Katie:

she moved this past weekend, which a very ugh, crazy, sad thing. But also, know, the you of her journey, we're because we could talk about that later. She eats a lot of Cheerios, like that is her primary food source because she has autism and. It has food aversions like no other. And so Cheerios is the primary thing She eats and they're fortified with tons of, you know, quote unquote vitamins and things like that, which it might sound like a good thing. But then when, when they do labs for her, they find that she's super deficient in like all of these vitamins. And you're like, well if she's eating Cheerios and it's fortified with these specific vitamins and stuff and nutrients, like why is she so deficient in it is'cause her body is not actively absorbing it. There's also tons of other reasons because she also is not getting a lot of other things in her diet that she should be, and so there's a lot of problems going on, but it's like, okay, her body doesn't have the capability to absorb these because it's not the whole food source that she really needs in order to get these.

Chrissy:

Right.

Katie:

It's kind of a bummer.

Chrissy:

Yeah. So Katie, what do you think is one of the biggest reasons people decide to go gluten free? You know, everyone says go gluten free it'll help your gut it'll save your gut.

Katie:

That's a really good question..

Chrissy:

Um, what do you think is one of the reasons for that?

Katie:

So actually I think a lot of people think that it's just the healthy thing to do. They're like, oh, everybody's doing gluten-free, so I'm gonna do gluten-free because it's so healthy and I wanna be healthy. So think a lot of people choose it for that reason, and it's not necessarily completely inaccurate. There are a lot of people who have intolerances, like, celiac disease, where it's like they actually have reactions to gluten. And so they choose to be gluten-free because of that. However, it's quite interesting what I've learned is that a lot of us do actually have some level of intolerance to things like gluten and dairy especially. And so if you have poor gut health and all this stuff, I have found that if you eliminate things and focus on other foods, that it does help people. I literally just listen to podcasts and that's what everybody's saying. And by everyone I'm talking about health professionals that are like, yeah, if you have problems with acne or even just sleeping or indigestion or constipation. A lot of times, many of these holistic health professionals recommend eliminating these things and then potentially adding them back or just not adding them to your diet. I have found that if, you really do focus on making your own bread, and or if you choose to buy pre-made bread, making sure that it is really good organic bread, then it really can be okay. I really love bread, so there's no way that I could ever eliminate it from my diet.. I've never had an issue with it myself. And so, for me, I've never even paused to consider eliminating it because I haven't had any problems in the past, but I do know a lot of people choose to try to eliminate it because, they think it's healthy, but they don't really know why and they think like, oh, being gluten-free is just like the thing to do, and it's like a fad kind of a thing. What do you think

Chrissy:

I am. I'm actually convinced that one of the reasons so many people have gluten intolerances. This is not talking about celiac, celiac is an allergy. We are talking about gluten intolerances. I genuinely believe that has more to do with the enrichment process that we do to our flour, and the synthetic vitamins and minerals that are added to it and the natural vitamins and minerals that are taken out of it. You know, it's the body kind of throwing a fit against the synthetic versions of things. And so that is my personal opinion when it comes to, when people say, oh, you know, bread hurts my stomach, I am gonna go gluten-free. And then they say they feel so much better after going gluten-free. I am, I'm convinced it's more so the processing of the bread and the preservatives that are put into our bread than it is.

Katie:

And glyphosate!

Chrissy:

Yes,

Katie:

always glyphosate's in everything

Chrissy:

I know. Oh my gosh. It is. But the preservatives and pesticides that are in the bread, that is what actually causes them to have issues. Which actually leads me to another thing, you know, wheat is a plant and it is grown like any other plant, and so therefore it does have the potential to be exposed to glyphosate and other pesticide and really unfortunate things. Also another thing that I think has contributed to our likelihood of developing a gluten intolerance is that wheat has been genetically modified many times in the past 50 years or so.

Katie:

I think wheat and corn are two of the largest crops in America that are genetically modified

Chrissy:

Yes,

Katie:

yeah.

Chrissy:

But wheat thankfully has a lot of different forms. I honestly couldn't even name off all the different kinds of wheat that there are out there, but I do know that einkorn wheat is the form of wheat that is the least genetically modified of all of the forms of wheat because it has a very robust flavor, like a very earthy flavor. And when pastry companies and bread companies are trying to make their breads, you know, they're looking for more of that like wonder bread kind of flavor. You know, the light airy,

Katie:

fluffy very sweet tasting.

Chrissy:

Yes! That flavor. They're not looking for that earthy, robust tones in their breads. And so that has saved Einkorn wheat from being genetically modified as much as other forms of wheat like soft white wheat and hard white wheat. Those ones have more of that gentle, typical bakery flavor that you would think of when you're eating bread. So those ones have been genetically modified a little bit more, but you can also look at making sure that wheat berries are organic and making sure, they come from a family farm. You know it's kind of nice that there's not a huge demand for wheat berries at this point. And so the supply of wheat berries is not super broad. And oftentimes if you're even going on Amazon to buy wheat, you are able to then go to the family farm website to see the family that raises this wheat and get to know them, get to know their kids, like through this website, which is really cool. Most of the wheats that I've looked at that are. Organic and non GMO And, things like that, uh, are raised by small family farms. And, that is one way you can actually know that your wheat is coming from a good source, that you are able to actually meet the people who are farming your wheat for you.

Katie:

I've considered after our conversation and then after talking to some friends who have also done their own wheat grinding, I've considered doing it myself. The grinders, like you said, are expensive, they can be. I actually have been looking on Facebook Marketplace to see if I can find one that's more cost effective. But interestingly enough, not a lot of people are selling them. Probably because not a lot of people have them in general'cause it's such, a niche thing. But occasionally I see some come up and I've been looking. To see if I wanna get one. Now I'm at the weird crossroads of like, okay, we're getting ready to move and do I wanna get more things that I need to pack and no, probably not. So I'm also kind of waiting on that. And the real, the reality is that I probably won't get into it before we move anyway, because we only have like two more months here. And I'm like, seems like a hobby I don't necessarily need to pick up yet, though. Also, speaking of making things from scratch, ice ream is another one of those ones that we would love to make on our own. I actually, controversial topic, not really, but, on a podcast I listened to recently, this person was talking about how their favorite super food is ice cream. And that ice cream can be a super food if you make it yourself and make it with like really good organic grass fed ingredients and things. So anyway, I'm like, we're gonna make our own superfood ice cream. And so ice cream makers are something I've also been on the hunt for on Facebook Marketplace and those, there are tons of them galore. So I'm kind of waiting for a specific one and for a specific price. But anyway that's one of those hobbies that both Wes and I are like on board with where we're like, we are to be our own ice cream makers. Yes.

Chrissy:

Max, actually, he made his own high protein ice cream a couple months ago and it was delicious. He put, organic protein powder, raw cocoa and A little bit of maple syrup, I think, and like vanilla extract and mixed it all up. It, it was delicious. Oh, and milk and cream, obviously. He he mixed it up, put it in the freezer and unfortunately utilized one of my mixing bowls for a week until we ate all the ice cream. But, You know, after working out, he always wants to have a chocolate milkshake and it was a good, replacement of that chocolate milkshake that he usually wants.

Katie:

I made a coffee shake the other day too with just my own ingredients and I found an ice cream that I don't know the brand off the top of my head that is actually pretty clean for ice cream. As it goes. I've been on the hunt right now just for better ice cream in general and our grocery stores don't have a lot of options unfortunately, but I found one that was organic and didn't have boat loads of sugar. Their vanilla flavor is the cleanest. But then their chocolate had like some seed oils in it, which was unfortunate, but I still got it because I was like, okay, it doesn't have a lot of the other preservatives and nasty stuff. This is probably as good as it's gonna get right now. So anyway, I made my own coffee milkshake with some of that because I love that kind of stuff.

Chrissy:

That sounds delicious

Katie:

I love making things from scratch'cause it really is like such a great way to save money on this healthy, crunchy journey that we're on

Chrissy:

Oh, for sure.

Katie:

Because I find that that is one of the biggest problems that I run into when I tell people like, yeah, we've been switching to organic and we're really trying to be mindful of the food that we're putting in our bodies because we really believe that it can heal us and that it can help prevent all these chronic illnesses but everybody's like, well, how are you doing that because it's so expensive. And I'm like, well, we're, we're making a lot of things either from scratch just like yes, we're buying the organic produce, but we're not buying the organic, like pre-made stuff that just tends to cost more. So it's like we're buying a lot of produce, but then we're making tons of stuff from that. And I'm just like really excited actually for our move this summer. And by the time that this podcast comes out, we're actually, we will be planted in our new place, at least our temporary place, which is crazy to think about already. But I'm excited for the possibility of like, I really want a big pantry that we're gonna do like all this stuff. And I'm like, we're gonna make our own bread. We're gonna make our own ice cream, and we're gonna make our own like pasta sauces and we're gonna make our own pizza.

Chrissy:

Have all the all the different kinds of wheat berries along the wall so that whenever you're making, say, like pancakes, you get the kind of wheat specifically for the pancakes. Or if you're making bread, you get the wheat specifically for the bread.

Katie:

I can't wait to share with with everybody all the pictures. So make sure you're in our Facebook group so you can see. Cause I'll post my pictures there of all the stuff once we move. But that's like, I keep telling Wes as we like look online for houses, I'm like, I just want a really good kitchen with lots of counter space and I want a big pantry that I can just keep all of our food storage in because I really want to stock well, so that way we can save money ultimately and still feed our family really well. And it's really all about like intentionality and figuring out what your priorities are. Because if your priority is to feed your family organic foods, figure out the most cost effective way of doing that, and go for it. Right? So it's like you gotta figure it out so that way you can balance it. And, we've seen maybe a slight increase in our grocery budget recently, but it hasn't been outrageous and it hasn't been dramatic where it's like, oh my gosh, I really can't afford this. It's been more of like, okay, well this means that we can't go and eat out maybe one extra time this month, maybe we can't buy certain things as often, but it's not things that we're like really upset about. It's just like again, reprioritizing.

Chrissy:

Right. And if you think about it, you know, now going out for dinner or going to fast food just makes you feel so much more, ugh,

Katie:

exactly

Chrissy:

and it's so part of me, I, I've even found myself evaluating of if I stay home and make this meal, I'm gonna feel so much better. Whereas if I go and I lean into my laziness and get fast food or something like that I'll feel okay.

Katie:

Yeah.

Chrissy:

But that's it. I'll just feel okay

Katie:

It'll be so temporary right? because you're like, just think of all of the benefits from making it at home versus going out because okay, you saved yourself money. Your food was probably. Better for you at home because it's like maybe organic or at least have a lot of the other junk in it. Because oftentimes when you go to any restaurant, they cook everything with seed oils and you just never really know like what's going on in that kitchen. And I find it so hard to find the full ingredient list of anything, online. I literally, the other day we almost decided to go to McDonald's to get an ice cream cone.'cause that's one of those things that like night we're driving home from somewhere and we're like, let's go to McDonald's and just get a little mc flurry or something like that. And we, we were almost about to do that and I was like, I'm just so curious. Like, I'm not even trying to like talk ourselves out of this, but I just want to know. What actually is in their ice cream? And I went, it took me forever first off, to find their ingredient list. I had to click through so many different links. They do not make this easy. And I finally stumbled upon it and there were, I kid you not like 50 ingredients or something Wes finally was just like, I'm not going to any of these places because you're making me feel so bad about eating any of it. And I'm like, it, that wasn't even the purpose of me trying to pull it up. I was just purely curious to know what are we putting in our bodies? Like what choice are we making right now? And in so doing, we were both like, this is just really sad. Like, Let's maybe just not, and just go.

Chrissy:

You know, actually what's interesting, I recently watched a movie on the foundation of McDonald's early on in their restaurant process. When they started expanding, they actually used powdered milkshakes

Katie:

That's kind of interesting.

Chrissy:

In order to reduce the cost of refrigeration for all of the ice cream, of just pour the powder into cold water and boom milkshake.

Katie:

Interesting, I don't know how I feel about that

Chrissy:

That made me so sad. Apparently At the end of this movie, they did come in and say. Since that point, McDonald's then transferred back to using real ice cream in their milkshakes, but, um, I don't know the percentage of real ice cream that's actually used

Katie:

it was like one of those things where I think one of the first. Ingredients on it was something like corn syrup. And, and I, I literally was like reading off some of these ingredients to Wes in the car and I was like, there's not really cream in this. It was like something crazy. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is not actually really ice cream. And the same could be said for bread. When you start reading some of these ingredients to make up bread, you're like, I'm not actually eating bread. This is not truly bread

Chrissy:

It is like if you look at the ingredients of Wonder Bread, like there's literally 30 ingredients on there, and the vast majority of them is all preservatives.

Katie:

Last night I made biscuits. Biscuits are literally my favorite thing to make because I make them in less than 30 minutes. Typically, I just like scoop it all into the bowl, mix it up and pop it in the oven. And I think I pulled out five things from my pantry. Like it's just. And like, like the honey, I didn't even necessarily need in my biscuits, I've made biscuits without honey. So I'm like, I could've eliminated that and it would've been like four ingredients. And so anyway, it's just so insane to me. Sometimes like when you see something that really, like bread is a really good example. Ice cream is another good one. You know that these food items, when they're made really should only have a few basic ingredients. If they're flavored something like ice cream, then yeah, you're gonna have a few more. But if you go to the grocery store and you see like over 10 ingredients for something like those. You know, that is probably not good for you because why do they need to add all these other things? It's probably oils that they don't need, or preservatives that you don't need, and it's all so bad for you. And it's, really sad that that's how, that's what we think is food, but it's really just a bunch of chemicals

Chrissy:

It has made it very difficult to go grocery shopping. I have found myself going through the grocery store and being like, man, I really just want some chocolate ice cream right now and you know that desire of chocolate ice cream. I go down the ice cream aisle and I start looking at all of them, and as soon as I look at the ingredients list, I put it down and walk away. It, it has become yep. Enough to kind of quench that desire, that my desire to feel good and love the way I look and love the way I feel. It is so much greater than my desire to have some ice cream. I, I would much rather just eat a piece of dark chocolate and call it a day.

Katie:

And it ends up saving you money when you do that. I mean, you don't even actually need to know what the ingredients are when you look at it, but if you just see that there are just so many, it's like okay, I just know that one of these out of the 50 listed here is probably not good for me. And so you just you just put it back on the shelf and you walk away why don't we give our listeners maybe a few takeaways of something that they can do as a result of this conversation.

Chrissy:

Let's see, I think for me, my biggest takeaway is challenge yourself to make a loaf of bread. Just try it. we will put the link to my personal bread recipe that I use, in making whole wheat bread and the link to the, recipe book that I have for whole wheat recipes because it does have a little bit of a. Different moisture ratio than regular flour. so we'll put that in the link and I will also post on our Facebook group. Our Facebook group is, Crunchy Christian Mamas on a Budget, I will also post in there links to the wheat grinder and the wheat that my husband and I use so that you can have an easy in to just get started. And honestly, the initial cost is not that much. The wheat grinder itself that we use is only about$40

Katie:

not bad.

Chrissy:

The wheat in and of itself is about$55 for a 25 pound bag that lasts three months. so if you think about, if you buy one loaf of bread for$4 and you buy a loaf of bread a week for three months, you're gonna be about at that$55 range anyways. So, yeah, that's my first challenge is to try to make your first loaf of bread, whether it be with flour or fresh ground wheat. Um, yeah, that's mine. What about you, Katie?

Katie:

Yeah. Bread making really isn't that scary? I, I got into bread making several years ago and I really do enjoy it. It's so fun. And it doesn't have to be, I think a lot of people hear about sourdough and sourdough can be more of a challenge, and

Chrissy:

No, sourdough is horrible. I woke up at three o'clock in the morning to stretch and fold. I said, we're not doing this.

Katie:

I know, like I've gone through phases of really enjoying it, but I'm just not at that phase right now of my life that it is something I enjoy. I like making things as quickly as possible and enjoying them right when I want them. Bread making doesn't have to be scary. Learn about it. Like Chrissy said, I think my tip would be figure out what that thing is in your life, and it doesn't even have to be bread, but figure out the thing in your life that you're like, I really love this food and find out how you could make it from scratch. I know pizza for a lot of people is a great example. I've made pizza dough from scratch myself and made the sauce and everything. It tends to be more challenging, but maybe even like, don't even think about every little part, but like instead of going and buying like a Domino's pizza, get the pre-made ingredients for it. So you can buy pizza dough, you can buy pizza sauce, and then, you know, even you could get sliced up veggies or whatever you wanna put on your pizza and then make it, and that's like your first step. But then challenge yourself each time and be like, okay, maybe I could make the pizza sauce or maybe I could chop my own veggies and, and get them fresh and things like that. So would just figure out what is that thing that you love and make it a little bit yourself and then keep making it till you're like doing it from scratch and you're a genius at it, right?

Chrissy:

And then everyone looks at you and they say, how'd you become such a great cook?

Katie:

How did you do this? People are shocked that we make our own hummus. We make hummus like all the time, and that is, it's one of the easiest things. We literally, you just put it in a blender, you blend it, and you put it in a bowl

Chrissy:

Wow.

Katie:

We've been doing that for years. This is before our like crunchy journey really started.

Chrissy:

Hummus is one of those items that I have such a hard time buying because they all have soybean oil in them.

Katie:

is so easy.

Chrissy:

my goodness.

Katie:

whatever, chickpeas, whatever you wanna call'em. we keep them in our pantry just all the time. So It's so easy. So yeah. Anyway, figure out, what is that food that love and can't live without and see if you can make it from scratch. And if you try that, tell us in the Facebook group. We'd love to know, um, and don't forget to subscribe to our podcast. That way you don't miss out when we put out new episodes. And be sure to share this episode with a friend who needs some encouragement on their own holistic, healthy, non-toxic journey. We want to get the word out about this podcast and sharing it around helps others find it as well.

Chrissy:

We pray over each and every one of you guys, and we just hope that these episodes can be helpful in your journey to being a better steward of your body your mind, your soul, your spirit, your finances, and your families. We are praying that this episode was helpful for you and we will see you next time.

Katie:

Bye-bye.