Kitchen Table Chats #44 – Soaking/Sprouting, Proportions of Protein/Carb/Fat Plus UTIs
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 cover:
- Learn why Alison rolled a 12 foot metal circle through Stroud
- Garlic naan bread
- Instant Pot beef brisket stew
- Karen’s question: I’m confused about soaking/sprouting/fermenting grains…help!
- Rebecca’s question: How do you determine the ‘right’ proportion of protein/carb/fat on your plate?
- Laura’s question: Can you recommend an alternative treatment for UTIs?
- Laura’s question: Do soaked flour recipes need all of their liquid content to be ‘active’?
- Prescriptiveness in recipe-writing
- Recording in person!
Thank you for your questions! They make us feel useful 🙂 Don’t wait for a prompt from Alison to send us them…whenever you think “Oh, I wonder what Alison and Andrea would think”, send your question in and we’ll save it for the next KTC podcast!
Resources Mentioned:
Episode 17 Pre- Para- Pro- and Post-Biotics
Aftershow for Episode 104
Maurizio Leo, The Perfect Loaf
Kitty Bloomfield, Weight Loss for Women podcast
Kate Deering, Healing Your Metabolism
D-Mannose, Horsetail Herb, Uva Ursi
Simon Y Mills, The Essential Book of Herbal Medicine (highly technical)
Marcos Patchett, Episode 13, The Secret Life of Chocolate
Transcript:
Andrea:
Hello, Alison. How are you?
Alison:
Hi, Andrea. Yeah, I’m well, thank you. How are you?
Andrea:
I am quite well. Looking forward to this.
Alison:
Still oh yeah in the background it’s frosting outside.
Andrea:
So we aren’t over aren’t over the winter hump yet but we’re.
Alison:
Getting there how.
Andrea:
About for you.
Alison:
Yeah it’s not it’s been we had two weeks of absolutely blazing lovely sun beautiful blue skies but it started raining again now but not too much gable’s out we got we got this trampoline oh talk about what palaver he gable said he wanted a trampoline for his birthday so i started looking thinking i don’t want to bring more trampolines into the world let’s see what i can find on the second hand sites you know does anybody, i don’t know i think some people do yeah um and i found this one free the other side of stroud, It was in kind of, not a state, but it just hadn’t been moved for very many years. And so Rob and I went there last Thursday to try and dismantle it with numerous various tools and things. And it took us about an hour and a half and lots of ingenuity to try to dismantle this trampoline. It’s like a big, it’s probably 10 to 12 foot across.
Alison:
And it’s got a big net on it so kids don’t fall off, you know. So it’s got sort of structure pointing up and then the neck goes around it um and so we managed to get it apart rob really struggled at some point pulling some of the tubes out because they were a bit you know rusted and had been in there a long time and he was like i can’t get this out anyway so we what we couldn’t get apart was the the the widest bit the circle where the springs attached to when then you put the trampoline in the middle of it we just could not haul that apart for love nor money so we went home with all the bits dropped them rob carried them all because i’m rubbish at carrying and then we went back to pick up gable who was in town took him back to the trampoline with his friend because we were walking him home and said okay you see this big 12 foot metal circle we’ve got to roll that across stroud to get it home so at the half past three like school shucking out times we had to go past all the bus stops i had to go up the hill and it’s it’s a good right it took us a good 35 40 minutes rolling a massive metal wheel across town rob was like i don’t want to do this i hate standing out and i said no it’s good it’ll give people something to talk about when they get home guess what i saw today so we wheeled this thing all the way across stroud like nearly a mile i think my gosh got it into the garden and then then we just collapsed.
Alison:
And after that a couple of days went by and gable’s like let’s put the trampoline together so rob’s for the last few days when there’s been a spare hour he’s been out there with gable and to start with he couldn’t put the tubes back in there wasn’t quite enough reach on some of them and we were hammering things and anyway it’s it’s back together apart from the net and it’s in the garden so Gabriel was now out there like a jelly bean jumping up and down oh yeah he’s very excited so yeah he’s I’m impressed he should be so it was zero money no new trampolines were harmed or brought into the world and and because it’s a little bit sunny and he’s out there you know for whatever time he can get in between the showers jump and the best.
Andrea:
Thing is he got him, priceless memory that will last his entire life and he will say when i was a boy we had to push our trampoline up the hill yeah i’m just thinking of like some american driving through stroud tourist saying wow in england you know what they do they like push this giant wheel down the road everyone.
Alison:
It just happened that everyone we knew went past us like.
Andrea:
Literally like cars.
Alison:
Were beeping I was like, oh, hello, Katerina, hello. To everyone who knew us, happened to drive past when we were going home. It was amazing.
Andrea:
I’m amazed that Rob kept with you. That’s true dedication. I’m surprised he didn’t just leave you and like, you know what, you guys, figure this out.
Alison:
He was like, about halfway into it, he’s like, Alison, your idea is sometimes, you know, I just would have bought a new one or said no. I’m like, no, you know, you can do this. It’s fine. Because usually I just come up with these harebrained schemes and they end up being far more complicated than anyone ever imagined they might possibly be. And this almost turned into one when we thought we couldn’t dismantle it. And he was like, that’s it. We can’t get it. We can’t dismantle this circle. I was like, no, we can roll it home.
Andrea:
Alison, that is amazing. That is amazing. Let no one say that you hath not perseverance.
Alison:
Well, exactly. Yeah, no one would say that about me, I don’t think, really.
Andrea:
That’s.
Alison:
Kind of like a downside when you’re me my perseverance unfortunately.
Andrea:
Anyway do we do we do what we had for lunch on the ktc yeah we do what did you have what did.
Alison:
You have for lunch i don’t know dinner breakfast.
Andrea:
What would you like to choose i kind of had i had like a little breakfast but not a very um sustaining one i made um garlic naan breads last night for dinner so this morning I heated one up and had one with coffee and milk so that was uh do.
Alison:
You put yogurt in or kefir in your garlic nines.
Andrea:
Like when I’m making it?
Alison:
Hmm, that’s what I mean, yeah, when you’re making it.
Andrea:
Hmm.
Alison:
Because naan bread is traditionally made with yogurt.
Andrea:
I think. Yeah, this is kind of not really naan bread, but kind of was naan bread. I made a bunch of batches of tortilla dough, and then I’ve just been making them throughout the week. We’ve been using them. And I got a batch out yesterday, and I just thought, I’m not going to roll them out very big. I’m going to make them thick. I’m going to brush them with butter. I’m in the mood for. So it’s kind of a tortilla that was. Because Gary looked at me and was like, are we having tortillas or naan bread? I was like, I don’t know. It’s something.
Alison:
A hybrid. What, you could call it tour naan or something. I don’t know.
Andrea:
Something like that. What about you? Sounds nice.
Alison:
Yeah, we had a dish which is actually fast becoming a staple in our house because it’s simple and easy. Um a rolled beef brisket which um i figured out is cheaper than buying mince from our farmer the brisket for the same weight it’s not as expensive as mince and um we unroll it so get rid of all the string and all that work make it flat is.
Andrea:
That what you mean by rolled like it’s.
Alison:
Yeah so like a bit a bit of meat that then is is actually flat but then it’s rolled up so it looks like a joint kind of thing you know and they tie it with strings so you could put it in the oven like you might that’s cheaper.
Andrea:
Than the mince.
Alison:
That’s cheaper than mince yeah that’s cheaper than the ground beef beef yeah um and we put it in the instant pot with um we had onions this time mushrooms and we didn’t have any celery we haven’t had any celery at the market but we had celeriac and one of the celeriacs we had had lots of greens on the top so i chopped all the greens off the top got rid of the leaves because they can be a bit bitter but use the stalks so as if like a celery sort of thing put that in there and then um tomato paste italian tomato paste horseradish together i think i’ve talked about that before um some water and um some oatmeal to thicken the liquid a bit and then put the brisket on the top and we put it on high for i think an hour and a half is what does it for quite a long time on the pressure cook and then separately we had some cabbage left over and some cauliflower so we steamed those on the side um and then broke up the beef like you know you would pull pork so it’s all really soft and kind of just comes apart serve that with the sauce with the mushrooms and onions and celeriac bits and then the cabbage and the cauliflower on the side and the boys had some kraut and we had a spelt sourdough bread which was a couple of days old with lard and salt on it really yummy.
Andrea:
Sounds great. When you put the oatmeal in, was it ground or flaked or what?
Alison:
Yeah, it’s not rolled oats. It’s oatmeal, the English interpretation of that word, which means stone ground oats. So I guess if you don’t have access to those and you want to do the same thing, you could just whiz up porridge oats in a mill and get like a flour and put that in. So it’s just, yeah, it’s sprinkled on top. It’s like a, it’s a coarse flour. That would be how you would kind of.
Andrea:
Describe it of course and then you stir everything yeah every once in a while when i’m reading english things or talking to you i suddenly hear the word and i’m like oh like like oatmeal i never heard the word before but now i’m realizing oh it’s meal like duh but yeah exactly yeah yeah exactly so that.
Alison:
Happens to me all the time i hear these words i’m like oh duh.
Andrea:
Of course i can’t remember an.
Alison:
Example of course in the moment i can’t remember an.
Andrea:
Example but it happens every week i realize like companion the first time i was like wait a minute it’s the person you have bread with oh duh like how many times have i said that word yeah exactly the vagaries of english and the problem of having like 28 languages in one you.
Alison:
Know the best one is that the last few months is haversack have you heard.
Andrea:
The word have a sack yes oh yeah i told you i told you this because of Redwall, obviously. They have haversacks in Redwall.
Alison:
Do they? Ah. So do you know the meaning of haversack? Did I have told you before or not?
Andrea:
You did tell me, but you should say now in case somebody listening doesn’t know.
Alison:
Okay, yeah. Okay. So haver is the Norse stroke German word for oats. And so haversack was the sack in which you put your oats to haul them around or feed them to your horses or whatever. It’s in the sack. So, of course, haversack, which is really a synonym for rucksack or backpack. Was originally a sack that you put your habber in, i.e. your oats, the bag that you carried your oats around in.
Andrea:
So it’s basically like a lunch bag or a lunch tin or a meal pail or, you know, whatever.
Alison:
A bag with lots of yummy oats in it.
Andrea:
Yeah. Wow.
Alison:
Okay, we’ve got lots of questions today, haven’t we?
Andrea:
And before we get to them, I have a surprise for you.
Alison:
Oh, go on then.
Andrea:
It’s kind of a review. It’s a comment. So, there was a conversation in the Literary Life Discord about using non-wheat, like spelt or emmer or things, because more and more people are realizing that they have a sensitivity to wheat specifically. And my theory is that everybody does, but that’s just my theory. And… They are wanting to switch over to using ancient grains. So they tagged me and said, I need to learn how to use spelt. Andrea, help. And so the conversation began there. And Ellen, who has reviewed your spelt book, said this. I have a wheat allergy, not gluten, wheat confirmed through blood test. We have essentially only used spelt for years, aside from some kid baking projects. We fresh grind it for everything. it really does function very similarly to white flour we just sub it one for one in any conventional recipe cookies cakes everything it’s fantastic the best spelt sourdough resource i’ve found is allison’s cookbook that andrea linked above.
Alison:
Yeah hey isn’t that nice i.
Andrea:
Wanted you to hear that.
Alison:
Thank you thank you and anyone listening who doesn’t have that book yet you can get it with a 50 discount um so only six dollars by going to your original welcome email where there’s a code which will give you that discount send one of us a note if you can’t find that email and we’ll send it to you.
Andrea:
Yep and take note.
Alison:
Yeah ellen.
Andrea:
Has been using exclusively spelt.
Alison:
For years a long time she bought.
Andrea:
Your book right away when it came out and she has really enjoyed it so.
Alison:
Yeah i think that there’s a great desire actually for baking with spelt and there aren’t as far as I know really any other books out there especially not ones that deal with whole grain, and I thought many times about how can we get that book out wider you know I don’t have the energy or the desire to put it on KDP Kindle desktop publishing to get it out like that way because that you have to jump through hoops to do that but I’ve been glad to see it grow you know to see it going out further and further because i think that it’s um it can change people’s lives you know it really can yep.
Andrea:
Well we have actually some more grain topics to discuss.
Alison:
Yeah so.
Andrea:
We’ll just segue right in do you mind if i just go ahead and read this question.
Alison:
Right away yeah we’ve got loads of questions today we’re a whole question episode i think so yeah if you want hit us with the first one then that’s cool okay.
Andrea:
All right so this question comes from karen she said it might Might be too late, but here’s the question. I’m still very confused about the soaking process. I understand the why, but the how is what is confusing. I read one way to do it in nourishing traditions, but then hear or read about other ways. For example, rice. Soak for 24 hours, rinsing at least twice a day, then cook. Or soak for six hours, rinse and cook. Or soak, then ferment. Then my thoughts are, doesn’t cooking then kill all the beneficial bacteria created during ferment? So why bother? And with grains. In nourishing traditions, Sally says to soak, sprout, then use in bread or casseroles. This seems like a stupid question, but do you grind it first? Because she doesn’t say to. I’m also still struggling with making a whole grain loaf of bread with a nice rise. Sourdough, grinding my own flour, more than two inches. We don’t mind eating a hearty loaf of bread, But I would sometimes like to give them away as gifts. And there’s no way people will eat this version if not used to it. That being said, I haven’t tried your spelt recipe. I need to do that. Thanks for all that you and Andrea do.
Alison:
Wow.
Andrea:
They’re very good questions.
Alison:
Okay.
Andrea:
And they’re all questions that I had too.
Alison:
A million questions in there. Okay. I’ve got your question in front of me. So thankfully, I think I can just go through it slowly and try to logistically kind of cover everything. OK, so the first bit about rice. Karen says that she’s read Soak It for 24 hours, Soak It for six hours, Soak It and Ferment It, etc. I would say Soak It for as long as you can up to kind of 24, 48 hours. So if you’ve only got two hours and you’ve got the facility to be able to soak it, then soak it. If you’ve got six hours, then soak it. If you’ve got 24 hours, then soak it. If you’ve got 48 hours, then you can soak it for that long. I think that the longer you soak it, the more it’s going to soften. So it’s going to be easier to digest. And the more any chemical reactions in it that are going to happen will happen. So I think sometimes bloggers are kind of arbitrary about soak it for this long soak it for that long and it’s not arbitrary it’s a continuum you you should choose what works for you in your kitchen if you soak it for 24 hours then I would rinse it um once during that stage sometimes I’ve done that and forgot to if you soak it for 48 hours I would say you definitely need to rinse it you can leave it to ferment um whilst you’re soaking in that case you’re probably not rinsing it you’re leaving it in there.
Alison:
I don’t do that very often. She then asks, you ask Karen, doesn’t cooking kill all the beneficial bacteria? Yes, cooking will kill the probiotic bacteria in there.
Alison:
But there are many other biotic, biome, wonderful materials that remain in your food that has been fermented, even though it’s been cooked. We have an episode way back in the catalogue talking about postbiotics and paraprobiotics. And those are things that you get, for example, in sourdough bread or, for example, in sauerkraut that you cook. There are catalysts and microbes that go in and clean up your intestine and do fabulous things in your intestines, even though they’re not uncooked probiotics. You know most cultures have a tradition of cooking some of their fermented foods you know sauerkraut was used in cooked dishes sourdough bread has always been cooked so i don’t think you know it’s it’s null and void fermenting grains and then cooking them because you have softened those grains you have done the things that ferment has done to them and you are still getting beneficial bacteria so that’s what i say about rice and obviously that applies to things like you know millet sorghum any other grains that you might be using the same kind of thing do what works for you you know don’t not have the grain soaked because you don’t have the two days to go and keep rinsing it and not rinsing it if you’re going to eat it for lunch just get up and soak it in the morning that will help the next section.
Andrea:
On grains yeah go on can i drop something in there yeah i was gonna say that’s episode 17 which is oh.
Alison:
Thank you the power.
Andrea:
Called pre pro para pro and postbiotics that.
Alison:
Was my name i think.
Andrea:
Any other prefixes you care to use and uh yes that was your name but it’s a good one and my other comment because this is one i get a lot is well i’m fermenting this dough, but then I’m baking it. So, what’s the point is, as you said, it does make it more digestible, but also not every single bite we eat of food needs to be probiotic. The spectrum of ancestral food would indicate that you were getting some portion of probiotics at every meal. And as you and I know, you really only need a tablespoon of sauerkraut. You don’t need a half a cup of sauerkraut. So, you’re getting a little inoculation on your plate, and the other things can bring in the other benefits like the prebiotics or, you know, which you might get from this cooked rice, for instance.
Alison:
Exactly.
Andrea:
That’s something to keep in mind. Not every bite has to be a probiotic.
Alison:
Amen. Okay, next bit of the question was, Karen read that in Nourishing Tradition, Sally says to soak sprout and then use the grains in bread or casseroles. And she asked, don’t you need to grind it first? So that is not a stupid question because it’s not a stupid question and then.
Andrea:
You’re like wait i feel like i missed a step because what is going on here.
Alison:
100 i would say if you are using them in casseroles you don’t need to grind them first you can put sprouted grains into casseroles you can sprouted grains into salads without um grinding them that’s fine um you can make a bread without grinding sprouted grains like um sort of like an ezekiel bread where you, put the grains together in a food processor and mush them up and sort of shape them into a patty and cook them. And how do I know? Because I’ve done it a long time ago.
Andrea:
Of course you did. Leo Maurizio has recipes kind of like that in his Perfect Love book, actually.
Alison:
It’s quite mushy. It can take a while to cook and you might find it doesn’t seem to cook all the way through. So it’s not necessarily an easy thing to do. If you want to make a more standard loaf of bread, like the loaf of breads, you know, in my spelt book, then you can put sprouted grains in at a small percentage, not ground. So for example, you can make a dough and then you could put maybe 10% by weight sprouted grains. You could stretch and fold those into the dough and those will just give you a bit of texture when you are eating the bread. But if you want to use more than that to make bread then yes you need to grind them first and in order to grind conventionally sprouted grains you would need to dehydrate them first so you’ve got the sprouts you dehydrate them and then they’re like malt you know like you’d use in ale making and then at that stage you can grind those grains because otherwise if you try and put them for your grinder when they’re wet they’ll just mush up horrible um you can then have what is essentially sprouted flour, which you can use in bread i’ve never made a loaf with 100 sprouted flour.
Alison:
And i wouldn’t necessarily recommend it because the sprouting process changes the, carbohydrate profile of the grain and therefore it wouldn’t necessarily do what you’re expecting to do when it rises but you can certainly use 10 15 20 percent of sprouted grain flour so that would be sprouted dehydrated ground flour in your breads does that answer that question andrew do you think.
Andrea:
I think so and if.
Alison:
You hop.
Andrea:
On to the ktc podcast then the after show for baking with Ancient Grains, 16 minutes long, so clean, quick, to the point, and you covered a lot of this in more detail today.
Alison:
Why you would or wouldn’t want to do that so.
Andrea:
Um karen if you want a little more detail go there.
Alison:
Okay let’s just deal with the last bit which is about the rise of a whole grain loaf of bread um it’s hard for me to kind of um diagnose without seeing the loaves and being there in your kitchen and you say you’re finding it hard to get a rise that’s more than two inches so that could be, because the bread is being overproofed and therefore by the time you get it in the oven it’s not rising as much. It could be that your starter’s not strong enough and that means it’s not rising enough. It could be that the temperature and setup in your oven means it’s not rising enough.
Alison:
Two inches is quite a rise for a whole grain bread and I don’t know if you mean that you know from where it was before the proof or where it was when it went in the oven.
Alison:
You know my bread expands width wise and length wise as well as height and and I’m quite happy with the crumb I would say have a look at my the pictures of my recipes in the sourdough spelt book and look at the crumb and compare it to your crumb and by that you’ll have more of an understanding of you know where you’re at I understand that you know when you’re giving breads to other people who have different expectations of what the word bread means it can be a bit difficult and if you’re making loaves for other people I would say put some put some white flour in you know grind some of your flour and take say you take say you’re grinding um I’d say 600 grams but that’s like a pound and a bit for you isn’t it um take a quarter of it and just put it through a sieve and just use the white save the brand for something else and put that white in and that will help give an extra rise for the breads that you’re making for for someone else um yeah that that’s kind of my best suggestion for getting a better rise other than you know sitting and troubleshooting with you.
Alison:
With you know seeing how your starter is seeing how your loaf is watching you proof going through the whole process with you which I can do because I do do saldo consulting but that’s quite a commitment um but obviously that is an option um because it’s difficult for me to tell without seeing your loaves so compare them to my ones in my book and go from there and think about all the different things that go into it like the starter the proofing time the oven temperature and see if you can move forward, is my suggestion there.
Andrea:
Great. And if you get on the live with us, Karen, bring one of your loaves.
Alison:
Yeah, that’s a really good idea.
Andrea:
Show it to everybody. And then you can get the input of everyone. And we’ll probably be very admiring.
Alison:
Definitely.
Andrea:
Sometimes I think our expectations, like you said, are different. And on the vein of expectations. When I give people 100% home ground loaves, I actually change the name. I don’t say, here’s a loaf of bread. I say, here’s a hearth loaf or here’s a rustic loaf. So, I’m intentionally shaping their expectations that it’s going to be more dense and more chewing. And then they are excited and surprised and delighted by the difference and they don’t come into it expecting a spongy kind of whipped loaf yeah I think is helpful that’s.
Alison:
A great tip.
Andrea:
And on that note also Maurizio Leo who Alice and you got me turned on to his stuff and now you know I’m a big fan he has a website called the perfect loaf and on there he has a recipe for 100% whole grain bread and he does mill his own flowers and he described how you could sieve out some of the bran and then he soaks it separately and then brings it back in and i know you’ve talked about that before too ellison yeah so it’s a little bit of a more intensive process but if you wanted to just, work through that a few times to see how it feels and decide if it’s worth it to you yeah i forgot about that because the.
Alison:
Bran is kind of sharper because it.
Andrea:
Doesn’t break down.
Alison:
As much so it cuts through the gluten mesh network so that certainly might help as well thank you.
Andrea:
Yeah.
Alison:
Cool. Okay, should we move on to the next question?
Andrea:
Where to next?
Alison:
Fact.
Andrea:
Are we going to do Rebecca’s?
Alison:
I shall read this one. Yeah, Rebecca’s question. So Rebecca, who’s been a podcast supporter for a while, Rebecca, said to both of us, to be sure your podcasts are my favourite to listen to. I feel so at home with your voices and how you organise the podcast with such good topics. You feel like long-time friends sitting with me in my kitchen or with me out in my garden, walking through the farmer’s market, foraging for wild plants, or watching Ruth in the Tudors series, or finding a good movie that seems to naturally depict the days in the 1800s. I’ve got a question. Can you speak to the role of nutrient-dense fats in a proper ratio with proteins and nutrient-dense carbohydrates, not empty bad carbs? So proteins, carbs, fats, how to figure out a ratio so we are not overeating our beloved raw butter, cream, lard, reserved and safe fat from the cookings of meats. I only mean the proper fats used and referred to by the Western Price in Nourishing Traditions and she’s gone to their website and found some info on the Know Your Fat archives.
Alison:
But she asks do either of us have a factor, a kind of a theory that we turn to in relationship of part of protein, carbs and fats for ourselves as adults. And the reason she asks is because a substacker and podcaster she’s heard both at separate times saying they felt they were eating too many fats when they were following a Western Price diet and needed to tone it down. So she’s just started keeping an eye on her fat intake, but she’s not limiting it. And more, she’s doing it more out of curiosity. She’s not trying to lose weight, but maintain a healthy weight. And if gaining a pound or two is a result of that, then she’s fine with it. Okay, Andrea, do you want to start with this question from Rebecca?
Andrea:
Sure. This is… This is one of those questions that shouldn’t be complicated, but it kind of is, given that we’re all coming out of different lifestyles. And I was just having this conversation with Megan Francis yesterday when we were talking about actually movement and how she was saying it feels like movement is one of the hardest pieces of the ancestral life that is lost to weave back in because it no longer, take what I say with the meaning, I mean, it no longer serves a purpose. So you’re not walking to something. You’re just walking, you know.
Alison:
It was demanded in the past, you know.
Andrea:
Yeah.
Alison:
You had to survive, whereas we don’t need to now.
Andrea:
You’re turning water out of the tap. You’re not walking down to a creek. You’re throwing clothes in the laundry. You’re not walking to the creek. You’re taking honey out of a jar. You’re not climbing a tree. You know, it’s a different world. So, I would say that something that isn’t addressed often when people discuss percentages and ratios is how much you should be moving and also the rarity of fat in an ancestral diet. You know, we can make things now like fat bombs or we can have butter every day of the year if we want to, but not all fats were available at all times for most people in history. And that is why they are so special, because they are high in energy, and when a good portion of your diet is those soaked mushy grains you’re talking about made into a patty, then it’s really valuable to be able to have a piece of fat with that to make sure that it lasts you throughout the whole day. So, I’ll just caveat by saying I always think back to the ancestral lifestyle and how did it look in context? It came with a lot of movement, and it was a significant source of energy because resources were often few and far between.
Andrea:
So, that being said, we now have accessibility to everything we want all the time, and we can basically, now we have to try and say, what’s the perfect percentage of something now that we can actually choose and i don’t know that that’s really an easy thing to throw a pin at because it is different for everybody and there is nuance and that’s not anything anybody wants anymore so kitty bloomfield has a podcast it used to be called win at life and she changed the name i think the weight loss for women right and um, You don’t have to listen to it with weight loss in mind necessarily.
Alison:
No, it’s such a good podcast. And I know she probably did that because she’s got her market and that attacks her market. And so many people want to lose weight. But it’s such a good podcast above and beyond weight loss that it’s just don’t be put off by that.
Andrea:
I think that’s why she originally called it Win at Life because she wanted it to be very broad. It’s just how to really win at all the things you’re trying to do and be successful with your health. Um it’s not you know and and she sees you know weight loss or gain as part of the full picture of a healthy body yeah but but yeah you’re right she was probably trying to be able to be found by people who needed a more specific um title anyways she and i talked on a zoom call once about this very subject. And I don’t know if she still exactly says these ratios, but she said it’s really hard because everybody wants her to give them a number, like, this is how much fat you should be having. And she was like, well, you know, it really varies. Like, are you in your luteal phase? Are you in your follicular phase? Are you premenopause? Are you lactating? Are you pregnant? Are you trying to gain weight? Are you trying to lose weight? You know, are you training for something? There’s so many variables that we could throw in here. And so, she’s very resistant to giving out a number on what kind of a ratio for fat would be.
Andrea:
However, she has to give you a starting point for something and she wants you to take that starting point and maybe try it on for a couple weeks and be tuning in to how your body responds and see if it feels right or if you need to kind of fine-tune it. The suggestion that she gives, and I don’t know, again, if these are the exact percentages she still shares, but you can also look in Kate Dearing’s book. Oh, Allison, what’s the title of the book? It’s upstairs on my dresser.
Alison:
Heal Your Metabolism.
Andrea:
Oh, thank you. Heal Your Metabolism. Because that’s the other thing is Kate and Kitty’s big focus is getting your metabolism to be working properly. So, without a proper functioning metabolism, it doesn’t always know how to deal with the energy that you’re bringing in. And you may have been in really high cortisol state for a long time and your body just thinks there’s famines around every corner. And, you know, our adrenals are dying and we need to protect our organs with more fat, you know, so your body is going to behave differently than somebody who turns up to ancestral eating, you know, and has been….
Andrea:
You know, like Gabriel at 18 will be a different creature than if, you know, he had been walking out of like eating. Yeah, yeah, totally. And his metabolism will be functioning. And so, he would say, well, I eat this much fat. And somebody else would say, hold on, I can’t do that or I gain weight. You know, it’s like, well, there are differences. So, that’s the complicated side of the answer. I will now tell you some of the ratios that Kitty shared, but I just want you to keep that in mind because it is really risky to put a number out there, I think, and I don’t want anybody to take it and latch on to it. But she suggested for people in a maybe more maintenance stage that a good ratio could be, for some people, kind of a 15 or 20% of your caloric intake coming from fats, and then maybe around 60-ish percent from carb, and maybe around like 20 to 30% protein. So, or 25 to like 30% protein.
Andrea:
So this is highly variable, depending on what stage you’re in, you might need a lot more of it to come from protein, or you might want some more to come from fat. But the thing to keep in mind is that a little bit of fat can give you a lot of energy. So it’s not like the same weight of fat is the same energy as the same weight of carb. And so I think maybe what she’s referring to where some people feel like it’s off balance is it’s very easy to put two tablespoons of butter in a pan because I like doing that, versus like one and you and I both come from a history of I don’t know what you want to say like over tracking things and so you know you want to be cautious because that’s another thing to keep in mind that kitty addresses a lot is are you going to trigger off some kind of an orthorexic state in yourself by measuring this i.
Alison:
Mean measuring it is really quite hard because you know if i have.
Andrea:
An egg well.
Alison:
That’s got protein that’s got fat you know there’s fat in the beef that i had for lunch as well as you know separate fat that i’m spreading on my bread so it really, to track it to the nth degree even to track it accurately is really really hard you have to go on.
Andrea:
Phone use.
Alison:
One of those apps don’t you of course i.
Andrea:
Forget that those exist yes still that for.
Alison:
Me that is easy to trigger me into some kind of over controlling.
Andrea:
Yeah 100 sort.
Alison:
Of spiral i would say.
Andrea:
Not everybody has that problem so i want to i want to give allowance for that not everybody’s going to have that same problem no.
Alison:
Some people need to do it probably.
Andrea:
Yes and actually what kitty said was she said you you do want to be cautious especially if you’re coming from a disordered eating background, but her suggestion was… Do track what you’re eating at least for three days to get it to feel like an average, but longer if you can. And she says the reason is because a lot of women have no idea what they’re getting. Like we can’t even ballpark it. And she often finds there’s not enough fat and there’s not enough protein. There’s a lot more carb. Of course, that’s possible.
Alison:
Um and do you think you.
Andrea:
Follow those roughly.
Alison:
Those percentages that she’s putting out or not.
Andrea:
Right now i have no idea exactly i have no idea just tried i tried.
Alison:
To figure out what i had at lunch and i was just like so.
Andrea:
When i when i tried to um track it for like two weeks with her i was like i can’t do this and she said you know what you just need to like get close because i was like, she said because i said well i don’t know like i’m supposed to weigh the egg right because eggs can be quite variable in size and and of course the eggs for my chickens will have different, yeah you know properties and the eggs from a different chicken and and she said the thing is, you you not necessarily needing to be at that granular of a level you can say, Yeah, she’s like, if you just go in and say an egg, okay, maybe I don’t know the exact size, but you’re going to roughly get a picture of where you’re at. And she goes, you know, then if somebody’s like trying to cut 2% for a show or something like that, then you’re getting on to level where you’re like, okay, you need to weigh this to the gram. But other than that, she said, for a lot of our purposes, we just need to get kind of close. which was freeing to hear because i was really struggling because i would get it in for like one day and then i was like i can’t keep i can’t write everything down weigh everything you know.
Alison:
But just like.
Andrea:
Just get close just get close.
Alison:
Okay and.
Andrea:
At that point i found i was eating way too little protein.
Alison:
Shocker okay that’s interesting that was what i mean i’ve had that i’ve had that awareness as well that i’ve i eat i have eaten in the past way too little protein i don’t think I’m quite in that place now and I wanted to add a few things if that’s all right yes please said I was just gonna ask.
Andrea:
If you could.
Alison:
Yeah I think I think it’s hard to to track it um I think, I tried to look at what I had at lunchtime like I said I was just thinking okay what did I have I had 100 grams of bread two slices and then I had a lot of veg um and then I probably had around 90 grams of meat, I know that we don’t eat as much meat as often I see portion sizes of other people like that. How to eat book. Some of the portion sizes of the meat in those diets of people. I just I was just like, how on earth are they eating that much? It’s bonkers. And then on my bread, I probably had, I think, about a tablespoon of lard. So that is 15 grams. So I that’s kind of what I think I had at lunchtime. I have fat at every meal, very definitely. And I know if they’re a normal person and came and looked at how much fat I’d have, they’d be shocked. But I have substantially less fat than Rob. Rob has much more fat than me. So if they saw the amount of fat Rob has, then they’d probably fall over. I can’t metabolize fat very well.
Andrea:
It’s because he’s carrying trampolines across town and rolling a wheel up a hill.
Alison:
He can get energy from fat really well. He has been through periods of his life where he’s been eating far less carbs, far fewer carbs and a lot more fat. And he’s done kind of long distance running and played around with Maffetone percentages, which are, you know, just having fat and running on that and getting to a kind of a stage of running where you’re just burning fat. I cannot metabolize fat that’s one of the big things that I learned from doing the GAPS diet and taking my carbohydrate right down I lost a ton of weight and I didn’t sleep and I just I couldn’t power my muscles because my fat metabolism is terrible and I’ve tried over the last 15 years to improve it and not really been able to do much to shift it and so there’s really, in my experience when I eat more fat there’s kind of no point me eating more fat because it just comes out the other end I’m not doing anything with it and it makes me feel a bit ill and that’s because, yeah I had because I had 15 years of not eating fat so my body just mhm, got used to not having any fat. And I think I probably lost the things that I need, whatever they are, the enzymes and the microbes or whatever to digest fat. So it kind of plays out that, you know, everyone’s what you’re saying. Everyone’s an individual. What are your needs? What’s your history? What, you know, what are you, where are you coming from?
Alison:
And I think really the way that I balance protein, carbs and fats now is I just try to do it intuitively. But I guess that’s come on building many many years of times where I did weigh and I did check and I did try and I did watch and so now I’m like I’m not weighing I’m not doing any of that I just I try to tune each meal over time to what I know works best for me so sometimes I’ll have meals with less carbohydrate and sometimes no bread and I’ll notice oh I’m getting hungry at three o’clock is that okay is that not okay how do I feel about that and how does that affect my sleep how does that affect my mental health how does that affect all these other things and with protein you know I’ve I did track it a bit and I was like okay I’m not getting enough protein and then when I increase my protein at breakfast I sleep better generally and so just as over time and I know that’s frustrating when you want to get it right in the moment but over time just by being conscious of what’s going on your plate not necessarily weighing and by listening to your body and tracking symptoms and thinking about things and just taking a moment to reflect okay how does that meal make me feel how did I sleep that night how there was my energy throughout the day I think you can.
Alison:
You can just teach your body to make the best decision for you in that moment. And that might be like, you know, when I’m bleeding, I might want a lot more of certain types of food, you know, at certain times of the month, at certain times when I’m tired, or in the winter, I might want more of something. In the summer, I might want less. But I feel like, as I said to you before we started recording, I’m reading a book that Fiona lent me, Michael Pollan, talking about how we’ve nutritionalised food so much and how, you know, for most of history, people just ate food and they didn’t know what a carbohydrate was or what fat was and what protein was. And I feel like that’s the ideal state. Yeah, that’s the ideal state to be, that we eat what we’ve got around us in a way that feels right to the land and to our bodies and to the people we’re sharing with.
Alison:
And that’s what I would, that would be my ideal, you know to to move to that place all the time that I’m close enough and intimate enough with my own makeup that I know what does the best for me and yep that’s um that’s a life journey I think for sure lean into those instincts right yeah yeah and also learn to understand where the instincts are you know because the further I get away from being the overeating Alison who was hot as double the weight she is, the more I learn to work with.
Alison:
What are cravings and what do I want? You know, back then, if you took me back 20 years, I would have been more driven by the addictive needs of my body using food in a wrong sort of way. And now having 20 years away from that and having learned how to address those things in my life, I’m able to come to food with a clearer head because I think that plays into it too.
Andrea:
Yeah. So, for the podcaster then that she referred to, based off of what you just said, if it was a grob, he might have said, oh, this is so perfect for me. I finally feel like I’m getting what I need. And if it was you, you might have said that my body isn’t responding well. And that’s the thing is nourishing traditions cannot be prescriptive because it’s so variable. And I when you said that about the fat you made me think when I was on gaps I tried to make the fat, like the coconut and honey bombs and I threw it up immediately oh I think I have yes and that’s actually been a problem since I was little I actually wouldn’t even eat sausages when I was I’d throw up because it was just too much fat somehow for me to to deal with and I don’t exactly know why so but you know when i.
Alison:
When i was doing gaps i had periods where i ate a lot of coconut oil and i felt really very ill so.
Andrea:
Maybe coconut.
Alison:
Oil just kind of got that thing to it i don’t know.
Andrea:
Yeah, well, it is a palm oil, and it is a good oil, a good fat, but it is one that, you know, genetically my body is probably not very accustomed to.
Alison:
Yeah, that’s what I thought for me.
Andrea:
I don’t have a lot of, you know, South Pacific or warm sort of ancestry in me at all. So, I don’t know if that plays a part.
Alison:
I was dreaming of the South Pacific when you said that. I think, you know, the waves and the beach and.
Andrea:
Yeah, possibly.
Alison:
Yes.
Andrea:
Okay.
Alison:
Okay. Anything else for Rekha’s question?
Andrea:
No, I think that’s a very good question and one that, you know, will probably be good to revisit from time to time. And maybe when I come out of this postpartum, I’ll, you know, maybe I’ll do some more tracking and see where I’m at.
Alison:
But yeah, yeah. Okay, let’s move to Laura’s questions then. Laura has two questions for us. Do you want to read the first one or shall I?
Andrea:
Sure, I’ll read it out.
Alison:
Yeah, okay, go on then.
Andrea:
She says, hi, in at least one of your episodes, you and Andrea talked about avoiding antibiotics, and I agree 100%, but any suggestions on something herbal or more ancestral that can be done in place of an antibiotic for a UTI? I know prevention is the best, and I know and practice all the prevention tactics, which has worked quite well for many years, but I wound up with a UTI a few years ago anyway. My mom says I got them a lot when I was very little, so I guess I’m just prone to them. I tried some home remedies, but instead of getting rid of it, it just got worse, so I wound up on an antibiotic anyway, and probably a stronger one than if I had just gotten on it right away. So I’m just curious if either of you had heard of something non-antibiotic that works on a UTI once it has already started.
Alison:
Okay, do you want to start with this one or shall I?
Andrea:
Well, this is not my speciality. Okay. So I’ve, in my life, I’ve had one UTI, at least I think that’s what it was. This has not been something that I’ve traditionally had to deal with. So it’s just not something I’ve done a lot of research on. So I think I’ll hand this one to you.
Alison:
Okay. So I do have something to share from my own experience, but obviously there’s probably a ton more out there, which I have not got any experience of. So take what I’m saying, but understand that probably there’s a lot more out there. So in December 2023, I self-diagnosed interstitial and testicial cystitis. And when it first happened, I thought that perhaps it was a UTI. And so because of that, I started researching alternative options for UTIs. And you get all the cranberry juice, et cetera, et cetera.
Alison:
But I looked into herbs and I have a book which is quite old which Marcus Patchett who is a herbalist in London who did our chocolate episode with us who is the person who I turn to for herbal advice he runs a herbal college has been herbalist for many many years and he is almost as persistent and thorough as I am and he recommended this book The Essential Book of Herbal Medicine by Simon why mills and it is quite complicated and you can see why he likes it because he’s a thorough person but it talks about the kind of structures of herbalism and you know kind of the kind the different body types and is very very thorough but he does have sections on individual herbs and so during that first phase of trying to treat my bladder problems we rob and i used two herbs The first one was Horsetail and the second one was Uwe Ersi. And we got both of those and made teas out of them. They’re quite easy to access via the internet. And so I just, I looked up the sections on Horsetail and Uwe Ersi in this book. I’ve got it in front of me. There’s tons of information, but there’s a tiny bit on horsetail, which just is specific to this. Let’s see if I can find it.
Alison:
Yeah, the combination of these properties leads to the major use by modern herbalists of horsetail as a urinary astringent, useful for checking infections and damage to the walls of the uterus, bladder and urethra, as well as the prostate in men.
Alison:
It dilutes the urine, possibly increases clotting on site and may have other healing effects on the mucosa. Um so that is quite well known for urinary tract infections horsetail and then there’s another one called uva ursi which is also in the book and it just says this is a prime remedy for urinary infections such as cystitis urethritis prostatitis and similar um so those two i know um have been used for a long time for um alternative methods for utis that’s about as much as i know i mean i took them they were fine um they didn’t particularly work in my case because mine’s my situation i have is more of a syndrome rather than infection but i i know that herbalists do turn to those so that might be something that you maybe don’t know about um and could just have a look at do some googling and get herbal book and see if you think that might be appropriate in your case other than that i’m sure there are lots of other home remedies but unfortunately i don’t have any experience of them um do you think any of the oils would make a difference andrew i was thinking of this one of you and i thought maybe you have some oil recommendations but i don’t know about oil and bladder in particular i.
Andrea:
Don’t know particularly i know that.
Andrea:
A friend of mine found ginger to be very effective.
Andrea:
So you could probably use the oil ingested. You could, she was making, we make like this raw ginger and raw turmeric and lemon juice blend and strain it and drink it. So it’s like a ginger turmeric lemon tea. And she found when she wasn’t drinking it, she would get UTIs. So, for some reason, her body was in some way unstable and she was prone towards the UTIs, but when she was keeping up with drinking that, it seemed to stave them off. She also found that if she was eating sugar it almost definitely would bring it back in so perhaps there was some sort of bacteria that was consuming the sugar and then would proliferate and create an imbalance and a weakness i don’t know because again this isn’t really my field yeah um but she found you know any sugar including you know eating an orange or something like that So, I don’t know if, I know you had to be off sugar for quite a bit now, but now I’ve heard you mention fruit from time to time. So, I know you’re able to bring some back. So, that’s a good thing. That does indicate, you know, stability and health in your gut. So, if you hear the baby, it’s getting changed. Oh, dear. Gary’s getting ready to take him with him. So, he’s changing his diaper and he’s not happy about that.
Alison:
Poor little thing.
Andrea:
Yeah.
Alison:
Okay. um i hope that that helps with the uti from our have you heard of yeah d manos, yeah it’s a it’s in pineapple isn’t it or it’s a it’s some kind of sugary thing in yeah that was in you know when i had the um problems with my bladder i went to the normal doctor in italy because i wanted to organize and um in italian it’s called an echografia which is guess an ultrasound um to make sure that there wasn’t um any um cancer pushing on my bladder um that was all fine um but he gave me this um kind of powdered drink prescription which had d mannose in it and a cranberry extract in it and told me to take it, um every day for 30 days I think um because he said they will flush out the bladder but I just you saying that word has reminded me that I think maybe it’s bromelain that’s in pineapple it’s in something it’s in some sort of fruit but you can take it as an extract and it is apparently good for bladder as well um and I think it was just a concoction so you might find online some kind of mix up of the different concoctions um i stopped taking it because cranberry is actually counter indicated for a lot of people on who have interstitial cystitis so and i was gonna.
Andrea:
Say i don’t think that would do.
Alison:
Much good combo so if you just.
Andrea:
Had a standard uti.
Alison:
Yeah it probably would have been helpful would work yeah so yeah look up d mannose as well thank you for remembering that.
Andrea:
I’ve heard some positive reviews of that people have said you know oh my My child had a UTI and we just like we put D-manos on our hand and she licked it or something.
Alison:
Like she just.
Andrea:
Ate it and she was fine or whatever. So I don’t know. Anything to avoid the antibiotics.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
Absolutely. Okay. Would you like to read the next question?
Alison:
Yeah, I’ll read the other question too from Laura. Yeah. So she says, my daughter has realized she’s gluten sensitive, but Alison, your ancestral Irish soda bread.
Andrea:
That’s on my blog.
Alison:
And Andrea’s cream soaked biscuits. in the podcast cookbook she has no problem with thank you so can i take any recipe that uses flour and milk replace a tablespoon or two of the milk with kefir or whey soak overnight and then proceed with the recipe or does soaked flour only work if using all kefir like the irish soda bread recipe or cream instead of milk with the kefir forward slash whey like the soaked cream biscuit recipe okay and then she says thank you so very much i’ve learned so much from your podcast thank you for saying that laura do you want to talk about this andrea how do you do your.
Andrea:
It’s kind of a nice wrap-up because it brings us back to soaking like we started.
Alison:
With yeah i.
Andrea:
No you don’t need to use all cream the all cream is used in the biscuits mainly because it’s a replacement fat. So, you know, where you would once cut butter in, the cream is the replacement for the fat. And I learned that technique from Cook’s Illustrated back when I first got married and have never looked back. And.
Andrea:
I know I and many others have found success using partial cream instead of, you know, all cream or some, I think some people have even used all kefir instead of any cream at all. And they all seem to make a nice fluffy biscuit. So, for the biscuit recipe specifically, it doesn’t have to be all cream. For baking generally, for soaking flour, it definitely doesn’t have to be all cream or any cream at all. And it doesn’t have to be all kefir. You need some of an acidulator, but you don’t need 100% to be that, if that makes sense. Because the bacteria will proliferate on their own. And I suppose you could do with lemon juice, and that’s not a bacterial source, but it’s just acid. But, well, I guess if you used vinegar, there would still be like acetobacter in there. Yeah so so no it doesn’t have to be all kefir it doesn’t have to be all cream, and i have probably done every combination under the sun in almost every recipe just based off of what i had on hand do you make soda bread.
Alison:
Often or not.
Andrea:
Uh not often well i actually used to make it all the time but i haven’t made it in probably i don’t think i’ve made it since we moved here so at least five years wow okay i should make your recipe though huh.
Alison:
Yeah i am i’ve never made soda bread with anything other than just all the kefir or the um.
Andrea:
Yeah and i don’t think i’ve ever made it with kefir so oh okay interesting i’ve used um yeah just buttermilk or i’m trying to think if i’ve done just milk with probably i’ve i’m pretty sure i’ve done it with just milk and then lemon juice and vinegar mixed so do you think that laura could make.
Alison:
A soda bread with just a few tablespoons of the kind of buttermilk or milk kefir kind of thing with the baking powder or do you think is.
Andrea:
It because.
Alison:
I’ve only ever made it with totally.
Andrea:
Baking soda yeah yeah okay yeah i bet she could i i would uh i will bet one dollar that she could so if she wants to take me up on that bet one of us could make a dollar by.
Alison:
The time you converted it to pound i can’t play because just.
Andrea:
By the time you got the exchange rate fees and i’d end.
Alison:
Up with like five p.
Andrea:
One of us owes somebody.
Alison:
So the answer is you can try, experiment with just, maybe start with doing half liquid, half water or half normal milk and half an acidulated milk.
Andrea:
But probably you could. here’s the thing when when you look through older materials you often find okay nobody had um access to eggs you know during rationing so guess what you can make cake without eggs you know what i mean yeah like there’s all these workarounds for things based on desperation necessity lack, interest food sensitivities now and allergies now before it was just oh we’re not rich enough to have an egg in our house and now it’s we could we could buy 40 eggs but we can’t eat them so, um there’s pretty much workarounds for everything and because you and i both have that particular disease where we don’t go and buy an ingredient we just try to make it work with what we have we have sort of by necessity found oh look you can do this without that and it actually works really great so yeah um and the more you do that the more your instincts kind of start to kick in like oh no i tried that that one time and it wasn’t that good this.
Alison:
Is why that this sort of cooking is really hard to um box into i mean.
Andrea:
Yes to.
Alison:
Try say for instance trying to write a recipe book i mean we did write a recipe book in meals and the ancestral hearth and we did try to get across that these recipes were just templates and we do say that throughout the podcast you know just try this try that sometimes we add this sometimes we do that if we haven’t got that we don’t do this but the sort of trying to encapsulate that for a book other than one that’s going to people who kind of know what we’re talking about already.
Andrea:
Right um.
Alison:
Is just it’s so opposite to all of the other cookbooks out there it seems to me that that’s.
Andrea:
Really quite.
Alison:
Hard to to express you know um.
Andrea:
I find that.
Alison:
It’s a it’s an you know people have been doing it for centuries and centuries and centuries like you said you know there were no stores they just made what they could but we seem to have forgotten that so.
Andrea:
We have well we’ve either forgotten it or never been taught or never been exposed to it you know a lot of us are in kitchens for the first time as adults you know really doing anything other than opening containers and stuff like that because it’s just not been something you know a friend of mine said she’s having a hard time but she’s she’s doing a great job but she’s um, She’s trying to do things like save the bacon drippings or soaked beans. And she said inwardly she’s resisting because growing up, the generations before her were very, very, very poor. And then her parents and her grandparents’ generation had just a little bit more. And so, they scorned things that they associated with poverty, like cooking your own beans or saving the bacon grease because that’s what poor people do.
Alison:
Yeah.
Andrea:
Don’t do that anymore we are wealthy enough that we can buy pizza and have it delivered so that’s what we do and um that’s the story of awful.
Alison:
As well isn’t it you know well.
Andrea:
The poor people eat the awful yeah and sauerkraut and broth and um so she said it’s a little bit of a mental struggle but the the prescriptiveness that you alluded to is also why kitty and kitty bloomfield and Kate Dearing both said they had such a hard time giving some sort of numbers because we have no starting point.
Andrea:
We don’t know what’s normal because we haven’t seen normal. We’ve seen ultra-processed, we’ve seen packaged, we’ve seen restaurant servings, and all these things distort our concept of what a normal meal looks like. And so, it’s hard for us to say, go with instinct because our instinct has been dulled and diluted by our exposure to these things. And so she said it’s hard to give that number because people latch onto it. And then they say, I’ve got myself doing exactly 15% calories of this. And I find that I’m on my cycle. I’m so tired. And she’s like, okay, so don’t do that. Like, it’s a struggle. And I don’t want to contribute to the culture of prescriptiveness, which is why you almost had to pull my fingernails out to get me to write down the recipes. But I did it eventually but it was still hard because I I didn’t I also don’t like being told what to do and you’re telling me to I’m just kidding but and so when I read a recipe I don’t want to be told you can only do it this way or if you’re gonna say that I want you to explain to me it only works this way because the carbohydrates convert and you need to malt them and you know I like to understand so when I wrote the recipe I didn’t want to say you have to do it this way But then if I make it too broad, and somebody who’s never made it before, they’re just confused. There’s no starting point.
Alison:
Some people just want to be told what to do, don’t they?
Andrea:
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, honestly, sometimes I do. Sometimes I do. Just tell me what to do.
Alison:
Decision fatigue. Can’t cope.
Andrea:
Yeah. Well, that’s probably exactly what it is. Decision fatigue. And but but once maybe you could do something the way it was prescribed for a while and then make sure you keep that autonomy, that freedom to adjust on the fly.
Alison:
Yeah, I think that’s what quite a few people do who I’ve spoken to. You know, they will try a recipe as per the book the first time and then they will decide to go off and do something themselves, you know, change things, do change this, change that. Again, I find it hard to even make it as per the recipe the first time. I can count on one hand probably the amount of times I’ve done that in my life.
Andrea:
Right.
Alison:
But I think it’s good in theory, just not in practice when it comes to me in the kitchen.
Andrea:
Yeah just don’t just don’t uh change every single thing in it and then go on and write i tried making this spelt bread didn’t work used rice instead of spelt and used water instead of milk and i didn’t want have time so i didn’t rise it zero stars this was terrible okay well you didn’t do the recipes so don’t comment oh.
Alison:
I have had people put that on my blog i tried to make this.
Andrea:
For this and it didn’t.
Alison:
Work well that’s because it’s not supposed to be made with that i’ve never tested it.
Andrea:
Exactly.
Alison:
Anyway, right, I think we’re done. Possibly.
Andrea:
I can’t believe we answered all those questions.
Alison:
Yeah, hopefully we will.
Andrea:
Do we get a prize or something? Because that was…
Alison:
Don’t know.
Andrea:
Don’t know. Well, yay, we did it. All right, great.
Alison:
That’s quite cool. Yeah.
Andrea:
These were fantastic questions.
Alison:
Thank you for sending them in. Sometimes I forget to send a message out saying, please send us your questions. So just send us your questions at any time, and then I’ll keep them, and we’ll put them in for the next thing. And so, you know, don’t wait for me to ask because sometimes I forget to ask. Just if you think of something, think, oh, I’d really like Alison and Andrew’s opinion on that, then send it in to us and we will definitely put it into the next KTC. So thank you everyone for sending those in because it made an interesting chat.
Andrea:
Yeah. And the other thing is if you send them a little early, we have a little bit more time to look at them. And um send them back i mean these ones are great because you and i have actually discussed all of these topics yeah probably to death between each other except the utis we weren’t yeah weren’t as well versed on that but oh i wanted to say that the yeah marcus patchett, episode was number 13 thank you wanted to go back and hear that one the secret life of chocolate another episode with.
Alison:
Him later in the year hopefully it may well be the first podcast ever recorded in person i’m hoping.
Andrea:
Oh my god to be in the same room as.
Alison:
Him i’m hoping to go.
Andrea:
See him if.
Alison:
Bob can set up all the you know microphones synchronization and all of that thing i might be in the same room with him which would be really cool.
Andrea:
I’d be interested to hear how how that experience is for you because energy is a little different yeah in person um yeah like leah and i recorded that not really an episode but you know what i mean like the little side episode that goes out in april um and we were in person and um in some ways it was more distracting because i kept forgetting about the microphone and just wanted to talk to her i was just talking to her and um or i like move away to show her something and i was like i gotta get my face back over here so but that’s always my problem so.
Alison:
Yeah we won’t tell the listeners that you’re actually chained to the seat with your head in.
Andrea:
Some sort.
Alison:
Of brace keeping.
Andrea:
The mic i think rob was really close to sending one over like just hold your head still i move too much when i’m talking i’m very i’m not a very static person okay right.
Alison:
Let’s let’s head.
Andrea:
Off that’s.
Alison:
Been a really cool episode it’s been lovely to speak to you.
Andrea:
Good to talk to you allison bye until.
Alison:
Next time bye.