I’ve been a bit absent, and thus, silent lately. I’ve really, truly…been pondering the best way to serve the couple dozen wonderful humans inside this community. Here’s the conclusion I’ve reached. Ultimately, sometime this year I will be creating and launching my own app where everything is simplified: a place for recipes—a place to connect and ask questions—a place for sourdough bread baking resources—and a place for anything else I find helpful in making your life better. I was going to close this group down and just refund anyone who paid anything. However, I still want to use this to test some stuff out, share recipes in here and communicate with y’all. The first 25 members acted quickly and were able to join for free. The remaining others paid either $10/year or are paying $1/month. I will happily refund you and remove you from the group, but if you choose to stay you will get early access to my app for free. I will need some people to test it out and give me feedback. I’m perfectly okay with whatever you choose to do. Just DM me on here or on social media (or email [email protected]) and I’ll refund you right away. I’m working on some new sourdough content and recipes so stay tuned for those as I’ll be launching them inside here first! Gratitude, Jake Widmann

Who knows what’s true or false any more when it comes to health related information. No one agrees on anything, and everyone is validated in their beliefs because there is a study out there that “proves” everything they believe. Take the chart below for example. •Plastic utensils are toxic it says, but silicone is great •Aluminum foil is no good, but parchment paper is fair game. I hope you’re ready for this. Buckle up… I actually lifted this picture off a Facebook post. You should’ve seen the comments. Hundreds of comments arguing back and forth how aluminum foil is toxic, and so is parchment paper, but not if it’s a natural type of parchment paper that hasn’t been bleached. And even then it’s hard to tell if it’s good because it’s still going to off gas at high temperatures. Those plastic utensils you have in your kitchen, throw them out and swap them for some silicone ones. But don’t do any type of cooking with the silicone, because it’s highly toxic at high temps and will leech loads of chemicals into your food if you do. Oh, and that state of the art bamboo cutting hoard you got…throw it away—unless it’s extra virgin, organic, vegan, non-bleached, non child labor harvested, and only grown in climates that don’t get above 82°F…okay some of that was made up, but that’s basically the premise of what I took away from that post. You can’t even trust the very hands you cook with because those same hands might leech chemicals into your all wooden organic vegan oak utensils, and then bam…it’s basically like cooking with plastic. This is why I try to make things simple and not stress people out over stupid stuff like this. I do recommend you stop using non stick pans. I do recommend not using a plastic cutting board. BUT…more than anything…before you even get to worrying about silicone vs. plastic utensils…make sure you meal isn’t coming from a box most nights of the week. Make sure you’re cooking with ingredients and not microwaving a tv dinner or eating McD’s 3-5 nights a week. Make sure you’re sitting down at the table with people you care about and conversing with them about meaningful stuff.

Hey Yall! Just published a good starter ebook for y'all to snag. You can view and download it here: https://www.skool.com/food-and-freedom-3309/classroom I’ll be adding another one in the coming days as well, but it won’t unlock until level 3. You “level up” when you post and engage with others in our community. FYI—It doesn’t rise much to get to level 3. Chat soon! Jake

I put a lot of effort into making sure that my content is NOT super polished. I make food/meals that anyone can make, and therefore I make videos that, for the most part, look like anyone can make. It’s why I still do, and likely always will, shoot my videos on my iPhone. I could whip out my wife’s professional Canon camera and set up all the lighting and have some very high quality looking videos posted on social media, but that’s not what I’m going for. I was, after all, a wedding videographer for a handful of years. When someone comes across my page I want them to realize that the meal is easy enough to make that they could do it too! That’s why I share stuff like the below picture. Life happens, and yesterday life happened. I started making some hoagie rolls for tonight’s steak sandwiches, and I was also doing some projects in the house all day. I ended up letting these rolls over proof, so they ended up flat. However, they still taste amazing. And they’re made with real, quality whole food ingredients, unlike that which we find in grocery stores. So let this be a lesson. It doesn’t have to be perfect. You just have to put in the effort to get it done and that’ll take you 95% of the way there. And when it comes to feeding your family…95% of the way there is pretty darn good! Cheers! Jake

😩 I know that it seems like every time we open our phones someone is telling us about a new app or website or person we need to follow, or movie we need to watch, etc… 😌 I think that this app, Skool, and this community, Food & Freedom, although new, will help to undo some of that frustration and anxiety of constantly being pushed and lulled across the internet with our very limited time. 👀 Check out this quick video, then as it says at the end, drop a quick introduction. 🏡 Where you’re from, what you hope to get out of Food & Freedom, and one thing that you self proclaim as your area of expertise, or something you take great interest in. Alright…chat soon! -Jake