Exploring Food and Whole Nutrition

Kody: Hi there and welcome to the Homestead Education Podcast. Do you have a homestead farm or just dream of a rural life? This is a show to help you and your kids grow your own food and grow as a person. I’m your host, Kody Hanner. I’m a homesteader, homeschool mom of six and small town enthusiast. I was raised by an old school rancher and blessed by the grace of God to have been exposed to so much of what rural life has to offer. Join me every week to talk about homesteading homeschooling and growth with a homestead education. Alright everyone, I have Liz Haselmayer on today. She’s the creator and founder of Homegrown Education, a company empowering families to embrace real food. Liz has written several real food educational resources, including nutrition Curricula for Children, a six week dinner plan, and most recently, a nourishing breakfast cookbook. Liz also hosts a weekly podcast with her husband and homeschools their three daughters and their suburban Ohio home. Hi Liz.

Liz: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Kody: Yeah, thanks for coming on. So I’ve been so excited to talk to you because food is such a big conversation in the homestead world. So do you wanna tell us a little more about yourself?

Liz: Yeah, I would love to. So, you know, I think it’s even funny, I’m on this podcast ’cause like five years ago I would’ve never imagined that I would have this company built around real food . It’s been such a natural progression in my life, but also at the same time, looking back totally makes sense why I’m here. But I’ve always had a really complicated relationship with food in high school and middle school. I had a really debilitating eating disorder, you know, and I was a nineties baby, like I grew up on the classic packaged processed foods. My parents were, you know, very typical middle class Americans, and we just ate that way. And I think most people in that timeframe ate that way. I also was blessed, you know, to have grown up in the era of like the early two thousands where like hyper thin was in, right?

The models were thin and like this beautiful thing to aspire to be. And, you know, I succumbed to that. I fell prey to that and I think a lot of people my age did. And so I had a not so great relationship with food all the way up to having a full-blown eating disorder. And I didn’t really find food freedom until I started educating myself on food itself. So even though I went to an inpatient treatment facility at the age of 17 and you know, lived in Arizona for three months during that time when I was still in high school and then came home to a group of dieticians and therapists and all that, I would, I didn’t leave there with an understanding of real food. I left there with a basic, basic clinical understanding of an eating disorder. But I didn’t find food freedom until I found folks like the Weston A. Price foundation and folks who honestly, in the homesteading community who are connected to nature, who understand the source of their food.

Liz: And, you know, it’s been a really beautiful progression because as I’ve gotten closer to the foods we eat, I realize how I can avoid some of those confusing topics with my own kids. And so I have three daughters and I wanna do everything in my power to set them up with the most robust food education and food appreciation and respect, and have an open dialogue around that, because I don’t want them falling into the same traps that I fell into. And you know, I just saw a news article circulating social media where it was like the heroin chic look is back, right where we had this moment in time where we were really empowering women with more curves and, and more muscle tone. And now like, we’re back because, you know, Khloé Kardashian is now super thin and I’m just like, ah, I reject that.

Liz: I will not have that for my daughters. And, you know, it honestly brings up an awesome opportunity to have that conversation with them. My oldest is 11 and while I might not use the term heroin chic with her ’cause that will open a whole other candle worm. We can talk about these body image issues and these, these results of the, these cultural norms. And so that’s kind of where my heart and my passion comes into it. I live in the suburbs, right? So I’m not a homesteader. There are so many amazing ways to be close to your food, even if you do live in the suburbs or the city. And so I think that’s kind of the critical role my family and my husband and I play in this real food space, is just an example of a family living in the suburbs, wanting to be close to our food. And, you know, we are a hunting family, so we have that aspect. We process our own venison and cook from scratch and source our dairy from a local farm and all of those pieces. But we aren’t the same huge chicken coop and garden in the backyard as, as a lot of people we see on the internet, which is fine. I think we all have a space or a place in this space.

Kody: I really feel like the modern homestead movement is more about self-sufficiency and less about what you’re able to grow in your yard. So thank you so much for sharing that vulnerability with us about how you had your struggles with food. And that’s actually something I wanted to talk about first is in one of your podcasts you talked about your, everybody has a catalyst to their natural eating and how we start down that path. Was yours this, or was there, was there an aha moment?

Liz: You know, mine, like, so many people came from, I would call it a health crisis. And it wasn’t my own health crisis, it was actually my middle daughter’s. She was born. So she was born with a pretty typical birth defect called bilateral clubbed feet. It’s just where their feet are pretty misshapen and it looks like a golf club. It’s like the most ridiculous diagnostic term. But she was born with clubbed feet.. And you know, when we were delivered that news at our 20 week ultrasound, my OBGYN at the time was very flippant and uneducated and she didn’t know anything. And that’s hard, like, yeah. Yeah. And she goes, you know, not only were they like, oh, it’s a girl. They didn’t even tell us that they were gonna announce the gender, but then they go, yeah, everything looks great except it looks like she’s got a birth defect and, you know, she might not be able to walk. And we’re like, what?

Kody: Scary. Yeah.

Liz: So scary. And so it led, they basically said, we can’t tell you anything because once baby is born, it’s the pediatrician’s job to inform you on all things in life. So I had to track down a pediatrician and try to call them out of office hours and they didn’t answer. And so I had to sit with this news for like 24 hours of oh my gosh, what is clubbed feet? And then Googling everything. And then there’s so many things that are associated with bilateral clubbed feet that like, she could have all these other issues and it could be a cascading thing. Turns out, yes, she had clubbed feet at birth. She got braces and, and she was casted from her hips down for the first five or six months of life, but like, very correctable, very reversible. And she’s beautiful and healthy and can walk and run and do all the things today. 

Kody: I’m happy to hear that we had something similar with our two and a half year old where they’re like, oh, he, his spinal tube or whatever at 13 weeks was large, so that he was either gonna have down syndrome or have a heart defect. Yeah. And they’re like, let’s do a blood test to confirm that. But I was on blood thinners, so it took three blood tests to be able to get enough information. So like this, they told us this at 13 weeks. We were 25 weeks old when we got the confirmation that he was okay. So, I mean, it was just a disaster. I mean, I was like, “I’m gonna accept this and we’ll accept whatever comes with him.” I mean, so was my husband, but he was like, he can’t handle that type of information. So no matter how much education I threw at him, it wasn’t helping. So it was, it was a stressful time.

Liz: Yeah, I agree. I think my husband too really struggled with it. And, you know, as much as I am so thankful for the modern medical system in times of urgent care, like a car crash. OBGYN side really, really failed me for multiple of my pregnancies. And so, you know, I hate to say that, but it’s just, sometimes the diagnostic efforts go a little bit too far and for us. It just wasn’t helpful. Wasn’t helpful information. So anyway, she turned out to be just fine. But we did have several things with her where, you know, I was breastfeeding but then I had to go back to work full time. So then I was like, okay, I need to switch to formula. And it was really in that time period with terrible eczema, terrible digestive issues. I already have this baby that has these poor casts from her hip down to her toes. Like she’s so clunky when I pick her up. I just was like, ah, she’s not thriving. And I actually found the Weston A. Price homemade infant baby formula, which you wanna talk about an interesting way to get into the real food space. It’s trying to feed your kids raw milk. The internet will tell you just a atrocities so, so scary, right? You’re so afraid of real living food and oh,

Kody: I was a food safety specialist for five years and raw milk was like the devil so.

Liz: So you understand. So imagine me, I’m like, I’m just trying to get on this path of, you know, living a little bit more holistically. I feel like with each kid I kind of took five steps further. You know, my last baby was a beautiful home birth unmedicated and it was an awesome experience. But like how special? Yeah. So many things in between there. I was just still relearning. And like I said, my experience in eating disorder treatment facilities and with dieticians taught me unfortunately, literally nothing about food. Like nothing about food. No. And so it was when I dug into the topic of raw milk, which is why I love it so much, it’s why we just published a raw milk guide because I just, I love the topic.

Kody: I saw that I downloaded it last night and I was reading it.

Liz: Yeah. So yeah, it’s free. Anyone can go grab it. Because I was like, I don’t need to be a gatekeeper for this information. Everyone needs to understand, milk, food collect. But you know, milk is such a good example in the US of a food where regulation has just changed it completely. And I think once you understand the history of dairy in the US you can start to understand this, the history of so many other things. It just took me back to this initial exploration of what real food was. You know, I was still buying pop-tarts and cereal and frozen meals and stuff for my kids. Even though I was like, oh, well if I just buy the organic brand, like I’m good to go. No. I had to unlayer it, right? And I had to really simplify it.

Liz: Real food is so much simpler than having to look through a list of 25 ingredients, and memorize what everything is. I don’t do that. No. We are a Whole Foods family. That’s not saying we don’t ever eat chips or like trail mix or something, but in general, the majority of our food is Whole Foods. So for us, like for so many other people, my sort of diving into the real food space was because my middle daughter and I couldn’t give her this homemade raw milk formula without having to fully embrace and understand raw dairy. So for a long time when I would get our milk pickup, like I would drink a glass first and wait like 45 minutes, like, am I gonna be okay?

Liz: So it’s so funny to think about now because I just have the most respect and trust for our farmers. But I had this real fear around raw dairy. And so I did make the leap though giving our child a homemade formula and she just thrived. Like her eczema went away. She had, so she had way better digestion. She started actually gaining weight ’cause she was so little and tiny. And she, I just watched her thrive and then from there I was like, okay, well what else can I learn? What else can I become a student of? And it has spiraled since then. She is gonna be seven next May. And so it’s, you know, been I’d say a solid six years on this journey looking through the lens of real food. And it’s honestly been the best experience ever.

Kody: That’s amazing. I love that you took that leap with your daughter. I, our journey with raw milk because of my background. When we first got a cow, I pasteurized everything. I was like, well, at least it’s raw or I mean, at least it’s from my farm. I know what went into my cow. I mean, I did feel better about that stuff. I was also pregnant at the time, so I was like, maybe I shouldn’t jump into raw milk when I have concerns of listeria and stuff like that. So, but then my baby was born and as soon as he switched off a formula, I had to, I had to stop breastfeeding ’cause I got sick. And so we had him on formula for a while, and as soon as we switched him off of formula, he went right to raw milk. And I, it didn’t even scare me at that point, but, and I look back to like pregnant with him, like pasteurizing this giant vat of milk on my stove. And I’m like, I probably didn’t need to, it was probably more dangerous trying to mess with that giant pot of milk with my big old pregnant belly than it was to actually drink the milk.

Liz: I’m curious though, like how did you, did you just heat it to a specific temperature mm-hmm. and you didn’t have to do it under pressure?

Kody: No, that’s ultra pasteurized. Yeah. Which we would just do, I guess first level pasteurized, I don’t really know because we weren’t homogenizing it or anything, so I could still pasteurize and then get cream off the top. So, you know, it did make me feel a little better when we were learning how to do raw milk. And then my kids were milking a lot because like I said, I was pregnant. And I, I don’t think I’d ever go back on that decision just because I knew where I stood with it. But, and, and you know, being a food safety specialist, you know, all the onslaught of bad things that can happen. But now that I know all the great things that can happen from it too, like, like I said, I wouldn’t change pasteurizing when I was pregnant, but we don’t pasteurize now and I’m really comfortable with that. So.

Liz: Yeah. And I think the other thing too, like my husband Joey pointed out is that any real whole living food has potential to carry a pathogen, not just milk, it’s just that we’re so used to that being pasteurized that the raw version of it freaks us out. Yeah. But no one would say like, oh, my orange juice at the store is pasteurized, so therefore I’m scared to eat a raw orange. Right. We wouldn’t use

Kody: No,

Liz: Even though every fluid in the grocery store is pasteurized because of the way that we have to ship things in manufacturing. So, you know, for me, I’m like, anything has the potential to carry pathogens, anything has the potential to be that host and let those bad bacteria breed. I mean, we, I have a good friend who’s like a microbiologist and she’ll tell you all day, like, yeah, you don’t want to utilize cer you don’t wanna utilize raw milk room temperature for this amount of time because then some of the bacteria growth, like, you don’t want that in your yogurt. So mm-hmm.  I have looked for the microbes for sure. And I’m not saying that any dairy that has not undergone heat treatment is gonna be great for us. So that’s where the sourcing piece really comes into play. 

Kody: Well, honestly, when you’re making homemade yogurt, you hit that temperature that you need to hit to do the home pasteurization, so you’re killing off that bacteria and then you’re actually inoculating it with another bacteria. So it’s kind of, you’re not hitting that ultra pasteurized that kills all the enzymes and everything, but you are still killing off some stuff in there. So yeah.

Liz: It’s necessary for that process. Because you’re gonna sit at that warm temp. Yeah. You don’t want certain things breeding in there, <laugh>.

Kody: Right.

Liz: A cold glass of raw milk is much different than a warm mixture of, you know, pre fermented yogurt. So yes,

Kody: much different. So yeah, we actually, we had a catalyst for us too. And it, I’ve talked to my audience about it before, but it was, my husband was diagnosed with liver disease and so we had to go to an all natural diet and that actually, we talk about it a lot that, and you brought it up earlier that the nineties kids where we just ate everything out of a box. Yeah. And I mean, honestly, when I was finishing up my homestead curriculum, my husband was gone on a fire, the kids were trying to handle everything. We ate frozen burritos, like for lunch every day. And I don’t even feel bad about it,

Kody: Because I mean, it was, we were just in it, it was a short period of time in our life and we’re moving on. You know, I feel like what I feed my kids is considerably better than what I ate because even though we were a, we were a big hunting family, so I didn’t even, like, I don’t think I bought store-bought, had store-bought beef till I was like 10 or something. But it was, we’d have venison steaks, you know, fried and white flour and oil and have a box of mac and cheese with it. And I’m like, at what point was this better for me? Because it was innocent. I don’t feel that it was Yeah. Versus what I do with my venison, you know, like Yeah. But, oh, sorry.

Liz: I was just gonna say, I think something we talk about often is like when we’re in seasons of survival, like there are definitely seasons of survival. Like for us it was, we had a house flood and so we had to our entire first floor and basement. And so we didn’t have a kitchen for like five months. That’s a season of survival. Right. Even though in that time, you know, we had been buying milk from our farm, we had to just get by and sometimes the mental stress of like, oh my gosh, am I eating all these processed seed oils? ’cause I’m eating out, you know, for three meals a week or five meals can do more harm. Like the stress on our body or the stress that we put on ourselves can do as much harm as, Hey, you know, am I trusting God with this? Am I gonna be okay. And recognize that this is a season of my life and that it doesn’t have to be this perfectionist all the time I’m eating perfect food. And again, that’s where that food freedom piece comes into play. And then you can supplement and you can buy snacks and cold things that you can, you know, chug your kombucha or you can easily make ferments. You don’t need a fridge or a kitchen for that. So I, appreciate that time in your life too. ’cause We’ve had systems like that as well for sure.

Kody: Yeah. And you know, like we have this talk all the time about like the easy foods and like the culture that comes with that. And like we’re, I wish that we didn’t have to make that choice, that we didn’t have to have that catalyst, that it was just, from day one, it was all about regulation and balance. But sorry, how do you guys handle the commercialization of food with your kids?

Liz: So, you know, we talk about food a lot. I think to your point, what you just said is like, I wish we didn’t even have to have had a catalyst to go back to real foods. Is what I, and I I agree. I think that’s a byproduct of our society just wanting to cheapen our nourishment. Like we just don’t place a high value on the foods that we eat. We don’t place a high value on taking time to eat together in community.

Kody: Well, I mean like the government literally pays subsidies to grow more corn where we can have these like corn syrups and I mean, it’s an insane process that they’re doing.

Liz: Right. And so it’s, so it’s those tidbits of information, right. That when you unearth, your eyes really start to open. And one of the best ways I love talking about this, the industrial movement of our food is through documentaries. ’cause they paint a great picture. And so, like, I’ve watched all the documentaries with my kids multiple times. Some of my favorites are Sustainable. I actually went and visited Spence Farm last year. I met Marty Travis and his son Will. So that’s Sustainable is an awesome one. I love The Biggest Little Farm with apricot lanes out in California. That’s a great show to watch. We Belong is good. That’s a newer one. And then let’s see, Kiss The Ground.

Liz: That’s a great documentary. Sacred Cow obviously is right up there. I love Diana Rogers. And yeah, there’s just so many good documentaries that actually like to take you into the factory, right. And then show you the opposite and take you to the farm. And it’s just a much better way to have that conversation with my kids than, you know, we also walk through the grocery store and they’ll pick up a box of Little Debbie’s and be like, “oh my gosh, mom, doesn’t this look amazing?” And I’m like, “yeah. How long ago do you think that was baked and sitting on this grocery store shelf, you know, when we bake a cake at home and it kind of tastes good for three days maybe. And then like on the fourth day it’s kind of stale. Can you imagine baking something like a month ago? Right?”

Kody: They’re probably even longer than a month. It’s probably a month before it even left the factory.

Liz: Oh. And so I’m like, you know, it’s tricky, right? Because we have a house where I would say 80% of our foods are whole foods and or cooked from scratch, right? And we still have packaged foods. I still have beef jerky upstairs that I didn’t personally dehydrate. You know, it sounds silly, saying that, but there is a little bit of guidance when we talk to our kids about real food because, and it depends on their stages. So we have a five, or we have a six year old who is obsessed with other foods. ’cause She’s like, “oh my gosh, a bag of Cheetos.” You know, they kind of are in their head to this amazing thing. So if there’s a better-ish brand of organic chip, I might let them indulge. We’re gonna have a movie night this afternoon with my parents. We’re making homemade sourdough pizzas, homemade chicken wings with beautiful pastured chicken. And then I bought two bags of chips. Literally, that’s it. But they’re both organic, you know? I don’t know what the <inaudible> in, but like, that’s kind of the balance, right? Homemade most of the time. But then I’m letting them indulge in a packaged food because A, it’s just fun and B, we can’t hold these crazy high standards when we look in the grocery store and it’s like 80% of the food is packaged. So that’s hard. 

But like we have conversations about it. My 11 year old is on a different path, right? So she kind of gets it a little bit better. She can comprehend, hey, that food you know, that’s highly processed, came from a factory, didn’t necessarily come from a maker like an artisan. And so that might be different from like stopping in a local bakery and picking up a pastry versus like grabbing a box of Chex mix off the store, two totally different carbs, two totally different types of food. And so you know, you have to meet your kids where they are. Having the conversation even earlier today, I, visited a small co-op and did a little class for these 4 to 7 year old kids talking about what food was and where it comes from. I love that.

And yeah, I just think the more you can connect it back to the initial food producer or grower or rancher, then the more there it starts to click. Like, Hey, this didn’t come from someone who grew this food and, and made it wholesomely for me. This came from a manufacturing plant that also took, you know, a byproduct of this other food to make this, you know, weird granola Chex mix thing. And here we are, you know, three months later. So it’s a delicate balance, but I find that visual aids help. So those documentaries are wonderful. Going through curriculum, like your curriculum, the curriculum we’ve created, any sort of resource like that that we can add some comprehensive context to. It’s just really helpful.

Kody: Well, I mean, we’re definitely hitting a new frontier with our curriculums that teach, like teaching kids the real skills that they aren’t getting in schools. And even as homeschool parents, we wanna teach ’em, but we weren’t taught that.

Liz: Right? 

Kody: Yes. So we don’t necessarily know where to start.

Liz: Yeah. I think it’s interesting that, you know, we might be three or four generations removed from the farm, but I think something about our generation is just like really longing for that connection again. And so I don’t have a living grandparent that worked on a farm. My great-great-grandfather, I can’t remember, someone up my dad line. He grew tons of stuff. And my dad to this day says like, I wish I would’ve spent more time with him to learn from him. My dad became, a commercial airline pilot and served in the US Air Force. He still had a great legacy.

Kody: That’s wonderful. Yeah. my Husband’s a veteran.

Liz: See, I love that. So, you know, there were these generational shifts and now finally you and I are like, “Hey, wait a minute. Our kids are showing up in this world completely confused with life skills and completely confused with the most basic of life skills, which is how to feed themselves.” I have friends in their late twenties, early thirties who still don’t know how to cook. Then what hope do their kids have? So that’s a concern. 

Kody: I’m so thankful that my sons can cook.

Liz: Yeah.

Kody: And my people and my daughter too. But she is, she’s my mini me and the only girl outta six. 

Liz: That’s, oh, she’s gonna have the best time. I have three brothers and I love it. I always say like, my husband’s one of his best qualities might be the fact that he went to culinary school and can cook better than I can. That’s awesome. So yeah, it’s an excellent skill. It’s not just for women to learn. It’s like everyone needs to learn how to nourish stuff.

Kody: My husband is always on board to cook. Like I don’t have to worry about that. He was a little iffy on, “you want me to follow a recipe? Like I know how to make burgers,” but now it doesn’t bother him. Especially ’cause he understands this natural food movement that we’re trying to achieve for ourselves and our kids. But I mean, like, I’m having a, I don’t wanna say like a problem, but I’m definitely, I have 14 year old twins. I have a boy and a girl and we’re struggling with them right now. It’s a really interesting, they know, like my 14 year old daughter, she makes lunches for all her brothers on co-op day. And she’s like, okay mom. I did it with whole wheat bread and our Turkey that we made and I put tomatoes in there and you know, she’s like going through this whole, like, I made a perfect meal for everybody and she understands everything that needs to go in it. And I’m like, what’d you pack? What’d you eat at school today? She’s like, Skittles.

Kody: I’m like, and you know, she is going through a growth spurt right now and like then actually lost like 10 or 15 pounds. And I’m like this, like her clothes are falling off of her. So I’m having to follow her around and be like, even if you don’t want breakfast, you need to drink like a little protein shake or something. Whereas my 14 year old son, he’s struggling more like on my end where I’ve always struggled with my weight on the high end, but he’s like a carb junkie. Like we had dinner the other night and he’s like, “yeah, I, you know, I don’t feel like having chili. I’ll just eat cornbread.” And I’m like, “no. The chili is made with our homegrown pork and our canned tomatoes.” And I did buy beans, but you know.

Liz: So I say you have to say, I did buy some store-bought beans to show how homesteady you are. Because I love that. Yeah. I think that’s amazing.

Kody: Well we always joke like that’s how you flex, you know?

Liz: Yeah. I did buy some beans at the store. I always buy my beans. You know, I shared this on another podcast, but we sent our 11 year old to summer camp this past summer. It was just for like a week. It was a church camp and it was hosted at a local college and you know, for some unknown reason, they gave these middle school students full access to the Coke machine. It was Pepsi actually. And so she’s like, I had a Pepsi there with every meal, like three meals a day. And this child, I’m getting soda. If we have any carbonated beverage, it’s literally kombucha from our local farm. An Ollypop, which is like $2.50 a can, which is outrageous. Or like some, there’s a revive brand of that too. They’re just like effervescent, you know, I think they’re supposed to be touted as probiotic juice, sparkling juices.

Liz: Who knows? But they’re not sodas, right? There’s no corn syrup, there’s no roast stuff. So this girl who never drank soda, went to summer camp and drank a Pepsi, like for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Oh my gosh. And like she knows, and like I had a conversation before she went to camp. I was like, “Hey, I, I know you’re gonna be really busy. You’re gonna be running around. It’s hot. It’s really hot here. Make sure you’re getting a good source of protein with every meal,” because you know, for her carbs are easy. Yeah. But it’s like you need protein. And she’s like, no, I had this soda. And I was like, okay, well how’d it make you feel? And she’s like, well I had a stomach ache so bad on day two that they almost called you. But then like, you know, they gave me a mint and it went away. And I’m like it is probably ’cause you’re chugging soda. Right?

Your body’s just confused. And so it would be so easy for me to be like, oh my gosh, I’m trying to build this company around people nourishing their families and drinks Pepsi. Like, but here’s the thing. I think that there’s going to be a period of time, I know this actually ’cause this is how I was too with a kid where we can teach our kids and set standards in our own home, but they have to figure it out themselves. There’s gonna be decisions that they make where you’re like, I literally raised you on raw milk and eggs and sourdough bread and here you go eating the Skittles. Right. Or eating whatever.

Kody: Oh, my 17 year old right now, he works for an electrician’s apprentice, makes good money. He comes home every day and opens his car door and like Mountain Dew cans fall out and I’m like, water, like you need to drink some water. Like I get the Mountain Dew, I get the caffeine, I’ve been there, but water.

Liz: I know. And it’s like one of those things, I feel like it’s like, you know, with your faith too, it’s like you have, they have to make their own and so we can teach them, we can guide them, we can give them like, Hey, if you wanna eat this particular candy, like there’s actually a better brand of that here, let’s choose this one over this. Or, I don’t know if there’s a healthier version of Mountain Dew. I’m pretty sure

Kody: Maybe.

Liz: Yeah or I think Zevia makes a Mountain Dew flavor, but I don’t love Zevia anyways. Like we just have to hold it loosely I think, as parents. And it’s hard and it’s gonna be hard as my oldest daughter ages and my other kids grow into that too. Because right now my youngest just eats everything I put on her plate. But you know, it won’t always be like that. The best thing we can do is just set the good example and nourish them when we do have the opportunities too. And then hope that like by the time they’re 20 they come back around. And they start realizing that their bodies need this food and you know, and also like, it’s okay for us to indulge. Like, I’m not looking for perfection for myself or for my kids, but I wanna have a baseline of real food.

Kody: Yeah. We do the real food all week and like about every other Friday it started back when I was a single mom with the twins. Like I’d get paid every other Friday, we’d go get a movie and get a pizza and get soda and we’d go home and eat our pizza and drink our soda. And it’s kind of, that tradition has stuck around. And that’s the only time we ever have soda in the house is every other Friday night.

Liz: Yeah.

Kody: But I know if I keep it in there more, they’ll drink it all.

Liz: Yeah. We do similar things too. We have, well we have these movie nights. Like tonight we’re gonna have one, but every year we do this big. On the 23rd of December we watch Swiss Family Robinson. I don’t know why we watch that, but it’s our favorite. And we go all out. Like we’re getting a hot chocolate bar. We set up this whole thing for a hot chocolate bar. We have all these chips and candy, but it’s the cleaner version. So it’s super expensive and we’re like, we’re making homemade dips and we’re making all these amazing things. We’re getting special drinks and the girls are like, we set up a party basically just for our family of five, which is hilarious.

Kody: Oh fun.

Liz: It’s like they know that, it’s just true food is part of our family tradition. And so, you know, we have chosen to make that night a particular indulgence because It’s just really fun. It’s like two days before Christmas and we love it, and the kids love it, and every year they know it gets a little bit bigger and it’s just, it’s a good time. I would never trade that for any amount of carrot sticks and celery. 

Kody: We kind of do one, like the kids don’t love working in the yard. I don’t think we really love working in the yard. So we do this, we have a big patio and a big grassy lawn. And so we do this thing where we take the kids outside and all day long they have to work for an hour, play for an hour and that’s their thing. But I’m making tacos in the crockpot out on the patio the whole time. And then when we’re done we have this big taco bar and we make, like I say mixed drinks, but we don’t drink. But we, and obviously I’m not giving my kids mixed drinks, but we do like, you know, like seven up and lemonade and like, you know, make these like fizzy fun drinks and the kids play, I don’t even know, racketball or something in the grass, you know, I guess it’s not racketball in the grass. It’s badminton. Yeah.

Liz: Oh yeah. That’s it.

Kody: And they look forward to it. Like, are we gonna have, you know, like a taco bar on the patio? And I’m like, if my lawn gets done. They work for it.

Liz: Yeah. I think that’s awesome.

Kody: So yeah, let me see here. So we have, we’re actually with our kids, their big one right now is they get excited for everything that I, we can say that we make ourselves. So like, you know, especially like my five-year-old, he sits down what all of this came from our farm. So, you know, and that’s, he’s my tester for my younger curriculum, you know, and have him go through that. I’m actually doing it with his co-op this next spring.

Liz: Oh fun.

Kody: Yeah. A group of five to seven year olds. So I’m looking forward to that one, kind of test it out, see how they like with a bigger group not ’cause everyone always goes, you know, how do you teach it? But I’m like, I, I don’t know ’cause I only taught it to one kid. But so what we’re working on is the nutrient-dense foods is, you know, we, like, I was kind of saying like I bought the beans but like, you know, we’ll do nachos for dinner and the only thing in there that’s, you know, store bought not good are the chips. And you know, that’s what we work on is, you know, like we do. So I mean we do have some grass-fed beef, but our big one is pork because we’re pig farmers. So I actually, I use pork for my tacos and chili and everything if I don’t have beef or elk or something. ’cause Those are all seasonal, but pigs are not. But how do you teach your kids about the nutrient dense versus the non nutrient dense?

Liz: Yeah, I love that paradigm so much better than the food pyramid because every co-op I visited, I was like, does anyone know what the food pyramid is? And no one said yes. I was like, thank you. ’cause I hate it.  Awful food pyramid. This whole trend, and that’s really why I wrote the curriculum right, is because when I was looking to teach my kids about this and not just me hold up an apple and a steak, but have a textbook they could work through, there was just nothing out there. Like it was all regurgitating what the USDA has to say, which unfortunately I just don’t think people are paying attention. Yeah. I think if people knew USDA was upholding highly refined seed oils in replace of natural traditional fats, they would be appalled. Yeah. I think they, if they heard that they were telling people to reduce their amount of red meat consumption and increase things like plant-based meats to tofu milk alternatives, deeming them the exact same as real dairy, I think they would be concerned. I don’t need to be a dietician or a nutritionist to tell you that plant-based milks are not a nutritional equivalent. They’re just not. And they should never have been in that same category. Entities and coconut, I mean coconut’s a little bit different ’cause it’s like more of a whole food, but soy milk like should be a soy tea if anything. Like it’s, it’s not right.

Kody: No.

Liz: You have to get away from this verbiage because it confuses the consumer into thinking that it’s a good swap when it’s not. And so, you know, because I’m sort of battling the USDA’s food guidelines because we just don’t believe in that, as a hunting family for you to tell us to reduce our amount of red meat we live on venison. Like what do you mean reduce our red meat then that would make us more, more reliant on the industrial food system. That’s the only thing that that choice would do. It would just mean that we can no longer source our own meat and that we’d have to be sourcing meat from some manufacturer, some processing plant that’s, you know, or some even worse, you know, patented food item that is made from plants that’s supposed to be an adequate source of protein. So.

Kody: Well and like I was just, while you were talking, I was looking it up on my phone ’cause I saw on Facebook or something this morning that somebody was saying that the FDA had approved the lab grown meat. And I was like, before I say anything I wanna look it up and see if I actually see it from a, I mean I see it from CNN so, but I mean that’s, it’s out there that they have actually approved the lab grown meat and that, I find that appalling.

Liz: It’s, it’s, that’s a great word for it. It’s truly appalling. ’cause We are now in a place where we are so confused as consumers, what the heck we’re eating that if we don’t quickly educate ourselves in this next generation, I tell people all the time it will cripple them, this anti-meat dogma that’s happening right now.

Kody: Yes.

Liz: The next generation. And you know, I get a lot of heat for being so loud and vocal about animal source foods, but it’s because they ARE the nutrient dense foods.

Kody: Oh, get louder

Liz: Yeah, I know, I know. I’m like, I

Kody: I stand behind you like cheering you on.

Liz: That’s a big rancher. You should, yeah. Because here’s the thing, like, and I think sometimes people misinterpret the message, right? And they think like, we don’t eat vegetables. Please don’t hear me say that. ’cause we absolutely do, we like vegetables, right? We wanna make sure they’re organically grown as much as possible and we’re eating them in season as much as possible. But we can pretend that humans are not in need of animal source foods. And it’s not just like, oh, you have to eat meat. It’s like, no, I want you drinking milk. I want you consuming real butter. Not this like country crock. Real cream. Like I’m not afraid of cream. You know, I love eggs. Like let’s stop trying to denature and refine everything and separate egg yolks from egg whites. Let’s just eat the whole egg. Right. And, you know, it goes even deeper to say Americans just don’t have a good understanding of what it means to consume nose to tail. We are, we’re just, we’re freaked out if it’s not a muscle meat. And people know that the meat they’re eating is muscle fiber. Like I don’t think adults know that. Yeah. And so it’s like when you understand that hey, a whole animal has yeah. Muscle fibers, but also organs that we can utilize, bones and connective tissue and skin. Like why are we, why are we buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts at the store? So, you know, I’m like, that’s

Kody: Right? I mean we skin our own raised chickens just ’cause it’s easier and we don’t have a plucker but it has nothing to do with not wanting to eat the skin.

Liz: Yeah, I know. Because this crispy skin is so good. Right? And so, right for us, whenever I’m having these conversations with my kids, I would rather approach it through a lens of, hey, these are the foods that are most nutrient dense meaning, so let’s break that down. What does that mean? It means for the smallest amount of food, it packs the most punch. We have the most vitamins, minerals, fats, proteins, whatever in this amount of food. So I can eat, you know, a four ounce piece of steak and get a ton of stuff versus like four bowls of broccoli, right? So I wouldn’t consider broccoli nutrient dense. Now is broccoli so important? ’cause It can be good plant fiber and delicious if you roast it and blah, blah, blah. Yes, of course. But unfortunately we have to recognize as parents that it’s not the, it’s not just the battle of combating junk food and what we deem as real food that we have with our kids.

Liz: It’s the battle of, of combating this plant forward or plant only narrative in society. And so that is why we stand really firm with understanding that animal source foods are the most nutrient-dense foods. Okay. Like things like liver, egg, yolks, butter and rum, whole milk are gonna be so nourishing for you, that it doesn’t even compare to your kale or your chia seeds or whatever you grew up thinking was, you know, a healthy super food. Right. And because I fell into that trap, right. I was no fat for a long time. I ate anything that was like low fat or I would just eat salads all day.

Kody: You know, well I had the exact opposite problem. I’ve always struggled with being heavy and it’s because I was told like, you know, either, either lettuce or everything else. Yeah. Well, I’m sorry. Lettuce is gross. I mean, I love salad now as an adult, but as a teenager I was like why is the only way to be happy, you know, I associated happy with thin, but the only way to be happy is to only eat lettuce. No, that’s not the whole story. That’s not the whole picture. And I still struggle with my weight, but I don’t associate happy and thin anymore.

Liz: Yeah. Good. I think on that piece, it’s like, it pains me to recall, but like in my eating disorder treatment, the goal was not, Hey, let’s educate you around your food. It was like, Hey, let’s get you comfortable eating your whole plate. So like at all, every single meal, we would have a timer and once we got our plate, the timer would start. If we finished our food in the first 15 minutes of the 30 minute stretch, then we would be rewarded by being allowed to drink a glass of tea. We had a specific code on our band. We could also have a tablespoon of honey in our tea. It was like so regimented. Right. And then, so, there’s one thing. First of all, my plate was like a bagel who, which definitely wasn’t organic or scratch sourdough. Like it was a highly refined carb, a thing of Philadelphia cream cheese, which like, again, not organic, probably had some fillers and some gums and preservatives in it. Then like probably a piece of Turkey bacon or something like lower fat. Right. Because again, they’re following the USDA food guidelines and it’s like, oh, my dream is to open like a nourishing women’s facility where I could actually teach people about real food, but I don’t have any of the accreditation behind my name. Like, I’m not a registered dietician, so maybe I need to partner with someone who is, but

Kody: That’s a really beautiful goal. 

Liz: I would love to do that because here’s the issue.

Kody: Like to be the idea behind it. 

Liz: Yeah. That’s, we’re getting there. So I mean, we will get there at some point I hope. It’s like for your example, and I believe that too, right? The salads are the only thing I have to eat veggies, you know, I have to be really low carb. I have to burn off every calorie I eat. And if I “indulge” in a food that is outside of that, then I feel the urge to combat that by working out or by physically purging that food. Right. Such a horribly disordered way of thinking. Yeah. And it’s, they learned through, honestly like the ss a price foundation and others is some of the most nutrient dense are nourishing and satiating and they’re actually the foods that we can eat to maintain a healthy weight. Like now I eat so much butter and cream and egg yolks and meat and yes, of course eat vegetables, but like I enjoy sourdough baked goods. I’m not afraid of wheat. I’m not afraid of any of my other in the past like beer foods because lines of, is this traditionally prepared, is this wholesome? Is it grown in a way that honors like the ecosystem and the biology of the environment? Or was it grown in a way that <inaudible> with goals?

Liz: So yeah, I the combating that exact model of thinking of, hey, I have to eat vegetables to be healthy, to save myself and to save the planet is exactly kind of what we’ve set out to do. And I think there’s a way to eat really nourishing, amazing foods and they can include things that, you know, at one point we might’ve been scared to eat. I tell people all the time that they’re like, what do you, what do my kids snack on? I’m like, there’s a number of things, but like, please don’t be scared of whipped cream if it’s made with beautiful raw cream. A little bit of maple syrup, smell extract like that with some berries is a kid friendly treat that your kids will for sure eat. And it’s not,

Kody: It’s a mom friendly treat,

Liz: And it’s, it’s not like we’re spray it out of a can, but again, because we have so many counterparts that are these hyper processed foods, we, we tend to think like, oh, whipped cream because it can come in a can, it’s unhealthy or Oh, a cheeseburger because I can buy a version of that at the, at the drive-through then they’re junk food. Not to me. I love burgers. I will eat a burger. I think it’s a really nourishing food. So

Kody: Yeah. It’s about what you have with it. I mean, we don’t eliminate anything from the house. Yeah. I mean, except for Takis. I don’t allow Takis.

Liz: Those things are spicy.

Kody: They are. And I have two kids with stomach issues and they’re the two that love them, so they like, and they’re teenagers so they go to town together and buy talkies and then come home and whine about their stomachs and I’m like, I don’t care, like, you made that choice and you’re not a baby.

Liz: That’s true.

Kody: But so yeah. I love how you mentioned it a bit back that there was nothing out there to teach your kids and so you created it. Like, do you wanna tell us a little bit about that? Because that’s kind of my story too, but I want to hear yours.

Liz: I know when I was reading on your website, I was like, oh my gosh, this is my counterpart. Like she did exactly what I did too. I don’t know when you started yours but mine I started writing it back in I think 2019. I think I got my logo created in 2018. But I didn’t launch until 2021. So we’re only like a year and a half old. And

Kody: Yeah, that’s about where we’re at. Yeah. As far as launch date.

Liz: Cool. Yeah. And I’m glad I actually was, I actually put it off a year because I was gonna launch in April, 2020 and then my homeschool convention, the one that happens locally in Cincinnati, which is supposedly the biggest one in the United States.

Kody: Oh, I might be there this year.

Liz: Oh yeah, yeah. It’s huge. But in April of 2020 it got shut down. Yeah. They kept saying, oh, we’re gonna meet anyways, this is gonna be fine. And obviously that wasn’t the case. Yeah. So imagine April, 2020, which I’m honestly in hindsight, so thankful I waited an extra year. ’cause I just think everyone’s mental capacity was maxed out. Yeah. Like this new thing and they didn’t, and then like,

Kody: and by 21 they’re like, we know what we wanna do. Like how do we do it?

Liz: Exactly. And the other beautiful thing was like a lot of people rushed to homeschooling or they did this virtual school, which by the way is not homeschooling. 

Kody: No

Liz: Differentiate ourselves. Like if parents of public schoolers suffered through a year where their teachers tried to teach via Zoom or something like that and they were like, if this is homeschooling, I’m out, all the OG homeschoolers, like you and me need to be like, “hey, that is not homeschool. That’s The worst of public school and the worst of your at-home environment and meshing them together.”

Kody: Right.

Liz: So I really am thankful for that extra year that kind of weeded through the people that weren’t really gonna homeschool long-term. And also like now people are finally starting to wake up to like, Hey, my food does matter. Hey, my, not just my food matters for my health, but like my food choices matter for my neighbor’s health, for my community, for the land on which my food has grown. And I think we’re just starting, we’re just a small piece of this real food movement, but the real food movement itself is gaining momentum. So for me..

Kody: Literally, well we kind of have the honor of bringing the kids into it in a different way.

Liz: Totally. And I was surprised that nothing was out there. Yeah.

Kody: There’s nothing. Well now there is.

Liz: Now we’ve got the homesteading world and the nutrition real food world covered and I’m so thankful that, you know, so many other parents have seen that need for their own home too. ’cause at first I was like, I don’t know if anyone else needs this but me, but if I just create this for my daughter, like that’s good enough. So I, it literally just looked like me, you know, writing on a piece of paper like a course outline, like, okay, what would I write in here? What would I put in here? How would I even start this conversation? How do we unlearn? So the very first lesson in the original workbook is called Forgetting the pyramid because I’m just like get it out.

Kody: I love it. I think I need to order this for my kiddos right now.

Liz: Yeah. And I’ll ship some to you. So yeah, I’d love to hear your thoughts too on it. But I wanted it to be all encompassing in terms of like, just understanding what food is and where it comes from. I also wanted it to be really aesthetically pleasing. So I did hire a brand designer to do a logo for me and then I had her lay out the first five lessons and then from there, I took it and kind of designed the rest. And then every resource from then I’ve created on my own. But, you know, for our early elementary product that we launched last December, I hired a watercolor artist and she, the art that’s in that. And then our most recent product, I hired like our city’s best food photographer. ’cause I just want our products to be beautiful.

Kody:  I want them to be Right. I kind of went through the same thing. I had a little bit of imposter syndrome. Like mine isn’t beautifully painted, like all these other ones I see. And then I was like, no, you made yours the way you did because you wanted like, exact pictures of what some of these things actually look like.

Liz: Yeah. And that’s necessary and you can’t let beauty get in the way of function. 

Kody: Well and then my, I do feel like mine turned out really beautiful in a different way.

Liz: Totally. And so, yeah, it was like two and a half years of writing the book. And that time, like I was, I got pregnant and then had our youngest daughter in May of 2020. And so, you know, that happened. Yeah. It was wild timing. And then somewhere in that time Sally Fallon Morale the founder and president of the Weston A Price Foundation got ahold of the book and reviewed it for me and gave feedback and wrote notes in the margins. I still have the copy, like I’m gonna keep it forever. 

Kody: Right.

Liz: She gave her input in it on it and I asked other homeschool parents and I talked to other people and it’s so nerve wracking launching something into the world when you’re like, I don’t really know what kind of credentials someone might need to write this, but like, I feel like I don’t have them. And you know, I had people ask me like, well you don’t have a medical degree. How can you talk about food? And then I had to stop and, and remind myself that having a medical degree doesn’t necessarily mean you know anything outside of pharmaceuticals. Yeah. You don’t have to know nutrition to be a practicing md. I’m pretty sure they get one hour of nutritional counseling.

Kody: Right.

Liz: So,

Kody: Well, I mean, I would think people would be more concerned about being a nutritionist, but even at this point I feel like there’s a lot of really great nutritionists out there. I don’t wanna discredit them, but I feel like with this movement, it’s more somebody who’s digging past all that.

Liz: Exactly. And so for a while I was like, okay, well I’m not a dietician. And then I realized, well when I used to see a dietician, you know, she would drink a diet mountain and do it every session waiting five, you know, so it’s like you can be a dietician and still espouse a highly processed refined foods or you can be a real food dietician and blow past all that. But dieticians, their whole goal is to counsel one-on-one. Okay. So, yes, I’m never gonna walk into a hospital and give recommendations on what someone puts in their feeding tube because I’m not a registered dietician. Right. But I have master’s degree in communication and I do have some design background and I definitely have some writing background. So if all I need to do is write a resource, cite where I’m getting my information and design it to be beautiful, I can do that. And so that’s exactly what I did. So and that’s giving me so much freedom to be like, Hey, I’m not the researcher here. I’m the one that’s just compiling this information so that you don’t have to go write this curriculum for your own kid. And honestly, that’s how our meal plans have come into play too. It’s like, Hey, I’m just creating these recipes which, you know, anyone can write a recipe. And developing these things that we’re just mirroring and mimicking in our own home. So yeah,

Kody: That’s the spin that you put on recipes because like you’re going for the whole food movement where like the recipes I put on my site are a lot of times how you can make nutritious meals when you have a busy family.

Liz: Totally. Yeah. And I think everyone’s perspective is needed in that space too. And so, you know, I resonate with you putting something into the world after you’re like, wait, I need to teach my kids this, but there’s nothing available. And so, you know, you and I stepped up when we did it and I love it. I love it too. I just, it gives me so much life and so much hope and it’s been really freeing for me to step into a space that I know needed. Like, I don’t take my past journey with food for granted. I’m thankful I walked through that experience because it colors how I see food and raising daughters today. And so it’s like, what a gift from God that I can take my old experience and, and put light on it now and have it be something that’s actually beneficial to the world. So Yeah.

Kody: Well thank you for doing that because that’s, you know, each time now that I think of something that I wanna teach my kids, my brain immediately goes to, I should write a curriculum about that. And then, you know, my husband melts down and runs away.

Liz: Yeah.

Kody: So, you know, I keep joking that he says I can only write one book this year, so I’m only gonna write two.

Liz: Yeah. You know, the first year we launched, I, I think I put out like three pieces of new material. Like I was releasing something new almost every three or four months and it was really fun, but really exhausting. And then this year we haven’t really launched a legitimate product. I say that, we launched a coloring book in the beginning of the year, but it was a very small project compared to writing a full meal plan or a full curriculum. And we’re coming up on our first legitimate product launch next week. So I don’t know when this question

Kody: It’s gonna line up really well because I was planning on releasing it Tuesday. So

Liz: Yeah. So we’re gonna launch our what’s for breakfast resource on Monday. And yeah, I mean, being a content creator, you know, how difficult and challenging that is and what a, what a monumental amount of work it is leading up to your launch, so.

Kody: Oh yeah. I mean you have to do all the behind, you have to be the creator and the marketer and it’s just, it’s exhausting trying to balance the two. So, I get you a hundred percent. So on that note, you are releasing your what’s for Breakfast? You wanna tell us a little bit about it and tell us what you have for our listeners?

Liz: Yeah, so the What’s for Breakfast, we have a resource also called What’s for Dinner, which is six weeks worth of nightly meals. So it’s 42 dinners and it kind of flows from one to the next. And we give you weekly shopping lists. So you buy for the week and then you cook all your dinners based off my cooking instructions. And you know, it’s really designed to say, Hey, you cook a whole chicken on Monday and then you boil the stock on Tuesday and then you use the stock in the rice on Wednesday, that type of thing to really stretch your ingredients. Good. but then after I released that, people were like, “but what do I do about breakfast?” And I hesitated for a long time. I was like, “guys, I don’t know, like I don’t wanna ride another meal plan because it’s just a lot of work.”

And then I was finally like, “you know what, we gotta have a What’s For Breakfast?” And so for this one it’s more so, ’cause I don’t think people need six weeks of breakfast ideas. I think they need staple recipes where they can learn how to utilize what’s already on hand. So I basically formulated a bunch of recipes out of just using staples that you’d have. So flour, eggs, butter milk you know, a seasonal vegetable or a seasonal fruit that you’re already buying for another meal. How can we utilize these ingredients you already have on hand? Also to train you to keep a stocked fridge and pantry and then make nourishing meals that center around animal source protein. Obviously that’s huge for us. Having a good carbohydrate in the morning, having good fats. And then also put it into that like, weekly rhythm of, hey, we tell you this is kind of the shorter meal prep.

Liz: So you can use these for Monday through Friday and then on the weekends you can enjoy these sort of like longer 30 ish minute meal prep. So it’s half cookbook, half meal plan, honestly. But it’s just got everything in there. It’s got our coffee consumption, our teas that we love the way that we conscientiously source our coffee and the ways that we drink it not on an empty stomach in the morning, you know, and, and we’ve got like our staple ingredients and where we source those and why we keep them on hand. And so it’s just supposed to be an all-encompassing book to say, “Hey, you need breakfast ideas, grab this book. You can cook nourishing real food.” And honestly, like my mission behind it was to take back the family breakfast table ’cause I’m so sick of us being sold so short like cereal and pastries and toaster strudels like that.

Liz: And I just think like us as humans, we thrive so much better if we put real food into our bodies first thing in the morning than if we are rushing down a bowl of cereal or something else. You know? And I’m not opposed to cereal. I use it as a snack every now and then, but it’s just one of those foods, I just love it so much. So I try not to keep it on hand. But you know, a bowl of organic cereal and some raw milk is an occasional treat for me. I just don’t consume it for breakfast. So that’s the thing, why have our breakfast turned to what looks more like dessert and why are we not nourishing ourselves? Why do we lie to ourselves and say that breakfast, one third of our meals of the day, doesn’t deserve our time in the kitchen? I don’t believe that’s true. So that’s what, what, that’s what’s for breakfast. And I did put a discount code on our website for any of our resources. So any of the children’s nutrition curriculum, the What’s for Dinner, we have a coloring book and the what’s for breakfast, you can get 15% off by just using the discount code homestead. You just have to type that in at checkout. You should get 15% off.

Kody: Great. And I’ll put that in the show notes for everyone. Yeah, I’m so excited ’cause I hate sweet stuff for breakfast. Yes. It’s, except for yogurt. I do like yogurt for breakfast, so with fruit in it, but that’s different than like a pop-tart. So. Totally.

Liz: And like one of the breakfast ideas is yogurt, but we give you a really simple homemade granola and there’s a sourdough fermented version of the granola if you wanna do that. And so yeah, there’s savory items, there’s some sweet items. It’s all supposed to be really balanced on a macronutrient level, and it’s just trying to get people re-inspired when it comes to their morning meals.

Kody: That’s great. So we’re starting to wrap up now, but I have something that I ask all of my guests and that’s what does keep growing mean to you?

Liz: I love that you asked this to your guests. ’cause On our podcast, the final question we ask is what are you learning today? And to me those are the questions. Right. What does keep growing mean to you? What are you learning today? For me, it’s like constantly positioning myself as a lifelong learner. I was even just talking to my husband the other night where I was expressing to him that I have this struggle where I feel like I can be really self-disciplined in one area, but I have a hard time when crossing over. 

So, for example, I’m about to launch this book. I’ve put in probably 35 hours this week working, you know, in my house. I don’t have childcare, so my kids are around too, right. And I’m like, I’m dedicated and I’m disciplined, but my workout has fallen like I haven’t gotten daily movement in. And you know, like my food is always pretty much the same. But you know, sometimes it’s like the kids’ school, it’s like, oh, well I, I need to block out these hours. And sometimes I’m either super diligent with the kids’ school or I’m super diligent with home alone, or I’m super diligent with my workout schedule and it’s like, why can’t I somehow not be disciplined in more than one area at one time? Like, why am I so compartmentalized? And he’s like, you know, you gotta set specific goals right now. Your specific goal is to launch this new resource. So that’s why you’re working so hard on it. You have to set specific goals. And so like, that’s a perfect example of I’m constantly analyzing how my week is going, how I’m feeling, how my kids are feeling, what their emotional needs are.

Liz: I have an 11 year old daughter, like emotional needs run high in my house, as you know. So it’s like constantly checking in and calibrating to what we’re just observing is me trying to have a forward center of mass trying to constantly learn and push myself. And it’s both rewarding and exhausting, but I feel like we should feel spent to some degree at the end of our days. Like in a good way.Like you should feel, you should feel a good sense of like, wow, I worked from before. The sun rose till after the sunset, you know, and that’s not just business work that’s like, I’m doing dishes, I’m cooking for my family, I’m having a conversation with my daughter. You know, it’s, any of that is that

Kody: Well-Rounded accomplishment.

Liz: Totally. And so it’s like, that’s what it feels like for me is constantly reassessing. And that’s, I’m in that season right now of like, what, what else do I need to optimize here? What else do I need to recalibrate so that it makes more sense for myself and my whole family? Because I’m in charge of a lot. I’m in charge of homeschooling my kids. I’m in charge of running my household. I’m in charge of running my company, and I’m in charge of making sure my body is equipped to do the work I’m called to do. And so that’s a lot if you put that all on paper, right.

Kody: It really is. But I understand where you’re coming from. It’s finding that balance that you feel good about every aspect of your day at the end of the day. ’cause I, I feel that a lot. Like, you know, when I’m writing, I am 100% in it and I get done at the end of the day and I’m like, I didn’t mark anything off my list today. And my husband’s like, but you wrote, you know, three chapters. And I’m like, that’s, that’s not enough for me because I didn’t meet the needs of everybody. And I, I could have still been productive after writing two chapters and, you know, kinda that I definitely respect that goal.

Liz: Yeah. And I even think like, it’s okay for us in certain seasons for one of our responsibilities to take precedence. Like if you’re on, if you’re about to launch a product or you’re like, I have a deadline, I have to finish writing this book, I think that’s okay. The piece where I’m also trying to stretch myself in is like, “Hey, I can’t completely fall off on my other, I can’t lose sight of my other things.” And that’s what I do. I completely lose sight of it, and we have a home gym, I can just go in the gym, it’s on the other side of this wall here, and I could just lift basic weights. I don’t need to run five miles, I just need to do a little bit of weight training, build some muscle. It would take my…

Kody: I have a bike with a desk on it right behind me. So

Liz: Yeah, it’s like, we’re so close, we’re right there. But for me it’s just gonna be, and I’m saying this in the future tense because I haven’t accomplished this yet, but for me, my goal for myself and what I wanna grow into, to answer your question is like, I wanna get better at not losing sight of my other goals just because I’m working really hard and really disciplined in one of them. And so my husband’s a great example of that. I don’t know how he does it, but I’m hoping he’ll teach me along the way.

Kody: Yeah. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming on today and talking about this so important subject in our world right now. And I hope that we can reconnect again soon.

Liz: Yeah, I’m so happy I have your curriculum in our house. I’m gonna work through it with our girls. And I’m thankful for your work. Thank you for this podcast. Thanks for having me on. And thank you for creating the resources that you saw a need for and just keep cranking it out. I can’t wait to see what two books you write next year.

Kody: Awesome. Thanks. 

Well, thank you for joining me today at The Homestead Education and I hope that I have given you something to think about this week to help others find me. Please comment and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. You can also follow me on Facebook and Instagram at homemade revelation. Do you have questions that you’d like answered or just want to say hi, please email me at hello@thehomesteadeducation.com. Until next time, keep growing.