My toddler daughter won’t eat meat. This ordinarily wouldn’t have bothered me, I hadn’t planned on giving her meat for many moons, I was a vegetarian for 15 years, I figured we’d cross that bridge when we needed to. Well we needed to. We found out our daughter was low in iron, something quite common in babies that aren’t supplemented with formula, we had started on a liquid iron which I was not crazy about (I don’t think anyone wants to give their child anything additional in their system) and then we stopped the liquid iron after the recommended dosage term only to get re-tested and find out she was still low. The doctor insisted that iron from meat would be the best iron, so we tried all sorts of meat in all incarnations and even pureed it to see if we could ‘slip’ it in. No dice. Iron is essential for growth for a baby/toddler and she is very petite so we wanted to ensure that she had the iron necessary for her growth and health. We also didn’t want to give her too much iron, because it seems to be one of the easiest supplements to easily get toxic (and fatal). What’s a mother to do? I decided if she wasn’t going to eat meat I would need to learn how to create meals for her that offered the most balanced of nutrition for her growing body, that’s when I fell down a quite glorious rabbit hole. My research introduced me to many new blogs and books and an entire community that I wanted to be part of. From the infamous words of the diner in ‘When Harry Met Sally’–‘I’ll have what she’s having’.

One of my first discoveries was Sarah Britton’s, ‘My New Roots’.  Her blog is beautiful in it’s simplicity (she was voted a Saveur Best Food Blog), the recipes are completely doable and I discovered so many new things from Sarah. Risotto made from sunflower seeds? Making your own flours from grains? I have easily (and successfully) made at least five different flours now, which is perfect since I don’t bake enough that I need a ginormous container of suspect flour sitting in our already tiny pantry space. Sarah it seems has an enormous following + fan base and after you start reading her blog you may just find yourself amongst one of them.

This week we will be sharing the beautiful new to us blogs and their books. I was tremendously inspired and love that there are blogs that are still thriving, it makes my little blog loving heart swell.

Are you already a fan of Sarah Britton? If so have you tried any of her recipes? I would love to know which ones were a hit!