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How to Boil a Husband

How to boil a husband

This is good advice about husbands and real food, I promise.

And no, I’m not upset with my husband and taking it out on men everywhere.

It was my husband’s idea, in fact.

Ever since I pulled things like serving beef tongue and not telling him (and then successfully doing the same with beef heart), he has given in to the fact that he’s thoroughly boiled. And of course, now that he’s actually  instigating dietary changes in our family, I think I can safely say the process is complete.

What’s with boiling him though? It’s about the slow process.

Here at Kitchen Stewardship®, our basic, foundational habits all save time and money while increasing your family’s nutrition or health, but there’s another layer to “health” that is important too: relationships.

Most specifically, the relationship between husband and wife. The decisions about the way a family eats have to happen within that relationship in some way, and if real food strikes marital discord, bringing back the harmony is fundamental to all your work in the kitchen.

I don’t think I’m alone in being the woman who is the driving force of health and nutrition in the family, and I’m pretty sure my husband is not alone in his initial resistance.

It’s common that as the husband watches his favorite boxed foods dwindle and not get replaced, he becomes concerned. He may complain, question, sulk, or balk the system entirely and buy his own food.

Many husbands also watch the bottom line closely, a good habit, and when they see the food budget expanding, they want to know how to cut the fat. When they hear that the fat now costs $4/pound and you’re buying more of it than ever, along with added expense for raw milk, pastured eggs, and grassfed beef, many men may put their foot down.

I’ve been asked many times to explain how I got my husband “on board” with the traditional foods eating habits we adopted over the course of Kitchen Stewardship®‘s existence. Is it a nearly universal question?

We’re called to be partners in marriage, so it’s vital that we work hand in hand. The way the man of the house reacts to the food being served can impact not only the peace of the marriage, but also the way the children accept the food and respect the mother.

It is not this way in every situation, but so many of us wives are the ones doing the reading about nutrition and/or following our gut to determine our family’s nutritional goals. What’s a husband to do? When we put something a bit off the grid on the table, do they just have to eat it?

My apologies to the 2% of men out there; this post is not exactly for you. Ladies, read on for inspiration to get on the same page with your husband in the kitchen, no matter what it takes.

It’s important to get the basics down in the kitchen and at the grocery store, so you know what to buy and how to prepare it, but equally important is knowing how to explain what you’re doing to your partner in life. This is our story in three phases.

The Beginning: He Was a Normal Guy Who Liked His Junk Foodfamily picture Christmas

By way of example, I present to you my husband in 2008 when our journey began:

  • computer programmer (Science/Math, as left-brained as they come)
  • man of faith
  • Crohn’s Disease patient, about 5 years after surgery to remove part of his intestine, no symptoms since
  • lasagna lover extraordinaire (never any question what he’d order at Olive Garden)
  • regular soda pop drinker
  • avid cereal eater (two bowls for breakfast, skim milk, known to grab another bowl for a snack)
  • roller hockey player (once a week)
  • intermittent exerciser (see above, plus if his friends were around to lift weights, maybe once a month; hates running)
  • doting father adjusting to parenting two children

And his thoughts on food and nutrition? Non-existent, other than “Mmmm, this banana bread is good,” or “I don’t like fish.”

Transitions: Womanly Wiles and a Husband Comes Around

Daddy and kids semi real food camping

Here are some real stories from the first year of our real food changes, written as they happened:

  • When I first started reading about real food in December 2008, I shared information about raw milk with my husband. He listened politely, thinking any big changes would be a long way off. I have a habit of taking a long time to make big decisions. Suddenly by the very next month, we went to the farm and I was asking for his blessing to take the plunge. Poor husband. His jaw sort of dropped, and he grinned sheepishly:  “I thought this was more of a pipe dream…” he admitted. And the next month KS was born! 
  • I asked some friends if they wanted to get into a CSA that summer, and one said, “We’re very interested!! (We meaning me, and I’ll talk my husband into it later.)” and the other replied, “I read your first line to my husband, and he groaned.. Our hardworking hubbies just don’t know how seriously we take the job of care taking their health!!”  Is that typical of many homes, or what?
  • My husband also had to deal with wondering if I’m hiding something in his food, the results of many various experiments (like tongue and even dishwasher detergent!), and the re-makes of some of his favorite dishes. He can tell when I’ve tried something new; I’ve got no poker face. “What did you do…?” he’s fond of asking.
  • He keeps wondering where all the chips have gone, and he looked at our last few boxes of cereal in the basement recently and cried, “That’s ALL the cereal we’ve got left?!”  He added in dismay, meekly:  “You’ve effectively killed my cereal habit.”  This from a man who used to eat two bowls with skim milk, every morning and sometimes for snacks.

The photo of dad and the kids camping is a perfect example of our transition: We’re doing healthy things, being outdoors, hiking, etc. They’re eating apples – but they also had S’mores. (OK, we still allow those, but not daily!) 😉 And in the background, you can see both stainless steel water bottles and Gatorade that he hadn’t given up yet.

  • If it hurts your pride and your pocketbook to pay three digits a night for a hotel room…
  • If you love the wide open spaces, fresh air, and good old dirt of a campsite…
  • If you hate the thought of packing hot dogs….

We’re right there with you. It’s all about real, homemade food, even in the middle of the woods.

We’ll show you how we do camping with four kids…

…just imagine the family memories you’ll make (on a budget) when you head out on your own camping vacation, no matter what ages your kids are!

Get our guide here

Beyond womanly wiles and bulldozing your ideas through, what’s a real foodie mama to do to keep peace in the marriage? Sometimes there are a lot of changes to make to transform a standard household to a whole foods diet. It really goes against the paradigm of seducing our men through their stomachs. A good meal is traditionally (and truly!) like a love letter to a man, whether during courtship or marriage.

If you’ve read my story, you know part of the craziness that happened within my own head and in my home as I learned more and began to make changes in our diets. When the dust settled, my husband was tentatively on board.

I probably did some bulldozing. I may have used some womanly wiles (here is one example, see the part about jeans). Ultimately, I do have a few tactics that I can share with the masses. They’re coming. 😉

Kitchen Stewardship Veto Jar for when healthy gets a little too weird

One funny one from back in this “first year of big real food changes” phase is the veto jar that my friend mailed him for Christmas. You’ve got to have a sense of humor about the whole thing!

Nowadays he just adds Frank’s hot sauce (or the homemade version when I have time to make it)

Real Food Family: Healthy Became the New Normal

Fast forward to 2013 and let’s meet him again:

husband holding all 3 kids
  • computer programmer (Science/Math, as left-brained as they come)
  • man of faith
  • Crohn’s Disease patient, about 5 10 years after surgery to remove part of his intestine, no symptoms since committed to avoiding medication as much as possible for infrequent symptoms (for more health details, read the rather scary story of his family history of heart disease and finding a “new normal” from Crohn’s and more)
  • likely gluten sensitive (eats a 95% gluten-free diet and knows why); does elimination diet meal plans from time to time starting with this highly effective diet experiment that eradicated his Crohn’s flare-up, proving unequivocally for the first time, for him, that our diet made a positive difference in his life
  • lasagna lover extraordinaire (never any question what he’d order at Olive Garden) but misses his favorites. Olive Garden? Probably chicken, salad, no bread-stick
  • regular soda pop drinker hasn’t touched a soda in nearly a year
  • avid cereal eater (two bowls for breakfast, skim milk, known to grab another bowl for a snack) likely to make eggs for himself for breakfast if on his own; avid soaked oatmeal eater with whole raw milk, raisins and stevia (read about stevia’s health benefits.)
  • roller hockey player (once a week)
  • intermittent exerciser (see above, plus if his friends were around to lift weights, maybe once a month) works out 3-5x/week, P90X, Insanity, ran a half marathon last fall
  • doting father adjusting to parenting two three children
  • 20 pounds lighter

Thoughts on food and nutrition? He makes me proud when he spouts off some fact about gluten sensitivity and why so-and-so really needs to cut grains to see what happens, shows disgust with people eating junk,  or believes that fat doesn’t make you fat. There are times I do a double take and say, “You know that? I didn’t think you were listening…”

He also eats fish, when I serve a little salmon with his spicy seasoning for fish.

In 2012 he went on a business trip during a grain-free time and hardly ate out at all – he cooked bacon and eggs in his room, cut fruit salad and bought yogurt. He managed to stay grain-free the entire week. The man he was at the beginning of the journey would not recognize that man (and would probably think he was off his rocker).

When I asked my husband what the strategy was for pulling him off the rocker with me, he said, “It was gradual. I think that was the trick – it’s like that story about the frog.”

Do you know the one?

How to Boil a Frog

How to boil a husband

(photo source)

If you put a frog in a pot of water that’s just the right temperature, he’ll likely sit happily for you.

If you turn on a burner under that pot and begin to heat the water slowly, the frog will remain in the pot.

The frog is fully capable of jumping out of the pot and making a slimy mess of your stove, but he does not.

He sits.

The water gets hotter.

And still he sits.

He does not take note of the gradual change in the water temperature.

Eventually, the water gets hot enough that no being in its right mind would enter it, but since the frog was already in the pot, he stays.

He sits happily in the pot until he is boiled alive.

This story is often used to warn people of our toxic culture, how we can become so accustomed to small compromises that suddenly we look around and realize we have become accepting of many sins and immoralities because they seemed “normal” or “better than the next guy.”

In our case, I boiled my husband.

And instead of it being a bad thing, it was a pretty darn good marketing strategy for my nutritional plan for the family.

My husband will say pretty bluntly, “If you had tried to make all these changes all at once, it never would have worked. I would have fought them – and you. It would not have been good at all.”

In other words, I baby-stepped my own husband, Kitchen Stewardship® style, into real food and natural living. I slowly boiled him alive…in the best possible way, because he’s now a well-nourished, well-informed eater of real food (who still loves a good hot dog when he can get one).

The Final Phase: Assimilation and Ownership

family Christmas Mass

This phase probably started when my husband did his first Whole30 on his own accord, something he decided to do for Lent to see what happened. The next year, 2016, he convinced a friend to do a Whole30 with him.

Then in 2017 my husband finally read a book that may end up making “health as the new normal” go even deeper, like when a new convert to Christianity starts evangelizing others. He’s already trying to get his own father to read it. 🙂

And our definition of “healthy” may take even more steps away from the mainstream too, if that’s possible (it is). This phase is a work in progress and not one I would expect most reluctant spouses to ever reach, but it’s kind of amazing to know that it’s possible, even if it does take almost a decade to actualize.

You can read more about how this is playing out in our household in the post about our new gut healing diet and how it’s going.

How You Too Can Boil a Husband

The advice finally cometh!

Taking it slowly is definitely the overarching theme of what your strategy needs to be, but there are other components that need to be part of the marketing package along with the timeline:

  1. Information Sharing
  2. Trust Building
  3. Retaining Normalcy
  4. Demonstrating Results
  5. Accepting Cheating

1. Share Information

Paul with cows calf farm

My husband is a computer guy, an engineer who truly appreciates cold, hard facts. I try to be as up on the science behind the nutrition as I can, and I lay it out for him as plainly as possible. He doesn’t have to know everything I know about what we’re eating, but he wants to know enough to understand why our food budget is expanding slightly and some of his favorite treats are disappearing.

I always explain to him how certain foods will keep us healthy and the rationale behind purchasing decisions, whether for the environment or our health. He knows enough to stay afloat about raw milk, gluten, and his own triglycerides. He visited our new milk farm with me and met the cows (much to his olfactory chagrin). But he understands why we trust our farmers.

My advice for others? Know how your husband likes to think. Talk about food. In manageable bites. He deserves to know.

2. Build Trust

My husband knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that I have our family’s best interests in mind when I work in the kitchen. He sees how much I care, how hard I work, and he honors that in how he reacts to the food I serve. This is not something I can make a bulleted list about for you.

Building trust is simply part of our marriage, based on open communication, prayer together, and a foundation of faith and love. Just as we discuss our family size and our goals for the future, we can discuss our health concerns and desires openly. He hears me pray for our family’s health and for guidance on what to buy and what to eat.

He knows I’m doing my very best, and that is of the utmost importance. If you don’t have a foundation of trust in your marriage, stop working on real food and start with your relationship with your husband with God as the guide.

3. Retain Normalcy

hamburgers without buns

Bunless burgers and homemade French fries….Mmmmm…

This step is key to the gradual process. If everything I served was super healthy but didn’t really taste good, and if my husband felt like all of his favorite foods had been stripped away, the emotional upheaval of the sudden loss of tradition, memories, etc. would be too much. He would resent food, and it would come between us.

Here are some strategies:

I served tasty alternatives often enough that he didn’t notice his habits had been broken.

We ate soaked oatmeal a lot for breakfast, which he loves, so the memory of daily cereal was less painful in the mornings.

I tentatively upgraded certain meals, hoping the end result would be as tasty as the original (or better, in a perfect world).

We had great success initially with Homemade Hamburger Helper, Pepper Steak, and chili (Recipe available in The Everything Beans Book), all from Better Than a Box. If I make a failure, I’m generally careful to wait at least a few days before trying something new!

In the first five years, his tastes truly shifted, and he now enjoys real food, sauteed vegetables, simple soups, etc. much more than he did previously. I didn’t have to be nearly as careful to serve “the normal” after a while, because we had a new normal…and it was delicious. In the assimilation phase, he actually started loving greens, for example, which even after we had done real food for years, he still used to pick out of his soups and stir fries. Change is possible!

Distract him from the weird stuff with normal stuff.

I keep us stocked with frozen fruit to put in our yogurt, which is always available. We eat lots of soups that taste great, and I work Mexican meals in as often as possible because they’re his favorite. Homemade refried beans, guacamole and farm ground beef make for a great real food, husband-approved meal: tacos.

I make sure we have hamburgers in the summer and homemade pizza every so often – used to be with soaked or sourdough whole wheat crust, now with various grain-free and gluten-free crusts, one of the best of which is this chickpea pizza crust that is crazy good.

I make sure we still have good treats around, but they’re all upgraded nutrition.

I’m often trying recipes for healthy baked goods, and with our changing palates, even grain-free goodies with low amounts of unrefined sweeteners can be absolutely mouth-watering.

4. Show Results

dad's half marathon 2012

It took more than a year before I could really demonstrate to my husband that our changes were working. Every situation is going to be drastically different in this arena, because you have to start with whatever health situation you’re given. At the “New Normal” touchpoint with over 4-5 years of slowly transitioning to real food, this is what we found:

No weight gain

People worry that when they ditch the low fat lifestyle and drink whole milk, plenty of butter, cheese, and coconut oil, that they might gain weight. No one here has gained a pound, and in fact, we’ve seen the opposite.

Weight loss

By cutting down on and cutting out grains, by exercising regularly, and with one big reduce-food-quantity-intake effort last spring, my husband is down over 20 pounds from his highest weight, and he looks and feels great.

General health

We get frustrated sometimes when we get wicked colds or other infections, but truth be told, we do notice that we handle the sick season better than many families, and we credit real food.

Crohn’s symptoms banished

This one was major for my husband. A few years ago, his Crohn’s flared up in the form of chronic diarrhea for two full months. A prescription anti-diarrheal couldn’t touch it, lab tests didn’t tell the doctors anything, and he was starting to discuss permanent medication to treat his Crohn’s.

I heard Jordan Rubin, author of the Maker’s Diet and himself a survivor of near fatal Crohn’s, speak about diet, came home, and suggested we immediately cut all grains, legumes, and dairy and see what happened. Within two days his symptoms were 100% under control.

Believe me, there’s nothing like results to convince a man that food makes a difference in one’s health. We had to make a radical change to show radical results, but with all the baby steps we had taken up until then, we were ready. 

Twice

The next time Crohn’s started to rear its ugly head, it was the old familiar “rumbling” and “gurgling” in the gut after a meal. Painful, yes, but worse, it was ominous. The pain was nothing my husband couldn’t handle, but he recognized it. It was like seeing that a man with a gun was lurking in the bushes outside your house and being unable to lock the doors or close the windows.

Imagine knowing that your children were sleeping peacefully in their beds and this intruder was about to gain entry to your home. That’s what it feels like for a busy father of three when Crohn’s goes from being a memory to suddenly being present every day.

Helpless.

We started a new probiotic, and again within two days, the symptoms were gone. They have not returned, and my husband no longer is wondering every day how he will keep up with his children when his gut is wrenching after every meal.

Triglycerides within normal range

Although we’ve had some up and down shifts, the best triglycerides of my husband’s life were taken when he had put the most work into his own health. He owned it, and he wanted it, so he stayed committed to it.

Whatever you can do to get someone you love – no matter who that person is – to invest in their own health, do it. That makes more difference than anything else you can do. (Read more about the whole Crohn’s Disease and triglycerides story here.)

5. Acceptable Cheating

If I flipped out every time my husband had pizza with friends, went out for lunch, or bought a Gatorade on the way home from hockey, we’d have problems. (I get a little worked up but try to tone it down, to be honest. I could do better with the “accepting” part of this step.)

Here’s one example of a yearly “big cheat” that has been a part of our food tradition for ten years:

how to boil a husband camping trip junk food
how to boil a husband camping trip junk food
how to boil a husband camping trip junk food

Every August, I buy all the food for his ten-man camping trip out to the woods. Ten years ago, our only goal was cheap. I prided myself on finding the very best deal on all the white bread and cured meat you see in the photos above, shopping for about three weeks to make it happen.

Since then, I’ve added fresh vegetables and cut fruit to the rotation, but I have no say in the main courses. Did you see all that cured meat? In case you missed it:

how to boil a husband camping trip junk food
how to boil a husband camping trip junk food
how to boil a husband camping trip junk food

The 6 burgundy boxes are filled with bacon, if you’re wondering…

When I took those photos in 2012, I even titled them “how to boil a husband – camping trip junk food,” because I knew that allowing a once-a-year total gluten-and-cured-meat-fest is integral to keeping the real food dynasty afloat at the Kimball house.

I do make sure we eat a ton of fresh vegetables after he gets home, and instead of keeping the leftovers, I encourage him to give them away to his friends.

In the years following, more changes seem to be made each time. He takes gluten-free bread now. We’ve upgraded the quality of the burgers significantly. Have you ever read the ingredients on a box of cheap, frozen hamburgers, by the way? Dis.Gust. Ing.

He’s even noticed that he feels bad with all the junk food – an unfortunate side effect of both getting older and eating healthy. But it’s one more way to see and feel the positive power of healthy eating, and he embraces the vegetable “detox” after returning even more.

Remembering from Whence we Came

How to Feed a Husband Real Food (& Convince Him it's Healthy)

When we talk about other people trying to make nutritional changes – or who probably should be trying but aren’t – we both remember what it’s like to be back at square one.

“I get it,” he’ll say. “It’s a huge mental leap from eating whatever you want to cutting all gluten or dairy, or making your own food all the time or whatever. It’s really hard…I don’t think we could ever go from where we were to the way we eat now in one huge leap.”

Baby steps.

I emphasize them for a reason, folks.

They work.

If all you can do for step one is have a serious talk with your husband about how tempting packaged treats are to you, and beg him to keep his junk food at work so that he is supporting you in sticking to your own goals, then that’s a great place to start.

Keep up the conversations about food, try to find some real results to demonstrate, and make sure you make meals that are pleasing to your husband’s palate at least half/some/most of the time. Use your intuition to gauge when you’re moving too fast or not including enough “familiar” in your day-to-day eating.

Partners in Life, Partners in Food

How to boil a husband

The bottom line in feeding a family, as in everything that has to do with running a household and growing children of God, is that you and your husband must be on the same page, or at least close. When I wanted to start raw milk, he said, “I’m never going to be more in favor of this than I am now. I’m still skeptical…but if you think it’s important, then let’s do it.”

love my husband. In my opinion, it’s good that he’s more skeptical than me, because it keeps me grounded.

It helps me remember that we cannot add a day to our lives by worrying, and that the Lord counts every hair on our heads and will feed us well, just as He cares for the birds of the sky and the flowers of the field. He keeps me balanced, and this is vital in a field where I am constantly coming across conflicting information and research.

Who’s to say what the perfect diet is?

Be a team with your husband; peace in the household is more important than the most perfect meal on the table. Giving up (for a time, with more prayer) may be the answer, if that’s what it takes.

Stay the Course

When I asked my husband this morning if he had anything to add to the “How to Boil a Husband” tutorial, he said, “Persistence.”

I mentioned, “And tacos and brownies every so often?”

Surprised, he raised his eyebrows and said in wonder, “Oh yeah…I guess that does really help, doesn’t it?”

He didn’t even notice that it was all part of the plan.

Don’t give up on your spouses, good kitchen stewards. Even the most ardent cereal lover can come around. If you need another tool have your spouse watch this video where I interviewed my husband on the process. It could be a game changer.

Use a deliberate marketing strategy for the real food transition, show positive growth, and take good care of your “stockholders.” Your investment in building trust, sharing information and keeping the changes gradual will allow you to form a successful partnership with a common goal, and you’ll be reaping nutritional dividends before you know it.

What challenges do you face in bringing your spouse along for the real food ride? What successes have you experienced?
Unless otherwise credited, photos are owned by the author or used with a license from Canva or Deposit Photos.

74 thoughts on “How to Boil a Husband”

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  2. DessertForTwo

    What a great post!
    I agree–gradual is the way to go. I have my Mr. reading food labels–something he never thought he’d do before he met me!

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  7. It was fun to read this as it somewhat mirrors my own experience. I’ve been married for 9 years. My husband took his time making changes slowwwwly. This fall he got gout for possibly the third time in a few months and that was it. Now he is vegan. Doesn’t drink beer anymore. Lost 20 pounds and is more committed than I have ever seen him. He looks and feels great. Some things take their own sweet time. 🙂

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Robin,
      AWESOME story! Hate to hear about someone getting sick, but when it’s a gateway to better health and owning it for himself, that’s a serious silver lining. 🙂 Katie

  8. I’ve also been baby stepping my family into whole foods. Most of this came about to me taking a lesser paying job and us needing to make changes to how I shop for food. I now make a lot of our noodles, breads, stock, etc. etc. I knew that I had truly changed how my husband thinks of food last night after he helped me shred the chicken. HE, not me telling him, but HE asked me where the pot was for the bones so I could make stock. I say he’s on board!
    [email protected]

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Lydia,
      All the women whose husbands have accidentally thrown away the bones this month are cheering for you!! That’s awesome!! 🙂 Katie

  9. Katie, I LOVE this post! My husband was just diagnosed with Crohn’s so this might be the post to show him why we need to do some baby steps. I’ve made your granola bars for him and he loves them; I am nervous about peanut butter as part of a problem for his Crohn’s, though. I just love your blog! I like to look at it often and I am hoping your success will be mirrored by ours, once my hubby and I are both on board for real food. I’ve been real butter & whole-milk for a while now but grain-free would be a stretch for both of us. Lent is coming, though… 🙂

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Angela,
      It is a HUGE leap, but you have no idea how much easier it is during Lent. DH says he can’t do the big things for anyone but God, and it’s so true for me too. Yes, PB is troublesome for some…my DH seems to fly in the face of everything that is “supposed” to hurt him – nightshades (peppers and onions), spicy foods, nuts. They’re all good, but Pizza Hut + pop = messed up. Gluten is definitely a problem for him, but not every time, which makes abstaining 100% tough.

      If you want to go grain-free, my best advice is to buy a bag of coconut flour and find a couple good recipes. It will last a really long time and give you some sense of normalcy – muffins, pancakes, crepes for wraps, quick breads, biscuits. I can email you some!!

      God bless!
      🙂 Katie

  10. Julia Skinner

    I have been slowly weaning my husband onto a real food, grain free diet, his attitude is I will eat anything you put in front of me but when I go out I will have bread. He got home from a work lunch yesterday and said, paraphrasing ‘you will be so proud of me, I had the curry and no bread or rice, everyone was eating so much bread and you didn’t need it.’ They come around 🙂

  11. I am trying to learn to slowly boil him with baby steps, but his baby steps have been more baby-ish than mine. That, and I have a really bad habit of getting a bit too excited when he accepts one baby step and then get so gung-ho about it that I immediately try to go all in…yeah, that doesn’t work. (^_~)

    The biggest hurdle that I’ve had is getting him off the cereal, followed very closely by attempting to introduce him to new veggies (broccoli and carrots are pretty much all that he likes…). When he gets home from work, he has a bowl of cereal (to “tide him over” until dinner). After dinner, if he feels even the slightest bit of not-fullness, he eats a bowl of cereal. If he gets the munchies, he has a bowl of cereal. He does not know what to do if there is not a box of cereal in the house, despite my abundance of fresh fruit and homemade yogurt in the fridge. I kid you not – a few months ago I had a FULL fridge and a FULL pantry, but no cereal and he, with a look of absolute frustration, told me that there was nothing to eat in our house! (-_-)

    I thought that I had finally gotten him at least partially off the cereal when I made steel-cut oatmeal for the first time over the summer – he told me that it was awesome. So I started making it for him more often. And now he hates it.

    Since he takes breakfast “to go” every morning, I really don’t know what else to do for him other than giving into the cereal gimmes and attempting to hide the box so he doesn’t eat any more when he gets home. Any ideas for good mobile breakfast-y foods? (^_^)

    1. I always have bacon or sausages, homemade muffins or pancakes in the freezer ready to be popped into the toaster. My husband just grabs what he wants and eats it on the road! This was the only way my husband would stop eating cereal after 25 years of frosted flakes for breakfast!

    2. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Amy,
      Wow…that’s a pretty serious cereal habit. Is there a 12-step program for cereal? 😉

      2 cereal-based steps in the right direction that might help:
      1. http://www.vigilant-eats.com/ – oatmeal you can eat cold by pouring milk in. Just had some samples, and they’re pretty good! Don’t know about the not soaking/not cooking nutritionally, but at least it’s not extruded grain.
      2. http://attunefoods.com/ – their cereals are not extruded, whole grain, no or little sweetener, no white sugar or HFCS.

      Other to-go breakfast ideas:
      1. homemade pancakes in the freezer
      2. sourdough toast with nut butter or butter/raw honey (I miss that now that we’re GF!!)
      3. hard-boiled eggs? My hubs could take a plate with an omelet on it in the car, but not everyone would do that!
      4. muffins! homemade whole wheat or grain-free with coconut flour
      5. burrito breakfast wraps – with eggs and peppers and stuff.

      Would he put some cereal on top of yogurt? Might be a bridge to yogurt without cereal…

      Good luck, Amy!
      🙂 Katie

      1. Thanks for the suggestions, ladies! I’ll try some of these. On the bright side, my hubby DOES love my cooking (most of the time), so that helps. He WILL eat yogurt next to cereal for breakfast, but then when he gets home from work, he forgets everything else we have in the fridge and heads straight for that box. There seriously does need to be a 12-step program for this!
        (^_~)

        1. Lol, good luck on working with your hubby. Mine is a cereal addict, too- although he’ll look elsewhere before he goes to cereal. But it is his staple breakfast item!

          One thing that I’ve found that helps is making homemade burritos. He LOVES them- I can’t make them fast enough! I do both breakfast burritos and beef/bean. All the ingredients are homemade, and he easily grabs one to take on the road (or any other time, for that matter! LOL)

          I’m still working on getting him away from cereal, but for the most part, as long as there’s burritos in there, he’ll happily indulge in that.

          I have some other stuff I make, too, which I’ll be making a post on before too long. You can check out my blog for ideas if you want! (I don’t know that I can post the link, but I think it’s in my name… idk LOL)

          1. Hey ladies, I’ve found a fabulous granola recipe that doubles as a cereal at our house. We make a few changes using coconut oil for butter (allergies) and we leave out the shredded coconut just because we didn’t have any the first time we made it. http://www.100daysofrealfood.com/2010/04/04/recipe-granola-bars-cereal/

            1. I have a Better Homes and Gardens cookbook called “Cooking with Whole Grains” (1984) that has Wheat and Bran Cereal recipes. I wonder if there are more recipes like that out there? There is no ‘extruding the grains’ step 🙂 I haven’t tried the recipes because one calls for peanut butter and my son is allergic. But I keep thinking if I could find a way to sub something maybe it would work. I can’t imagine making homemade flakes all the time, but maybe occasionally? It’s basically wheat flour (I am guessing you could use any kind you want to), wheat germ, peanut butter, salt and water rolled out and baked like thin crackers. I think granola is probably better, but some people really like their flakes or crunchy shapes.

              1. You could maybe try sunflower butter (easily made at home by grinding sunflower seeds in your food processor) for the peanut butter?

    3. I agree with one of the other posters about granola. My oldest son is a cereal addict, his fav being a very sugary, cinnamony concoction… So I make cinnamon & brown sugar granola for him and he loves it with raw milk!! I use Alton Brown’s recipe with about 1/2 the brown sugar and add it whatever I have on hand. Sometimes it’s cocoa with dried cherries, or apple chips & cinnamon, almond & honey is really good too.
      I also just discovered a great grab & go breakfast item just a couple of hours ago… Baked oatmeal made into muffins!!
      We tried this recipe, doubling it & adding pb, mashed banana & a few 60% cacao chocolate chips. OH. MY. YUMMINESS!! http://www.stacymakescents.com/kitchen-tip-tuesday-82311
      I think they may convince my hubby to eat breakfast since he doesn’t at all.. ;o)

  12. Angela Mills

    My husband helps a lot, right now I’m in a lot of pain and he’s doing the grocery shopping for me, going to 3 different stores like I do to find what we need. The only thing is he gets craving for fast food and will bring it home to surprise me. He also buys junk and eats it at work. I never complain, but I’ve been thinking that if I could make some healthy things that would satisfy his craving for junk food, he probably wouldn’t eat it as often. He’s also very open to learning why and how, he even went to a nutrition seminar with me. I think the key for him is to hear it from someone besides me!

  13. Alice Fremont

    Haha I love the title! I was wondering where you were going to go with that. But, honestly, that is amazing. His transformation is amazing!

  14. Great article–despite the alarming title! 🙂

    For us, since we both cook, food choices and methods of preparation are a matter of mutual decision. I do have a little more control as the primary shopper. For the most part, we have agreed on each step, but it’s definitely been a gradual process. The one thing that made the biggest difference was giving up meat for Lent, because it made us aware of the distinction between eating something because you feel your body needs it and eating it out of habit, and because we found that making a change like this was easier than we expected.

  15. Thank you so much for this article, Katie. I am currently single, but am aware that the way I eat holds great potential to be a point of contention with my future spouse. I’ll have to bookmark this to refer to in the future! 🙂

  16. Wow! I tell you this was a de’ javu. When my already been boiled husband and I got married, I had to tell him every ingredient in anything I cooked or prepared. Years later, I began to hear him giving good advices to others for all sorts of things, during pregnancy, when having cold or flu syptoms etc. Today, he will call me during the classes he teaches to have me help him explain the benefits of yogurt and garlic and how to make your own yogurt. He is enjoying the choice of bicycling as his method of transportation and trying to extend himself further into health. I have to say it has been an amazing and truly funny journey to watch!

  17. This made me realize just how blessed I am to have a husband who will eat anything I make. We still (both of us) are working on kicking the soda habit but it’s getting better everyday!

  18. Katie, Thank you so much for the reminder, slow and steady wins the race, and the hearts and health of our loved ones. When my husband and I were married 12 years ago the only vegetable he ate was ketchup. While I sometimes get discouraged (finding a random fast food bag tucked in the trash can), I need to be reminded of this fact and that now, 12 years later, some of his very favorite meals are meatless, made 100% from the bounty in our garden. Thank you for all you do!

  19. i love this! so very practical and it really is the way we have done our journey as well… little bit at a time and allowing cheats… really we have come so far and i thought we were pretty healthy 11 years ago when we got married. i didn’t know how much further we could go.

    i also agree that you don’t have to compromise taste to eat healthy! it takes practice, but healthy can taste far superior to junk!

  20. My husband and I have been boiling each other for 20 years. It’s what marriage is about, isn’t it? Learning from each other. I am now much more of a neat freak, and he fully embraces our way of eating. I stopped wheat and dairy about 25 years ago with wonderful results. One great thing about him-he adores my cooking, so feeding him what I want has been great. Except for his belief that meat was bad and we had to eat fish for protein (that was a lot of fish we ate). In the last few years he’s discovered he has more energy and able to withstand his international trips much better now that his diet includes pasture raised meats. Pretty much everything we eat is local. organic, and cheaper than the health food stores. And it’s delicious to both of us. Every couple has their challenges. I can’t discuss money (altho even that is now opening up, so don’t give up on even the most resistant husbands, just don’t push bc they push back!) but food is our happy place. At 62 he looks awesome and always wants people to guess his age, vain guy that he is. …

  21. Oh how I wish my strides were as big as yours!! I am still struggling with my husband & there are definitely days that I feel I have made *zero* progress. My guy loves his gas station sodas (diet) & snacks, believes eggs are the most unhealthy food there is, & would banish all full-fat products given the option – one more note, he thinks the individually wrapped cheese slices are very good for you. He does our shopping & up until Jan 1 had been purchasing separate lowfat foods for himself while the kids & I eat our full fat real food (I am thankful that he follows my list, even though he does make fun of it). I have approached this from the budget angle with absolutely no result and from the health aspect whereby he declares my ideas “wrong.” Incidentally, he is the only member of our household who struggles with his weight and a few related medical problems.
    When I announced that one of my goals for this year was to dive even deeper into my “everything from scratch” philosophy, he may have had a slight blackout – just until the homemade yogurt was ready, at which point he declared that I have gone off the deep end completely! I am also thankful for my strong resolve and my ability to stick to my guns 🙂 One of his goals for this year is to try to be more supportive of me & my goals, his first idea was to start eating what the rest of us do and to acknowledge that I have truly spent hours planning, baking & preparing our meals (I’m a 45 hour-a-week working mom on top of it). Maybe this is the year I make some progress…

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Amy,
      Your husband’s goal is just lovely! You definitely want to help him remember that he made that one…. 😉

      Wow, 45 hours a week working – good for you! I am not sure how I’d keep up on everything – impressive! I pray that this is the year, for you, that your husband sees results. 🙂 Katie

  22. I didn’t really have trouble getting my hubby to go along with this. He has always been agreeable to my dietary changes, except when I tried to do something with tofu. Before I got serious with a wapf diet he was overweight (even though he was working out) and heading toward diabetes. Now, no beer belly, no meds and a good weight. He loves everything I prepare. I always make sure he has a breakfast to take to work and the people he works with notice what he has. they talk to him about his weight and what he’s eating.
    I have to learn how to boil my son. It’s my fault. He grew up eating a SAD diet because I didn’t think we could afford better. First it was junk food, then lowfat junk food, and now cooking from scratch whole foods. He misses the junk when he is home. He is back at school now so I can’t control what he eats. I worry that he will have diabetes or something else later in life hubby says he will figure it out eventually and change his ways. Kudus to you Katie and all the moms who are feeding your children the wapf way now.

  23. Theresa Ceniccola

    Great story, Katie! And congrats to your husband. Love that you don’t flip out anymore on his ‘cheat’ days.

    My husband and I have been “boiling” each other for years. He’s the one who slowly got me into exercise by buying me a bike more than 20 years ago. And I got him into running by doing a marathon and challenging him to beat me! We both gave up soda a long time ago and have very gradually changed our eating habits over time. Sometimes (when I’m focused on how much MORE I want to do to improve our health) I forget about how far we’ve come. I forget that we used to eat pasta and bread 5 nights a week and now we eat kale and almonds almost every day. Now we’ve got to start boiling the kids a little more:-)

  24. Kate @ Modern Alternative Mama

    I have to say this — know your husband!

    My husband and I are both black-and-white, all-or-nothing people. So, when I brought up all this stuff to him and said “Here, look at this research I did, I think we should try it,” he said “Sure, okay, whatever you think is best.” He had no issues with me immediately removing snack foods, pop, etc. from our home, because we talked about it together and he understood it was right to move in a new direction. I really can’t think of any change he fought me on, and we’ve come a LONG way in the last five years. He’s such a supporter that he’s constantly talking up cooking at home, making stock, brewing/drinking kombucha, raw milk, fat, and so on at work! He’s talked to many co-workers and offered to help with their health concerns by sharing what worked for us. He’s not shy about it at all — he probably shares more openly than I do!

    His position on it all right now is even a bit harsh towards men at times. He basically says, “Look, if it’s important to her that you try it, then do it. Listen to her. She wants you to be healthy. Step up!”

    Not that he isn’t tempted by donuts or pizza showing up at work and not that he doesn’t *occasionally* indulge (not that we all don’t!). But we’re able to talk about that issue together, about our “old favorites” and how we struggle with temptation sometimes, and we work together in the kitchen to make healthier versions of these favorites. He would LOVE if I perfected donuts! Right now he’s grain free and I don’t have access to pastured lard so it has to wait, but it’s definitely something we’ll explore together down the line. Even so he’s not upset about not having donuts and about to go hit Krispy Kreme or something — he’s fully committed to not eating that because he knows he doesn’t feel well when he does. He also works out 4 – 5x a week now.

    So — bottom line — know him! And approach him in the way that is going to work for him. Many husbands need the baby stepping, but some are a little crazy extremist, like mine (and me!) and big leaps work, if you both are up to it.

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Kate –
      Definitely true! That’s awesome that your hubs is so on board – works with you in the kitchen? Very cool. So yes, personalities are absolutely paramount here! 🙂 Katie

  25. Courtney @ "The Life & Food of Mrs. Curly Girl

    What an amazing article! Now that I think about it, I’ve been “boiling” my husband, and myself, for about a year now! Now my husband and I are 3 days away from completing the Whole30 program and he’s lost over 15 lbs! I couldn’t be more proud and excited about our health and our future.

  26. Katie, thank you so, so much for this post. This is just the motivation we needed at just the right time. 🙂

  27. Thank you for this post. This is a constant struggle in our house. My husband is thin and healthy and just wants to be “normal.” His ideal diet would be the vegetarian version of the Standard American Diet. His mom had some health problems when he was growing up and changed all of their cooking to fairly restrictive healthy food. Every time I make changes, he has flashbacks to his sugar-free (vegan?) childhood.

    We have made progress – he loves that low-fat/fat free foods have been outlawed! And he loves our change to real butter. He’s fine with our raw milk – though I think he misses homogenization.

    I think I’m healthier now than when we started this journey four years ago, but I am also so tired of the fight. Good food does not speak to my husband – he’s one of those rare men who would never eat if he could get away with it! He wants quick, easy, few dishes, and ideally from a box. At least he’s super laid back…

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Laura,
      I have a friend whose husband is like that – “he eats only to survive” she says, which is great because she can serve just about anything, but I can see it going the same way if she started spending more and making food a big deal.

      On those days when you feel the most tired of the fight…go out for pizza! 😉

      Oh, and my husband misses homogenization too.

      You are not alone! 🙂 Katie

  28. My biggest stumbling block with my husband is actually implementing a plan for more than a day LOL. He grew up in a house where they ate the same meal every Monday, Tues, Wed …etc, so I think it has scarred him a bit for a planned out meal. I have been able to show him that I can cook yummy meals from scratch, using real ingredients by continuing to persevere. Usually, when I want to make something new that he is hesitant about, I make enough for just me, and prepare him leftovers, or something else that is simple. He can try what I made, but still has food he knows he likes.

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Jessica,
      You really make two meals? Maybe you just don’t need to tell your husband you planned it out and let him think it’s spontaneous! 🙂 Katie

  29. Have a suggestion for that yearly camping trip 😀 My hubby is the “grill master” at our house so I bought him “Campfire Cuisine” which would be a perfect way to baby step allll the husbands 😛
    Here is an amazon link to the book: “http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594740852/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1594740852&linkCode=as2&tag=froinsti-20

    BTW I’m Southernfrog on Instagram 🙂

  30. What a great post, Katie! Thanks so much for sharing!

    Besides the higher cost of some things, my biggest challenge is “proving” that real food is actually better. Because I get much of my info from you and other bloggers and haven’t supported that info from other sources, my husband questions it. He wants to see results of scientific studies in order to be convinced.

    I do feel that I’ve had success, though, it finding very economical ways to incorporate the real food. Buying food through Bulk Natural Foods and Azure Standard and from online sources like Vitacost have really helped. I also get raw milk and eggs from a farm cheaper than I could from the store!

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Stacy,
      Sounds like you’re a darn smart shopper and your husband is a smart man! He should ask for real proof. 🙂 When we looked into raw milk, I had an 8-page document on the computer of all the scientific sources I checked out.

      Good for you!
      🙂 Katie

  31. Paula Cornmesser

    As a single income family with 5 kids, we always grew most of our own food and I preserved extra for winter use. Our kids would often lament, “there’s no food in this house, just ingredients.” They remember when grocery trips involved huge bags of flour and if they were lucky, a box of corn flakes.
    A year ago, we became interested in a locavore lifestyle and since we had 300+ jars/bags of canned and frozen produce and two freezers full of our own meat, we decided to take the plunge. For four months, our only “food” purchase was raw milk from a local dairy and local honey.
    We are entering our second year and are attempting to go grain free. My husband is a health care systems consultant and registered nurse, so he knows the nutrition facts and has always been totally on board with this new lifestyle…although he never passes up a cookie if one is offered to him 🙂
    Our children and now 9 grandchildren are getting used to the new family traditons…the grandchildren especially love that Gramma can make food and “she doesn’t use a box.” We’re hoping to pass on the legacy of healthy eating to future generations.

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Paula,
      What a beautiful testament to and legacy of real food and care for your health! Fantastic! 🙂 Katie

  32. I think this is great, Katie, because it shows respect for the husband rather than treating him like a stupid kid who needs to be fooled into eating right. By and large, I think most men WILL listen and learn, even if it takes them longer than we’d prefer! My husband is definitely not inclined to be “crunchy,” but he’s a smart and curious guy who is fascinated by concepts like probiotics, higher nutrient levels in grassfed beef, insulin production, etc. The key is taking the time to explain rather than just saying “we’re eating this way so you better shut up!” 🙂

  33. My husband came around quickly when he realized I was going to stop buying low-fat foods! He had been suffering through my skim milk and chicken breasts, and now he gets to drink whole raw milk and eat a variety of real meats.

    Another thing that really worked for him was learning about the ethics of real food. He cares a lot about justice, and when he learned about the way big companies like Smithfield and Monsanto exploit small farmers, he became passionate about buying local foods, and even growing our own!

    1. Katie Kimball @ Kitchen Stewardship

      Stephanie,
      Another awesome page to add to the husband-handbook! You knowing what is important to your husband allowed that side of him to get connected to the eating/food thing. Perfect! 🙂 Katie

    2. Krystal Wight Armstrong

      Stephanie,
      I’d love to know any specific resources (books, articles, blogs) you found really spoke to him. My husband has similar passions and he might be interested in some of that. I’m not sure I’d know where to start looking specifically.

      1. A good place to start would be the movie, Food Inc. I think it’s available on Netflix. I’ll ask him more about what books and articles he has read (he started doing a lot of research on his own after we watched that movie!).

  34. Still writing on my pop-guzzling, gas station-food-loving husband. He did make the calls to find us grassfed beef and pastured pork though. Progress!

  35. Mary via Facebook

    I’m working on my husband too! He’s finding it hard to give up his grains as well. Loves my rice/quinoa mix so I’ve started to at least soak it before cooking. Me? I’ve lost 10 pounds in 2 months wihtout any other changes. I’m about 90% grain free. No milk = no acne for me. I haven’t been able to find raw milk near me anywhere but I’m looking.

  36. My husband became interested in health when he finally started having health problems! It is still hard from him because he was raised on junk. My grown sons like to eat healthy since they were raised on healthy food. Raise your children on healthy food!

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