Kitchen Table Chats #47 – Throdkin, Baking in the Instant Pot, and Who Inspires Us!

These are the show notes for a podcast episode recorded especially for patrons of my main show (Ancestral Kitchen Podcast). These patrons pay a monthly subscription to be part of the podcast community and in return receive monthly exclusive recordings (like this private podcast) along with lots of extra resources. You can get access to the recording and see how the community works by visiting www.patreon.com/ancestralkitchenpodcast.

What we talked about:

• Throdkin
• Chicken Curry
• Souper Cubes (again!)
• Ancestral Ale
• Episode mentioned: Celebrating the Ancestral Food of Wales
• Episode mentioned: Baking Pans with Elly from Elly’s Everyday
• Episode mentioned: What Have We Done to Beer!?
• Alison’s notorious blog post
• Question: Gift overwhelm – how to handle excessive gifts for children?
• Question: Baking bread in the Instant Pot – how did it work out (and do we prefer the oven!)?
• Question: Who do we turn to for inspiration?
• Question: How do you use sourdough starter right from the fridge? What is the process? When do you feed it?
• Question: What are our favorite herbs and how do we dry and store them?

Resources we mentioned and promised to make note of for you:

Bokashi for US shoppers (use code AKP for 10% off!)

Bokashi for UK shoppers (10% off automatically added when you follow the link!)

Sounds True – Insights at the Edge podcast

Kelly Cumbee’s classes on Medieval cosmology, books and poetry

The New Mason Jar with Cindy Rollins podcast

Megan’s dried herb and garlic store

Transcript:

Andrea:
hello allison how are you hi.

Alison:
Andrea yeah i’m i’m good thank you.

Andrea:
I’m settled.

Alison:
In and ready to have a nice conversation with you.

Andrea:
I know i’m so i’m so excited we have lots of questions which are really fun and i i feel like we get the best questions ever because i agree there are things that i think about the things you think about sometimes it’s something you and i just talked about you know well something i wish we could talk about and.

Alison:
I never even.

Andrea:
Realized and.

Alison:
Someone asks it.

Andrea:
And pretty much whenever one of our supporters who’s listening right now thank you sends in a question we say oh we could do a whole episode on that yeah so exactly lots of good question ideas and um, honestly podcast episode ideas that come in so but before we get started i have a question for you which.

Alison:
You won’t see.

Andrea:
Coming which is.

Alison:
What did you eat oh gosh what a surprise yeah we just had lunch and um yesterday i said to gabriel what do you want for breakfast because i’m feeling a bit you know breakfast sort of lack of inspiration and he said bacon sandwich.

Alison:
And I thought we’re kind of running out of bread we only really had enough bread for one so I thought I can’t really do bacon sandwich but um I thought you know what I could do a throdkin which is as I will explain in a minute which includes bacon and then I thought oh it takes an hour to cook I didn’t I’ll wait and see how I feel in the morning we’ll either have it for breakfast or we have it for lunch anyway I didn’t feel like waiting an hour for breakfast us this morning so we actually for breakfast we had emma which i ground in the mock meal and then put in the instant pot we had like an emma porridge but um for lunch the meal we just had was a throbkin which is oh uh an old dish from the area of lancashire by the sea called blackpool and it’s a thick layer of oats topped mixed in with lard topped with bacon and then baked in the oven slowly for an hour so um all the bacon kind of goes crispy on the top and all the fat goes into the bacon and the bacon under the oats underneath are kind of a bit stodgy and thick but really tasty and moorish and um the boys describe it sometime as kind of a porridge in a bread but it it doesn’t have quite the same taste as porridge it’s a more crunchy kind of fresh taste i think because it’s not cooked in so much water that gelatinization creates.

Alison:
A different flavor with porridge but we have that with a big hunk of that each and we had a salad on the side all the salad vegetables are just you know spilling off the market stalls every saturday so absolutely delicious and gable made a dressing a simple dressing with apple cider vinegar olive oil and nigella seeds and some garlic salt which amelia um gifted us she made it herself with um well garlic leaves and salt and so we put some of that into dressing delicious sounds.

Andrea:
Splendid you kind of have my mental wheels turning, because coming up in a couple weeks here out here on the farm we have kind of an informal gathering, the first of hopefully many annual, where friends from the podcast, listeners, supporters, as well as homeschool moms in the area and homeschool moms that I know through the literary life and… A general group of people with interest in, you know, good food and good books and good music. We’re getting together out here on the farm for a weekend. And we’re kind of informally planning the food. Everybody’s bringing the thing that they specialize in. So, by the time this goes out, I think we’ll have had the gathering.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
But everybody’s kind of bringing the food that they have or that you have a lot of. And i’m just thinking this would be a really fun and easy meal to make.

Alison:
Oh it’s so nice and it’s literally it takes yeah it is sturdy and you can just you cut it up into kind of wedges i did it in a round pie dish but my pie dish is probably maybe an inch and a half deep it has sloping sides like a proper pie dish because it’s easy to get it out it is a bit crumbly around the side so you need a sloping dish or a dish with a with a loose bottom when you could push it up you know um and then you can cut it into wedges and each wedge has a little bit of bacon on the top obviously gable fights over that bit of bacon’s mine that fell off of course of course but then you can people can just help themselves to one kind of hunk of it you know.

Andrea:
Isn’t it so fun when yes please please do when you’re a parent allison and your little kid wants you know that piece of bacon and it’s so important and special to them and you really don’t care but you get to be the benevolent giver of good.

Alison:
Things yeah you.

Andrea:
Can have that piece and they’re like wow it’s just so fun.

Alison:
Yes yes yes oh.

Andrea:
Okay throdkin sounds like some.

Alison:
Kind of outfit but okay it’s um it always you want to know where the word comes from because i could tell you that too allison.

Andrea:
Do i as as i as the computer is propped up on my stack of anglo-saxon english.

Alison:
Dictionaries yes i want to know it um it comes from the word thrody which means to thrive and in lancashire at the time a kind of a sturdy well-built young man was was called thrody and so it’s kind of the idea that this is i’ve got a quote in the in the book which obviously isn’t a book yet but it’s just on my computer that says um is from a report of a bazaar at a catholic church and it says that they were talking about two old men and the description of the two old men was um oh they were brought up on throdkin the stuff to give red red to the cheeks without the use of rouge it’s kind of a really hearty sort of bread that fueled people to do things i think.

Andrea:
That uh makes sense because we all you know we have the word ruddy.

Alison:
Yeah which is.

Andrea:
Like can all it can be used to mean a healthy person also can be used to mean like pink in your cheeks right.

Alison:
Yeah exactly expression or.

Andrea:
Complexion wow this is amazing well my, meal is not as exciting but okay still delicious still delicious it was chicken curry chicken curry oh yum um so i was actually making while hannah was here we made a gigantic amount of chicken curry so that i could freeze some pans yeah yeah that was my thought um because as i was telling you and megan between uh monday and like the middle of september there isn’t a day where we don’t have a large group or in between the weekends we have like a family or families staying with us. And I just foresee my time in the kitchen shrinking. And, you know, there’ll be other things pulling me away that I’ll want to do or that will have to do just because when there’s more people, I either spend the entire time cooking or I prepare ahead what I can and And then I spent only half the time cooking. Yeah, exactly. I had thought, what is something I can just make and pour into pans and freeze? And I thought, chicken curry, that’s pretty easy.

Alison:
And what do you put in the curry this time? I always make my curries different each time.

Andrea:
So that’s why I say this time. I know, exactly. Well, my friend Karen visited and she brought me a container of curry powder from her most recent trip to India. So I used that as well as a curry I had bought here. We have really incredible Indian markets here. There’s quite an Indian population where I live, which is amazing. We get the benefit of them bringing lots of wonderful aspects of that food here. So there was curry, an onion, and then I cooked it in coconut oil.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
Just because that’s what I had on the counter. Lard would have been fine too. And let’s see, what did I put in? Tomato sauce. tomato paste crushed tomatoes all of these were canned not by me and, coconut milk also not canned by me and yogurt plain yogurt okay.

Alison:
Wow quite a.

Andrea:
Mix and like a bunch of random spices that sounded really good i had forgot i wanted to put in oh i use story.

Alison:
Of my life a bunch of random.

Andrea:
Spices i know it sounded good Oh! Listeners can hear the coffee episode to hear Rob’s opinion on that. The, like, garlic from Megan, which I am almost out of now.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
And, uh… I wanted to put in lemon juice, but I didn’t remember lemon juice.

Alison:
Yeah, I always forget lemon juice and calories as well.

Andrea:
It’s because it’s in the fridge and I didn’t walk over there, you know.

Alison:
Did you put anything sweet in? Sometimes Skabel likes it if I put raisins in.

Andrea:
Oh, I didn’t think about that. I don’t know. I feel like the coconut and the tomato combo is pretty sweet to me.

Alison:
Yeah, I don’t often put coconut in, so that makes sense.

Andrea:
Yeah, yeah. Coconut has a lot of sweetness to it. So I don’t know that you’d want to add raisins well maybe you would I don’t know.

Alison:
Once I put banana in you know like a couple of months ago there was some there were some p bananas in in the shop down the road and I remembered when I was young my nan used to put banana in chicken curry and I thought I’ll just put this banana in it see what happens explain like dice blended, you don’t really taste a banana you didn’t I couldn’t actually taste banana in it when I tried some um is.

Andrea:
That does that is that a good thing to say about a banana.

Alison:
I don’t know I think I think maybe it is a good thing because it must have added to the general ambiance of my curry without making it be banana-ish curry hmm.

Andrea:
Well, I wouldn’t have, that would not have risen to the top of my mind. But I did actually have bananas in the house because Hannah was coming and her children are half fruititarian. So, I had prepared by buying bananas and I went to our neighbor’s house because it’s, you know, they’re preparing for apple season, which if anybody, well, Nicole has apple trees. So, part of that preparation is an insane amount of picking small apples off the trees and picking up windfalls from the ground because she doesn’t want to attract, you know, too much of the bees and bears and things that come in and eat it. And then we take bags and bags of those apples and either my kids just eat them because they’re tiny little apples and or we steam them or sauce them or whatever.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So, we do our best to make use of them. But, yeah. So, we had a ton of those. So the kids basically ate a thousand apples over the.

Alison:
Course wow well we’ve the apples have just come back at the market here and so rob and gable are really i’m i’m off sugar again so i’m not eating but they’re loving the um the apples that are coming back oh the apples are back yeah and we’re getting some plums as well now which is nice does.

Andrea:
England do you have like is there an apple trade there or do they all come in from wales or what’s the or does.

Alison:
Well not really grow yeah no No, there are apples all over England, I think. I mean, so Kent, the place where Rob’s mum live, is historically known for apples. The area where we live is historically known for cider making and apples. So there are apples around, definitely. Obviously, if you go into the supermarkets, the apples don’t come from England or Wales or Scotland. They come from France, New Zealand, South Africa, all over the place. But I think I’ve talked about this before. Potentially england has thousands or maybe not a thousand but lots and lots and lots and lots of apple varieties historically and the farm that we buy from at the market down the road is kind of nurturing those old varieties and bringing back as many of the traditional varieties of the area that they can you know preserving the trees and bringing back the trees which is just wonderful for them to be doing that um but yeah there are carwin who i interviewed for the welsh podcast that and we have way back in the annals um he wrote a book on welsh apples because well wales has a ton of kind of indigenous varieties of apples as well um so yes is the short answer to your question there are lots of um english and welsh i presume scottish as well apples around if you look in the right places.

Andrea:
That’s interesting. I’m going to… I hit the Google while you were talking, and you were right. It said , varieties, so yes.

Alison:
Yeah, okay. Well, I wasn’t overestimating then.

Andrea:
No, that’s insane, but that’s amazing. Okay, so the boys are eating apples, everybody’s eating apples. Let’s do some questions.

Alison:
Yeah, we should get on with some questions. The first question you got from a listener, and it’s about presence, isn’t it? Now, when you read it to me, I thought, I don’t really struggle with that very much. So, I wondered if you could enlighten the listeners to the question and then maybe talk to it a little bit as well.

Andrea:
Yeah. Okay. The listener came from a question. The question came from a listener and she asked, what do you do about gifts? So, when family members want to give in excess to your children, basically, is the problem. And she elaborated that some of the problem is now her kids are old enough that they see the gifts and they know if they’re not getting them or they want to keep them or whatever, and it’s not as easy as it was when they’re really small and she could just kind of make it disappear and it is to anybody listening who is the giver of good gifts it can be a struggle for parents because when, of course, it is a wonderful thing when somebody wants to generously give to your child, and we feel it as a gift to our heart too, and that generosity is a, appreciated. However, it gets complicated when it’s really expensive and over-the-top things that then causes the children to devalue other things or to not be able to take delight in or enjoy what the parents can do on their own.

Andrea:
And the primary problem that this listener was having was the children would basically, for lack of a better word, get highly overstimulated on the day of abundance raining down on them and then be dysregulated and, you know, kind of in turmoil for a little while after.

Andrea:
And then she has to stack on top of that, that she’s got to get rid of or take away the excessive amount of gifts that have come in the house, which then adds compounds to that. And she does what she can in telling the children, it might be too much, things are coming I might I’m gonna have to I can’t keep it all but it’s still you know we we’ve all felt that that pain even when you see something in a shop that you really want but you can’t get it like oh and imagine if somebody handed it to you and then and then Rob is like I’m just gonna take that away and you’re like what you know so it’s it’s difficult and to compound that then there’s the sheer volume of clutter and then toys that you know create unwelcome noises or explosions or you know chaos that then then now you’re dealing with shoveling out the room and you know oh so that was her her question um and she welcomed if people in discord wanted to offer solutions so if you’re listening to this and you’re like i have dealt with this You know.

Andrea:
Please, by all means, let’s discuss it on Discord because I think there’s a lot of collective wisdom in our listeners and a lot of experience and practice across the group.

Alison:
Have you had to deal with that yourself, Andrea?

Andrea:
So, we are fortunate in that our, well, my mom raised eight kids in a three-bedroom house. So she already is anti-clutter yeah so i don’t have to tell her and gary’s parents are extremely generous and they also understand space they have a one-bedroom house that they raise two boys in and so everybody’s got relative space issues and they tend to ask us do they need boots do they need jackets can we get snow pants and they buy these expensive but necessary items that it adds up when you have multiple children absolutely and then each of the parents kind of has their little niche.

Andrea:
Toy category category that they like to get for the kids that I just don’t interfere with so like Gary’s folks like to buy Legos so when the kids tell us oh I really want a Lego I say you don’t ask me for that that is something you talk to your grandma about that’s her category and then, my mom likes to get them little calico critters which is characters that go in a little dollhouse that the girls play with like every single day so so they kind of limit themselves to that and then my mom likes to focus if you’re a loving doting generous grandparent listening to this and you want ideas my mom tends to focus on the kinds of snacks that she knows my kids can eat like organic canned fruit meat sticks you know things that she knows like she she gets it off of azure as well you know our orders go through at the same time so she’s not getting you know corn syrup treats or something so she gets treats that she knows are acceptable in our home that that, again, are kind of indulgent and probably not something I would just let, like, buy for the kids and let them eat. But it isn’t something that I wouldn’t let them eat. It’s just because it’s expensive when you have a lot of kids. So, she does that. So, snacks is always good and needed and wanted clothing. So, Gary’s mom also loves buying the girls’ clothes and she buys…

Andrea:
Kind of expensive high quality cotton um brands that i know i have i’ve received them from families who like put them through four children and the clothes still survive like this brand that i know is really good so so if you want to buy you know do check with the parents on like style if the parents have concerns or um material because that is a growing concern with lots of people now is avoiding the polys and the plastics and the microplastics. And so, check with the families that you’re purchasing for if that’s something you want to do. And maybe they’ll say, oh, we really want our daughter to have this, you know, little cotton nightie, but it’s pretty expensive because it’s, you know, not made by slaves in a foreign country out of plastic, you know. And so, you could spoil your, you know, granddaughter with that luxury item that, you know maybe her parents couldn’t but would want her to have so um yeah that anyways.

Alison:
I think really what you’re what you’re talking about most there is communication and that’s feels like if that is available sometimes that’s not available between generations and that’s true and but if that is available or could be nudged open to be available then that’s the thing you know to to say oh i’ve got this idea for a present for my daughter how about you do you want to do you want to get it do you want to give it to them that’s the way we’ve tried to work with, our parents rob’s mum tends to just let us buy whatever feels like the right thing for gable with some money from her and then it’s from oh that’s.

Andrea:
Nice that’s a good.

Alison:
Idea um, my mum kind of does the same thing you know she just says what does gable need and i and often she buys clothes so i will say oh you know he needs new socks or new pants or something and she will buy that or a new bag for when we were at school he needs a new rucksack in italy so she paid for that um the sort of the things that he needs because she’s very practical she’s like well you know like i’ve heard you talk about your mum christmas was the time where you get new knickers and new pants and new socks you know um but my dad is a bit more um of a sort of.

Alison:
Sometimes a difficult character because he likes to go online find some ridiculous toy and we’ve had lots of situations in the past where a noisy particularly you’ve mentioned a noisy toy has come to the house and I’m highly sensitive and I’m just like I don’t want that thing in my house you know can you play with the outside and so he but he’s got better through communication i think for us giving him sort of ideas or telling him more about what gable’s into you know so we’ll we’ll talk about him loving you know playing table tennis on the dining table or we’ll love we’ll talk about him loving crystals or about how he’s loving building things you know making robots and doing electronics and and then that will steer my dad towards something a bit more suitable um so if if communication channels are available or can be opened up i think that’s a, way that can help but i know that’s not always possible because some people just they’re going to buy what they’re going to buy and you have to just deal with that as a parent and that’s hard so.

Andrea:
Riddle me this allison i.

Alison:
Know because.

Andrea:
This listener and i after she asked me this question and I told her I’d pause the question to you, then we kind of elaborated a little bit to understand her situation better. I happen to know that she has done a remarkable job of communication and it is going nowhere. And the volume of stuff that she has alluded to has shocked even I. So, what would you do on the receiving end? You know, there’s balloons coming in the door, expensive dolls, lots of toys, you know, outdoor play things, and it’s all coming in at once. Another wife. And there’s three children. Um… What do you do? What would you do? Like, how would you deal with the fallout? Like, at this point, are we just doing damage control?

Alison:
I think maybe. It depends on how those presents are being delivered. I think to start with, I would try and deliver them over a number of days. So I wouldn’t just have those presents or have them, and they’re all wrapped up just in a big pile for the kids to go mad in and, you know, crawl the paper off. And they do will go into overload then. you know I think if I had that I would keep those presents somewhere else and I would say right okay today we’re going to have four and I would let them open those presents and I would encourage them to engage with those presents on that day and then I would move those presents somewhere else and the next day we would have another four you know if I felt like I had no choice other than to accept all those presents I would try to stagger them so they actually weren’t overwhelmed and got time to interact with each present and then watch and see which ones they liked and which ones they didn’t and then I would try to feed back to the person who gave the presents and say for this so you know so I really love this one to encourage them to to not to you know go that way in the future and and I just I don’t know I mean sometimes it’s not worth bringing it up because it’s just going to result in an argument and I’ve had you know experiences in the past where, rob and i’ve decided it’s not worth talking to parents about it because we know it’s not going to get anywhere um but it’s.

Andrea:
Just going to damage the.

Alison:
Then there is fragility.

Andrea:
Of that relationship.

Alison:
Maybe that’s why i’m more distanced from my parents than my sister is because you know if you went to my sister’s house at christmas you would see a you know a whole house full of wrapping paper and toys everywhere and the tv on the whole day and just chaos and and i i’ve been there not for many years but in the past when the kids were when her kids were very young i’ve been there and and i go into overwhelm just looking at the house you know it’s not my type of christmas and therefore that’s why my parents are closer to my sisters than they are to me because.

Andrea:
We’re just different and we distance ourselves yeah they’ve used them all aligned it’s it’s not like oh we both like shiny paper it’s that the conclusion that brought us here is the same yeah.

Alison:
Yeah so what would you do with all those those presents being just kind of like dropped on your kids at one time.

Andrea:
Well do you mean like what would i like to think i would do or what would i actually do because it’s probably different things yeah yeah it’s, would spiral and just throw everything into a black bag yeah yeah so there’s that choice uh it would i i don’t know i have before just kind of like i get as overstimulated and overwhelmed yeah as the kids are and my tantrums look about the same as theirs which is just like i can’t handle all this noise i can’t handle all these things flashing at me blah and then like we need to we need to get rid of half of our belongings get black bags and so yeah that yeah yeah that’s probably what would happen so i don’t know and that that of course you know then leaves your children traumatized yeah when we were kids my parents wouldn’t let us have presents and they got really mad when people tried to give it to us like well, so that it’s a really tough one my friend listening on the other side that is so tough i agree there’s also the option of lots of alcohol you could just try to drown your sorrows.

Alison:
Don’t give it to children give.

Andrea:
It to the parents give it.

Alison:
To your parents.

Andrea:
That’s what i meant but yeah they opened the presents it’s.

Alison:
Fine they’re not in the bin at all.

Andrea:
Hey whatever i can’t see straight it’s fine oh don’t take that advice but ancestral ale now i can point you to a podcast episode yeah yeah i think oh i just smile and zip.

Alison:
I just i want to believe that you can you can find a bridge and communicate out of any situation but i know from experience that there’s a lot of situations where that’s just you just can’t and you’ve got.

Andrea:
To do.

Alison:
Damage limitation at your end to try.

Andrea:
Yeah and.

Alison:
If if there’s a few of the presence that you can you know kind of lose then if that’s possible then lose them but otherwise, it’s doing the thing that will keep you sane because actually in the end that’s the thing that will keep your kids as happier because when you’re not sane then they’re not going to be whether they’re even picking it up off you or whether they’re being influenced in the same way as you you know so whatever your judgment is as mother and father i think that’s the right thing to do.

Andrea:
okay let’s take the next.

Alison:
Question and.

Andrea:
Allison just to make this fun i’ll tell you i I have two funny, funny things to tell you today that I saved to tell you on the KTC.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
And I will tell you one now and I will tell the other one after the other quest. Next question.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
One, do you remember on the last KTC, we talked about super cubes and how we both bought them for the first time in the same week. I did check mine and you and I got the same size set.

Alison:
Oh, really?

Andrea:
Yes.

Alison:
Isn’t that weird?

Andrea:
So, let’s just count.

Alison:
We’re using us lots. We’re using us lots.

Andrea:
Oh, yeah. Mine’s in the freezer right now. So, anyways, here’s the next question. Actually, can you tell me the next question? Because it’s not written directly.

Alison:
Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, that’s true. So, I was talking on Discord about the fact that the door fell off my oven last week, the week before last, and how that then meant, oh, my gosh, no bread. And I looked around my kitchen and thought, what can I cook bread in? And there was the instant pot sitting there. And I thought, you know what, I’ll give it a go. So I ended up making bread in my instant pot and mentioned it on Discord. And I had a chat with Hannah in Belgium about it. And when I put a call out for the question, she said, talk about your instant pot bread.

Andrea:
So I also think that the thing to note here is that you casually started this segment with the door fell off my oven.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah, the door fell off my oven. It is now fixed. It is now fixed. And interestingly, the part, I ordered the part. Rob then got the part with no instructions at all on how to fix it. And so I said to him, you’re going to look up on YouTube how they do it. So we looked up on YouTube and it said on YouTube, be ever so careful attaching these hinges. The guy who recorded the video, I have seen oven engineers rip their hands open by installing hinges. And Rob was like, my hands, I’m a musician. I play the piano. What am I going to do? He didn’t tell me this. Otherwise I would have been like, right, I don’t think you should do it. He managed to find a way to hold this hinge open with two screwdrivers so he didn’t have to put his hands by it and then insert it and flick it back before it clamped closed. So he managed to fix it, which is great. But yeah, the door literally fell off our oven. And my newsletter explained the whole hoo-ha around it.

Andrea:
I saw your newsletter came out with the title. What to do with the oven? The door falls off. I was like, Alison, you are clickbaiting me.

Alison:
Oh, don’t. Someone put a comment on my blog last week about how one of my titles was clickbait. And I thought, oh, God, you just don’t know how many hours I spend thinking I can’t do that because it’s clickbaity. You know, go and find a thousand bloggers and test their integrity levels next to mine. See what you come up with, you know.

Andrea:
Let me tell you allison that clickbait does not work on me or most people anymore because if you tell me it’s the most shocking thing i already know i’m gonna click it and it’s not however, when you post something that seems a little clickbaity i’m like okay something actually happened now i need to know i rob teaches me to ignore.

Alison:
This rob teaches me to ignore the stupid comments on my blog because otherwise you just end up getting in conversation with someone who’s got way more time than you and is not willing to give up and.

Andrea:
So I just don’t do it now. They have no clickbait because they’re not doing anything so yeah they’re just jealous.

Alison:
Anyway, tell me about the instant pot bread. I thought well I don’t really want to be without bread so this instant pot is a slow cooker and I’ve heard you can cook bread in the slow cooker, and I did for a few moments think about whether you could cook bread in a pressure cooker, and I did a bit of googling and I thought potentially you could but maybe I’ll just go with the easier option here and use the slow cooker which isn’t exactly easy but you know it was less of a kind of a task than cooking bread in a pressure cooker I think. So anyway I made a.

Alison:
As per the everyday recipe that’s in the cookbook and when it came to the stage where normally I would shape it and put it in the loaf tin I instead shaped it and put it into a piece of greased parchment paper inside the inner pot of the instant pot so the instant pot has kind of like a metal bowl a bit I guess it’s kind of the equivalent of the ceramic bowl you would have if you’ve got a normal electric slow cooker. So parchment paper with some fat on it and the dough placed in it. And then I put the instant pot on slow, slow cook. So it’s got three levels for slow cooking. I put it on the lowest one. I’ve noticed that that lowest one is really quite low compared to my old slow cooker. It really does slow cook. And the idea is that as that slowly heats up your bread does its last proof and then it bakes so I ended up doing it twice the first time was not as successful because I opened the lid after two hours and looked at it and thought oh it’s whizzing a bit and then I put my finger in and touched the top of it and the dough just came off on my hand I was like no it’s not done yet so I put the lid back on but I think I lost a fair bit of heat during that process because you lose you know all of the heat basically in a slow cooker when you take the lid off and is it did.

Andrea:
I did i miss or can you.

Alison:
Tell me.

Andrea:
Was this straight on the bottom of the pan i mean you said there’s paper but like.

Alison:
On the bottom of the panner so um the instant pot has uh.

Alison:
Inner in a pot which is made of steel and it’s resting on a little kind of nodule which is on the very bottom of the instant pot so it doesn’t actually touch the bottom of a heat base as it were you know it’s not it’s not the heat’s not directly being applied through this metal pot it’s slightly raised when you put the pot in so it was directly in the insert of the instant pot but that bottom wasn’t touching a heat base because that’s how the instant pots designed.

Alison:
Um anyway i left it for another couple of hours and then took its temperature and i usually aim for breads to be c i can’t remember what that is f um but it wasn’t it didn’t it wouldn’t just wouldn’t go any higher than c and we were like oh it’s eight o’clock you don’t want to go to bed yeah i’m kidding we ended up taking it out and it looked a bit um just like uncooked dough color wise and so i said well let’s you know we haven’t got a door but we can still use the grill on our oven the broiler setting so we turned that on and put the oven put the bread on a tray under the grill and it made the top brown so it hardened the top and gave it more of a you know oh well This has been cooked. Look. And we ate it and it was all right. It was a bit dense and also it was a bit overproofed, interestingly, because I feel like the warming up process of the slow cooker proofs the bread in a way that is much more vigorous than I would have proofed it myself.

Alison:
Then we did it again and I kind of learnt that it takes a long time. So I did exactly the same thing, same recipe, the same parchment paper, the same in the pot. um lid on and then I put it on for four hours on slow and I didn’t touch it.

Alison:
And when it came out, it was much more solid on the top. It had risen a bit more than the time before. And again, I put it under the grill of the broken oven to brown the top. And it was better. The second loaf was not quite as dense. And Rob liked it. He said it was really cakey and he kind of likes cakey breads. You know, he’s like, he’d give them a dense rye any day and he’s, you know, happy ass. So he likes that kind of cakey texture. And he said it would be really nice with some, maybe some walnuts and some raisins in. And I thought oh maybe a tea loaf a tea sourdough loaf with fruit in actually might be suited to a slow cooker because it would have that dense quality yeah that that type of bread has anyway that’s a recipe for the future at some point um now the oven door’s back we’re back in making breads in the oven um but it but it worked and so you know if if you are in a situation where you’re between kitchens as I know Hannah is at the moment or something unexpectedly breaks, or you’re away somewhere and all you have is a slow cook or an instant pot it can be done and you just got to give it a lot of time and not expect it to necessarily be as, light and raised as it would be in a standard oven but yeah it can be done.

Andrea:
Wow. Well, I love that you came up with that solution. And it’s a good reminder in the kitchen, and when serving ancestral food, especially to people who aren’t accustomed to it, a lot of the task is managing expectations.

Alison:
Yeah absolutely like.

Andrea:
Instead of saying this is you know this here’s our usual loaf just say here’s our rye cake you know.

Alison:
Like come in with a different.

Andrea:
Term or something so that people aren’t like wait this isn’t what i expected.

Alison:
Yeah i think i think if it was a slightly sweet loaf with fruit in people wouldn’t bet an island because that’s what they expect from a kind of a know a tea loaf or something like that you know you could sort of say well this is a tea loaf um but on normal bread you would have to set expectations a bit more over i think yeah.

Andrea:
Well, that’s a fun story, and I’m glad Rob didn’t slice his hand open.

Alison:
Yes, I am.

Andrea:
I’m glad you got the instant pot bread, and I’m glad you don’t have to do it anymore. But you know you can if you need to.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Andrea:
All right.

Alison:
So, thank you for asking, Hannah.

Andrea:
Let’s tackle the next question. I’m actually going to save my fun fact for you for after this. And just so you know, it’s a fact about you.

Alison:
Oh, gosh. Something I don’t know already.

Andrea:
This question comes from rebecca let and yeah she says i’d love to hear about people who have inspired you in the past and or people you turn to now when you need an inspiration pick me up, rebecca no we don’t have time for this question no i know we’re gonna make an episode on it yeah next year long time this is so good yeah i i say yes let’s put it on on the schedule for next year and do a full episode but we’ll do a mini answer now.

Alison:
Okay go on then.

Andrea:
No you go, okay allison you inspire me i’m gonna start by that just totally totally honest because i i do i i was telling rachel um people know rachel because she made our nourishing traditions read-along schedule. I tell her, you know, you are what I aspire to.

Alison:
Oh, no, no.

Andrea:
Sorry. I knew you wouldn’t want to hear that, but I’m sorry. But it’s true, because there is a, I don’t know what the word is I’m searching for, but a resolve to your decisions that, that I appreciate. You know, I’m going to make bread and I’m going to figure it out and I’ll do it in the Instant Pot. You know, we will have bread and it won’t be second rate and it will follow my, you know, standard of grains and…

Alison:
The world will move when I ask it to.

Andrea:
I know. I know, Archimedes. So, that is something that I really appreciate about you And that I do tell people when we talk, I’m like, you know, Allison is who you think she is on the podcast. Like, she is that. And even more so, you know, we have had conversations about just business things. Because the podcast is a business at this point. And are we willing to make this compromise or that compromise? And no, you aren’t. And no, we never do. and yes the schedule is here and we get the things done and somebody said um you know oh Andrea I think you’re the real deal because you have a real podcast and and you know it it goes out regularly and I said that’s because of Alison you.

Alison:
Have to know.

Andrea:
That’s because of Alison so yeah you you are an inspiration to me.

Alison:
Thank you I am I I wear that you don’t have a bit skew whiff and kind of unsure about it because you know what that the idea of the podcast going out regularly because of me I just I feel like that’s a blessing and a curse being the person who owns that part of of that of of that in my brain you know the person who would do that for years on end despite moving countries you know despite all these other things that’s a that’s something that I I frankly struggle with sometimes because yeah I often don’t agree with that part of me and yeah it’s and i don’t want to yeah i.

Andrea:
Don’t want to put it on you and say look now you have to be this inspiration or something it’s just they asked so.

Alison:
Thank you i’m.

Andrea:
Always very honest on the podcast so.

Alison:
Yes you are we both are we both are yeah is that all you got to say what.

Andrea:
You want more compliments.

Alison:
No about someone else there There must be someone else. Come on.

Andrea:
No, I can say more people, but I want you to say someone.

Alison:
Okay. Okay. Well, to be honest, the person who inspires me the most, if I’m being honest, is my husband.

Andrea:
Yeah. Oh, I love that.

Alison:
That doesn’t help Rebecca, really. He’s who I turn to when I need an inspiration to pick me up. He just is. He’s the first person I turn to. And it’s not just because he’s right there, which he usually is. is also because he’s just amazing. He’s like the most amazing person I’ve met.

Alison:
The story of his life, which not many people know much about, you know, and I won’t go into, but it’s just, he’s been through incredible things and done the thing that you would not expect him to do, that was harder. You know, he’s taken his glasses off after years and years of headaches when no one has done that. You know, he was in an absolute mess at university and just wanted to be a musician. And he’s dedicated almost years of his life to his craft, moving through problems that I just, people would have just fallen at these fences and he’s just continued. And you know he he’s claims that it’s kind of a bit of a disease that he’s just beholden to this desire inside him but I’m truly inspired by what he does to um bring into life his the creativity that’s in his head and he’s always grounded and he’s always asking questions about why why why this why do we have to go this way just because everyone says we have to doesn’t mean we have to and I think that’s a kind of a signature of people who do inspire me they’re the ones who don’t necessarily put their head above the parapet but they they won’t.

Alison:
Go a particular way just because it’s easy or because it’s what everyone else does or because it’s the thing that they think will bring them money or success or the thing that they want they question question question all the time and then they aren’t afraid to say something different but importantly to do something different you know there are people who say things different out there but they’re not doing it in their life and to see someone actually doing that in their life is really inspirational in the past um for a very long time it i found it hard to find people who inspire me but there was a woman there still is a woman she’s still alive Sheila Davison who lives in Canada and she back in the days when i ran a life coaching business she um i employed her as my coach for a while and she’s very unusual in the way she kind of runs her life in that you know she does question like that she does follow her creative desires but question those as well you know not in a woolly way in a very practical way and you know she’ll for a long time she ran her business without using any social media and she she’s always questioning again and.

Alison:
Again and has dropped many things in her life to move on to something that was calling her even though everyone around her said no you know you’ve got this massive business that’s working well why at the moment she’s she’s basically let go of her coaching business to be a performer and a comedian and i mean i never would have guessed that i never would have guessed that you know even though she was funny you know years ago years ago when i worked with her and yet you know she’s she’s let go of this coaching business she not just let go of it she’s actively kind of created rituals to.

Alison:
For its death you know for losing it for letting go of it in order to bring forth this thing which terrifies her which is standing on stage and apparently making people laugh and that sort of thing I just that’s that’s inspiring to me I also um when I when I read this question the other day I thought you know all of the historic books I gravitate towards particularly for writing this oak book you know of the communities who lived in the UK and the way they lived and the way they worked and what the women did in those kitchens what the men did out in the fields, that inspires me I’m inspired by reading the books of the people who came before me and how they lived their life because they you know they lived in this era before industrialization happened.

Alison:
And they had to rely on each other and that changed their psyche in a way you know they were part of a whole and and I feel an inspiration around that I feel like you know just the connections that we’ve had with patrons and the connection I have with you and what we’ve built together that’s inspiring to me you know that when I look at the the podcast feed I think we did that you and I did that together you know it wasn’t just me it was you and me it was us together you know with it with just me on it on my own I wouldn’t have done that at all I might have been able to put something out for two every two weeks because that’s something I happen to be good at ticking off but I wouldn’t there’s no way in the world I would have created what we’ve created, and so working yeah go on.

Andrea:
Throwing back to your first person neither of us would have get anything out without rob so.

Alison:
Yeah it’s working together and so i think the relationships that i have with other people inspire me and what can become because of them um the one other thing that i wanted to talk about um when rebecca mentioned this is i, I don’t really listen to podcasts anymore, but I do sometimes at night time listen to a podcast called Sounds True, which is the podcast of a publisher called Sounds True. I think the podcast is actually called Insights at the Edge. And the lady who founded Sounds True many decades ago does this podcast maybe every couple of weeks, I think. And there’s always tons in the feed so I can pick and choose based on the title, what I think might be appropriate. It’s a publisher that publishes spiritual books. I’m very spiritual, but not religious.

Andrea:
Definitely. I’ve heard of this publisher. Sounds true. I either listen to something or have something by them for sure.

Alison:
They’re very big. And they’re kind of widely spiritual, you know, so they’ll cover lots of different topics. I’ve done courses on kind of embodiment with them, practices to, you know, work through kind of body therapies with them. And she interviews their authors. So they’re usually an hour long and she’s such a good interviewer she always asks the question that you kind of think i’m thinking that and then she asks it wow wow and she interviews people who’ve, have been on a spiritual journey and have something that they share and very often they’ve been through very difficult times and been able to use them as a way to become um fuller um fuller people you know more connected people better people and they use that then as a guide in their life and I really I really enjoy listening to interviews with people who who have who feel they’ve got something to share with the world in a way that’s um spiritual not, You know, not that kind of the feed you see on social media where everyone’s got something to share with the world. But those inspire me too. So, yeah.

Andrea:
That’s a really good place of inspiration. I think finding people who have been through kind of a transformative experience and are able to articulate that. That’s really valuable to listen to.

Alison:
I think that sometimes, you know, you are forced to go on a spiritual journey when you go through difficult experiences. And therefore, someone who has something valuable to share is often someone who has been through the depths of something really quite horrible.

Alison:
And those two things together often can can guide us when we’re going through difficult times you know that you’re not the only one that someone’s been through something you know that’s that’s deep and hard and maybe not the same as you but we we understand that as humans you know when when we hear someone else talking about a time like that and it’s where we find the it’s where we find our most precious movements for going forward you know all the all the times in my life where I’ve had to make very difficult decisions and have decided things that actually were really good for me but really hard to decide they’ve all come out of dark times in my life you know times where I’ve been, I’ve been challenged and although I wouldn’t want to go through the challenges and I don’t want anyone to have to go through challenges I do know that when we do as humans we we find things that are difficult to get hold of sometimes otherwise you’re.

Andrea:
So right I’m looking at the little list of people I have here and I am realizing that they have all been through things and that’s probably very much related to why I find them so.

Alison:
Inspirational yeah and.

Andrea:
I will note down I I’ve jotted down the names you said so that we can put these in the.

Alison:
Okay description.

Andrea:
In case somebody wants to look them up.

Alison:
Um so.

Andrea:
I will I will.

Alison:
Thank you briefly.

Andrea:
Introduce these people that I have and then we’ll leave it at that then people can go look them up on their.

Alison:
Own yeah something that wonderful thank you um.

Andrea:
One is this lovely lady named kelly cumby i learned about her because i started taking classes from her through the literary life and now she has her own teaching website and she has nine children and she homeschooled them all and her children have said, We’ve never heard her yell. She never raises her voice.

Alison:
Wow.

Andrea:
I don’t know. So, inspiration. So, I take her classes and I feel like I’m just absorbing being a good human from her.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Not to mention what she’s actually telling me is there, but I’m just absorbing her ability to be a good person. And something I noticed about her when she teaches, you know, she does these Zoom recordings and sometimes there’s hours and hours of them, but she stands the whole time. She doesn’t sit down.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
So, she has her computer up, and then she stands in front of it to speak so that she can be, like, fully present with us.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Which I think is, again, says something about her as a person. So, I will note her website at the bottom because I just find her utterly inspirational. And one thing I learned from her, which is, I’ll say, a category of people that has inspired me, is the medievals. And I just find, I know you, too, find them very intriguing. And the hardship of life and then the beauty of life and then the way that they found the time to make things beautiful and even during hardship it inspires me to look around my life and say am I being purely utilitarian or is there ways that I can make this actually beautiful and, calming to my nervous system instead of just you know modern and harsh.

Andrea:
So, she, her kind of primary focus is medievals and medieval cosmology. So, then I started learning about that through her and then kind of, you know, led me to understand that this was more interesting than I may have thought at first glance.

Andrea:
Another person associated with her is Cindy Rollins. She has children, I think, or , or . No, , I think, also. They have lots of kids. Yeah. Something, it’s something that as a mother who homeschools, I look at these mothers who have had lots of children, and I would include my mother, also my own mom on this list, because of the fact that you’re like, okay, when you say something about parenting, I’m listening with all my ears. Because you’ve seen the different personalities the different quirks the different shades of spectrum you’ve seen things come through and if you talk to a mom who has a two-year-old she’s like oh yeah always put them down at the same time and they’ll learn you talk to a mom with kids and she’ll go yeah some kids will do that some kids won’t yeah yeah and she has a completely different attitude so Cindy Rollins as a mother and a speaker something she always says is because I speak and I teach in audio classes I know at some point I’m gonna say something wrong and something that’s untrue so I always pray that if I say something untrue it just kind of passes over people and they don’t it doesn’t absorb I and I thought well that’s really wise as a speaker because yeah when you talk a lot there is a chance that something you say is that maybe factually I’m always worried.

Alison:
About that like.

Andrea:
You said that Ellie said.

Alison:
In in her um recording that she did about the pans you know I said this several years ago and I don’t do it like that anymore maybe people think I still do and.

Andrea:
It just I felt that we’re.

Alison:
Just humans talking you know.

Andrea:
Yeah and sometimes your life changes and yeah you know I always think oh somebody is gonna come to my house and say wait you have paper towels and five years ago I didn’t have paper towels and I said that on air so they’re gonna be like wow you have paper towels now what’s going on but I find Cindy inspirational as a mother and as a person who speaks for a living. Of course, my mom, I find my mom very inspirational. And when I feel like what you told me of her. Yeah. When I need somewhere to turn or to be supported in my decision or to be told if my decision is terrible, I ask my mom. And she’s a really good sounding board for that. Without imposing too much of herself because she is capable of saying, this isn’t a choice I would make, but, you know, could still be a good one for you.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
Charlotte Mason, I turn to her when I need to be reminded that how to be a good person. She’s a good inspiration because she always says, you know, no matter how hard it is, you do the right thing for the child all the time. You see them as a person. You respect them as a person. You treat them as a person. And you don’t, it’s not that anybody, I should hope, wouldn’t do that or want to do that. But being told constantly how valuable that is through her writing, I feel like, is so affirming and rewarding and inspiring. And then I look at the women like Kelly Cumby and Cindy Rollins and my mom who were kind of taught by her, if you will, and I look at the outworking of that and I say, wow, they really took that to heart. Yeah, definitely. And I can see how it showed up in the lives of their kids. Yeah.

Andrea:
Gary Young is a huge inspiration to me also, for the same reasons, because he was unrelenting in his desire and his determination. A lot like you, whatever, like, bug you have, he has the same one, where he goes, well, maybe it’s a curse, but I need it like this exactly, and I will move the foundation of the earth and shift the tectonic plates to make that happen, you know? Like, I will stay up all night if I need to, or I will, you know, whatever it is. And, you know, my children will never have white flour and all these things that he said. So, I find him inspirational. And, yeah, there’s a lot of people I find inspirational, truly, because I need their strength. But I also want to put on this list our patrons.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
The things that I see in Discord blow me away. The things people are doing the things they are making the things they’re investing in the people who are investing in our podcast they’re like oh i believe this so i want it to go out to other people yeah the the things that they commit to it it literally lifts me up and just makes me even want to do better so i find them very very inspirational yep yep we should just do a whole episode on this definitely because you’re right you.

Alison:
Know we could talk about the you know there’s there’s books that I’ve carried with me like and.

Andrea:
I don’t carry.

Alison:
Many books with me.

Andrea:
No because.

Alison:
I’ve moved around so much but for you know years because, they’re there when I need them.

Andrea:
Yeah you.

Alison:
Know and and we should definitely do an episode on this.

Andrea:
I am in full agreement of that because there are more people I could put on this list and, and I want to like you said there’s things I want to say about my husband and how he inspires me but they’re part of his story that isn’t always known to the world and but you know there’s things that just are so inspirational about people for a certain reason around us and it’s good to talk about that I love this question Rebecca thank you for asking it.

Alison:
Yeah thank you.

Andrea:
Um Rebecca if you’re on discord do I think Rebecca yeah she is not very okay yes.

Alison:
She is yeah.

Andrea:
I want to hear I want to hear what you are who you’re inspired by and start hearing from other people because I’ll bet there’ll be a lot of crossover for all of us yeah absolutely okay next question and a weird fact about allison oh okay okay a listener a listener who i won’t name in case she doesn’t want to be named a listener has told me that she’s pretty sure she’s secretly in love with you because you’re so amazing and so she told me she’s she’s always talking about uh us to her husband and and she was telling her husband how i had shared about your ale and okay yeah how important it was, and how nobody’s really doing it the right way. So, he kind of started thinking about it, and then he thought, well, I think, you know, she’s talking about the minerals and all the benefits. And he thought, well, maybe I should, maybe we should like start doing that at home. So, he started doing some research online, and he found a blog post talking about ancestral ales. And they’re doing it the ancestral way, you know, not using modern.

Andrea:
Uh yeast packets and things and he found it really intriguing he found he thought it was a very well written article and so he showed it to his wife and she goes yeah that’s allison i’ve been telling you about her i thought it was pretty funny yeah you kept looking yeah so your your page got out there and excellent and uh so somebody was looking for instance well they found you and they thought well, this has got to be the best written article I’ve seen yet. Let me show my wife. And she was like, I talk about her all the time.

Alison:
That’s me.

Andrea:
Yep. So anyways, I thought that was great.

Alison:
Thank you.

Andrea:
Yep. So we have a question from Izzy. I’ll read this one, Allison, and you will have to answer it because this is a you thing. I have a question about using your sourdough starter straight from the fridge when making bread. I’ve heard you mention that you do this and I’ve heard Ellie mentioned that she does this. You both talked about this just lightly on the podcast episode with her.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
I’m just curious how that works using straight-from-the-fridge starter. Normally, if I’m gonna make a loaf of bread, I take my starter out of the refrigerator the day before and I feed it once and then feed it again the next morning before I’m about to make a loaf of bread. Then, After I’ve mixed my bread, I just put my starter back in the fridge. I don’t feed it again. Do you feed your starter again before you put it back in the refrigerator or no?

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
There’s a lot of questions packed in there.

Alison:
A lot of questions there. Okay.

Andrea:
Good luck.

Alison:
So first of all, yes, it’s fine to do what you’re doing. And a lot of people do that. You know, a lot of people recommend you do it. So they take the starter out of the fridge, you feed it. Sometimes people just feed it once and then they use it. some people feed it again the next morning like you do Izzy and then they use it to make bread and I think probably most big artisan bakers online would recommend that you do something like that because you want your starter in the peak condition in order to get the peak rise out of your bread um I just can’t fit that into my life I can’t kind of work it in and and it also means that potentially I’m going to end up with some starter that I need to throw away because the day before I make the bread if I feed my starter it’s just gonna if I got a lot of it in the fridge it’s going to be too big and I’m going to have to end up throwing some of it away and I just don’t like that what I found is that my bread works just fine if I use a starter from the fridge um i believe there is far more nuance in the amount of time you allow a bread to proof and bulk ferment to um.

Alison:
To create a bigger loaf you know as long as your starter is strong which mine is I know it is I know it works really well it bounces back when I feed it really quickly it smells really strong it you know regularly accepts feeds really well and it’s strong enough for me to be able to make a loaf of bread that I’m happy with I haven’t noticed much difference frankly on the days that I happen to have refreshed my starter the day before and on the days where the starter’s been in the fridge for six days sitting there um i’ll try and say what i said again with a bit more eloquence i really feel like the rise of the bread is more dictated by how long you leave it to bulk ferment and how long you leave it to proof there is so much nuance in that in that you could over ferment it you could under ferment it for the bulk ferments you could over proof it you could under proof it for the for the final proof and if you can get those two things right which is only really you will do through experience through using the same flour the same recipe over and over again and learning through touch smell feel sound how the dough is if you can get those right those seem to be to me the key in getting the biggest rise not my starter so the way that I.

Alison:
Generally work is that I make bread for example once a week and on that day my starter comes out of the fridge it’s been in there since the last time I made bread whether that be a week’s time you know a week before or maybe five days before I get the starter out on the morning I’m making the bread I try and remember to get it out so it comes to room temperature sometimes I don’t sometimes I’ll just even use it cold and then I mix that starter in with my with my salt and my flour and my water and if the starter is cold my bread’s going to take slightly longer because it’s going to make a dough temperature that’s lower going to take slightly longer to get going if I’ve managed to take it out a few hours before and just leave it on the side then it’s more likely to be ambient temperature and then once that bread is on the go and I’ve covered it and I’m leaving it to ferment I have what’s left of my starter which is usually only a few scrapings because I’ve managed to work out how much I need and then I will refresh that starter so I’ll grind some extra flour in the mock meal and I will take that the scrapings of the starter that are left put them in a new jar put my water put my flour in stir it around put the lid on I’ll leave it on the surface for the rest of the day and then before I go to bed I put it in the fridge and it stays in.

Alison:
Another five seven days until I make a loaf again sometimes if I’m making pancakes in the week or making fermented things in the week I’ll take a spoon out of it and use it for the pancakes if I make bread in five days I’ll use it in five days if I make bread in seven days I’ll use it in seven days so it goes straight back in the fridge fresh after having made a bread and then the cycle starts again the next time I’m making bread I pull it out of the fridge it’s been in there five six seven days I use it from the fridge to make that dough and then I refresh it and then I put it back in the fridge so I don’t do this I bring it out and I feed it once and I feed it again I’m not making a separate what some people call leaven or levain depending on which language you speak to to make my bread I’m literally doing the what feels like to me something efficient enough to create the bread that I love but not a process that requires extra time energy or resources in the form of flour from me what I do works and I’m really happy with my bread and so I I stick with it because it’s easy have I explained that reasonably well Ellie I I’m Andrea I feel like I I don’t know whether I chipped over some of my words there and explaining does it make sense to you what i said.

Andrea:
I think i’m comprehending and i’ll narrate back to you just.

Alison:
So you make sure it’s.

Andrea:
Clear you explained that i think an important thing that what you and what you mentioned is that you do bake at least once a week.

Alison:
So this sourdough is.

Andrea:
Coming out and being fed.

Alison:
At least once a week yeah correct and.

Andrea:
You find that, It is active and strong. The desired bacteria are all present in it. They just aren’t foaming the way we see it when it’s on the countertop at room temperature and has been fed. That activity happens when you do your ferment of the mixed dough. Correct?

Alison:
Yeah. I wouldn’t say it’s not foaming because my starter doesn’t really foam because it’s rye. so it’s quite thick it’s.

Andrea:
More kind.

Alison:
Of cakey um but it it when it’s in the fridge it doesn’t you know look it doesn’t necessarily.

Andrea:
Look like.

Alison:
A massively just risen starter that’s just at.

Andrea:
The performance you know kind of thing it.

Alison:
Does and sometimes it even smells like it’s a bit gone over you know so it will.

Andrea:
Smell like.

Alison:
Acetone or something that’s.

Andrea:
It thinks.

Alison:
A sign that to me that it needs feeding um it won’t be it won’t necessarily be on the peak of its performance so yeah.

Andrea:
Right so you mix it with your dough and you have your initial ferment then you shape your loaf and you have your second rise yeah and you find these are more critical yeah than the, risen status of yet the starter and you believe it’s really important that we practice the same piece of music i mean the same recipe multiple times in a row without a lot of variation insofar as we can control the variables in our own kitchen so that you recognize by sight and smell and touch when those things are perfect for the loaf you want absolutely okay so we need to get in the kitchen is what i’m here and then once i’ve.

Alison:
Made the bread i refresh my starter then leave it on the counter for that day and then put it in the fridge and it sits there for another week.

Andrea:
So it’s been fed yeah and then it’s got you know basically six or seven days to think about it okay yeah exactly and your we’ve talked about this before your starter is pretty dry compared to a lot like when i keep mine on the counter mine’s fairly wet yeah and yours is pretty dry and that i think is an important aspect, because it means for the yeah ratio of bacteria in there there’s actually more food that’s.

Alison:
That’s a really good point actually to um add to um the answer to izzy’s question which is i know ellie does the same. Now, Ellie keeps a wheat starter. I keep a rye starter. But both of us don’t do them very liquidy. We do them quite… I think mine’s probably a bit thicker than Ellie’s because mine’s rye and rye soaks up more water. But I think doing this method from the fridge works best with a thick starter because water encourages fermentation. So the more water you have in your starter, the quicker that fermentation is going to happen. So if you want to make your starter last, say, for example, you’re going on holiday and you want to make a starter just last. The key is to make it more thick because it won’t ferment as fast as well as putting in the fridge. So through maintaining a starter that’s thick, I’m able to easily do this kind of five day week routine where I, you know, just recreate my starter on the day I make the bread and then put it in the fridge because it’s fermenting more slowly than your starter would, Andrea, because yours is more liquidy. Yeah.

Andrea:
Yeah. And in answer to Izzy’s final question, which was, do you feed your starter again before you put it back in the fridge? You said, yes, that is the one feeding it gets. And I think an important aspect of your method is that you then need to grind flour once when you’re preparing the loaf and feeding the bread.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
And you don’t really have discard. And you and I have talked about this before, that when it comes to discard recipes, we actually have to produce discard because we don’t typically have enough. Yeah. So this also, I think, falls underneath that category, which we are frequently asked of, how do you find the time? How do you do the things? And one of the things is not making your sourdough this complex, multi-daily activity.

Alison:
Yeah. it.

Andrea:
Happens at an on a specific day of the week isolated point and it’s all wrapped up in basically hours you’ve handled all the steps and then you don’t really have to fuss with it.

Alison:
Yeah until.

Andrea:
You’re ready to work again.

Alison:
Yeah exactly so i’m kind of thinking you know when i when rob mended the oven i made a loaf on monday um and i refreshed my stutter then it’s been in the fridge since Monday today is Friday and tonight we’re mixing a pizza to have tomorrow for lunch so I’ll use some of that starter tonight to make a pizza and then there’ll be some of it left that I’ll put straight back in the fridge and then I’ll probably make a loaf on Sunday with that and at that point I will refresh that starter and then we’ll have another week in the fridge.

Andrea:
I like it because with your method.

Andrea:
You are always at the same point of readiness, if that makes sense. So, Izzy, in the illustration Izzy gave us, they have to know the day before. Now, okay, typically we do know the day before we’re going to make bread. But what I’m saying is, you know, what if you didn’t? You have to know the day before and get the starter prepared, if you will. With yours you could say gee whiz i really feel like making pizza dough right now and just get up and go do it yeah absolutely shoulder willing and rob door installed willing yeah then you’re ready to go so i i like that a lot and i think in in the fall we’re moving back to generator life a bit where anytime you use power it has to be very scheduled and planned yeah and camille is moving towards taking over the bread making so i okay think i might be adopting your refrigerator system yeah because i don’t want her having to fiddle with it constantly it would just take too much time yeah so and i’m going to uninvolve myself as much as possible just in the interest of her being able to take over and own it sounds really nice, Well, we’ll see how it pans out, so keep you posted on that. But yeah, oh, I love this. Thank you for sharing that story, Allison.

Alison:
Thanks for the question, Izzy.

Andrea:
Red situation. Yeah, very good question. Okay, we have one left. Do you think we have time to? Okay.

Alison:
Yeah, I think we’ll do it. Yeah, okay, shall I read?

Andrea:
This comes from Rachel. Yes, no, I’ll read it because actually I want you to answer this one too because I don’t have much to say. All right, Rachel says, favorite herbs to grow and any special tips for harvesting slash drying slash preserving them.

Alison:
Okay um i don’t have so many herbs in my garden this year as i had in the garden in italy we were kind of more organized there um well.

Andrea:
You’re more established too you know.

Alison:
Yeah so in italy i think we were growing basil obviously um in ridiculous quantities um thyme rosemary sage and parsley and chives i can’t remember some other things as well that oh pineapple sage as well um so here um my my i guess they would be my favorites because there’s the two i’ve chosen.

Alison:
To grow we’re growing this year parsley and basil but it’s a cinnamon basil you know there are all these different types of cinnamons that you can buy um all these different types of basil sorry that you can buy we found at the market a cinnamon basil gable chose it so i got two of those little tiny plants and two parsleys one amelia gave me a a little um plug of and the other one again i bought at the market one’s curly one’s flat leaf I love parsley I just I could put parsley on every single meal and I would never get bored of it I think parsley is a magic herb it goes with anything and it’s just so bright the flavor and I’ve never been able to grow it in the quantities that I want I’ve learned that it needs it prefers proper soil not pots it needs space and I’ve never really yet been able to give it that my one of my ambitions is to just grow enough parsley so I could use it you know literally every day and so as well as growing I’m buying it at the market every week I just think parsley is wonderful I think it’s it’s rubbish when it’s bought in a shop dried in a packet it doesn’t taste anything like fresh parsley and I love fresh parsley on in salads. I love it on eggs. I love it on anything, on curries. I love it on risotto. I love it on toast with butter. I just love parsley on absolutely everything.

Alison:
So I do love to grow parsley. I very rarely…

Alison:
Um dry it or preserve it because i like it fresh um the other herb that i’m growing this year is basil as i said and i love to grow basil i think that basil is um again a herb that just brightens everything up and i love to put it on pizza fresh on pizza so i think with basil you have to be really careful when you’re cutting it because you can bruise it quite easily um so they do say you’re supposed to rip basil rather than cut it with a knife i think um i haven’t dried basil but i have frozen it in ice cubes which was nice um nice and simple and then i can pop it out in the winter and you just get that taste of summer which is just wonderful i have also um fermented basil.

Alison:
By chopping up really small and mixing it with salt and then putting that into a small glass jar pushing it down and cover it in oil and then i’ve left that and we’ve had a jar of that in in italy we had a jar of that in the fridge from our home um grown basil for the whole of winter and it’s just wonderful again in you know january to just bring out this jar of fermented basil and it just tastes so alive and fresh in a way that dried basil just doesn’t so um yeah i would say basil’s a really lovely one we also have a mint growing in the garden which i think a lot of people do if mint’s been put in the ground and it spreads everywhere and so i’ve been picking that and dehydrating that and then using that in teas and sometimes in salads too um.

Alison:
I don’t dry herbs I know that some people dry them by hanging them up from the ceiling but I haven’t done that um yeah and that’s it I’m trying to think is there anything else I’ve done with with herbs most of the herbs I use are fresh you know in Italy when we had all the the other herbs like the rosemary and the pineapple sage and the oregano I just go out pick them fresh come back in use them what are your favorite herbs Andrea.

Andrea:
Well I I like a lot of the herbs that you I i like the ones you said i i love sage having sage on hand i love basil uh i just thought about fried.

Alison:
Sage and how nice that.

Andrea:
Is so sage leaves yes yeah sorry so the the sheep ate my parsley and basil down three times oh.

Alison:
Nice of them.

Andrea:
So nice little sheep.

Alison:
They obviously needed it for some reason.

Andrea:
Obviously they needed it because they had how many endless acres they free range so they can roam all over the place and eat whatever they want and they went ahead and climbed through the fence and helped themselves to the herbs on my porch also my tomatoes they ate down to a oh you’re joking so oh my gosh joking i wish i were and dahlias they ate those too they apparently eat pretty much anything they did not maybe so fun fact they did not eat the thyme they did not eat the rosemary.

Andrea:
And i think that was it that they did not touch so i guess if you need to survive probably deer sheep goats any kind of basic ruminant oh they don’t eat lavender either so okay there you go those are the ones you can grow but uh i agree with you i do not i mean i i do use dried herbs like i use dried thyme and sage and i use those all winter long but there’s nothing that there’s not not the same thing as the fresh herbs and when we do when we do a salad which we do make salads contrary to what i always am saying um then i find that you can make your salad the most wild and exciting and people just can’t get enough of it when you just chop in tons of herbs none of this a teaspoon of this or a teaspoon i just like chop up giant handfuls of herbs tastes amazing.

Andrea:
And then we take milk kefir and I just mince, okay, I mince as small as I can, not tearing. I just mince up herbs and I just pack them into the kefir. And then I really like using the garlic from Megan or her, that ranch mix she has was really good, but I used all that. And… Uh when hannah was here she was like i’m just trying to find things to put this dressing on because this is so good because i think i would eat this on anything and we had different meals and she just kind of dumped it on top because it was so good but it’s very tasty fresh garlic and things like that too but i would say the herb that makes there is an herb that when i smell it i literally am happy it just it brings me happiness if i catch a whiff of this if i open a drawer that had it in it if I but it has to be fresh it doesn’t work with the dried it is dill when I smell dill I am so happy it’s ridiculous that’s.

Alison:
Interesting I am I’ve never grown dill and I’ve never really.

Andrea:
Bought the dried stuff because I thought.

Alison:
It didn’t taste particularly.

Andrea:
Of anything.

Alison:
Um but I know that it grew is it the same as having a fennel leaf is dill exactly the same.

Andrea:
As fennel not at all slightly different not even remotely same yeah they look similar with their little frondy sort of blossoms and they look very similar but they’re not they do not taste or smell remotely the same yeah.

Alison:
I’ve read about it i’ve read it’s really good in potato salads i think.

Andrea:
Yeah stop it we cannot talk about this yes it is really good in potato it’s good on potatoes do you grow dill then no i don’t grow dill but it has to be fresh there is a farm down the road from me so if you cross over the freeway from where we are there’s a little farm stand and they sell they have a refrigerator where you can buy giant bunches of herbs and obviously that’s what i do and it’s delicious and i could just keep it in the fridge to make me happy, i would like.

Alison:
To grow that i’d also like to grow some tarragon because.

Andrea:
I keep reading about.

Alison:
Tarragon like after year after year tarragon tarragon and i just never have grown any um i’m hoping that when we have a garden of our own with a bit more space that i could just get every herb possible and then i could just go out and pick a bit of.

Andrea:
Tarragon pick.

Alison:
A bit of lovage pick a bit of parsley and and do those massive salads and also put some tarragon with chicken because i keep thinking oh i’d like to make.

Andrea:
A risotto.

Alison:
With chicken and tarragon but not getting to it.

Andrea:
That would be amazing my sister has become obsessed with tarragon over the last year and a half and she’s told me it’s my herb of the year but we’re going on year two now so she said she’s like it’s like it’s been around my whole life and then suddenly here i am just discovering it and she’s used i’m keep putting it on everything so i actually did get a small tarragon plant and the sheep have not eaten it so oh okay i’m with you though on the herbs and i was telling gary i think our our garden patch which is pretty much only herbs at this point i think i just intend to continue just doing herbs yeah why not, Yeah, it’s not that I won’t ever do vegetables, but at the moment, we do have that lovely farm down the road that does vegetables, and I love getting this stuff from them. But exactly where we are, vegetables take quite a bit of effort. You know, you’d have to bring in a lot more soil, and we’d have to basically put up a greenhouse because, you know, the warm growing days would be like two months out of the year, basically.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
And so, you’d pay a pretty high price at the end of the day versus the herbs. Yeah. They thrive up there. I mean, they’ve taken over the entire garden. That’s why I’m saying it would work. So the herbs do great. And the vegetables maybe will get there. But at the moment, I think as far as bang for my thyme buck goes, it would, you know, herbs would be a hit.

Alison:
Can you protect them from the sheep or not?

Andrea:
Yeah, technically I can. The actual garden has a fence that they cannot permeate. But the fence that was surrounding our yard and I have a bunch of pots of herbs on the porch yeah that fence was not so substantial and then Gary just I should send you a picture Allison Gary just built me a planter box next to the front door and given my traumatizing experience I only planted in it lavender rosemary and thyme what else I think I put a sage plant in there because i knew they won’t eat those ones yeah yeah and they’re also drought tolerant so if i you know don’t you.

Alison:
Get rambling rosemary the one that grows down rather than the one that grows up there or not.

Andrea:
Uh i suppose people probably have it but i don’t think i’ve seen it.

Alison:
Yeah i i really want to get.

Andrea:
Some rosemary that kind.

Alison:
Of grows it goes down you know rather than going into a bush it’s sort of it’s like one of the drooping plants i’d like to get one of those.

Andrea:
Wow that sounds really awesome i.

Alison:
Like plants that hang down i’ve got this kind of thing about plants that hang down i’ve.

Andrea:
Always had them.

Alison:
On the top of my fridge or high places in my house and sort of hanging down things i think they’re really attractive.

Andrea:
Something luxurious about them i think just that i can just hang here and exactly yeah it’s very, very beautiful looking that that like ivy or wisteria type stuff that grows over and then hangs down i like that look too yeah i could see that yeah wow anything else you want to say here no no i think that’s it yeah remarkably thank you that was a really nice episode proud of us yeah this is a great episode and lots of good ideas for other episodes yeah.

Alison:
Thank you all for the questions supporters.

Andrea:
Do please.

Alison:
Do keep them coming you know i i i try to remember right must ask about questions but even if.

Andrea:
I don’t.

Alison:
You know any time just send the questions in and i’ll keep them in.

Andrea:
A little box and.

Alison:
And then wheel them out when it comes to our recording session.

Andrea:
I love it okay and then also if you have questions you can also hop on our monthly live call which is typically the third saturday of the month except in june and july see schedule for details but that that’s when we get on and you can ask questions and get a lot of listeners feedback on the spot which was really useful for instance with the mayonnaise one because we immediately got this feedback from a bunch of people who said oh olive oil this and blender that and hand mix this and like that was instant input which was really helpful i’ve.

Alison:
Nailed that mayonnaise thing now i feel very proud of myself and thank you to all of the patrons who helped it.

Andrea:
Was a group project okay allison until next time.

Alison:
Yeah indeed thanks very much.

Andrea:
All right bye bye.