GNOWFGLINS eCourse Review 1: Fundamentals I, Getting Started

Are you ready to peek inside the GNOWFGLINS ecourses? I’m totally fired up to show you!

gnowfglins seedling on monitorLet’s me get this right out of the way: I am no kitchen genius; I need all the help I can get. While I can modify recipes to suit our tastes, I need the prep work and method clearly delineated. Put another way: If I can follow the instructions from GNOWFGLINS, boy howdy – you can, too.

Where to find GNOWFGLINS

Before starting off on the ecourse review, let me tell you where you can find Wardeh on various social media sites, because this woman pumps out great information at a rate of knots, and you won’t want to miss out on any of it:

@WardehHarmon on Twitter
@GNOWFGLINS on Twitter
GNOWFGLINS on FaceBook
Wardeh Harmon on Klout

And, of course, there is the GNOWFGLINS web site, which is where you’ll find the bulk of the content.

The GNOWFGLINS website

When members log into the GNOWFGLINS member-only area, this is the landing page (click to make larger:)

gnowfglins member landing page

From here, I can easily manage my account, grab class outlines, purchase eBooks, see my monthly subscription bonuses, pick a lesson to view, or access the helpful links Wardeh has set up. It’s clean, well-organized, and easy to navigate.

There are drop-down menus at the top for easy navigation, too:

gnowfglins dropdown menu setup

GNOWFGLINS has a wonderful forum area for questions not covered by the lessons, member support, and additional information (click to view larger:)

gnowfglins member forum area

Let’s take a look at our first ecourse!

Wardeh begins each main set of lessons with a “Getting Started” section, which goes over the objectives, lesson plans, and whether special equipment is required.

Her introduction to this course:

“In this preliminary lesson of the Fundamentals eCourse, I’ll give you an idea of what to expect from the eCourse, as well as share what inspired my family to dive into GNOWFGLINS. I’ll give you tips to help you succeed in establishing and maintaining new routines. You’ll also get the Complete Ingredient and Equipment List.”

gnowfglins fundamentals I getting started lesson components

Wardeh’s course organization is terrific – members can either download each PDF file individually, or a zipped archived of all PDF’s for a given lesson.

She opens the Getting Started segment by describing her family’s journey to natural foods, and listing some of the resources from which she learned. She talks about the format of each lesson:

“Here is what I’m going to do in each lesson, to help you make great, nutritious food in a straight-forward, simple
manner. As I present each lesson, I’ll be answering three basic questions:

      • What? What is this food and/or technique? What ingredients do I need?
      • Why? Why should we eat a certain food or prepare it a certain way?
      • How? How is the technique carried out or how is this food prepared?”

Within each course, there is a lot of information. I mentioned yesterday how I am not a “print it out and put it into a binder” sort of person. However, I was curious how much material there would be. I printed out most of the materials for the entire Fundamentals I ecourse; the printer worked hard for a long time:

stack of printed material

Fear Not: Because I’m obsessive about recycling, the sheets I won’t need for future referral will get run through the printer again, and then recycled. This gives you a good idea of just how much fantastic information awaits you within the GNOWFGLINS ecourses.

Don’t be intimidated by the volume of material, though! One of the best parts of online coursework like this is the ability to proceed at our own paces; we don’t have to adhere to a schedule at all, and can work in whatever we can manage during our busy days.

Wardeh writes about establishing new routines:

“In the Fundamentals eCourse, we’re going to transform your kitchen one task at a time. Every lesson, you’ll learn something new. Ideally, you’ll keep going with what you’ve learned; it will become part of your routine. This will make the learning, the incorporating, and the establishment of routines that much easier for you. But you can also choose to set aside what you’ve learned to concentrate on the next lesson.”

a sprouted seedlingShe offers some suggestions about finding effective ways to begin establishing a routine to include our new skills and techniques, and includes a PDF called “13 Tips for Maintaining and Establishing New Routines,” which offers excellent advice. It can be very intimidating to look at a pile of new materials and skills to be learned; take it slow and easy. Baby steps are a great way to ease your way into a whole and natural foods diet.

We don’t need to make a radical, 180-degree about-face Right This Instant. Taking it a little at a time, and getting one or two new routines incorporated into our schedule before moving on will likely mean we’ll be able to maintain this lifestyle. Bit by bit, we learn, we incorporate, we move forward. Think of your new skillsets as a sprouting seed – you have to take the time to grow your roots, and slowly put together the building blocks for a thriving, healthy plant.

In our first Getting Started segment, Wardeh also includes a comprehensive list of ingredients for the recipes in the Fundamentals course, and good places to find them. There’s also a comprehensive list of equipment needed. For the Fundamentals I ecourse, not many specialized items are required. A couple of things one might not have right at hand in a typical kitchen: Muslin bag, sprouting screens or lids, and a plastic strainer. There is also a grain mill or Vitamix called for, but there are ways around that kind of investment.

In the next installment, I’ll review the first official lesson: Lesson 01: The GNOWFGLINS Foundation. I hope you’ll stay tuned!

If you have taken the GNOWFGLINS ecourses, or have questions about them, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.



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