#115 – Four of Our Favorite Easy, Ancestral Meals

When life is overwhelming or busy, or I don’t know what to cook – What are a few simple meals I can have in my back pocket? As a person new to ancestral cooking, how do I know if my easy meal is ancestral or not? Can I still use my old cookbooks? In this episode, we will share four favorite easy, go-to meals that our families love. You will see how each of these meals evolve with the seasons for us, and we will share some of our best tips for making your favorite dishes ancestral. As a thank you for bringing these episodes to the public, we also have a special document for our paid podcast supporters at the 2nd tier on up with these four recipes written down. You’ll find this document by logging in to www.ancestralkitchenpodcast.com and going to the downloads section. If you want to support the podcast and grab this download as well as many others, visit our website or check the show notes. And now, on with the show.

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Resources:

Podcast supporter bonus: Four Easy Meals at www.ancestralkitchenpodcast.com

Episode 91 – 7 Meals in 1 Day!

Episode 56 – Preparing Nutrient-Dense Meals from Scratch Every Day

Our cookbook, Meals at the Ancestral Hearth, and Alison’s Spelt Cookbook, in our shop

Episode 83 – Meal Planning and Ancestral Food Rhythms with Rebecca Zipp

Episode 6 – Six Books We Love!

Episode 84: How to Get More (& Tastier!) Liver into Your Diet

Episode 100: What Is Ancestral Eating

Episode 50 – 20 Small Steps to an Ancestral Kitchen

Download 20 Small Steps

Monastery soup book in bookstore

 

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Transcript:

Alison Kay (00:11.873)
Hello Andrea.

Andrea (00:13.152)
Hello, Allison. How are you doing this fine day?

Alison Kay (00:14.734)
How are you? I’m doing good, thank you. Yeah, it’s kind of fine. But yeah, I’m kind of missing the sun in Italy still. Never mind. I’m sure I’ll get back there at some point.

Andrea (00:20.844)
Heheh.

Andrea (00:25.228)
yep. Yeah. I it’s, you know, the sun in Italy there. I remember mostly from your pictures that, you know, when you see pictures of Italy in a commercial setting, how do know if they’re edited or, you know, weird? But then when I saw yours, I was just like, what is going on with this light? And you said, I know it’s Italy. It’s just so amazing. Yeah, pretty vivid.

Alison Kay (00:34.605)
Mm.

Alison Kay (00:42.315)
Yeah, true.

Alison Kay (00:49.055)
Yeah, the sky is really that blue. It’s amazing. Yeah, how are you?

Andrea (00:56.628)
I think I’m doing quite well. actually ate breakfast today so I have something to say so that’s that’s fun.

Alison Kay (01:00.713)
okay, go on then, let me ask you. Andrea, have you had breakfast yet today? wow, okay.

Andrea (01:06.043)
I did. had salmon chowder and it was delicious. And it’s a fun story how I got it because I have a friend, Leah. Hi Leah. She lives up in Alaska and her brother actually lives just a few miles from our church. So she and I got a wild hair. And, when he was going to fly up and visit her, then I packed a box full of frozen pork products and

Then she sent him back down with a box full of salmon and halibut. So, so she’s enjoying sausage and I’m enjoying salmon. It’s pretty awesome. I know I feel super spoiled. So then our veggie stand down the road from us, I picked up, what all did I get? Carrots, garlic, potatoes, onion.

Alison Kay (01:45.532)
That’s a good trade, yeah.

Andrea (02:05.068)
I can’t remember what else and then I have raw cream of course and then I have a bunch of turkey broth and Butter and you do the math that equals salmon chowder. So

Alison Kay (02:20.104)
And can you taste the turkey broth? I’ve never put meat broth with fish together in a dish. Was it okay? Sounds like it was more than okay. Yeah, okay, interesting. I… Okay.

Andrea (02:28.104)
yeah, you would never know. Yeah. Yeah, it’s more than okay. we actually, we did serve it with rice last night, but I didn’t want the rice. just had the soup and then I had it again this morning. So yeah.

Alison Kay (02:41.83)
Lovely. I don’t often have salmon so I’m kind of a bit jealous because I just look at the salmon choices here and I just think, no, I don’t want that and I don’t want that and I don’t want that. it…

Andrea (02:45.869)
I know.

Uh-uh.

Yeah, I think we have salmon less than once a year before this because it’s like, where are you going to get it?

Alison Kay (02:56.855)
Yeah, I can’t remember the last time I had it and it’s like, it frustrates me that people think it’s the kind of healthy choice. And when you look at how those salmon are farmed, if you’re buying, even if you’re buying organic farmed salmon, it’s just not right.

Andrea (03:06.987)
Yeah.

Andrea (03:13.653)
I don’t even feel like those words go together. But yes, it’s seafood is a really tough one. I think maybe one day in our future life we’ll tackle that. But I am so far from understanding the complex world of seafood. And it seems like the ethics of seafood are just impossible. I mean, they’re just impossible.

Alison Kay (03:17.004)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (03:22.722)
Hmm.

Alison Kay (03:32.13)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (03:37.994)
They are. You know, I’ve started blog posts a few times on fish and I’ve never finished them because of that exact thing that it’s so complicated. When we lived in Penzance, we used to get fish. And even then I had to kind of think like, what is the fish that it’s okay to fish this time of year? And what is the fish that’s local? And how are they catching the fish? And we often used to have mackerel and crab in Penzance, both of which I felt okay about.

Andrea (03:44.128)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (03:57.216)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (04:08.313)
And they were good, but that was because we were right by a fishing port, you know?

Andrea (04:13.664)
Yeah, well this is a touch, Allison, on something that takes up a lot of real estate in my head, which is when people say how difficult it might be to eat this way or to have ancestral foods or, you And to think, there’s a lot of mental effort that never existed before.

a lot of gymnastics that you’re doing. You, you didn’t have to think, is this the season for mackerel? You went and if there was mackerel, it was the season for mackerel. And you didn’t have to think about all that. And again, you know, you and I always caution against romanticizing the past. That doesn’t mean everybody everywhere was, you know, humble peasants doing right. But there was a different, a difference to the way you

Alison Kay (04:40.628)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (04:46.407)
No. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (05:07.74)
got your food versus now where you have to check this long list of things to consider before you, you know, can buy it, which is exhausting.

Alison Kay (05:09.257)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (05:16.775)
Yeah, whereas in the past it would have been, well that’s what’s there, so that’s what we eat.

Andrea (05:21.312)
Yeah. And part of, mean, kind of what we’ll talk about today a little bit, but part of making that less wearing is simplifying what you eat, you know, just simplifying it. And like you said, eating what the land around you provides. That’s why we never have salmon. Now we have it now because of this fun exchange that I did with a friend, but it’s not like I was trying really hard to find ways to get salmon in our diet before.

Alison Kay (05:31.977)
Yeah, I agree.

Alison Kay (05:38.643)
Yeah. Swap.

Alison Kay (05:48.393)
Yeah, it’s, I know we’ve talked about this before, but it’s kind of a parallel with life and choices and spirituality. think that the more you burn the choices that you have, the happier and simply your life becomes because you address yourself to what’s there. You’re not going, but this or this or this or this or this. And it’s the same in the kitchen. You know, well, if I can get this, well,

Andrea (06:02.582)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (06:11.648)
Yep. Yep.

Alison Kay (06:15.241)
this is what I’m working with, okay, so what can I do with it? It’s an attitude that works in life and in the kitchen, I think.

Andrea (06:22.72)
Yeah, I agree. Speaking of, did you eat before we got on?

Alison Kay (06:27.357)
Yeah, I did. I had leftovers from yesterday, all leftovers, which was really quick and easy. Yesterday I cooked all in the oven some pork burgers that were literally minced pork, so ground pork in your language, just pushed into burger shapes. I don’t add anything. I put a couple of potatoes in the oven to do kind of jacket. And then a bit later on, I put some Brussels sprouts in.

Andrea (06:31.276)
Perfect.

Andrea (06:35.148)
Mmm.

Andrea (06:56.281)
that sounds good.

Alison Kay (06:56.519)
So I had that yesterday fresh and then today I just got them out the fridge, put them all in the oven again, put what was left in the oven again for 20 minutes to warm up and then had a pork burger, a jacket potato with lots of butter and some Brussels sprouts. I just, could eat Brussels sprouts every day when they’re in season. I absolutely loved them. So it was lovely, simple and lovely.

Andrea (07:18.79)
yeah, so could I. Those are so good.

Yep. That’s the way we like it. And it’s because you have Brussels sprouts around you that you ate them. I feel like that’s the, it’s one of these weird things to think about, but once you get your head wrapped around it, it does explain why you and I seem to have this impression that it’s so simple, which is, know, if nobody around you is growing Brussels sprouts and they just aren’t a part of your table and then you don’t have that difficulty of trying to find good Brussels sprouts.

Alison Kay (07:28.285)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (07:42.974)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (07:53.427)
Yeah.

Andrea (07:55.82)
Well, I have something I wanted to read to you, Allison, that I thought you might like to hear. Stephanie is a friend of mine through the Literary Life podcast, and she is also a supporter of our podcast here. And she posted this really nice message and I loved it so much. I just wanted to read it. She said, I just wanted to say I may only be about 20 % crunchy now.

Alison Kay (07:59.231)
Hmm. Okay.

Alison Kay (08:10.591)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (08:24.608)
But Andrea, there is so much freedom in ancestral cooking and eating. This morning I made Einkorn discard pancakes and my kids loved them. I’ve never found a pancake recipe that I approve and they like. My daughter took two in the car with her and said, these are so good I should have taken three. I didn’t ferment any oats yesterday. So I fried an egg in lots of butter and put it in a pancake. So yummy. And I would not have even thought to do that before, but the lack

of aversion to fats and carbs is amazing. I’m not sure it would help me lose weight, but I am trying to give that idol over to God and just eat healthy, thanks to this thread and ancestral kitchen. I love that. So thoughtful.

Alison Kay (09:08.344)
thank you Stephanie.

Yeah, absolutely. You know that weight thing, you know, I could talk about that forever. I remember when I started eating ancestrally, being absolutely terrified of eating butter and cheese, kind of having meltdowns with Romp and worrying basically that I’d end up fat again, that I’d just be the fat girl after being the fat girl all my childhood. And I just had to let it go and I let it go and it’s…

Andrea (09:15.688)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andrea (09:28.01)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (09:33.366)
Yeah. Right.

Alison Kay (09:41.161)
just been such a wonderful kind of experience life and my weight is fine so it’s different for everyone obviously but from just my corner of the world I can contest that letting go into really good home-cooked local food has been wonderful for my creativity my family life my spirituality and my body okay

Andrea (09:47.093)
that’s so good.

Andrea (10:07.532)
I love it.

Alison Kay (10:09.631)
I’ve got one more admin thing to add before we start on our exciting episode today, which is just to remind everyone that we do send newsletters. We have a newsletter that Andrea and I both personally write, which if you are not on our newsletter list, you can go to the website ancestralkitchenpodcast.com and at the top of every page, there’s a box there that you can pop your details in to sign up and you will get our missives.

Andrea (10:42.412)
Alright, we’re at 1039 and I’m gonna pause Allison and run upstairs because I hear the baby but I should be able to get him back to sleep quickly and then we can jump right back in.

Alison Kay (10:45.007)
Okay.

Okay. Okay. Alright. Okay.

Andrea (19:55.185)
I’m coming back All right, I didn’t want to rush and then have him like back up in Two minutes, but I think we’re okay. I thought it might take ten minutes and it looks like it did exactly Okay, so we’re gonna jump back in Yeah, I don’t want to give Rob any more Snips than necessary so that timing was good. All right jumping back in at

Alison Kay (19:56.78)
Okay.

Alison Kay (20:01.995)
wake up again. Yeah, no, you did the right thing.

Alison Kay (20:10.593)
I’m going go back to my Google Doc.

Andrea (20:24.268)
when we hit 2030, I’m going to start.

Andrea (20:31.702)
Well, Alison, let’s go to the main topic of today, which is what you and I definitely get a lot of questions about a lot of the things that we’re going to cover here. So one is just what are some simple meals I can have in my back pocket? And as you and I both know everything that we make, a lot of the times it can be variations on a theme based on what country you live in at this time or what season it is.

Alison Kay (20:58.37)
Yeah.

Andrea (21:01.11)
what you have in your freezer, et cetera. And also, Alison, when we get to the end after you and I, I brought two meals to the table and you brought two meals. And when we get to the end, if we can, I wanted to go over how does one know if their meal is ancestral or as people often say to us, it ancestral enough? And

Alison Kay (21:03.981)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (21:12.183)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (21:27.808)
Okay.

Andrea (21:29.246)
Are there a few tips that we might have for maybe swapping some things over or making your recipes you already have ancestral? Because I think if you try to throw out everything in your life and start fresh, that’s quite challenging. But if you were able to kind of take the way you were living now and sort of slowly evolve over, it’s a little bit easier. So, okay.

Alison Kay (21:33.676)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (21:52.331)
Yeah, okay, well I hope we have time to get to that because I have some things to say for sure.

Andrea (21:56.374)
Good. And then in the interest of also keeping life easy, I made a download PDF for the listeners of this episode. So if you’re a podcast supporter already, then you’ll find that download in your download section. And if you are not a podcast supporter yet, you can still get the download by joining that email. Alison was just talking about the newsletter. And we’ll have a link for that in the show notes to this episode. So.

Alison Kay (22:20.832)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (22:26.071)
Yeah, great. Yeah, I’m ready.

Andrea (22:26.837)
We ready? Okay. All right. So to start us off, I’m going to throw back to episode 91. Alison, if you remember recording that one, that is seven meals in one day. So it is kind of like what we’re talking about today, except you and I each brought in seven meals. So there’s actually 14 meals in one episode. How about that for an episode name? And that episode also has a download for supporters of the podcast, which is a book.

we made with all the… no that’s for everybody right? that’s for all listeners I think I can’t remember

Alison Kay (22:59.603)
that was for supporters of the podcast.

Andrea (23:04.01)
Okay. Check the show notes and see, cause I don’t know what’s happening. I just work here and the recipes are patron tested and there’s photographs in that book. And so if you wanted, you know, simple, simple concept for meals, Alison and I talked about how we tend to do some kind of batch cooking. And then we also, Hmm.

Alison Kay (23:25.889)
Yeah. See that episode and that download and all of the recipes from that kind of foray we did into showing how we cook for one whole week came from our cookbook, which I think maybe you were about to talk about. So it was two main meals in that that we took for the seven meals in one day episode and kind of extrapolated how we use them in our house for a week to feed everyone.

Andrea (23:40.073)
huh.

Andrea (23:44.309)
Yeah, you say it.

Andrea (23:54.188)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (23:55.185)
But the cookbook has many more recipes apart from those two. So that’s another resource which people can just have, like you said, in their back pocket or on the shelf in the kitchen. I know a lot of people who’ve got the book have printed it out and put it, know, in into plastic kind of pockets and they’ve got it on their kitchen shelf. So there is an episode that talks through kind of the…

idea behind our cookbook, which is number episode 56, which we called preparing nutrient dense meals from scratch every day. And in there we talk about kind of our philosophy and we talk about the book, which is available in the same place. The newsletter is ancestralkitchenpodcast.com and there’s a shop there and you see you can purchase the book yourself and have more recipes there.

Andrea (24:46.454)
Yep. Yep. And we get lots and lots of great feedback from that cookbook, which somebody was just texting me the other day and telling me she was making the noodles and she was like, my goodness, your sense of humor, Andrea. And I was like, what did I say in the recipes? didn’t remember saying anything. I also wanted to put, I just feel like we have a lot of really good episodes on this subject. And if somebody’s listening to this, looking for access to

Alison Kay (24:51.604)
Mmm.

Alison Kay (25:00.436)
I can’t remember.

Andrea (25:15.796)
simplifying their meals and getting some ancestral food on the table. I want to make it as easy as possible for them to not have to scroll the feed, but just find what they need mentioned here. And also all this is linked in the show notes. So if you’re trying to drive and write down episode numbers, don’t do that. Or if you’re trying to wash dishes and take your hands out of the soap, don’t do that. We’ve got it in the show notes for you. So there’s another episode that

Alison Kay (25:25.598)
Yeah.

Andrea (25:41.076)
Allison, I’ve gotten so many comments from people that how much they love this episode that it inspired them and that helped them find peace and routine with their meals. And Adia is a another friend of mine through the literary life, also a supporter of our podcast. And she was, we were voxering and she was telling me how listening to Rebecca’s method, it just blew her mind how it simplified the way she plans her meals. And that is episode 83.

meal planning and ancestral food rhythms with Rebecca Zipp. Rebecca is a friend of mine and she owns the website a humble place.com and that was how I initially met her was all of her Charlotte Mason art studies and then we just have become friends over time and she is a really organized thinker and she systematized her meals in such a clean and simple way and shared that with us.

And then, I also wanted to mention Alison, since we’re kind of alluding to ancestral food over and over that the definition of ancestral food you can find in episode 100, which is, Alison and my, our meals that we’re going to say here, both have lots of variations, including between house to house, like country to country. So

That being said, I’m going to start out the first meal I’m bringing to the table today. Alison is Cal de Verde, which this came from. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. European feel you’re in, you’re listening. There might be some sunshine behind this. So this came from the book, 12 months of monastery soups by Victor de Villa La Tourette. And he is a monk or rest in peace. He was a monk.

Alison Kay (27:11.06)
Okay, okay. It sounds good, sounds kind of very Italian and exotic. Okay, yep.

Andrea (27:35.5)
And I believe his monastery that he lived in was in New York. And the book, just to sell you on it, has medieval style line cut drawings and little quotes from saints and medieval sources. the recipes are simple.

a very short ingredient list. And then the instructions are like a few sentences at the most. So each page is very clean, half empty, clear, and it’s not overwhelming. I love everything about this book. It’s like the sensory soothing type cookbook that you and I both love. And we mentioned it. Yes. Yes, it is. It is. it’s gone through multiple.

Alison Kay (28:22.836)
That’s in our bookstore, is that right? That book? Yeah, okay. So we’ll put a link to that in the show notes.

Andrea (28:30.368)
reprintings at least two, maybe more. I’ve seen a couple different covers floating around. And we first mentioned this way back in episode six, which as I recall, I recorded sitting on the floor of the girl’s bedroom. And that was episode called six books we love. And, I also mentioned this book to a bunch of the moms in the literary life. And I’ve lost count at this point, how many bought it.

and have been telling me how much they love it. Just this morning, somebody was saying she made the Gloucester cheese soup and she had the last bowl and she’s like, I just can’t believe it’s gone. I know.

Alison Kay (29:06.324)
Gloucester cheese, that sounds interesting. Because I’m like about 30 miles from Gloucester here, so I’m interested in what the Gloucester cheese soup is.

Andrea (29:14.326)
I’ve never even made that one. Like I said, I’ve been cooking out of this book since I think I was maybe 14 or so, and I haven’t made all the soups. It’s insane. There’s a lot. And then you find a favorite like the one I’m about to say, and you just do it over and over. And because the soups are so simple, we use them for school lunches. So Cal de Verde has, it’s a broth base, and I use any broth. If I want to make it vegetarian, then I…

Alison Kay (29:27.358)
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea (29:42.188)
or actually vegan, then I make it with vegetable broth, which I’ve done to serve to friends who are vegetarian. It’s really simple. It’s really fast. And a child can make it. I made it when I was a child and my kids helped me make it. So it’s a broth base and you put in onions, potatoes. I believe he has carrots in the original recipe and chopped cabbage.

And that’s basically it. He actually adds white wine in the recipe also. And because I’ve never had that on hand to use, then I’ve never actually done that. But if you want to then go for it. White wine usually goes really well in broth soups like this anyways. It’s gluten free. It’s egg free. So it serves a couple.

Alison Kay (30:18.334)
Okay.

Andrea (30:39.968)
demographics if you’re looking for allergy friendly. and then that is the basic soup. And then we just add onto it, whatever we have. I’ve made it without potatoes. I’ve made it without carrots. I’ve added in celery. I’ve always had at least the cabbage and the onions. That’s pretty much the cabbage onions is the only staple and everything else around that has revolved into different things. I’ve added shredded turkey, shredded chicken,

Alison Kay (30:58.299)
Okay.

Andrea (31:07.852)
meatballs that just simmer in the broth. I’ve done ground sausage. I’ve put in sliced sausage links. And this also, this recipe works really well. Allison, if you make it in the morning when the kids are still asleep and it just sits on the back burner on low and just simmers until lunch or until dinner. And then I’ve served it over rice. I’ve served it over noodles. I think it would be really good on the millet, which by the way, Allison, someone is just telling me the other day, Rachel,

Alison Kay (31:18.949)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (31:32.495)
Yeah.

Andrea (31:37.772)
She was telling me that millet episode changed my life. Isn’t that awesome? and we’ve served it with, shredded parm on top. I’ve put shredded cheddar on top and this soup is for sure one of my absolute comfort foods. And when I think what can I make, I almost always just go straight to this one.

Alison Kay (31:45.112)
Yes.

Alison Kay (32:01.435)
Do you put cream in it? Because I just think in cream.

Andrea (32:03.852)
Hold up Allison why have I never tried that?

Alison Kay (32:07.391)
I’m thinking cream, I’m also thinking you could put some sourdough discard in to make it kind of thicker and a bit more kind of wintery. Just make sure you take a bit of the soup out and stir it into the discard first so the discard doesn’t go lumpy. But I like doing that in soups, especially soups that have got sausage in because I was just thinking when you put your sliced sausage in I thought that would be really nice with kind of bit of a rye sourdough discard in as well. Yum.

Andrea (32:13.045)
yeah. so Allison.

Andrea (32:19.636)
Yes. That’s I was gonna say.

Andrea (32:26.632)
Mmm.

Andrea (32:33.654)
That would be your episode, your recipe. It’s actually in the cookbook that we wrote the, when you talked about earlier, that description of how you put the sourdough discard in your soup is the thing that changed the game for me when it come. I, I had never done that before and I do that for everything. So you basically temper some sourdough discard or just starter, whatever you have.

in a bowl of hot broth and then pour it back into the main pot and your soup it it feels like you spent a long time making a roux and a gravy and but you didn’t it’s brilliant

Alison Kay (33:14.543)
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. You just threw your sourdough discard in it. It kind of gives it another level of that comfort food. You know, it makes it sort of thicker and sort of creamy-ish and, and, and yet you, would never guess that it was sourdough discard, you know.

Andrea (33:23.174)
Yes. Uh-huh.

Andrea (33:33.1)
Speaking of cream, Allison, you’re gonna say the name of your recipe and everybody’s gonna go crazy.

Alison Kay (33:36.495)
Mm.

Alison Kay (33:40.189)
yeah. Okay. So my first recipe for this four recipe spectacular is liver in a mushroom cream sauce. So this is something that I make usually once a week at the moment. And it’s how I’m getting my son Gable to eat liver. Now he loves pate and we love Naomi almost bananas pate recipe, but pate is really

Andrea (33:57.089)
Wow.

Andrea (34:08.811)
the only recipe.

Alison Kay (34:10.009)
Yes, not a recipe that you can make every day. It’s quite a lot of work. And I do try to make it in batches and it frees us really well, but then we run out and I don’t have the time to make more of it. And what I found was initially that although Gabriel ate liver when he was very young, he’s kind of got a bit more picky in the last year or so. And what I found was that if I put stewed apple with the liver, he would eat it. So I thought, hmm, okay, how can I incorporate apple?

Andrea (34:13.992)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (34:31.436)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (34:36.757)
Alison Kay (34:39.149)
into a liver dish and put some other things in it that he likes to make it more appealing. So I came up with this liver in a mushroom cream sauce and like your calder verde it’s really flexible. From start to finish it takes me about 25 minutes to cook so quite often on a Monday I’ll be working in the morning and I’ll come down at about 12 o’clock and I can just literally…

Andrea (35:01.196)
Wow.

Alison Kay (35:07.259)
have food on the table but have us 12, no problem. It’s so simple now that Rob can make it. I’ve taught him how to make it. He knows what the ingredients are. And the good thing about it is you can make it with any liver. So if you are hardcore and you really like beef liver, then go ahead, put beef liver in it. If you’re serving it to people who are a bit less liver enthusiastic, then you could put chicken liver in or duck liver, which is another one we’ve had recently.

that have much milder flavours. You can put in as much liver as you can handle. So if you want to put loads of liver in, can. If you’re just trying to introduce liver to someone, you could put a few more mushrooms in and a bit more onion and cut the liver down a little bit. So there’s only little bits of it. So it’s got butter. That’s the fact that I used to fry because it’s appealing to Gabriel. It makes the dish really creamy and lovely and it’s got cream in it.

The veggies are onion or leek, celery, mushrooms, apple, and then there’s liver in it. You could add wine to it if you wanted to, pretty much like you were just talking about. You could put some white wine in just after the veggies and reduce it down. And you could also put bacon in. I think bacon would go really, really well with it. Bacon and liver together are really good. Bacon and apples really good. Bacon and cream, bacon with everything is good. I haven’t been doing that more recently because

I’ve been avoiding bacon for the histamine, but I think bacon would go really well in it. It’s gluten-free, it’s egg-free and without the bacon it’s low histamine. And it’s really nice served like your soup a bit really. I mean, we serve it with rice often. Sometimes we’ll serve it with potatoes that we fried in the cast iron pan.

Andrea (36:40.549)
yeah.

Alison Kay (37:00.707)
or potatoes that we’ve roasted in the oven, sweet potatoes as well. Sometimes, you know, kind of a mix of sweet potatoes and swede, which is rutabaga for you, and parsnips and turnips that we’ve done in the oven. Sometimes we’ll save it with millet. It really goes, I mean, with everything, would go with crusty bread too. I like, if I’ve got it, to put fresh parsley on the top. Just colour-wise, it…

pops against the kind of creamy mushroomy colours. And often, sometimes I will put greens actually in the mix if I’ve got them. As I said earlier, I’m a fan of Brussels sprouts, so sometimes I slice up Brussels sprouts and put those in. But sometimes we have the greens on the side, or sometimes I just don’t bother that, you I’m not worried that we haven’t had greens for that meal. So that’s It’s kind of a winner in our house. Like I said, I’m making it once a week at the moment.

I haven’t frozen it, but I think you probably could freeze it. And sometimes there’s leftovers and Rob will eat those the next day. It’s just, it’s a, it’s a really quick and easy and simple dish that I don’t have to think about before. All I have to think about is have I got the liver really? And all of the ingredients and how I do that are in the download that you can go into show notes and have.

have a look at and do remember also that we have dealt with liver. Well, we’ve dealt with liver quite a lot before on this podcast, but we have a special episode dedicated to liver, which is number 84, which is called how to get more and tastier liver into your diet.

Andrea (00:04.077)
All right, Alison, let’s talk about lasagna. Is this? Yeah. This is Italian, right? Okay.

Alison Kay (00:22.346)
That’s always good.

Alison Kay (00:26.997)
Yes, it is. It is. And if you have more than one, it should be lasagne, not lasagnas. But no one ever does that, do they? Yeah.

Andrea (00:33.245)
was always wondering about that. always thought, like everyone says spaghetti, it’s pluralized. But is it a spaghetti if I just have one noodle?

Alison Kay (00:39.67)
Mmm.

Sounds so silly! I’ve never heard anyone after 10 years of living in Italy, I’ve never heard anyone say spaghetti.

Andrea (00:45.392)
It does!

Andrea (00:50.501)
Nobody wants one spaghetti. We want a whole bowl of it. Well, after learning from, from Karima’s book, they just called all the pasta macaroni back in the day, right? Like that was just a generic term.

Alison Kay (00:52.52)
No. Exactly. Okay, hit me with your lasagna then.

Alison Kay (01:01.447)
Yeah, exactly. doesn’t matter what shape it is. That’s easier, isn’t it?

Andrea (01:05.669)
Yeah, much easier. Macaroni. All right. So lasagna. I don’t know how Italian this is. I can’t vouch for the authenticity at all. This is a Pacific Northwest version. So it varies widely based on what we have available. But lasagna is a really nice, convenient, very changeable dish. So you can make it with pasta, which you can make yourself, which is an easy one to do because it’s sheets. So you don’t

really have to cut up and shape anything if you don’t want to. I’m using the pasta from Azure. think it’s Joe by bio nature brand. I’m not sure what the brand is, but we’ve been really happy with it. The box does say to boil it. I do not. I do not boil that.

Alison Kay (01:36.541)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (01:54.596)
Yeah, there’s always that thing about do you pre-boil lasagna or do you not? You know, because if it’s dried, if it’s fresh, you obviously don’t need to because it’s going to cook in a few seconds. whether you do with the dried stuff or not, I’ve made it both ways. But I think it’s a bit of a faff to boil it beforehand because then it kind of sticks to itself because all the starch is coming out and you’ve got to keep hold of it and you’ve got to put it in a separate place. So I think if you could, if you’re making it without pre-cooking it, I think that’s so much simpler.

Andrea (01:59.887)
Mm-hmm. Right.

Andrea (02:10.375)
Yeah, 100 % it is.

Andrea (02:15.759)
Yeah. And it’s hot.

Alison Kay (02:24.25)
definitely.

Andrea (02:24.669)
Yeah, I do too. And it, uh, you have to boil two noodles at a time or something because they do just turn into a lump and I’ve done, done the, made the mistake of doing too many at a time. So I just put them in and I always chuckle when I see the no boil ones, cause I’m like, what did you dry them out again? So they still up to cook. Um, but I put in a lot of sauce, so the sauce boils in the oven. So.

Alison Kay (02:32.367)
Mm.

Alison Kay (02:45.06)
Yeah, someone’s boiling them somewhere in a factory.

Andrea (02:53.713)
That’s how it cooks. but if you didn’t want to use, Alison, a spelt lasagna. Is that going in future books?

Alison Kay (03:03.054)
That would be really nice. I spelt pasta I have made before, spelt sourdough pasta I have made. We do have a pasta maker, but of course with lasagne you don’t even need that. You could just roll it out like you do in the recipe that’s in the Meals at the Ancestral Hearth cookbook for your noodles. And yeah, I mean, the recipe could get written up at some point. I’ll put it as number 376 on the list. It will be yummy.

Andrea (03:05.148)
that would be.

Andrea (03:09.788)
Okay.

Uh-uh.

Andrea (03:24.017)
Mm-hmm. Okay, good. I’m glad it made the top thousand. You could also, I’ve also used sliced zucchini. So thinly sliced zucchini. If you have a person who, you know, really can’t tolerate grains or for whatever reason you don’t want to use the grains or you have a lot of zucchini to use up, it works really great in this and it is delicious. squash. I’ve never tried that.

Alison Kay (03:37.15)
Okay.

Alison Kay (03:44.225)
Squash is good too. I’ve made squash or pumpkin kind of lasagnas which are absolutely delicious. So that’s another one.

Andrea (03:51.077)
okay wait like just lasagna thinly sliced or i mean sorry pumpkin

Alison Kay (03:55.197)
I’m just really, really thinly sliced a squash. I think I use butternut squash most often. And then I’ve made it with different sauces. So not with a tomato sauce, with chicken and a kind of a cheesy white sauce and mushrooms. That’s really nice.

Andrea (04:05.318)
Right.

that sounds divine. So re-sauce, we did not can any tomato sauce this year. So we’re using tomato sauce from Azure. And I like that it’s a reasonable choice with some ethics behind the company that I can understand people I can talk to. I do miss our home canned sauce. It is just so much better. I think I have three jars left that I’m kind of.

hoarding for a special day. and it does feel a little bit wasteful because when you open a metal can you throw it away and it is recyclable, but still, and then when you can it, you can use the jars for, you know, 60 years. So that’s, that’s the nice thing about home canned, but, but it is what it is this year. with meat, you can use meat. You can not use meat. We use meat.

Alison Kay (04:33.681)
No.

Alison Kay (04:48.709)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (05:01.563)
maybe, I don’t know, two thirds of the time. But this can be a vegetarian dish easily if somebody can’t have meat. I’ve used ground organs with chicken or turkey or beef. I’ve used sausage, usually minced, but the sausage I’ve used like slices before or whole pieces. You could throw sauerkraut on it, which has kind of got some Transylvanian vibes.

If you do sauerkraut and sausage in there. And I use, homemade cheeses or cheese from Azure or a combination. So from Azure I get cheddar. I’ve gotten mozzarella from them. I’ve also made it at home. And then Parmesan I’ve purchased from Azure and ricotta we make at home and just whichever one or ones I have on hand, I kind of sprinkle and layer in. And then I.

Alison Kay (05:32.675)
Yeah.

Andrea (06:00.167)
try to reserve some to top it off at the end. And, you can also slice like thin slices or dice and pre-cook if you wanted any amount of vegetables that you want to put in. So this is great in the summertime when you’re trying to use up, you know, all those random squashy type things that just never end, but don’t last very long. You can dice in patty pans or

Alison Kay (06:25.085)
So you’re cooking the meat and maybe cooking the vegetables or do you always cook vegetables?

Andrea (06:31.357)
Mm-hmm.

No, I would only cook the vegetables when they were something that I feel wouldn’t bake in the amount of time I was giving it. like if you’re putting in beets, maybe. Yeah, exactly. Precisely. and of course the other workaround is just to dice it smaller, make it really, really fine. And then, you know, you’re kind of okay. Yeah. And I suppose with…

Alison Kay (06:40.765)
Okay

So like, beat troop. Yeah. Snap.

Okay.

Alison Kay (06:55.125)
Yeah, or greater, yeah. So then you’re cooking the meat, but you’re not cooking the pasta and you’re not cooking the vegetables. And then you’re layering it up and then putting it in the fridge or putting it in the freezer or always cooking it straight away.

Andrea (07:02.973)
Mm-mm. Mm-mm.

Andrea (07:11.621)
usually cooking it straight away, but it is very easy to freeze. And this past week we did have one out of the freezer that I had made a while ago and I had just, you know, made a larger batch. And as I was making the one for dinner, I was also filling another pan and then that other pan I just dropped in the freezer and saved it for a rainy day, which happened this past week. And it was so luxurious to have it out and

Alison Kay (07:15.069)
Okay.

Andrea (07:39.175)
When I ate it, I just thought, man, who might this is? was so good. But it was nice to have it pre-made. So yeah. And then we just bake it and, yeah, enjoy. The kids love it. They can tear up a whole pan in one day, but if there’s any leftovers, it’s…

Alison Kay (07:42.386)
That’s nice feeling.

Alison Kay (07:54.94)
So do you just put cheese like cheddar on the top? you like, is the last layer lasagna, the pasta, and then you’re putting cheddar on the top? You’re not making any sauce for the top?

Andrea (08:04.285)
Well, I save some of the sauce and so the top noodle layer I spread sauce over the top because I do have to cook my noodles, you know in the oven and then I put a little cheese on top my preference would be mozzarella Parmesan and ricotta if I had my choice but Sometimes I have all three sometimes I don’t and also if I have ricotta which I pretty much always do because we make it about once a week then I

Alison Kay (08:23.535)
Okay.

Andrea (08:33.665)
mix ricotta with a fork or by hand with salt and pepper and two raw eggs and I just use the amount of ricotta that I get from one gallon of milk because that’s how much I make usually at a time and so I’m not sure how much ricotta that is maybe a pound or something and it makes a really nice filling you know with egg in it so but I put that in the

Alison Kay (09:02.006)
So you use that as the sauce thing and it’s got the egg in the cheesy section kind of thing.

Andrea (09:06.319)
sauce? It’s not really saucy. It’s more respectful than that. It’s kind of yeah crumbly. Yeah and then and then for the sauce I use variously either a smoothish sauce or I like to have some chunky tomatoes in there like diced tomatoes or something. some herbs. Your meat sauce recipe works really well in lasagna. The one from the cookbook meals at the ancestral hearth available now on our website.

Alison Kay (09:08.64)
You’re cheesy, kind of bit. Sorry.

Alison Kay (09:32.191)
yeah, yeah, with the lard. Yes, indeed. I think we need to do another episode on ricotta and other cheeses that you make, because we did the raw milk episode, but we haven’t really done a practical sort of cheese making things to do with milk making episode, and I think that would be really interesting to listeners. So pester us if you want that. Pester Andrea.

Andrea (09:36.036)
Yeah, go get it.

Andrea (09:42.501)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (09:50.929)
Yeah, I do too. Well, depending on, depending on how fast I get to putting that together and depending on when this comes out, maybe there will already be one out when this comes out. And if so, so depending on when you’re listening to this, just search cheese, I suppose. I’ll probably put that in the title. It’d be nice to have a podcast with some, or an episode with some easy homemade dairy things that aren’t going to take mountains of equipment and days and.

Alison Kay (10:02.838)
yeah, ooo, magic.

Alison Kay (10:10.406)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (10:19.92)
Yes, absolutely.

Andrea (10:21.105)
seven cows and such. Yeah, so that is lasagna and it can be that is in the download and you I saw had a carrot soup so I would like to hear about your carrot soup.

Alison Kay (10:27.599)
and that’s in the download.

Alison Kay (10:38.278)
Yeah, carrot soup. This is just, it sounds so simple, you think, really, is it that easy? But it is. And the reason I like it so much is because it tastes amazing. You you forget how sweet carrots are, and then you put them in a soup and you’re like, wow, and it’s delicious. But also it’s so easy to freeze. So I can make a batch of it up and then freeze it either in, you know, a portion size that would do all three of us.

Andrea (10:44.625)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (10:53.417)
right.

Alison Kay (11:05.661)
or a portion size that would just do one of us. So if one of us is on our own for a day or someone is eating leftovers, but there’s not enough for three, I can get one portion out on its own. I think I’d, you know, ideally I’d love to make it every couple of weeks and just freeze it because it’s so simple and such a good staple. So the basis is broth and obviously the better the broth is.

Andrea (11:22.151)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (11:31.095)
the better the soup is. So I buy carcasses and make stock for that. Usually I use chicken carcasses, but you know, you could use whatever stock you want to, or you have to hand. So mostly what I try and do is make the stock one day and then I freeze some of the stock, but I leave some of it the fridge. Then the next day I’ll make the soup. So that’s using the fresh stock and then I can freeze that soup. Apart from the broth, the main ingredients are that

Andrea (11:33.233)
Hmm.

Alison Kay (11:59.071)
the oil or the fat. you know, sometimes I’m using lard, sometimes I’m using tallow, sometimes olive oil. It’s got onions, celery, carrots, but then often I’ll add other root vegetables in there depending on what I have. So sometimes I’ll add some squash in, sometimes I’ll put swede in beetroots, which if they’re the purple ones make everything change colour. Parsnips, whatever root vegetables I have, I generally throw those in if I have them.

Andrea (12:18.054)
Hmm

Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (12:28.799)
Sometimes it’s just carrot and depending on how you like your soup you can add as much broth or as little broth as you wish. Rob likes his soup thick, I like mine bit runnier so usually I do something in the middle, kind of a compromise and remember to season it. Sometimes I forget that but don’t forget you know salt and pepper and herbs I kind of vary it. I like to have it with coriander.

Andrea (12:43.197)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (12:58.311)
kind of traditional cilantro, that’s what you call it over there, which is traditional with carrot soup. And I have some of that frozen in my freezer. So I can just dig into a kind of a little bag of frozen coriander I’ve got and put it in at the end. So if it’s a fresh herb like coriander, I’ll put it in at the end. Sometimes I’ll use parsley fresh at the end. But if I don’t have fresh herbs to hand,

I will use dried herbs. I often use dried coriander seed, which I crush in a mortar and pestle or ground coriander if I don’t have any whole coriander seeds or caraway goes really nice with it as well. So those are the kind of flavourings. The soup itself, I haven’t said already is gluten free, obviously it’s egg free and it’s a gaps legal soup. As long as you’re not putting a…

Andrea (13:27.645)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (13:48.541)
Hmm.

Alison Kay (13:51.442)
starch in there that you can’t eat on gaps. know if you put squash in it would be fine, if you put parsnips in it would be fine. The other thing I sometimes like to do if I have some on hand is to stir cream in, either when I’m making it or it’s nice to put the cream in a little jug on the table and Gabriel likes to kind of know make the circles with his cream on the top which is lovely. And then we we would generally eat it with bread, salad bread or oat cakes.

Andrea (14:04.188)
Ooh.

Andrea (14:09.745)
Yeah.

Of course, yeah.

Alison Kay (14:21.098)
or with the oat pancakes that are in the podcast cookbook. I love eating it with toast that’s buttered. I love the crunch of the toast, the kind of luxurious warmth of it and the butter melting over the top. You could also make croutons. So you could fry some older bread if you had some leftover in lard or butter in a pan and make them go a bit crispy or pop them in the oven. If your oven happens to be on, let them dry out.

Sometimes I add halloumi in. We did this last week actually. It wasn’t with carrot soup, but it was with squash soup. I like to fry halloumi and then kind of drop that in the top. So if I’m feeling like we need more protein and perhaps we’ve had a protein light breakfast and we’re having this for lunch, sometimes I will drop halloumi in. You could also crack an egg into it just before you serve it. I don’t do that because Gaby doesn’t eat eggs, but if I was on my own.

Andrea (15:02.909)
Hmm.

Alison Kay (15:20.731)
I sometimes do that. If you want extra, if you haven’t got bread or you haven’t got oat cakes, you can just cook some rice, pour the soup over it or some millet, pour the soap over it. And then recently when we were out this winter at homeschooling groups with Gabriel out in the park, we often took the soup out in flasks. We’ve got a couple of flasks that have wider necks. And then we just take some carrot soup and that is our lunch.

So yeah, it’s really simple, really flexible, really tasty. And as with your lasagna, all of the details are in the download. Okay, let’s go to an ad break now and we will come back with how do I know if my meal is ancestral?

Andrea (16:12.773)
All right. How do I know if my meal is ancestral? It’s such a good question. And I know that it’s when you hear frequently it’s when I hear too, a lot of people have favorite recipes that they’ve had, you know, in a recipe folder from their grandma, or they have a cookbook that they really like and you don’t need to throw out all your cookbooks in order to cook ancestrally. you can often modify it or adjust it, which is what I usually do. I don’t know if you do that, Alison.

since you kind of ditched a lot of your books along the way then you probably only reacquired the ones that are the most suitable but

Alison Kay (16:42.447)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (16:54.168)
Sometimes I find recipes online. I don’t have that many books as you said I in all our moves. We’ve got rid of a lot of books but Sometimes if I’ve got something and I think how could I? How could I use that and I’ll just look up something online and of course I’ll come across a recipe that’s not ancestral and then it’s just a case of right, okay? How can I make that work for the way we eat in the way we cook which is what we’re to talk about now

Andrea (16:58.237)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (17:21.405)
Right. Perfect. So I would start by, if you wanted to know what ancestral eating is, jump to episode 100, which is literally called What is Ancestral Eating? That’s a great one. And honestly, that one would pretty much give you what you needed to know. And then you could also listen to episode 50. So that’s easy to remember, 150. And episode 50 is called

Alison Kay (17:46.445)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (17:49.277)
20 small steps to an ancestral kitchen. And as your kitchen moves into more or wherever you are at in the stage, you may be farther along the road than I am, or you may be just starting out. Everybody’s at a, wherever they are. Then those are things you can do. And when your kitchen is more or less, I’ll say ancestral as kind of the broad term here.

Alison Kay (18:01.003)
Mm.

Andrea (18:17.54)
then a lot of recipes automatically happen to be ancestral. So for instance, the lasagna that I described, if you were making it with, you meat you purchased from a friend or raised yourself and tomatoes you perhaps canned yourself and some sourdough pasta made from Alison’s version two of the spelt cookbook coming soon, then, you know, by default, you know, there’s nothing you have to change. just because your ingredient choices were different.

that the recipe became, you know, more of what we’re calling ancestral food in a modern kitchen. So some signs that your meal is ancestral. is one is that it is not the same every time. And Alison, you kind of alluded to this with your carrot soup. So, you know, if I have fresh, I put this on. Sometimes I have parsley. If I have cilantro, maybe it’s frozen, maybe it’s fresh. And I always notice in recipes they’ll say, you know, top with

Alison Kay (19:11.752)
Mm.

Andrea (19:17.86)
you know, fresh parsley. And I always think, okay, but what if I don’t have fresh parsley? You know, this is not always the time for it. Unless I think Melissa was said that she was growing herbs and lettuce or something in the winter indoors in the discord. So I suppose in that case, she could do it.

Alison Kay (19:22.779)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (19:32.72)
Wow.

Alison Kay (19:36.964)
I could never grow enough parsley. I love parsley so much. And when I had my little containers in Italy, there was never enough room for the parsley because parsley needs a lot of room apparently. I just, yeah, I could have a whole garden of parsley, I think, and still use it all up. It’s lovely.

Andrea (19:39.005)
I know. Yes.

Andrea (19:46.172)
Yes.

Andrea (19:50.333)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, that’s me with cilantro or coriander. can like when, we get every during the summer, the place where we buy a lot of our veggies carries their fresh cilantro and I buy it and then I just ended up eating half of it while I’m trying to make something because it’s so good. so another sign your recipe is ancestral. It is usually quite simple and

So these things we described, Alison, were quite simple. And that is because really good on ancestral theme ingredients don’t need much to shine. They are natural stars and you don’t have to try to mask them, cover them up, hide them, oversauce them. You can just let them be their expressive self. And everybody thinks you did something absolutely insane.

when all you did was not destroy the ingredients. Your food, another sign is that it will be usually locally sourced as much as possible. So my tomato sauce is not locally sourced right now. Sad day, but everything else is. And so I feel fairly satisfied.

Alison Kay (20:54.102)
Hmm.

Andrea (21:17.559)
I know with your carrot soup, carrot soup is a nice one to be addicted to, Alison, because carrots have a really long season and they grow, you know, even in the winter, people can still be pulling them up out of the ground if it’s not frozen. So and they also store really well. We’ve kept carrots over the winter, big bags of them, and they do all right. You would be avoiding any ultra processed factory elements.

Alison Kay (21:22.087)
Mmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (21:44.757)
or because there are some good foods that come from reasonable factories, then you’ll have small manufacturer or ethical ones like olive oil is a good example of one that would be very hard to make at home. Well, we don’t have a lot of olive oil really, but we do have one bottle that I nurture and people, one time Gary took the olive oil out and used it. Like he just poured some liberally in a pan to fry something and I

You know, it’s something I would have used lard for because lard, you know, and, my brother-in-law still teases me about it because I came flying in the kitchen in a panic. was like, didn’t use the olive oil for that, you? And I was like, I was like, this is so precious. You don’t understand every teaspoon. And everybody’s like, wow, calm down Andrea. But, but anyways, it’s, know, good olive oil is, is very valuable.

Alison Kay (22:18.789)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (22:33.403)
you

Alison Kay (22:37.499)
You

Alison Kay (22:42.779)
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea (22:44.199)
So, and especially here where we don’t grow olives. So, so, so even if there are processed elements like that, or like my pasta in the lasagna, they are not the bulk of your diet. They are perhaps enhancing your diet in some way. and then many recipes can be converted either way. So like with the lasagna or like with the cabbage soup or the carrot soup or any of the liver, anything we said, you could

Alison Kay (22:46.661)
Yeah, exactly.

Alison Kay (22:59.973)
Mm-hmm.

Andrea (23:12.591)
make it from factory foods and it would actually be a pretty boring meal. If you make it with really good ingredients that are well sourced, then people just go absolutely insane and think you’re a genius. that is something Dan Barber talks a lot about that. And he has a book called The Third Plate, which is a phenomenal book. And Allison, talks, he has his entire Ode to a Carrot where he talks about the sweetness of carrots and

Alison Kay (23:17.047)
you

Andrea (23:42.151)
you know, carrots grown in compost and loam. And then he actually measures their sugars as compared to the carrots, which you see an organic carrot in a grocery store is typically grown in sand in a, in a, a factory farm situation in South America or something, if you’re in the U S and it’s boring and it’s not the same. So

Alison Kay (23:42.3)
wow.

Alison Kay (23:48.543)
Okay.

Andrea (24:07.589)
So if you tell people, yeah, carrots are unbelievably sweet and they’re thinking of a carrot grown in sand, they might be like, I have no idea what you’re talking about, you crazy lady, which you are a little, but you you’re not wrong. So what else would you suggest, Allison?

Alison Kay (24:23.482)
Okay, well those are really good ones. think, you know, thinking about me going back to, you know, looking at the odd recipe online perhaps and thinking what I would change. Certainly broth is the, is something I would look at. know, if anything is cooked in any liquid at all, I would choose good broth over the ubiquitous stock cube, which has goodness knows what in it. And that is just going to ancestralise your meal.

Andrea (24:36.999)
Mm-hmm.

Alison Kay (24:53.361)
without you doing anything else, frankly. And yeah, we should, that should be a word, ancestralise. And it would also bring much more nutrients to your meal. It make it more nutrient dense than just opening a square thing and putting water on it. So broth is a definite thing. I don’t just mean in soup, you know, if you’re serving any grain to go with your…

Andrea (24:54.703)
Ancestralize, I love it.

Andrea (24:59.357)
I’m coining it now.

Alison Kay (25:21.677)
dinner or for you for example for lasagna making a sauce if you were making a sauce yourself you could use tomato paste and broth to make the sauce rather than you know canned tomatoes so anywhere where there’s liquid in any way swap it out for broth if you can. The same with fats you know because every recipe that you find online if it’s not come from a specifically an ancestral blog will be saying to you to use vegetable oil probably.

Andrea (25:29.491)
Mmm. yeah.

Andrea (25:51.911)
Yeah.

Alison Kay (25:51.976)
and often not, you know, sometimes it’s olive oil, but often it’s just sunflower oil. so if you can swap that out for lard, whether you’re frying, whether you’re baking, whether you’re kind of making cookies, whatever you’re doing, if there’s any need of fat, swap it out for lard or tallow. Or if, you know, olive oil is growing where you are, around where you are, coconut oil is growing where you are, swap it out for that. That will automatically ancestralize your meal.

Use real salt. You know, we’re seasoning our meals all the time. Use a salt that is real, not a highly processed salt and use that for flavour. You know, we’ve talked about how usually ancestral meals are simple and you you gave my example, Andrea, of the carrot soup and how I’m seasoning it differently. That’s how we can just change up our foods. You know, there’s a recipe in the cookbook.

Andrea (26:26.594)
yeah.

Alison Kay (26:49.546)
for cast iron ground meat, cast iron minced meat. And I make that so many times we had it for lunch today and it is… I shouldn’t have said that, should I? Because we’ve already talked about what we had for lunch. I just realised. Can you make a note for time? And maybe Rob can cut that bit out.

Andrea (26:59.101)
Mmm.

Andrea (27:07.517)
that’s okay.

Alison Kay (27:17.268)
Damn. But we did have it for lunch today, that’s why I said it. Okay.

Andrea (27:22.417)
bet if you hadn’t stopped, nobody would have even caught it.

Alison Kay (27:25.692)
Yeah, maybe, maybe I’m too finicky. Okay, so I go from where I say there’s a cast iron ground meat recipe in the cookbook. Okay. Yeah, okay.

Andrea (27:31.015)
That’s okay.

Andrea (27:38.301)
Just say we had it for lunch this week.

Alison Kay (27:43.515)
So there’s a cast iron ground meat recipe or or minced meat recipe in the cookbook, which we had for lunch this week. And I make that so many times, but I just add different spices to it each time. And it comes out like a different dish, frankly. And so the cooking is really simple, but through flavouring, you can alter up the way that the food’s presented at your table, create different experiences.

Andrea (28:01.021)
You’re

Alison Kay (28:12.676)
which makes it easier to provide the same food all the time, know, particularly to people who aren’t used to having the same food all the time. It’s good to kind of switch it up. And then by using real salt instead of kind of shop bought salt, I think that makes a big difference to the taste of the food and also to kind of living on the principles that we want to live by and getting more potential nutrients into you as well. So those are my three suggestions.

Andrea (28:22.93)
Right.

Andrea (28:31.196)
I agree.

Andrea (28:42.779)
I think those are fantastic. Well, it, mean, it really is just shifting the ingredients and, you know, preparation methods over time and, and your plate evolves, you know, your plate evolves as you go. The easiest place to start could just be getting real salt and that’s step one and you’re in, you’re in the game. Well, is there,

Alison Kay (28:53.549)
Mm.

Yeah, slowly.

Alison Kay (29:07.939)
Yeah, absolutely.

Andrea (29:09.966)
Anything else you wanted to throw in here, Allison? I’ll refer people one more time to the download and look in the show notes for lots of links to other episodes where we’ve discussed details that we’ve referred to in here because we have other episodes where we’ve gone much more in depth on some of these things like preparing nutrient dense meals every day, et cetera. anything else you wanted to throw out?

Alison Kay (29:12.725)
Mmm. Mmm.

Alison Kay (29:32.853)
Yeah. No, I think those meals are lovely and I’m going to go and make your two now.

Andrea (29:39.879)
Ha, fantastic. I also am craving both the things you said, so I need them. Okey-dokey. Well, Allison, until next time.

Alison Kay (29:44.192)
Wonderful.

Alison Kay (29:48.959)
Thank you. Bye.

Andrea (29:50.311)
Bye.