Kitchen Table Chats #49 – Your Questions & A Panel of Ancestral Mothers

A special KTC answering your questions. It was recorded at Andrea’s place with four podcast listeners and ancestral mothers.

What we talked about:

Steps to cooking ancestrally (see Episode 50)

What we ate over the weekend

What to serve for Sunday lunch

Favorite snacks for a long drive (see Episode 111)

Camping food (see Episode 111)

“Would You Rather” questions

Gluten-free, dairy-free, and egg-free breakfast ideas

Our favorite oven-free dinners for sweltering days

What do you serve when vegan friends come to visit?

Kitchen tools you cannot do without (see Episode 15)

The second half was us working through the ideas presented here, from podcast supporter Hannah:

Question: “For homeschooling, I would really love to hear how people are balancing their daily chores and responsibilities + cooking from scratch with their schooling time, especially if they have littles running around? How much time to people spend on each thing? Another question is how to go about teaching our kids about nutrition?”

Resources:

www.Ketchikansams.com

Filling snacks and camping food can be found discussed in Episode 111

20 Small Steps can be found here, and the accompanying ebooklet can be downloaded for free by joining our newsletter!

All about our favorite kitchen tools

Alison and Andrea’s question episode

Transcript:

Speaker:
Welcome to Ancestral Kitchen. I’m sitting with Kirsten, Rachel, and Leah, and we’re recording a kind of a panel, a discussion. We just had the most food-filled weekend of kind of relaxing, but there’s a lot of little kids, so not relaxing in our normal home spaces. And we thought, well, we’ve got all these minds together. Let’s get together and record an episode and make it something that everybody can join in. So I asked you on the patron or supporter board. I asked in a homeschool board. I asked in where we had the meetup conversation happening. Everybody sent in questions. You all sent in a lot of good questions, more than we could possibly tackle, but some of them are so good. Allison and I are saving them for full episodes. And then a couple of them we’ve already done full episodes on and i’ll mention those when we get to those questions and then the other ones we’re all going to tackle together so everybody what was our name what did we decide we are the sprites the sprites of the round table the sprites depends on

Speaker:
How much we finish our tea i suppose okay so i’m going to start by introducing myself briefly and then y’all just follow suit and introduce yourself in the same manner. So I’m Andrea. I live in Washington State, and I have four kids ranging in age from to one. And if I had an hour with no kids, no demands, and I was not allowed to do chores, I would probably read. No, I would listen to an audiobook and crochet. That’s what I would do. Leah, I’m gonna pass the mic to you, and then you answer the same questions, and then we’ll just go around.

Speaker:
I am Leah. I live in Southeast Alaska. I have three kids from ranging two to six, and I would read if I had no time or no nothing to do, and I never do

Speaker:
Chores if I have free time. Ever.

Speaker:
Hi i’m rachel i live in northern california and i have five kids from eight to two and if i had no thing to do for an hour i would also read or knit or i would go play in the garden depends on what i want to do yeah it’s

Speaker:
A good one

Speaker:
Hi, I’m Kirsten. I’m from Canada, just outside of Vancouver. I have one child and he is two. And I have a hard time not doing chores when there’s time. It’s a problem. But I’m learning and if I could, and there was no cleanup, I would probably paint in an open hour or write and it would be in an open field.

Speaker:
Paint?

Speaker:
Right.

Speaker:
I know you’ve painted.

Speaker:
I did. Wow.

Speaker:
Yeah. Just learning things. This is a learning experience.

Speaker:
You need to do less chores and paint more.

Speaker:
Yes, you do. Actually, Allison has come to that same conclusion when she has time. She’s said this on some of the episodes we’ve recorded. She’s been more dedicated to sitting down and just painting or drawing. And then sometimes in record, I see the paintings hanging on the wall behind her, which is really cool. So Katie asked us that she would, she said, I’d be interested in hearing the steps people took to get into cooking ancestrally. Did they start with bread, quitting supermarkets? Also, why? And for some quick questions,

Speaker:
Some would, oh, some quick questions that could be fun. You’re right. thank you where did that go okay i’m rachel’s reminding me because rachel is is my my reminder yes yes um let me drop katie’s answer real quick and then we’ll i have another question for all you ladies and katie’s answer is episode is called small steps to an ancestral kitchen and allison and i actually talked to a lot of people who are eating ancestrally now and we asked them what’s kind of what do you feel like was your gateway what was your in and everybody was so different and then allison answered it i answered it and then we compiled a list of steps that you could take and you couldn’t start they’re not sequential you could start anywhere on the list and some you may never get to depending on the region you’re in they might like some people may never find good sourced fish i i can but you can you can overstep go to catchaganshands.com.

Speaker:
Actually, I was going to say move to Alaska. Yeah, move to Alaska. Because I had to start with meat. That’s true. Because that’s where you were.

Speaker:
Because we just lived there. I was forced. It’s true.

Speaker:
I was ancestrally before I wanted to.

Speaker:
Yeah, you had no choice. You didn’t have a choice. So you can download that list, Katie, by going to ancestralkitchenpodcast.com forward slash downloads. And you can listen to the episode and do all the things. So before we go into our questions then, ladies, I’m going to ask you, starting with you, Leah, what is the last thing you ate?

Speaker:
I’m going to reject your question and answer a different question, which is what is my favorite thing we ate this weekend?

Speaker:
Okay, I’ll take that. That sounds amazing.

Speaker:
And I think I’m going to go with the chowder. The salmon chowder was very good.

Speaker:
It was good. And where did the salmon come from,

Speaker:
Leah? The salmon came from, I would love to say me, because my husband’s never going to hear this. I’ll just take it. I’ll just go take it. But it came from him. Yes, he caught the fish and he packaged it.

Speaker:
And she supported him to do that. Right.

Speaker:
It was really me. It was to say.

Speaker:
Anyway.

Speaker:
Can you tell us where in Alaska?

Speaker:
In Ketchikan, which is in Southeast Alaska.

Speaker:
If it was a criminal case, you’d be complicit. So.

Speaker:
It’s true. So, I mean, I was complicit in the fish. That’s what I said. I also technically own Ketchikan Sam’s. I am so. Heck yeah. Therefore, you know, it’s sort of mine. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker:
Um let’s see we did eat a lot of good things and i did eat the salmon and cod

Speaker:
Chowder last night and it was amazing

Speaker:
I also ate applesauce that was pink with red number and um just kidding it was just pink it was pink because of the apples and two salty Swiss chard that I made. I put in too much salt. I’m not used to the humidity. There’s no humidity where I live. And fried liver from Andrea.

Speaker:
It’s good.

Speaker:
The last thing I ate was a hard-boiled egg and a few spoons of oatmeal, which actually is cooking upstairs right now, but I think it is kind of done. And it’s a different like it’s i think the oats are quite different than you’re used to because they’re quite cooked but there’s a lot of water left in the pot oh interesting yeah yeah so i don’t know say where the oats again yeah the um oh gosh i i’m gonna try to remember the farm’s name they are grown locally around where i live in outside of vancouver um but yeah which i think actually probably works well for oats because oats in Scotland and oats in Vancouver are probably similar climates, but I didn’t know until recently that we could grow them. So we’ve been getting them and they’re so hearty and flavorful. Yeah. All right.

Speaker:
Now that we’ve eaten, well, I guess I should say what I ate. I had hard boiled eggs, so I’m ready to go. So Hannah asked…

Speaker:
She said I’ve had I’ve or she had questions about what to serve for Sunday lunch. So for context, if somebody is going to church in the morning, then that means you kind of typically and if you have kids, your kind of entire morning is spent getting ready to go. You kind of want to look your sharpest and then you come back and everybody’s starving. But you haven’t basically haven’t been in your kitchen since the night before. That’s kind of the question she’s coming at. But Leah, you have a slightly different situation, which will be helpful for people to hear also. So if somebody is asking Sunday lunch, I’m kind of assuming that that’s her question is like related to being gone all morning. So I’ll say, Leah, when you were here last time, we recorded an episode about how I structure the meals over the course of the week. And I’ve moved a bunch of things since then, which I said on the episode, I’m sure I will. But we’ve moved pizza from Friday night to Saturday night. So on Saturday, we have pizzas. So you can mix the dough the day before, then Saturday we roll it out and have a bunch of pizzas. But I make a couple extra pizzas. And then I just shove the sheet pans in the oven and leave them there overnight. They’re baked, they’re done, they’re ready to go. Then when we come home from church the next morning, there’s literally ready-made food to go. And it’s right at lunchtime for us. So you can eat it cold, or you could throw it on the griddle, or you could pop it in the oven and heat it up. What do you, Leah, what do you guys do?

Speaker:
Well, we have lunch every week at my in-laws. They live right across the street from us. And so I am usually just making something to bring. And sometimes I bake it Saturday, sometimes I make it Sunday morning. It just depends what it is. if I’m bringing like a vegetable or a dessert or some kind of side dish and it kind of rotates. So yeah, that’s what we do is just something to bring. So it’s pretty low key, low stress.

Speaker:
Well, I have a slightly different situation in that I have to drive almost an hour to church both ways separately. It’s a two hour drive there and back. and we also stay all day. We come home at like, we leave at . in the morning and we come home at like three or four or five, depending on how long we stay there. So all of my food has to go with me. Like I don’t come back to my kitchen for lunch. I have to pack it before I leave in the morning and bring it with me. So we have a great cooler that we use for that. And I try to pick things that are… Really high density foods because my kids are running around with all the other kids and they’re having a great time and they’re hungry, but also are like zero mess because they’re in their nice church clothes and it’s very hard to keep them clean. So if I’m doing, I really have like two styles I do that use ground meat. I either do meatloaf because that’s great cold

Speaker:
And or I use meatballs because those are even better colds sometimes and sometimes I’ll take I’ll take like sauerkraut with me and sometimes cut up veggies to like carrots or celery sticks or something or not celery um cucumber sticks or something that works too sometimes we take bread and cheese which is our our normal lunch that we always have but that’s not usually filling enough for my kids who are running around for four hours with their friends. Yeah. And I have five, so I have to take a lot of food. So yeah, so I bake like, I make three meatloaves out of six pounds of ground beef, or I make like meatballs, probably not meatballs, a large amount of meatballs out of that. And then, yeah, and then I just bring them. We usually go through like a meatloaf and a half, maybe two meatloaves. I just slice it or sometimes I don’t even slice I just bring it in the loaf form and people just break it off. And that way they get.

Speaker:
Because it has like, what do you put like oats in it?

Speaker:
Yeah, I put some oats in it. I put eggs in it. So it has like a little bit of a structure to it. I’ll just put whatever I have, really. That’s what I do. So, yeah, that’s what I do.

Speaker:
Okay. Bye, Charlie. You were not invited, Charlie. Charlie, upstairs.

Speaker:
No, sir. You go, Kirsten. Don’t worry about it.

Speaker:
So I feel like I’m very much still learning how to do my Sundays. My child has been changing so much over the last two years, and there’s always been different nap times. But lately, as he’s more of a toddler than a baby, we’ve actually been kind of using, so we have a potluck at church too, and we stay quite a while. So we’ve been using, we just eat the food there, and it’s, you know, it’s great. um and we kind of use.

Speaker:
Um uh that time to bring something kind of fun like we don’t

Speaker:
Usually do desserts but um I’ve been doing baking with him like every every so weeks every few weeks I’ll be baking with him and bringing that um because then you don’t have all these leftovers for whatever you bake um I don’t know we’re just kind of trying new things right now um yeah sometimes muffins or cookies or whatever like a pie or or something that I’m kind of like having fun with and yeah I like that because we get to do something together and then um we kind of like eat it at church and then don’t have to bring home all this dessert just for a three-person family, um but then when we get home we still are hungry so I’ve been trying to have the slow cooker have something on that’s a really good day for us to have a slow cooker meal um yeah so I think that’s my perfect um my perfect Sunday is like slow cooker day um and that’s kind of what we’re we’re working towards right now but every Sunday is kind of different.

Speaker:
Another resource to look at for sunday um lunches uh one of our patrons hannah is jewish and she she said for sabbath they can prepare food on friday but once night falls friday they can’t touch it until they literally open the container to eat it so that is ideal if you are trying to prepare food that you don’t need to fiddle with. So I’ve thought before, well, I definitely want to get her on and talk to her about some of their traditions, but also just looking up sort of Sabbath type foods might be helpful because you don’t, you can’t touch it. So, all right, I’m going to throw a couple would you rathers out. So just, just, I won’t pass the mic, just shout Yes or no? Or which one? Beef heart or liver? Oh. Hard-boiled or over-easy? Over-easy. Oh. Spelt or rye? Rye. Aha. Rice or millet? Millet rice. That was very good. Allison, your real friend is Rachel. Can I tell a little

Speaker:
Story that something hilarious happened about rice and millet for my family recently? I’ve been trying to integrate millet and my husband has been having a hard time but he’s so.

Speaker:
Open like he really wants to and

Speaker:
Recently he’s been a little more vocal about his preference for rice over millet and then we watched a movie we watched a movie called seven samurai I don’t know if anybody’s.

Speaker:
Seen it but there is

Speaker:
It’s about um a small peasant village in Japan um who is always worried that thieves are going to come and steal their crop. And they’ve been told that they’re going to come and.

Speaker:
Steal their crop.

Speaker:
And so they hire seven samurai to protect them. And so they’re going to steal their barley and their rice. And so they’re, they’re like getting lower and lower on their rations and coming to the end of the season when the thieves are going to come. But there’s this thread of a joke throughout the whole movie that Millet is like the peasant food that nobody wants to be eating and rice is like the holy of holies and we were watching this movie and i’m like literally trying to incorporate into our life and my husband’s looking at me like wait a minute i have so many reasons not to um uh not to like i have arguments now um and it’s a long movie and it just happened there so many times they be trampled on my beloved millet and so it is a peasant food um it is but it’s also um very delicious oh that’s hilarious yeah.

Speaker:
All right, here’s a question. I think this came from Hannah, who was here and left yesterday. She said, what are some gluten, dairy, egg-free breakfast ideas? And my first answer to this is that the question itself would only come from like a modern Western culture, because we have a concept of specific foods for breakfast, specific foods for lunch and dinner.

Speaker:
And that’s new and that’s artificial. So my first answer is anything. Like if you would have salmon stew for dinner, you could have salmon stew for breakfast. There’s no reason why not. Is it filling? Does it have protein? Does it have carbs? Does it have electrolytes? Is it salty? You know, it’s the things you need. It’s a good meal. Why can’t you have it at am, you know, not just in the evening. So that’s my first kind of thought, the idea of there being food categories. The second thing I thought was I really love soup for breakfast. This was during gaps that this became, you know, Rachel’s nodding because she did gaps with her children and , whatever it is. And having soup, oftentimes in the evening, even after things were done, I would prepare a pot of soup when everybody was kind of dealt with and handled and the kitchen was quiet, I would mix a pot of soup and just put it on the stove and it would simmer overnight. Then when I came out in the morning, breakfast is literally ready to go. The soup is done and the house smells amazing.

Speaker:
Also, Throdkin’s. So that is in Allison’s Oatbook. You brought the oats, Kirsten, so that we can make the Throdkin. And we are now cooking your oats, but we didn’t make Throdkin this trip. But Allison’s Oatbook, when we were looking through it with Hannah here, then we were saying, gosh, Hannah, I think you guys could eat everything in here because it’s dairy-free. There’s lard instead of butter in most of these things.

Speaker:
It’s gluten-free because it’s oats and it doesn’t have eggs. So also peasant class food. Because one thing I noticed in that What I Eat book was the wealthier people were, the more like the dairy, eggs, fruit started turning up in their diet. The more peasant people, it was more focused on like carbs and like rustic animal products like meat or fat and that fits you know with an area where maybe you’re like this Welsh people’s what Welsh just means like stranger right like you’re the people who were pushed out had to stay behind the oat line you know not part of the community maybe moving and you don’t have all the same resources that like we picture maybe for the medieval like a medieval castle or something you can also slice the throdkin it’s like baked oats basically with bacon on it and you can slice it and fry it up i really like meat and kraut in the morning i feel like that’s a good breakfast and then if you look through gaps stage one, that’s pretty much going to serve you. Rachel, you had some other ideas too. Can you throw those out there?

Speaker:
Yeah, I also had a time of gluten-free, dairy-free, maybe not egg-free, but I actually have a lot of friends. I have a friend who’s pretty. She’s pretty. She has a lot of. She can’t eat any of these things either. So, yeah, so oatmeal. We eat oatmeal a lot. You can use coconut milk or coconut cream in there for that to make it more creamy. And I make oatmeal bakes. I do use eggs and milk in mine, but it’s pretty easy to substitute applesauce for eggs. eggs, abscess sauce for an egg substitution is a great one. And, um, or like pumpkin too. You can do the same thing. Canned pumpkin, um, for eggs and then like coconut milk for the dairy. So I just mix up oats together with spices and usually it’s oatmeal. It’s usually leftover oatmeal that I use. I bake, I use leftover oatmeal. I mix it in my KitchenAid because that way it gets all creamy instead of the chunks of cold oatmeal with, you know, your coconut milk. And you can use your applesauce or your pumpkin. And then you can add like a little bit of vanilla extract or a little bit of maple syrup or honey. And then you just bake it for like an hour and then it’s delicious. And my kids love that.

Speaker:
You can also do just meat, right? Like sausage and bacon. that’s also another good option and like the sweet potato pancakes from gaps are really easy to um they do but you can use applesauce or pumpkin right like you don’t you it’s eggs are really good for that so bake anything baked like that applesauce is a really really good substitute for that also on like the asian cultures they eat like seaweed soup in the morning that’s like a breakfast thing is they’ll eat seaweed soup i’ve also done fried rice in the morning it’s really really good it’s so like warming and um filling and yeah it’s really really yummy so

Speaker:
Now in jack’s case specifically he can’t have the coconut or the apples so then he has that layer of complication so pumpkin i’m i i’m hoping he can do i think he can do pumpkin all right i’m gonna throw some rapid fire questions pancakes or waffles pancakes cakes waffles pancakes cake or pie pie cake i have a great cake okay share

Speaker:
It not as good as

Speaker:
I i know pie is kind of amazing but okay but cherry pie it’s okay that you’re wrong rachel i’m just fine and that’s true for rachel it’s not an either or it’s an and you have a lot of kids you can do both ice cream or sorbet ice cream ice cream me too raw veg or cooked veg

Speaker:
I like raw better, but I try to cook them sometimes.

Speaker:
Be louder for the questions so people can hear you. I like them cooked. Pizza or lasagna? Pizza. Yeah, that was easy. Okay. Sorry, Leah. Wool or linen? It’s impossible. You can’t decide.

Speaker:
How do you decide?

Speaker:
Your two favorite things.

Speaker:
Based on where I live, I would say that wool. I would have to pick wool. Yeah.

Speaker:
Based on where I live, I’d have to say linen.

Speaker:
You’d be linen. Based on where I live, I think I need both. Okay. Rachel, let’s answer in the show. Well, no. Spit it out real quick. What’s your favorite oven-free dinner for sweltering days?

Speaker:
Oh, salads.

Speaker:
I have so many salad options.

Speaker:
It’s taco salad, tuna salad, regular salad with heavy dressing, like lots of olive oil in the dressing and all sorts of good things in there. And then millet salad, cold millet salad is amazing. It’s so good. So my dressing for almost all these salads, probably not for taco salad, would be it’s olive oil, balsamic vinegar, a lot of balsamic vinegar, herbs, fresh herbs are the best. And if you let them sit like overnight, if you make it the night before and put it in a window, it’s like…

Speaker:
So good. Salt, herbs, pepper, garlic.

Speaker:
You can do raw garlic in there or you can do garlic powder. And then a little bit of vinegar, like a rice wine vinegar or a sherry vinegar or red wine vinegar. Just and then lots of olive oil so that it’s very filling. So before our salads were never very filling. And then when I started making them like that, a salad will fill you even if there’s no meat in it kind of thing. So if you have like a fast free or a meatless or eggless or dairyless thing, it’s really full. Eggs, eggs can be really good in that too. Hard boiled eggs sliced. I put that on my tuna salad.

Speaker:
I have a question for you. Yes. I have a hard time making salads and having, if I have leftovers, they do not last till the next day. So is it just you make salads so good there’s no leftovers? Or do you make hearty salads that last like for a few days?

Speaker:
Just have more kids, Christian.

Speaker:
Yeah. My problem is my offspring is one.

Speaker:
Um so actually when i do make salad i use like three or four heads of lettuce and my family eats the whole thing because that’s what that’s what dinner is so it’s just the salad basically um no they don’t the lettuce is wilted the next day but i i just eat it anyways so i’m not that picky about that like it’s fine yeah i it’s just it’s just wilted and so everything still tastes good it’s just not the like crispness of the day before but it’s worth it and then you can kind of pour because there’s always like extra oil at the bottom you can pour it over other things

Speaker:
You can also if take that leftover salad and then get some like meat or something and put it in a wrap the next day and then i don’t know just put it in a wrap and not looking at it makes it taste better yeah

Speaker:
Yum i love that and i also like to pour some kraut juice if i make salad so then i’m like oh it’s probiotic or dicing some kraut

Speaker:
I put the kraut on top of the salad so like the salad’s made and then I put the crowd on top so the juice gets in there.

Speaker:
And it’s got to get that in there. Okay, here’s another quickie quickie. What do you serve when your vegan friends come over for dinner? And this would also qualify during an Orthodox fast, correct? Because you don’t eat meat or dairy. Yeah. So do you want to take this one? Sure.

Speaker:
Okay, so I do this pretty regularly because it’s Orthodox fast. Something like a third of the year If you’re doing it right, I’m not kidding. It’s it’s yeah, maybe it’s maybe it’s maybe it’s percent. It’s a lot because it’s Wednesdays and Fridays plus all of the major the four major fasts. Oh, yeah. Twice a week. Yeah. Plus the four major fasts.

Speaker:
Can you do?

Speaker:
Yeah. So we still we still it’s not complete fast. We’re still we drink water. We eat food. We just have some dietary restrictions. There’s a lot of things that go into fasting, but the dietary restrictions are no meat, no dairy. No alcohol. Well, it depends on what you classify as eggs. Some people don’t do eggs. Some people do do eggs. It’s basically no animal byproducts, though. So eggs are technically not allowed,

Speaker:
More or less.

Speaker:
But everyone follows that to their own level of what they can expect and do and what’s available, right? Like, so that that there’s also some interesting rules that like nothing with a backbone. So no fish. Fish is not allowed either. But like crocodiles are fine. Yeah, there’s like some interesting like I know it’s I don’t have any access to crocodiles, so I don’t eat crocodile. But, you know,

Speaker:
There’s a lot of Orthodox history in Africa.

Speaker:
Oh, yeah, absolutely. Egypt is that’s a really big Orthodox holy area.

Speaker:
So, yeah.

Speaker:
So I make lots of lentil curries. I kind of lean really heavily on like Indian traditions for that because they have a lot of stuff. Yeah, you can put potatoes in there. You can do it without potatoes. Yeah, no, I do like sweet potatoes, potatoes, vegetable medley, zucchini, carrots, onions, celery, all that stuff. I also do like a lot of rice and then like steamed vegetables with a sauce over that as well. That can be really good as long as it has high fat content from the oils or stir fry. I do a lot of stir fry, too. And that’s the thing at the during the fast. Yeah. And then, of course, millet salad because it’s perfect and regular salad stuff, too. Yeah, it’s it’s I know.

Speaker:
Yeah.

Speaker:
So it’s the heavy. I know.

Speaker:
For a salad, it’s like.

Speaker:
The way that

Speaker:
The, I think even the day later when the millet is a little dry, it’s like all separated. So then it’s perfect to throw in a salad.

Speaker:
And then you put the yummy oil on it.

Speaker:
And it can be a lot of like ginger and.

Speaker:
Exactly. Absorbs. Yeah. That is helpful. And so, Rachel, that makes me think there’s another resource people could look at. Like, what are some orthodox foods? Or if somebody was orthodox, they could look at vegan cookbooks. They could look at that book.

Speaker:
I was going to answer the question because I just don’t have vegan friends.

Speaker:
But I was like, oh, no, I have a lot of orthodox friends.

Speaker:
So I guess they just can’t come over on Fridays. Yeah but for

Speaker:
Hospice but but the thing is is like yes we have those those rules but then there’s also economia so right and fat and hospitality so if you go to somebody’s house you’re not even supposed to tell them that you’re fasting and be like hey i can’t eat meat today you just cross yourself and eat with a grateful heart yeah right exactly you don’t no no we’re supposed We’re supposed to fast in quietude and go into your house, wash your face, like Jesus says, and then go out in humility. So if you invited someone to their house, they wouldn’t be like, oh, I can’t eat that. I mean, maybe they would, but they shouldn’t do that. So that’s the difference. We have their own fast, but we’re not supposed to force it on everybody else.

Speaker:
Okay, we’re going to come back to that question again, Rachel, because when we get to the end, Hannah’s question. Because, um, obviously when you have like, you know, Jack is going to get very sick if he eats certain things, kind of has to let you know if you’re serving him. But, um, when you go to someone’s house and they prepare something that you’re like, oh, this, you know, we’ll get to that. Okay. When I, I have a vegan friend who comes over and stays for a little while every year, and I actually really enjoy coming up with a menu. I find it stretching and like activating for my mind.

Speaker:
So I suppose it would be like preparing for a fast in that sense. And since we eat it with her, I guess it’s kind of like we’re experiencing the, the food side of that, just the food side. And one of the meals I make every time is my delicious black bean soup from that monastery cookbook. But I use a veggie broth instead of a bone broth. And then I make a gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free cornbread to go with it, which cornbread is easy because it doesn’t have to rise very high. You can make it in a skillet on the stove. You can put it in the oven. You can make it into pancakes, whatever.

Speaker:
Or oat cakes. oat cakes are a great fallback when people have lots of restrictions because you can just literally we made down down below for the camping trip somebody asked about camping food i’ll say oat cakes because you can mix a whole container before you go and just keep using and if you have a sour a sour thing in there then it will only get better as the trip goes on but we didn’t have sourdough in there because my sourdough has gluten and we didn’t have kefir in there because it’s dairy. And I couldn’t put apple cider vinegar in because he can’t have apples. So we made it just literally ground oats and water. And it was still delicious. And we shaved nutmeg on top cinnamon. And I fried it in tallow, which wouldn’t work for vegan. But you could use coconut oil. Now he can’t have coconut. So we had to use tallow. So, you know, trying to cross over maybe for the whole community would be, I guess, canola. No, I’m just kidding.

Speaker:
No, but there are other oils that you could use. So avocado would be fine because it could take the heat and oats don’t have to get that hot anyways. So I wouldn’t use something like probably olive oil, but okay. Melissa, you asked about kitchen tools we cannot do without every day. I’m going to point you to episode . It’s called Our Favorite Kitchen Tools. And I’m willing to bet the ladies in here would have similar preferences. But Allison and I should probably record that again because we’ve acquired a few new things since then. But the important thing is, is you really like good knives and cutting boards because everything else. And yeah, neither of us had a mill when we recorded that. But now the mill is like a staple. So yeah. Okay, we are going to take the second half and go into a little more philosophical, less practical. But no, it’s also practical, because the philosophical, without the philosophical, there is no practical. And without the practical, there’s no point of the philosophical. So we’re going to shift from like, you know, favorite meals to a little more day structure,

Speaker:
Having kids, cooking, homeschooling, all these sort of overlapping endeavors, which a lot of us are doing. And if you’re listening and you aren’t homeschooling, it’s all the same. You’re educating your children still, even if they’re going to a place to be educated, you’re still heavily involved in their education and you still have all the same things that we would deal with. So more so demands. Yes, I would say so. Yeah, I have learned that. You’re right, Leah. Good point that I think the moms who take their kids to school and activities, their schedule is much harder than mine is. So, so hopefully some of this can be helpful to everybody. So this question came from Hannah. I think it was on the Ancestral Kitchen forum on our Discord. She said, for homeschooling, I would really love to hear how people are balancing their daily chores and responsibilities, plus cooking from scratch with their schooling time, especially if they have littles running around. How much time do people spend on each thing? Another question is how to go about teaching our kids about nutrition and what do you do when people come over or you go to someone else’s house for a meal and they bring or serve foods that go against my family’s culture. I’m willing to be flexible on non-fermented or soaked grains or commercial meat when it’s only on occasion, but everyone always manages to serve or bring things with seed oils.

Speaker:
So true. So let’s take the first half. So for homeschooling, how are you balancing chores, responsibilities, cooking from scratch? How do you do it with you? Have littles running around and how much time do you spend on each thing? Where do we want to begin? Where do we want to start. Who’s, why don’t, okay, okay, I’ll start. Okay, so this is something, well, I feel like I’ve talked about it on the podcast, so I don’t know how much people want to hear me say, but I would say,

Speaker:
This is going to have to be a little more back and forthy, I think, but for us, it’s hard to distinguish where the daily chores and the cooking ends and the school begins because of a lot of it’s overlapped. Like, it’s trying to pick out, like, where does literature end and language learning begins? Like, I don’t know. They’re enmeshed. Like, you can’t really pull them apart. So… Like handicrafts. For handicrafts, I got a sourdough book for Camille. So for handicraft, she can be learning not only a craft that she’ll take with her for the rest of her life and possibly serve her family with if her family can have grains or whatever, or at any rate, she’ll just have the practice of it. But it also helps us handle because instead of saying, I need to block out an hour for this specific craft of making a googly-eyed parrot or something, you’re like, well, this hour is a craft which is making the bread that’s going to serve us tomorrow. So I think overlapping things is really helpful. And I think the more literature you read, the more good food you want. I feel like that’s why a lot of us run into both the literature and the food world because it’s hard to read, you know,

Speaker:
Louisa May Alcott where they’re dosing her with broth or Charlotte Mason where she’s saying beef tea for children or understood Betsy with cousin Anne and all the food that they’re cooking in there. Dickens with plum pudding and yeah, and the turkey. Like it’s hard to read those books and be like, yeah, I think I’ll have another, you know, canola dipped biscuit or whatever. Like it’s, it’s just, Rachel’s crying right now. It’s also, I feel like the good literature also feeds that hunger for the good food. And then the, I think the same thing happened with us with the literature, which is the deeper you go into the good food or the good books, the further you want to go. And the harder time you have accommodating the thing that like you now see as um like dry and gross and um chemicals that you can taste now just like there’s books i used to read that you might read later and be like i see now i can’t i can’t read that you know

Speaker:
So for the practical, practical, Hannah, we have another episode that Allison and I recorded. I think it was our like questions episode at the end of where JC asked about my schedule. And you already know from the episode I did with Leah that I tend to have like a planned breakfast and like a rubric or like a structure for the week. And then I just you know like it’s a pasta thing on Monday which could be any one of a variety of things and then on Tuesday we have cheesy noodles for lunch you like like you kind of just know that because of the fact that for me I have to make decisions ahead of time when I get into the day it’s too late for me to make the decision like I’m already like overwhelmed or making too many other decisions or decisions I didn’t know were going to come at me are coming at me.

Speaker:
So I’m going to pass the mic to you, Leah. So your kids aren’t schooling yet, but I also want to say the importance of, and you know this, obviously, because you’re doing this, but I want to say a lot of people say to me, like, oh, my kids aren’t old enough for school yet, so I’m not really thinking about that. Or I’m not reading Charlotte Mason yet. Or I haven’t thought about this education philosophy, and then they get to the summer before their kid is going to start school, and they’re like, so what curriculum do I buy? And you’re like, hold on.

Speaker:
It’s kind of, to give like a comparison for the church, it’s kind of like getting to Saturday night and being like, all right, what church are we going to tomorrow? It’s like, well, there’s a whole philosophy behind each choice, and you need to investigate them and see which one works for you and works for your family because it’s going to drive every other decision associated with that thing. And when it comes to an education philosophy, I think I would say almost universally, at least in the U.S., what I see, I don’t know what it looks like in Canada, but from what I’ve heard from Acadia, I think it’s similar, which is we automatically walk in with the philosophy that has been ushered into us from the top down, from the government’s program. So we automatically have a industrial community education philosophy without knowing that it’s a philosophy. We think, but that’s how you learn, and that’s how you do school. But we don’t realize, yes, but that’s based on a philosophy, and also a philosophy of humanity and a philosophy of personhood, which would say, oh, a child is a blank slate. They’re a little sponge. I can put information in front of them. I will tell them they’re, oh, they’re a picture that I’m filling. Rachel’s hand signaling me semaphores from across the room.

Speaker:
And this idea like, oh, a child is just this little thing that I’m going to put all the information into, and then they’ll grow up and be able to use that information to get a job. That’s a philosophy. It’s a philosophy of personhood, and it’s a philosophy of education. Or there’s other philosophies, which I think we know you subscribe to, even if you haven’t read the book yet because of what you and Shauna have said. But certainly I know Leah and Rachel and I and Allison as well have discussed lots of times, which is that a child is born already as a person. They’re already them and their self. And you expose them to ideas, and then they take the ideas into their being. And if you’re educating them, then they can narrate the ideas back to you so you can see if they understood it or if they’re like thinking rightly or confused on what you said. And then they take those ideas and it helps them to make further decisions. And then they go out into life interested in the world, interested in other people, interested in different ideas, able to share back what they learned, you know, interested in literature or food or whatever it is that comes their way, they have that feast before them. Rachel’s going to snatch the mic out of my hand, so I’m passing it over.

Speaker:
And just remember, if you think that’s interesting, this is who Andrea is. That’s how Andrea grew up. And if you think Andrea is amazing, because we all here think she’s amazing, and you want to be like Andrea, teach your children this way.

Speaker:
You’re hilarious, Rachel, but I love it. Of course you do. I do. I know. It’s such a nice compliment. Forward to my mailing address, please. It is true, though. And again, we have to give the credit to my mom that she picked up Charlotte Mason in a time when homeschooling was like we had to stay indoors until p.m. It was like a different beast when I was a kid.

Speaker:
And she read them and she had to herself without it. She didn’t have like an ambleside forum to discuss thing on. She didn’t have like any, any, I never heard a single other person who had heard of Charlotte Mason until I was an adult. And she had to single-handedly discard all of the philosophies she had been raised with, which I think we find with a lot of people who are raised with them are like, yeah, I don’t, I didn’t like it. I just thought it was the way it was. so so determining your philosophy like when we say how are you balancing chores and responsibilities and cooking from scratch that’s going to be intimately associated with your education philosophy and your philosophy of personhood so it’s hard to pick those things apart because you can’t say in isolation like people say you know oh how do i eat ancestral but i don’t want to change anything about my life. And you say, well, the food does not fit with an industrial life. That’s what we were talking about the other day. So I want you to pull out what Cindy said, but what I was telling you, and then you were like, oh, Cindy said this, was I was saying everybody comes with these like extremely harried, rushed, intense lives where they’re home, like they’re out the door at dawn and they’re back home at night. And they’re asking, how do I make ancestral food with this lifestyle? And the answer is, well, there are things you can do.

Speaker:
From wherever you are, you can begin. But ultimately, ancestral food is part of a way of being that expects a different non-industrialized lifestyle. So praise hands from Rachel. So

Speaker:
So, ancestral food, I don’t want to say quite so drastically, is not compatible with an industrialized lifestyle, but it really isn’t. And that doesn’t mean you can’t start ancestral food in an industrial lifestyle, because I think most of us have no choice but to start from there. But we do want to work towards a philosophy of food, which is what I always call it, based on Charlotte Mason’s book. like I say, is towards a philosophy of eating. Like you will always be on that path and you will never finish. And you are a part of the lineage of thousands of people who have been eating and surviving. And then the ribbon was cut and we lost, you know, like the Ristalba oatcakes from Alison’s book. And yeah, just to make everybody back home jealous, Allison sent us some portions from her book, and we sat around the campfire and read them out loud. And it was like peak ancestral hangout.

Speaker:
And now we’re eating the oats that Kirsten brought from her farmer. Since Leah had to run up to grab her kids because it’s part of this lifestyle, what she was saying was that Cindy Rollins said in her Saturdays with Cindy that Charlotte Mason is incompatible with an open and go approach to books. Because people say, I need an open and go Charlotte Mason curriculum. But the philosophy of Charlotte Mason is incompatible with that. In the same way, the philosophy of ancestral food is incompatible with open and go. The closest you could get to is maybe extremely expensive made foods, but even those aren’t. Like the salad you described, you can’t buy that at a salad bar. That’s not a thing. It doesn’t exist. So, um… While Leah’s grabbing her kids, do you want to jump on the—oh, she’s back. How do you want to go? We said—I wasn’t sure if you’re coming back. I’m going to go close the window. But we were talking about what you said, Cindy said, about the incompatible thing.

Speaker:
Oh, yes. So when people are coming to homeschooling and they really want something just open and go and they want, you know, they want to start at a certain time, they want to stop at a certain time.

Speaker:
Like of the day.

Speaker:
Like of the day and we and we want to have like you know this is math this is the this is the homeschool book we’re reading this is our read-along book we’re reading but like very distinguished lines and and a way to measure progress

Speaker:
Like you’re talking like tests show right fill up the

Speaker:
Form so then you come to this philosophy where education is a life it’s a life lived, right? And you are, um, it’s about, you know, the atmosphere of the environment and it’s about your habits and it’s about these living ideas that can come from anywhere. And so, and so then school, it doesn’t, it doesn’t really start or stop. And, and so people come and they see that and they think it’s beautiful and then they’re like how can i make it like

Speaker:
Where’s the curriculum

Speaker:
So where’s the curriculum where i can get that what’s the product i can buy so that i can do that and those are all the wrong questions um so for balancing school and life in our house Which, you know, we have not started year one’s readings yet. I would not say we have not started school yet. We are not. I’m not expecting my kids to narrate back. I am not, you know, doing formal nature study. And yet we are outside for hours every single day.

Speaker:
You can see your oldest with like a dear heart in her hand and be like,

Speaker:
She’s never done anything. Yeah. Right. Exactly. And my daughter is like already butchering everything.

Speaker:
Has no nature study. Oh, God.

Speaker:
Right.

Speaker:
And can identify every single rockfish that she catches and every plant in the woods. Yeah. But our days are something like, and I don’t, we cook everything from scratch. And yet I don’t feel like any of it. I don’t, I don’t cook meals that take a long time. So I am definitely, that’s kind of part of my philosophy. Um, so breakfast is, you know, eggs or oats or pancakes or, or whatever. And then, um, we’ll read, read aloud a little bit at breakfast. And then, um, we clean up. Uh, my kids are little six, four and two, but they clean up. They can clear their plates. Um, the four-year-old loves rinsing dishes. The two-year-old loves to wash the table very badly and we let it happen. And um my oldest just wants to help cook everything so and that’s like okay and then how do you talk to your kids about nutrition well when they’re in the kitchen with you and they’re cooking and in my case they’re not just in the kitchen and cooking but they’re helping

Speaker:
With um sometimes they’re out fishing with us or out hunting with us and then they’re also helping process all the meat so there’s a lot of I wouldn’t say I’ve never I’ve ever thought about sitting down and having a conversation about that. But it’s just sort of part of our life. It’s just in the atmosphere. It’s just caught rather than taught. And I think those things, if you really want your kids to take them with them, if you’re trying to teach them and give them these little even short and well-meaning sermons about where food comes from, they’re probably not going to want that. But if they’re just catching it because it’s in the air and it’s part of what they breathe, then those ideas are actually going to be a part of who they are. And they aren’t going to be, even if you have a child who naturally wants to rebel against what you say, they don’t even, like,

Speaker:
It’s being caught. So it’s a

Speaker:
Lot harder to be like, if, oh, here she goes again, and I’m going to actively work hard to reject this idea that’s being taught to me.

Speaker:
Has Sam ever told your kids, it’s good to catch your own fish? Yeah. Like, does he have to say that? Or do they just, they’re like, I love catching fish with Dottie. It’s so fun. And like when you were here last time, your kids turned everything into a fishing pole. You know, like Emma’s walking around with a fork. This has my fishing pole.

Speaker:
Yeah, and now it’s a bow and arrow. But yes, exactly. And so, and so, and then, and then we go outside. And I might start a load of laundry before I go. A load of laundry? Start a load of, maybe like throw something in the wash on the way out. because we have no rags left. So I’m like, okay, put the rags

Speaker:
In the wash.

Speaker:
And we go outside and maybe we go to the beach or maybe we’re just walking in the yard or going up to the kid’s fort or whatever. And, um,

Speaker:
And they’re just

Speaker:
Pointing out things they see and they’re, you know, I’m not really doing much. I’m usually bringing a book with me and I’ll like find a place to sit.

Speaker:
You bring five books. I’ve seen.

Speaker:
I bring a picnic basket full of books and I have brought as many as like with me because I’m unrealistic um but no yeah so I’ll sit and read and that way uh and I’ll really just not discourage if like they need me for like somebody got her or something but I really discourage them from like being in my space I’m like go go out but bring you know bring me things you see and they are like bringing and again I mean I’m not asking for narrations but they’re coming and they’re telling me everything that they see and what they notice. And then they’re kind of building things. And then we go home and we start making lunch. And if it’s raining, because sometimes it’s raining pretty heavily and we’re inside, but then it’s kind of the same thing. I kind of sit back somewhere and I’m reading or doing something that needs to be done. And they’re doing the same thing. But inside with maybe maybe a toy, maybe a book, whatever, or, or we’re sitting on the couch reading, but, um, and then it’s lunch and I make them clean before we eat. So all, so like we’ll do like a quick, if we were inside, then we’re cleaning before lunch and everything needs to be picked up because they’re hungry and they’re motivated to do so.

Speaker:
And then, and then we eat and,

Speaker:
Um, If we can go back outside, great. If we couldn’t go outside in the morning because it was raining and we can now, great. Anyway, so all of these, and then we’re reading out loud again at the table. And some people will do like kind of a dedicated morning time where they’re maybe doing some nursery rhymes and poetry or a fairy tale or a read aloud and they’re kind of in Bible and they’re just all like kind of just going through them all. And I just separate it. So we do like Bible at breakfast and then we do like usually fun nursery rhymes and things at lunch and then maybe like a fairy tale over a snack.

Speaker:
Anyway, so we just kind of spread it through the day that way.

Speaker:
And that’s easier for me. And same thing, like quick run through the house, clean up, and I start making supper around four.

Speaker:
We eat early. We eat at five at the latest, sometimes earlier than that. Because, you know, the end of the day is probably where I struggle the most. And so I just want like everything done. I want the kitchen in my energy. And like, that’s when, you know, I’m trying, like, we’re going to start doing baths in bedtime. And I am usually, it’s just me and I am like rotating. Like, okay, now it’s this kid’s turn. Now it’s this kid’s turn. Okay, the oldest is playing with the baby while I get the middle down from bed because he’s usually asleep first. And like, so like, there’s not going to be any more cleaning. And when, by the time my oldest is in bed, I just go to bed. So, um, I want the kitchen completely done, put away everything done before six o’clock because at six o’clock, we’re going to start getting ready for bed. And the first one will be down by seven and the second one will be down by eight and hopefully the third by like eight . So, and then I’m asleep by nine if, if, if I’m lucky. Yeah. But that’s what I go for. so I mean how what’s I mean in all of that like which part was life which part was school which part was kitchen like it’s just all so mixed up um that I don’t think you could separate it so that’s my answer I

Speaker:
Feel like it’s important to point out in what you said you haven’t started school yet and yet there’s a lot of things that you said so if somebody’s like oh is she an unschooler? Like, no, this is literally preschool. So the kids already, their familiarity with the stories, the tales. And I don’t know, do you sit down and read a fairy tale or do I just hear you rambling them off to the kids? Do you sit down and sing nursery rhymes in like the nursery rhyme minute slot? Or do I just hear you singing them to the kids all the time? Like it’s just sort of dispersed throughout.

Speaker:
And adding lessons to what we’re already doing is really easy because we already have the anchor points and habits and rhythms set up. And that’s what I wanted to bring out that I didn’t is, you know, when I start adding lessons, it’s okay. Um, we’re gonna, we’re gonna, you know, after, after breakfast probably is we’re already sitting and reading together. And I might, um, have the other, the two little kids just give them something to fidget with or, or even while they’re eating food. And I might just sit, um, sit with Ireland and do one of her readings for school. And then I might add another one later. And I might have to when my kids are, I might do it all while the baby’s taking a nap. You know, I don’t know. I don’t know how it’s going to work out best. And I’m sure it’s going to be constantly fluctuating as things change because my littles are littler. Um,

Speaker:
But the habits and rhythms are already set up. So if you want to homeschool, like my advice would be a couple of things is get your kids in the habits of like cleaning up and contributing to the work of the house as early as possible. When they’re one years old and they want to help you empty the dishwasher and or they want to help you sweep the floor and it takes like minutes, let them.

Speaker:
Because one day they’re going to be helpful. So like let that stuff take the time it takes and get, um, get a good rhythm for, you know, meals and laundry when cleanup happens and then learn like, and then know what you want to do. But you, you want to have pretty good habits, um, beforehand so that it’s not like, oh, I need to learn how to manage a house and run a homeschool and i’m doing all of this at the same time like and how yeah like no they should already be really good helpers and if they’re not take six months and don’t start school and work on habits get them helping at home get them to where you can tell them to do something without it starting you know a battle um let them let them be ready to listen let them be ready to help and and stop everything and work on that and then like figure out what you need to run your house well and then think about school but don’t don’t try to start if there are areas that are like causing extreme stress and overwhelm already get those situated like it’s not going to be the end of the world if your kid starts at seven and a half versus at right at six you know like those things in time it might even be better depending on the child and for most kids it would be.

Speaker:
I like that. Um, Rachel, I’m going to pass the mic to you next. So let’s talk about cash. Yeah. I, I think the listener would like to hear it too. So Hannah said for homeschooling, I would really love to hear how people are balancing their daily chores and responsibilities. Plus cooking from scratch with their schooling time, especially if you have littles running around how much time do people spend on each thing? All right.

Speaker:
So I have a lot of littles. I have two schooling-aged children, an eight-year-old and a soon-to-be seven-year-old. And so I added my second student last year. And my next student is coming next year. And I have three littles who are insane.

Speaker:
They’re not lonely. All of my children are a lot,

Speaker:
Which is wonderful. They’re wonderful children, but they need a lot as well. So… Managing everything is hard. It is a struggle. And however, I’m not, because we are in the Charlotte Mason and, you know, education is an atmosphere, a discipline and a life. I don’t get as fussed about like, oh, we didn’t do school today kind of things like, you know, it’s okay. Every night we read about a book, and every night we do evening prayers together. That’s music and hymn study right there. We’re reading great literature together every night. It’s every night before bed. We always do that no matter what. So no matter what, they get at least those two things, even if I did zero school and the nutritional education. Yeah, so I do make all my food from scratch, and I really like making more elaborate things, So I have to try to scale. And I’m also really slow for, I don’t know why, but like dinner, making dinner always takes me an hour and a half. No matter what I do, it takes me forever.

Speaker:
It’s so frustrating. Because you’re feeding a lot.

Speaker:
Yeah, well, that too. I mean, I am feeding a lot of people. And I do, you know, to help offset that, I will make double batches for things. I make twice as much or three or four times as much as I need so that I can just refeed that. And so that does cut down on a lot of work. Like, yes, maybe it took me an hour and a half to make this dinner, but now I have dinner tomorrow night and all I have to do is put it in the oven and turn on the oven. And so now I don’t have that hour and a half tomorrow back. I can do some other projects. So that is one way that I kind of cut down on that. The other way I do it is that I have, we eat the same thing every day for lunch, which is…

Speaker:
Can you say?

Speaker:
Yes, it’s homemade bread. So I do have to make the bread ahead of time, but I make eight loaves at a time. And then I freeze them. Right now they’re all spelt. They’re fresh-milled spelt that my kids seem to really tolerate that well. And so that’s fine for them. So I do fresh-milled spelt, raw cheese, fresh local veggies, usually carrots or cucumbers. Yeah, we do. So I do grow a lot of – last year I had really great cucumbers and my kids would just eat them off the vine all the time.

Speaker:
Oh, no, no.

Speaker:
No, I had like . I had like cucumber plants. So not only – I mean, they’ll eat any dogs. Yes, yes.

Speaker:
Did they do their food? Right. Did they get a nutrition? Right.

Speaker:
Yes, yeah. So we do carrots and cucumbers or some other things that we have. Sometimes I have like fresh bean sprouts. And then I also do like a fruit, like apples or whatever seasonal. So I kind of try to do seasonal fruits because I don’t do any canned stuff. Not really. I’m not. We’re a very low sugar household and I haven’t figured out how to can fruits with very little sugar. So I don’t I don’t I just never ate that growing up. So I don’t like like canned peaches or anything like that. So I just never I never feed that. It’s usually and I live in California, so citrus and apples are always there in the winter. So when the winter comes, we just eat that in the summer. Right. Yeah.

Speaker:
But everybody says on the canning, everybody says you have to put sugar in when you’re canning fruit. And I literally never did. I don’t know why.

Speaker:
Maybe it’s just the industrial mindset. Got to have the sugar. I mean, really, if you look at the history of like how sugar we’re talking about that one time when it was like doubled in the recipes that you were looking at from the like the Joy of Cooking cookbook. Where like as the as the progressions they doubled the sugar so yeah no i don’t i don’t really do that much canned fruit no i do very i do none um i don’t really do dried fruit either because again i live in a place where there’s fruit year round so it’s like why would i do that i mean i i try sometimes i do frozen fruit we’ll do frozen we’ll do that like yogurt or oatmeal and stuff like that that’s really good but um But we don’t do any of that. So, yes, I do that. And that’s not like a super, super filling lunch. But right after lunch, I have a two-hour enforced nap time or quiet time. Can you talk about this,

Speaker:
The nap situation? Yes. I was talking about it last night.

Speaker:
Yes. Yeah. So I don’t have a lot of energy. I am kind of a low-energy mom. You wouldn’t think that because I have five kids and I make all my food from scratch and I garden and I homeschool. But you have as much energy as you can. else? You’ve just, I just, I don’t have a lot, you know, I have five little kids. Yes. Yes, I do. That’s right. Yeah. And a husband. So seven. Oh no.

Speaker:
But, um, but it’s very important for me to have that quiet space where no one is asking me for anything. No one is talking to me. no one needs anything from me so my littles take naps my youngest three take naps the oldest one is trying to not take naps but like we’ll just go lay down and if you don’t fall asleep in minutes you can get up and she’s asleep every time um and it kind of started out small i’d you know in the beginning naps were really a big deal my oldest napped until he was like six years old. He was napping three times a day until he was like three. It was a lot. He was really sick. So he’s not sick now. But the quiet time and my kids need the quiet time too. They need that like quiet letting alone where they can go play. My oldest will, they go into their room and they tell stories. They don’t want anyone to hear their stories, but they just like go and they’re like, I need to tell my story. And they go tell their stories. Or my oldest runs around and goes outside and find something to whittle or destroy outside. And, you know, yeah, there’s a lot of destruction. My kids are also very destructive. So I need that time. And, yeah, destructive letting alone. Let’s do it outside. Don’t do it inside.

Speaker:
And I just, I kind of started slower, right? Like it started with the naps. Like there was naps, you had to nap for at least an hour. And then I stretched it out long because I was not ready to refunction at an hour. And I mean, I’m honestly not even ready at two hours sometimes either. So you know, it kind of fluctuates in the day, but nap time is two hours. So you just sort of go slowly. Nope, you can’t come out. Yeah. You can play quietly in your room. You can read a book. That initial like setup stage the habit building stage is really hard when you’re already really taxed um but it’s so worth it teaching

Speaker:
Them or yeah get it okay yeah the

Speaker:
Initial teaching them the sat the doing the habit like you have to stay in your room for two hours that’s a really difficult stage to start with so

Speaker:
Kirsten’s not the perfect

Speaker:
Right start right absolutely okay

Speaker:
But but it’ll still be reaping rewards

Speaker:
Right it’s so worth it but it’s just like it’s a lot of struggle in the beginning the kids don’t understand why they can’t come out of their room they just want to play they just want to do something else but it’s like no you have to stay in your room you have to be quiet play quietly don’t be talking to each other i’m really noise sensitive too so like if i don’t get that quiet i’m just a hot mess later on so um that’s really yeah it’s a setting up of the habit so that your life can function well. And I’m trying for myself now to get myself a little more weaned off of that so that I don’t have to have the entire two hours. So it’s like maybe only one hour of rest for me. And the second hour I can either do some of the extra school stuff with my kids that I didn’t get to in the morning or prep for dinner or something like that. That’s still a nice idea in the sky for me. I haven’t managed to make that happen yet. And sometimes I can, but it’s just, you know, I’m tired, man. It’s a lot.

Speaker:
Well, that that’s I’m glad you said that, because that’s something that Allison and I’ve talked about, too. Like when you have different health things that you’re working through, sometimes the and you and I, we talk a lot about this. So so we kind of know what each other is going through. And And like the shape of things has to move with that because that happens with Allison. Sometimes she talks about like her neck or things that go out and it’s all related to stress, which everybody, we know that, you know, but it is true. But…

Speaker:
When I remember when Jacob was really small, a really good friend of mine from Virginia Beach, still a very, very good friend. She had four kids and she had the exact same thing every day at the exact same time. All for and she said and people say, oh, but your oldest is . And she was like, yeah, he can go lay down and read. And she was like, I need the time as much as they need the time. But I also thought, how wise that even I’m sure in their teen years that they’re in college now, they’re not like taking that rest. but they’ll come back to it undoubtedly when they’re adults. And they’ll remember how valuable it was in that mom took the time too. I remember calling her from here and it was like, I knew like what time it was in Virginia. And I said, Oh, are you in your garden? She’s like, how did you know I’m in my garden? And I was like, cause it’s nap time. I know what you do when your kids are in their nap. And she found it for her, it was healing. And now I see like looking back, I see how functional she was able to remain and that she really would have spiraled without that. And her husband is also gone all the time because he was in the military too. And so he was just gone. So she had to figure out how do I get space when I’m the only adult for like a year at a time. And so now I look back and I’m like, oh, she was so wise. But she said the same. She said, if you don’t start young, it is harder, but they do learn.

Speaker:
Yeah. And oh no, Don’t I lose my train of thought. Shoot.

Speaker:
You’re tired.

Speaker:
That’s where you left. No, I had something else I wanted to say about Andrea’s… This is why i prep ahead of time because in the moment i’m like i

Speaker:
I that’s why i write like pages yeah

Speaker:
No there’s um i’m probably just gonna start talking you can cut this all out later

Speaker:
And bring in some of the liturgical like what i’m gonna tell kirsten i’m

Speaker:
Only yeah yeah oh i was gonna say andrea you talked about like an ancestral lifestyle is not a modern lifestyle and that’s so true like the only reason i can have a two-hour quiet time is that i don’t do anything during the week like

Speaker:
Yeah i stay

Speaker:
Home all the time

Speaker:
In terms of you’re not going to like

Speaker:
Appointments no i don’t go to a plan i have one day out where i go out and i go shopping and i get the raw milk and the local vegetables the things i can’t get from and you voxer and i voxer you yes um so it’s that’s the one day i

Speaker:
Leave and but

Speaker:
Otherwise i’m home all week i mean occasionally i have things that all go out for, but it’s really hard for me to be gone because I need that quiet time. And so if we go somewhere, because we do live far away from everything, that now I’m for sure not getting that quiet time and the kids aren’t getting it and they’re really overstimulated and I’m overstimulated and it’s just a lot for everyone. So that’s very important.

Speaker:
Which again, people will say to you what I know they say to Alison, because she’ll describe her lifestyle and they say, well, you’re so lucky. And she goes, no, we built this. Like we did this. This was a choice. We looked at things and we discarded things and we intentionally gave up other things in order to have this, which, but you go to choir practice. Do you do it on the same days you do errands or?

Speaker:
Yeah, it’s not every week, though. It’s, yeah, I do. I do have some other things that I do, but I go by myself. Like, I don’t take my kids to choir practice. Yeah, so it’s not the same thing. When I do have to take my kids to stuff, it’s a lot of effort and a lot of work. And I mean, it’s worth it sometimes, but it is just a huge amount of effort.

Speaker:
And how would you say this whole how do you structure your day plays in with the idea of liturgical work?

Speaker:
Yeah, so I think that is important. You know, at breakfast time, we will, we read from the Bible and we read the lives of the saints. So the saint, every day, there’s a different book. It’s called the prologue. So it’s a collection of, written by a saint, I forget his name. It’ll come back to me in the middle of the thing and I’ll interrupt myself to tell you what it is. And it’s a collection of all the lives of the saints because every day has several saints that are associated to it. And so it has like a short, like one or three paragraph description of all the saints of the day or not all of them, but a section of them. And then there’s like a little hymn that you can read. And then there’s a reflection where he writes a reflection on virtue or something from the Bible or the lives that he’ll bring in the story from one of the lives of the saints to illustrate something. And then there’s like a little like a preaching at the end on a piece of scripture, usually the Old Testament.

Speaker:
But is that separate from one place?

Speaker:
Yes, that’s not the same thing. I do that while the kids eat. The reading. The reading, yeah. So it’s literally morning time. It’s literally morning time.

Speaker:
So you’re reading like a story. Yeah. You’re doing a hymn study. Yeah.

Speaker:
Yeah. And so we do do a hymn study. So then we also sing. My kids are learning. There’s like eight tones. And so we’re learning the eight tones, the troparian for each Sunday. So we’re learning that. Yeah. Yeah. No. And so now they know them. I mean, like, I’ve been Orthodox for years. And I didn’t start Orthodox. But… I only know these hymns after years of singing them every Sunday, but my kids know them immediately now because we go over the words. What does this mean? And so then we talk about theology and whatnot.

Speaker:
Did you see the moms in the discussion thread talking about how like in the states that count hours for school, they actually count church? And I had never thought about it, but I was like, yeah, I’ve always said, oh, all the richness I got from church. I can tell you a lot about ancient history just because I was at church. I can tell you a lot about, you know, scripture just from the time in church, or a lot about hymns or all the hundreds of hours of choir practice and being in dramas and writing dramas for the church. Like, all of that was because of time spent in church, and I never thought about it. But I was like, yeah, that’s part of your education, absolutely.

Speaker:
Yeah, so that’s part of the liturgical living that we do in the morning. And then, you know, we pray before every meal sort of thing. And…

Speaker:
Could you define liturgy?

Speaker:
Oh, liturgy. Okay, so liturgy means work of the people. So it’s a work that you do. It’s a work of praising God together kind of thing. And so… In orthodoxy, it’s a lot of repetitives. We use Lord have mercy over and over again, asking God. Yeah, asking God to help us. Lord have mercy. Lord have mercy. And, you know, oh, Lord, bless. Bless this work. Right. Lord, save us. Like all those things are repeated throughout our day. If I was a better Christian, I would cross myself before anything I did and say, Lord, bless this work. Yes, really.

Speaker:
But you say a phrase a lot to me, which doesn’t sound like, oh, thank God, but you say, like, thanks to God.

Speaker:
Oh, glory be to God. Yeah, glory be to God. You say it all the time. Yeah, well, because we, as Christians, right, like, glory, like, malfunctioning. Glory be to God for all things, right? Like, God gives us all things. And even the hard and difficult things that include, you know, overstimulated mom who just wants to be by herself for five minutes. Two hours, please. He’s not allowed. You know, all of those things are teaching us something.

Speaker:
Glory be to God for all things. There’s this beautiful akathis, which is a short prayer. It’s like -minute prayer service that is full of singing. And it was written by this priest who was in the gulag. And he was in the gulag when he wrote this akathis. And it’s called Glory Be to God for All Things. And so we sing it in my church. We sing it on Thanksgiving. so we go on Thanksgiving morning and we sing for minutes and it’s like glory for you who has shown us the stars and for like the beauty in nature and you know glory for you for the sadness and the hard times that teach us to draw near to you right because when things are hard if you draw near to God that’s you know that’s your solace and your comfort so yeah so I try to I try to incorporate those prayers into our everyday glory be to God for all things oh Lord bless you know lord have mercy and it just kind of forms a rhythm in like that’s just lord bless you know thanks you for this food bless this food and drink of thy servants you know that’s all a part of it and then

Speaker:
It’s always at your like tip of your

Speaker:
Tongue yeah yeah it just comes out now i mean after years and years of doing it you just say it and you know i think that’s what i want for my kids too with like in terms of food like just years and years of doing it you just you just do it. And some of my kids have this dream. They want to buy the farm or not the farm, but the property next door to us and have a farm on it. They want to marry the local church girl and move there and have a farm. And I, nothing wrong with that. I think it’s so cute. I don’t think it’s going to last, but I think that it’s really adorable that right now that’s what they want. And so to me, that says right now we’re living in, you know, we’re living on our property. We’re gardening. We have chickens. We make all of our food. And my kids want that because they want that life. And I also want to feel nourished by it. Yeah, it is nourishing. Like during quiet time, I forgot to say my son, he’s really artsy and he crafts. Yeah. And he.

Speaker:
He deconstructs these cardboard boxes and uses hot glue and makes these incredible like knight armor and swords and guns. And just he has all that he loves weapons and destruction. But, you know. I do a painting icon. Oh, he did. He painted an icon. There’s a recently canonized Alaskan saint, Matushka Olga. And he drew an icon of her. And it’s beautiful. And so I have it in my icon corner because it’s just so beautiful. It was because we were reading about her stories and, yeah. So, yeah. So, everything is just, it’s a part of life that God is there and everywhere. And at one time, when my kids were little, I don’t do this anymore, but when my kids were little, I would do, there’s the prayer of the hours. And so, every hour has a prayer that you can pray. It’s called the prayer of the hours that you pray at every hour. And so, you read, like, a psalm and then there’s a couple of prayers that go with that each hour. And so I had alarms on my phone for the third hour, which is nine o’clock and the sixth hour, which is noon and the ninth hour, which is three o’clock. And I would just read the prayer of theirs, which is like a two minute prayer. And I would just stop and read that during that time out loud. Yeah. To them in front of my eye. I wouldn’t necessarily make them come. Sometimes I did make them come, but like I would just stop and do that. And so when I did that, that was really good. I don’t do that anymore. But when I did that, especially when they were little, that was really, that was really helpful.

Speaker:
Welcome to the Orthodox Podcast with Rachel Duke. Oh no, I said my last name!

Speaker:
You’re known. You’re known. Uh some things are coming to mind while you were talking but like when you’re always thinking about the things you’re describing and i was thinking about like i read kristen laverne’s daughter last year and i don’t it’s microphone goodness i don’t think i remember did you did you guys read kristen laverne’s daughter i don’t think she ever like went to school did she i don’t think she did but

Speaker:
The richness of what she learned was embedded in their life. So she knew the days. She knew the rituals. She knew where to hang the bacon. She knew how to make the ale. How many times is she making ale in those books? Yeah. She knew all the plants. She knew the animals. She went out with her father. They ate the rye bread out of the saddlebags. She knew how to ski and cross country and she knew the songs of the church. She knew all the rituals and the prayers and what the icons mean. And that’s just embedded in a medieval lifestyle, which is in a sense what we’re all after. And so then when there’s things we add onto, so I think I want to make like a distinction in case anybody’s listening. Like we know what we’re, I’m gesturing at the ladies, we know what we’re coming from. But some people might say, okay, so Charlotte Mason is unschooling, unstructured, and they’re shaking their head. Of course, it’s not shaking your head because you’re on senior yet. But yeah, Leah and Rachel are shaking their head.

Speaker:
I’m just a lesser wife, so, you know, but they’re the favored wives. But that’s true. That’s true. Your eyes are weary, not bright.

Speaker:
Rachel and Leah in the Bible. Slash Leah’s stark lore. But the Charlotte Mason education, since I think we’re kind of coming down on this hammering Charlotte Mason a lot, I might as well say, it is not a form of unschooling. There is very much formal education. And people have said to me before, oh, you’re Charlotte Mason, you’re unschooling. And I think it’s because all our entire life is so woven into school. People who just see us from the outside, is he at the top of the stairs by himself? They can’t pick apart what we’re doing of school, But they also aren’t, okay, they aren’t with us when we do the, like, the formal lessons. So they, um…

Speaker:
I’ll bet Gary’s outside and he ran back in. So we very much have formal lessons. I have a stack in my closet of the books that Jacob finished this last term. It’s a gigantic stack. Winston Churchill and Julius Caesar and Shakespeare and just a lot of actual, very formal education that we go through. And then the girls, Rudyard Kipling, An Island Story, Ancient British History, Anglo-Saxon you know like there’s a lot of actual sitting down you know mathematics Jacob I think he went through like seven books in one year like it so that so Charlotte Mason there are portions of time where you literally are sitting and doing some work but it’s also hard to pick apart because the work is so beautiful and it’s so woven and then it turns up in so many like you could sit down with your kids and read the burgess bird book and then we’ll be outside and like my kids will be like hey i see a wren it’s jenny wren see she’s scolding like they which is in the burgess bird book um they they’re pulling it back into their everyday life you know and like you said leah you’re like i’m not asking them to narrate things but like kids will come which is

Speaker:
Why narration is so effective it’s not like oh we’re gonna come up with this thing we’re gonna come up with this thing that is like the secret to how kids learn and we’re gonna you know and this is something like When Charlotte, yeah, when Charlotte Mason was writing her principles of education, she wasn’t like, well, this is this thing that I’m going to make up and I’m going to name after myself. That was that was definitely not happening.

Speaker:
She would probably be so appalled. She would probably

Speaker:
Be appalled by that. But what she did is over plus years of teaching, she started noticing that there was these principles like that. These things were just true. This is how people learn. this is how children learn this is how persons learn and and she started um like writing all of that down but like you you don’t have to you know fully sign on for the whole charlotte mason life to um to bring in some of these principles and what’s amazing is how many people are homeschooling and then they find out about um you know mason’s writings or whatever they’re like oh that’s what we do so they’re like because it’s because it’s how people learn right right

Speaker:
We’re like you’re already doing it

Speaker:
So narration narration is kind of telling back

Speaker:
Um you know

Speaker:
So you’ll do a reading and then and then your kids right yeah so you’re gonna do a reading and your kids are hearing it and you’re just only gonna read it once you’re not because you want them paying attention you want them um able to give their attention and after the reading you’re gonna say okay What did you notice? And they’re going to kind of tell it or like, you know, tell it, tell it, tell it back to me or whatever you’re going to say. And, or maybe you’re going to say, draw a picture of the story. Like anyway, and they’re going to start talking and they’re not going to just give a little summary, but what they’re going to do is probably be like, oh, and then this happened oh and that reminded me of this in this book and that remind and then and and that remind me of this and that’s what happens like when we’re outside um you know uh ireland will bring me something uh maybe like a crab or starfish or whatever and then she’ll be like and then remember that time that we were walking here and we saw this one and and she’s kind of learning like the different habitats and the different areas and remember that story right And so these things, like this is already what kids do. You don’t have to teach your kids to narrate your kids.

Speaker:
We try to narrate. In fact, yeah, right.

Speaker:
Our kids run and they’re like trying to tell us. They’re trying to tell us. And we’re like, can we not? And then you’re, so what parents have to do is not teach their kids to narrate unless they’ve already broken and their kids have stopped. Parents just have to like stay out of the way and let them narrate. And let them narrate even when it’s boring and they they’re talking about something that’s really really dumb like you have to let them talk about it and then when it comes time for school that like process is already going to be there but this isn’t something that’s like special that you’re adding on this is what they already do and you are um you are nourishing it and cultivating it but you are not you do not have to teach your kids how to narrate you have to maybe pull out the weeds and you have to get out of the way and that’s that’s how it works it’s

Speaker:
A good narration on narration i’m an

Speaker:
Expert my oldest child is almost serious old yeah

Speaker:
You’ve been school

Speaker:
We we had narrations yesterday was it yesterday it feels like a lifetime ago as a group when we We did picture study together and Sean, I’m looking at Kirsten, her husband, Sean, had never, he, nobody’s told him to narrate, right? He’s not Charlotte Mason education or something. He didn’t read a book about narration or whatever. And I, so after we all looked at the picture, I think you weren’t there when he started, you had the baby. Yeah. So we, yeah, I know, which it just so happened that way, but I didn’t think about afterwards, but I’m actually super glad I did because it gave us an immediate example of when somebody’s not being like told not to be their person, then how they, this is the principles of the like personhood. But we all looked at a picture silently for a few minutes and then we put it down so we can’t see it and then I asked Sean first I said can you tell me what you saw in the picture and he started and normally I would then follow up and say was there anything it reminded you of was there anything else you noticed just to encourage more but he did all of that like he said I saw this it looked like this it really reminded me of this it also something it made me think of was this and and he pulled all that in and and then he was kind of like oh sorry i don’t know and we were all just like does this guy just like narrate the socks off the mine

Speaker:
I was like dang it sean and

Speaker:
Also what’s important is not necessarily the narration that your kids come up with what they say or what they write what’s important is what’s happening in their minds when you’re asking for that so like your kids can give some really bad narrations um then they will and they do but what the the work behind it so you can’t be like oh that was a really bad narration like maybe they didn’t comprehend it maybe i need to fix this there’s nothing to be fixed there is a process happening and it is good and

Speaker:
It comes later too Like, my kids, sometimes he’ll come up, it’ll be like a month later, maybe a year later, we’ve read some history story. And he’s like, Mom, I made a connection. And he’ll, like, connect to, you know, like, some literature story with this history or some Bible story with this history. And he’s like, that’s just like this. I’m like, great connection.

Speaker:
You know, like, they’re connecting that war and that saint. Wait a minute. That was. And you’re just like, how did you. But that’s why Charlotte Mason calls narration the act of knowing. Because I’m doing this with you guys on the Voxer thread. So I’m reading some books about health and we made a Voxer thread because I said, I need to narrate this to somebody because I need to know it. And so reading the chapter and then telling you, okay, I read this chapter on adrenal health and here’s what it said. Then you’ve heard me. I stopped and I’m like, wait a minute, where did, how, like I realized that.

Speaker:
The gap in my understanding when I try to tell you what I read. And Allison is a very good narrator. She’s orally narrating her entire book. Like we were reading, how fat was that stack of papers we had so far? Allison had to verbally narrate that. She doesn’t type it by hand. She has to verbally narrate it. So she’s reading. She was telling me she’ll have like books and pages like all laid out on the bed. And then she’s narrating to a microphone everything that she and it’s just it’s insane it’s insane to me because that is we all know from doing it how hard that is and she said that it she had to work really hard to be able to do this so i feel like the book itself i want to put it out into the shout listen community to be like this is a book that was this is an oral narration on oats like go read it and you can see what that narration does. But when we narrate is, I think, one of the most sacred times in school, because all my kids know, when it is your turn to narrate, when Rachel is talking and saying what she heard, you do not interrupt, because then the terrain of thought is jolted off, and it never really comes back the same. So you do not interrupt Rachel while she narrates. If you say the name wrong, I don’t correct you during the narration, even if you say it wrong times. And if you get a little fact wrong, I don’t correct you during the narration because I want to hear what you noticed.

Speaker:
And then when I ask a couple more questions at the end, was there anything else that you saw?

Speaker:
I think my kids kind of like that because they’re like, oh, like nobody can interrupt me. Like I can say whatever I want. And sometimes they do. I have one in particular who will start adding, you know, all kinds of stuff. And I’ll say, well, that’s like a really good story, but that wasn’t at all what we read. But look at how it’s sparking off this incredible story. And Rachel, you send your kids to this. Leah’s seen my oldest do this, where he will explode if he doesn’t go outside at least two times a day. And like, if you’ve been up to the garden, there’s a worn path that he has worn. Like it is just packed dirt because he paces and tells himself stories. And then he’ll read a book in school. And sometimes we actually have to quit early before I have fun because he’ll say, can I please go outside? Because this gave me a really good idea for my story. And I’m like, we’re just reading about like Augustus Caesar. And I like, I’d want to know what happened, but I’m not taking that. I’m like, yeah, go tell yourself a story. And he’ll just go And we’ll hear him just talking, but it’s like your kids. He doesn’t want us to interfere with his process. My children also won’t tell me their stories,

Speaker:
Which is annoying, but it’s fine. It’s fine.

Speaker:
When they’re taking care of us with royalties, then we won’t mind. That’s fine.

Speaker:
That’s fine. Yes. Be a famous author. Give me money. It’s fine. But also what’s funny is that at the end of each day, we also do like a gratitude, like a couple of things you’re grateful for for the day. And so sometimes my kids, maybe to be funny or maybe just they’ll be like, I remember that, which is how they start all their narrations. And then they’re like, oh, I mean, I’m grateful for, you know. And what’s funny is, you know, it’s part of the litany that they tell me at the end of the day is dinner was good and that it was a wonderful day. Like those are like they say those every time, like regardless of what the food was or anything. It’s so funny.

Speaker:
That’s so beautiful. Kirsten, I want to ask you the question. How are you balancing your chores, responsibilities, cooking? Your little one isn’t in school or doing school yet. But as we know, the education is already beginning. And like i see you as a parent you’re an attentive parent so like it it obviously takes it’s it’s really cool with kirsten because she was on the zoom calls from when her baby was like born so i literally feel like i’ve seen him grow up and now to see him like little man running around just like climbing on our giant dogs and hugging them it’s like feels so full circle so so share about how could I forget? Share about how your day works.

Speaker:
Yeah. Well, first of all, I, I feel so inspired sitting here. I feel like there’s things that, um, that I know I’m going to do now and things that I’m realizing that I’m not doing it that I could. Um, so you guys are doing amazing. um yeah i think let’s see um okay um i think i think just with having one and he’s been a baby for most you know most of my time with him and now he’s coming he’s kind of becoming a little kid, um he’s just capable of more than i think i give him credit for in terms of of helping around the house like I do I do like he wants to help when everyone wants to help I let him help um like he has his own set of knives he chops he chops up our vegetables like we have a standing stool um but also I I kind of you know if he doesn’t want to I don’t ask him to but like getting a rhythm of like we always clean up or we always um you know like you could at least bring your cup and your plate to the table every day. Those are things I think I’ve done a couple times, but we’re going to do. Um, let’s see. One.

Speaker:
Thing that I want

Speaker:
To build off of, Rachel, you’re inspiring me that you have two hours a day with five children where you do not work. Um, maybe sometimes you work some of it.

Speaker:
But it’s not very,

Speaker:
I don’t know. You have them yes that is yes like.

Speaker:
It built up that large of a chunk of time because it probably didn’t like it didn’t

Speaker:
Start it didn’t start no yeah but the.

Speaker:
More kids you add the culture’s already

Speaker:
Established so yeah yeah and i have a very sweet like like loves to read little guy so he’s perfect to start with and we have been for the last let’s see he’s months we’ve been doing it for like, I don’t know, four or five months. Like we have quiet time first thing in the morning. Um, so yeah, I will have like something, I’ll have hot coffee and, and we just go buy his books and my books and I’ll usually read, but sometimes I will just kind of be quiet or write or, or something. And we set a timer and he really like attached to that. Like he really believes the timer. He doesn’t believe me, but he believes when I set a timer that the set time, If it’s not over yet, we do not yet read a story. So at the end, we read a story together. So he has something to look forward to.

Speaker:
So we started out with minutes, and now we do,

Speaker:
I think, . And sometimes it’s a little more or less. But I think I could build up from that or have another time in the day to do a quiet time. I think I don’t ask. Yeah, I could ask more of him. He’s getting bigger.

Speaker:
And he does.

Speaker:
He loves it. Oh, and he’s been asking. Okay, this is great. Like, the last month, he’s been asking for quiet time. Like, in different moments.

Speaker:
Is he so self-wetting?

Speaker:
Yes, he is. Yeah.

Speaker:
Yeah yeah i’m quiet alone time yeah i just go off with her blanket and like lay down somewhere

Speaker:
And she learned that somewhere.

Speaker:
Yeah i don’t yeah yeah because she likes from i mean about she’s

Speaker:
Like listen mom you need quiet time

Speaker:
She’s just like she’ll just go and now she will now i know she’s getting it from me because she’s like i’m gonna go outside and have quiet time and she brings like six books that she that are like chapter books like she’s not reading and she brings her blanket and she lays her blanket and she looks at the books and like yeah like now i’m like yeah this

Speaker:
Is both the

Speaker:
But she started that.

Speaker:
Both the greatest and worst thing about being a parent is that they will do what you do

Speaker:
Right if you right it’s the hardest part about parenting is parenting yourself yeah

Speaker:
Absolutely yeah which.

Speaker:
Is why it’s so much easier to start

Speaker:
The sooner you can and the gift

Speaker:
You’re gonna start yeah start with things it’s never too early yeah

Speaker:
And i see the way you guys have your lives and the way that you guys are still like you’re reading you have you have like really like.

Speaker:
You have thoughts you want to share and talk about that are not just to do with your chores and your work and your, your like, um, practical side of life.

Speaker:
Like, I think that’s wonderful and that’s not something I see in every mom. Um, but you guys have carved out this and, um, integrated these things. So yeah, I feel, I feel inspired. So thank you. Um, but in terms of other things, So the question is what we’re doing to kind of start on that path, right? Towards homeschooling and, yeah, integrating. How do you balance everything? Oh, okay. Yeah. How do you work with a little guy? Yeah. Especially with just one. Right.

Speaker:
Well, it’s actually so much harder. Really?

Speaker:
Yes. That’s nice. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, I’m lucky he’s a participator, so he does want to be involved. So um like I said like having him on a standing stool with his chopping knives um yeah we also use a lot of music in the house like he loves music so he can in books like if he’s doing that and I’m doing my kitchen stuff like he really can occupy himself um he’s a little old man I think so like I really can do yeah so cute yeah yeah um so I think yeah let’s see um.

Speaker:
Sorry my mic yeah um in terms i’m just kind of thinking as you’re talking about narration i think we have started to do that a little bit too um i guess this isn’t about um organizing but i thought this was kind of interesting um um he’s been starting to read his stories to me um so like i guess that’s kind of the beginning of the charlotte mason thing like i’ll ask him like okay you know the story like can you tell me this story and so it’s like the little the very hungry caterpillar book he’ll go through every page and tell me so i think yeah and he wants to he’s now he’s like you can’t say all the words but he tries and it’s funny seeing what he misses and what he goes back to and like repeats and but it’s the first it’s like it’s a seed of, kind of this narration education that you’re talking about. I was realizing we’re kind of doing that.

Speaker:
Yeah, great job. Thank you. Ask him. Ask him questions. And so even if he’s not actually answering you, he’s even if he’s not actually answering you in the moment because he’s just such a little guy he’s getting in the idea of like thinking about it and like you said some of it comes back years later um so just being in the habit and knowing that you and sean are like willing to listen and have him say it is really helpful for being able to narrate

Speaker:
Yeah yeah um and i think another thing that’s kind of getting his um okay thank you i’m just like not doing the mic right at all everyone’s helping back i’m looking at the.

Speaker:
Recording thing and i can see how

Speaker:
Quiet it is okay all right so okay yeah okay so straight up um one thing that he’s loved ever since potty training is we always tell a story on the potty and um recently i’ve been asking him like well what’s the story about so he’ll he’ll bring up things that I would always tell like oh things I’d always bring to the story and now he’s like actually very picky about his stories he’s like it has to have this it has to have this yeah so maybe he’s got his fairy tales yeah yeah there’s.

Speaker:
No point if he doesn’t save her from the dragon

Speaker:
Yes usually it’s a lot less um um lower stakes In my stories, there’s like a tea party and everyone goes to bed at the end of the day. Yes.

Speaker:
And did you ever give him, like, you never gave him a worksheet on, oh, a story has a tea party. You just always told stories of tea parties. So now he knows there’s a tea party in the story. Very American. But he realized. Yes. So you can see how he’s getting that without you explicitly saying and checking, did you understand the elements of the story? Can you tell me the elements of, like he doesn’t have, you just always are bringing out the story in a fashion that then he recognizes. And that’s a really important part of reading and learning story. And also important to remember, most of history storytelling was oral. People weren’t reading it. And so they knew what belonged in a story by just having heard it whenever the show was in town or whenever somebody was telling the stories. Yeah.

Speaker:
Yeah. No, I love it.

Speaker:
And I also do poetry at dinnertime. And my four-year-olds will always ask me, which is you can’t speak very well, but, Mama, we use poetry. We do poetry, Mama. It’s so, you know, she’s the one that’s always asking me. I have one of those. And she’s always reminding me. I always forget. She’s like, Mom, let’s read the poetry.

Speaker:
I’m like, okay, okay,

Speaker:
You know, it’s all very good.

Speaker:
No, I love how I do think having a child has made my life so much more structured and so much more liturgical. And they remember the thing that you’re supposed to do each day. And like, yeah.

Speaker:
Parishoners.

Speaker:
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker:
It’s so enriching and good because, I don’t know, I feel like I used to be, I used to believe so much more I thought I was just a spontaneous person That’s just what I did And I just could only live from the heart But I’ve been realizing In the last number of years Since being orthodox Since being a mother And life is liturgical You need to have rhythm You need to go back to things And repeat And things get richer and richer The more you do that Yeah Yeah.

Speaker:
That is something that probably comes up in Orthodox conversation a lot. I know it does just in Lutheran or wherever anywhere liturgy is, but where people say, if it isn’t spontaneous, it isn’t genuine, and I think what you find by engaging in a, whether it’s related to your faith practice or not engaging in a liturgical type lifestyle, you find with the repetitive comes the room for the genuine. And so there’s, I think there’s a, I also used to say, I’m just spontaneous. I don’t want to have a schedule or plan things because then I’m boxed in. And then I realized that just made me frantic and disorganized. And then when I had a schedule or a liturgy to follow that was predictable. If I varied from it, there was intention in that. But also there was safety in saying, well, we already know this is going to happen and then this is going to happen. So within the that and the this, I get to be myself fully because I’m not also trying to plan out and decide and structure things before and after.

Speaker:
True moments of spontaneity can arise safely.

Speaker:
Creatively and true creativity like like uh what did hannah say like writing a sonnet you’re like oh but i can only do like slam poetry because that’s creativity but in i’ve written one sonnet and it’s really hard because of the rules but it just pushes you and like you have to stretch and count the line the needed where’s the turn and like but the creativity that came out of that that. Would it have been more creative if I could just write whatever order of words I wanted? I don’t actually think it would have been.

Speaker:
One of the things that I started doing, well, I did it before, but I’m restarting doing it again, is that I planned out my whole year on Google calendars for like my, like the big chores that needed to be done, you know, so we heat, like planting, yeah, planting, ordering seeds in the winter, firewood for the, you know, for the winter prep. And I also did like meal preps before birthdays or something like that or Christmas or holidays, somewhere where you had like a big meal prep that you need a couple of days, especially ancestrally before to prep the food, prep the rice, giant the camp house. Exactly. You had to do some prep ahead of time. So I put those blocks on my calendar. And so and I didn’t put just like one day. I put like three or four days like I need to order birthday presents for my kids in this next three days or something like that. And it’s really kind of helpful because it sort of gives you that like, okay, like the last three weeks I spent before I came here purging and organizing my house because I finally moved in after two years of not moving in, right?

Speaker:
But now I’m done.

Speaker:
Like, I’m kind of all done with that. And I’m ready to move on to something else the next couple of weeks. Yeah, we’re over it are about the church, because it’s the start of the new church year. And then it’s my daughter’s birthday. And then it’s firewood, because it’s firewood season. And I need to be warm this winter, you know, so and then there’s Christmas, and there’s all those things and February blue week. So let’s do something fun that week, you know, like, it’s planned in there so that the other weeks I can be more spontaneous or more available to other people who might need that time.

Speaker:
You can tell me because I’m outside looking in on the Orthodox, but that again, I’m thinking of the medieval life, the Anglo-Saxon year. You had to write it out on a calendar, but it used to be embedded in life. This is like Lamas day. This is when we eat the this. This is when we make the that. This is when we cut the this. This is when you harvest this, that. This is that saint’s day or that saint’s day, and therefore you eat this type of food or you don’t eat that type of food. And those sorts of things that used to be embedded in life. Again, when people, a lot of people come to ancestral food and they’re very frustrated, They say, like, how do I, how do I, like, learn all, I don’t know how to do the bread. I don’t know how, and now I have to grind the wheat, too, and now I have to gather it. What am I, the little red hen over here? But, yes, you are, and don’t teach your kids to be the dog, the mouse, and the cat.

Speaker:
But the thing being don’t beat yourself up too hard because you’re trying to rebuild a cathedral that was crushed like years ago and the stones are scattered and you need to find a stonemason and you need to find a guy who can do the lead and you need to find a stained glass blower and you need to like you need to find a plumber and you need to find like there’s a lot of skills, and the village has been dispersed, scattered. And so you’re trying to bring back in a lot of elements and just do not be so hard on yourself. And again, we’re…

Speaker:
Where Kraft’s cheese abounds, let grace abound even more. Like we have to give ourselves grace because I think the flip side is you could take, like, I have to build this cathedral and you can drive yourself into the ground and make your family hate the cathedral. They’re like, I want nothing to do with the cathedral. It has brought only misery to my life and it only makes our family unhappy.

Speaker:
I have a friend who that happened to. Like her dad was really, really insistent on the crunchy lifestyle. And she, you know, I was like, she was saying she needed something. And I was like, oh, you could have cod liver oil. And she’s like, I won’t drink cod liver oil. And I was like, why?

Speaker:
And she’s like, no,

Speaker:
I will never drink that because I had to as a kid. And I’m like, okay, find some synthetic vitamin A. Like, just do something to get that in your body. Like, you need this. And it’s so and also like the cathedral doesn’t didn’t get built over a year it was hundreds of years it was an entire process that required so much work and labor and love and the next generation and so you’re doing the same thing right like start small move slowly build on that lay one stone and lay the next stone it’s the same thing with homeschooling too right like one year is different from the next year. And Cindy Rollins always says that one good year can make up for two bad years. And, you know, I kind of feel like a imposter telling you guys about homeschooling because last year I did almost no homeschooling, you know.

Speaker:
You saw my last year.

Speaker:
Yeah. And my last year was horrible, too, just like Andrea’s in a different kind of way. But, you know, it was still incredibly challenging. And they were strained. They were completely depleted. And, you know, and so, but I can feel it like right now I’m moving into a much better place and suddenly I have this schedule that I’m ready to put on. Glory be to God in all things, right? Like I can do that schedule. I can do this. I can, I can read the Bible with my children because I didn’t, I didn’t do any of like those things I’m telling you like, oh, I read it back rest. I didn’t do that. Like I played on my phone by my children through food at each other over poured glasses of milk

Speaker:
I think it’s good.

Speaker:
I was crying it’s $ a gallon

Speaker:
We do I over this one I think

Speaker:
What you’re seeing is it’s, It’s all kind of visualized too in the way like a baby becomes a child. Like at first life is chaos. Like you really cannot, you cannot liturgize. You have to let your liturgy go. And that’s kind of what we’re all coming out of. And then your baby takes three naps a day and they’re somewhat predictable. And then you can decide how you start and end those naps. Like we do prayers right before because that’s when the baby’s nursing and then they’re calm and quiet and they’re enjoying their time and learning to be still and then your baby takes.

Speaker:
Two or one and you have more time so then you can focus more on what you’re actually doing in those hours and since then.

Speaker:
I find that I have been like just.

Speaker:
Like really digging into the ancestral um like like food preparation and things that take more time like cook up a whole batch of liver in the afternoon and pate um or yeah do you like now i can always bake on the same at the same time each week i could do my sourdough on like a monday because i am not before i didn’t know if i was gonna have energy monday if he didn’t have a good night um the night before but now i can things are more predictable so um i feel like it is so good to start early even you don’t have to have children but um you can start when life is chaotic still and start thinking about it processing it when you’re nursing your child all the time and you have no time for anything else that’s when you can think about it or have a little we’ll have a little audiobook going that’s really when i started listening to you guys so much on this podcast um and as more um kind of as more like hours kind of begin to reveal themselves as you kind of move forward on your journey um you fill them in you fill them in and in from the most important to the least which can be confusing which it comes first um but i think um charlotte mason has uh been learning like i said i have a hard time.

Speaker:
Not doing my chores but um yeah bringing making sure you do the human things first.

Speaker:
So what i’m it’s what i’m it’s what i’m intuiting, um yeah yeah so anyways i think that it’s it’s you know it’s kind of modeled in our human life even from the very beginning how we can kind of start this journey to liturgical life you have.

Speaker:
More to say you

Speaker:
Should say no i think that’s it i.

Speaker:
Love that yeah the, what you touched on, you’ve now touched on it two times, so we should probably make a point of it, is the importance of feeding the mind with ideas. And that does not stop when you leave like a school. And my personal favorite quote from Charlotte Mason is she says, the question when he’s done with his education is not how much does the youth know, but how much does he care? In fact, how wide of a room are his feet set in? How many orders of things is he interested in? And to me, that just sums up.

Speaker:
That’s what I want for my children is to leave with a wide, varied interest, healthy, nourished interest, and to care about things instead of saying, did I cram as many facts into them as I could? And did they spit it out on a piece of paper, because everybody’s met someone who’s like, oh, I was a really good test taker, can’t remember anything from school, but I knew how to game the system. Like, we’ve all heard someone say that. I think she said Angelina was, yeah. And there’s a way to take tests, and they’re, you know, but how much did that youth care when they left? They said, I want nothing to do with this. And… We want them to we we are hungry for them to care and you haven’t heard leah’s voice in a minute because she had to run out to her kids so

Speaker:
Because all education is self-education right like here’s here’s andrea you know we’re on this health um voxer thing together and we’re learning from what andrea is learning and and some of us are also reading some other books and you know doing our not nearly as good as andrea’s narrations and it’s just but it’s so helpful because we’re all learning together. And it’s like, are we not learning because we’re not in school? Like, no. I was in school and I was getting a PhD and I was miserable. And now I’m ordering books on medieval Norwegian cooking because I’m like, I’m going to figure out what my ancestors ate, you know? And that’s, I mean,

Speaker:
I don’t know. And are you doing it for a test?

Speaker:
No, I’m not doing it for a test. I’m doing it for myself. And I’m not going to get a PhD in the end in Norwegian medieval cooking. I probably won’t have anyone to talk to except for the people in this podcast. But, you know, it will be great. And, you know, and maybe I will only be interested in it for a couple of months and then maybe I’ll put it aside and it will be interesting later. But that’s okay. And what I learned was what I learned from that period.

Speaker:
I think it’s important to you that you have people to share with who are interested. You have your Voxer, you have your Discord, you have probably a community you have your church yeah yeah and i think until i found you guys talking about this i didn’t you know if it came up it was like that’s cool yeah but weird when you come across nerd when you enter a conversation a community it’s different and i think that’s like you you said you did it for yourself but i think you also did it you read your Norwegian cookbook for Andrea, for your community. They want to know, too.

Speaker:
Absolutely.

Speaker:
No, it is really true. And, you know, mom life can be really lonely without a community. And especially, like, a community of the mind, people who are interested in the things that you’re interested in. I read very old, very old books that nobody, you know, all of my real life friends are like,

Speaker:
What?

Speaker:
No, actually, there’s plenty of people in real life who care about that. But I mean, like old medieval, like Anglo-Saxon poetry, you know, the Alan of Lille and all that. Like that’s ancient stuff that nobody in real life cares about.

Speaker:
The one’s just upstairs.

Speaker:
I know, Sean. I just met you, OK? I have never met you before. And you live in Canada. But it’s very, you know, finding those people, like once you find those people and are able to have interactions, it makes the chores and sometimes the weariness of food and chores and the same thing again and again. It’s lifting because it’s like you have someone to take this with. You can share your thoughts. I have a very deep interior life. I don’t let a lot out. I maybe I talk a lot, but I think a whole lot and it’s really, really trapped in my head. And if I can’t get it out.

Speaker:
So you and Jacob, you’re like, yeah, I

Speaker:
Have to go tell my story. And so, yeah, finding that community. That’s one of the really good. I really hate a lot of things about technology, but the community aspect of meeting people and finding people and connecting with people who care about the same things that you do. Yeah. Yes. So important.

Speaker:
Is this a commercial for my supporter? I did not tell them to say that. I was not holding up signs.

Speaker:
It’s on you. I’m not even on your discourse.

Speaker:
But it’s exactly why. That’s exactly why. Allison and I connected to each other because we were both weird. And we’re like, oh, you don’t care. We’re talking about like obscure things together. And this was pre actually I think the Lit Life had just started when Allison and I started talking like the podcast it was the same year but this was like then we when we started the podcast we said we have to start because the weirdos will come and we need some way yeah what do you need buddy you need something over here okay we need some way for us

Speaker:
We happy few, to communicate with each other. And it has made a huge difference in sometimes feeling super isolated and nobody cares about my obscure fermented Norwegian fish thing. But oh, wait, in here, everybody’s like, you’re kidding me. You did that. Go you, you know, like you ask like an obscure question in there and out of the woodworks comes these people who are like, oh, Kirsten, we love these weird things, you know, like, this is amazing.

Speaker:
But it is really important to feed those ideas to the mind and ideas to your children. Like the thing with a Charlotte Mason education is the industrial model is to feed facts to children. And we don’t realize that that, again, is a philosophy that you are a blank slate that I can write facts onto, and then you’ll know the facts and you can go do the facts. Charlotte Mason’s philosophy is you are an eternal and immortal being that I will present ideas to you and you can take them in or you can reject them. But you are exposed to ideas and then you can choose between them and you can implement them in different ways and you can leave interested in things because of the ideas that fed your soul, even from when you were an infant in the cradle and your mother is rocking you with her foot and singing like an old Welsh tune that her grandma sang. Like that’s an idea. That’s a connection. And when you were saying, Rachel, about having the people to talk about the weird things with and like the voxer to share back what we were learning is so important.

Speaker:
Cindy Rollins has a talk that she calls the education of the freeborn. And the idea is that the

Speaker:
The difference between the freeborn and the slave was the slave does the work because he’s told to. It’s a list of facts. The freeborn does the work because it’s ideas and he’s passionate about it. So you’re in your kitchen. Are you a kitchen slave or are you someone who’s like, I am full of ideas about why this is important and why what I put on my plate matters. And because of those ideas, I am lifted up and I am connected to so many people ancestrally and currently living and the ideas of the saints and the things that they said, like you’re connected to all of that, makes you the freeborn. But if you’re like, I’ve been told to be a drudge in the kitchen, I must prepare calories to serve people, like all the beauty is gone. And then And it becomes slave labor and unpleasant. But the ideas make even the menial of the mundane, which we know mundane of mundos, which mundane is what the world mundos is made of. So it makes the mundane come alive and have value. Was there anything else you wanted to say on here, ladies? Oh, Hannah. Go first, Kirsten.

Speaker:
And I think it’s just, yeah, I think you already said it, but just reiterating that it’s such a journey and like we’re all at different places. And yeah, just like there’s something you can do where you are. And yeah, there’s something more you can do tomorrow. Um, and yeah, I think, um, every, every season just brings like new light on just like what your family needs and, um, what, what they’re interested in, what kind of leads you should follow. And, um, yeah, it’s exciting.

Speaker:
I think it’s an adventure.

Speaker:
I’m not very good at these like summation. I’m not very good at narration. I’m not very good at narration. I’m not. That’s actually one of the things that like I started to try to narrate some books for Andrea’s Voxer and I was like, oh my gosh, I am

Speaker:
So bad at this.

Speaker:
But it’s really good. But no, it is really good. And it gives you some like compassion for your children. Yeah. If you try to do it yourself and then you’re like,

Speaker:
Wow, this is so hard.

Speaker:
Like, especially if you’re trying do something that kind of builds on itself like the start of the chapter moves along to the end of the chapter and it’s all building and you’re and you’re you only remember the ending and then you’re like oh yeah so this is what happened i don’t remember how we got there you’re flipping through the book like trying to read over it quickly uh yeah so um yeah i think that i know kirsten said all of it really well too it’s true don’t be discouraged i mean you’re going to be discouraged, but don’t give up. Glory be to God in all things. Sorry. Just doing all of my personality traits here. But yeah, you have to keep moving forward. And if you can’t make something happen in the time, that’s okay. There will be a time for that. Something I read recently about do everything quietly without hurry. There will be time for everything. If you just do the thing that you’re doing without the frantic hurry, which I’m really good at doing because I have a lot to do and I have a lot of needs and a lot of kids and a lot of life things. But just like just doing it, knowing that there will be time for everything has been very soothing and calming to my soul. It’s like, oh, if you

Speaker:
Didn’t get to it today,

Speaker:
There’s time for it tomorrow. Right. Like there’s a time and season for everything. So maybe in that season, it’s not going out to bars with your friends. Maybe that season will come later. Maybe not. Maybe never. But you know what I’m saying? Yeah, wine bars. Oh, chocolate bars. I’m here for that. Book bars. Yes. We got to take the poser class. Yeah that’s that there will be there’s time for it and just do it and yes maybe every chore didn’t get done today maybe every bit of schooling you didn’t want didn’t get done today um but that’s okay there’s tomorrow and you can try again tomorrow and yeah doing the most important thing first. Yes, the question is not,

Speaker:
How much does the youth know? How much does he care?

Speaker:
She’s not reading that, folks. She just memorized it.

Speaker:
I just love it because it… It is what keeps me from being discouraged sometimes because I and I think I’ve gotten past probably because my mom and the way she educated us, but I don’t have the anxiety over. Did they get all of enough facts? Because as an adult, I remember being interested in things that I read as a kid that to the how many how many translations of Beowulf to have upstairs. Like, like I couldn’t have done, quote unquote, done all that in high school. I need my lifetime. And now learning how to read Anglo-Saxon because I need to read it also in Anglo-Saxon, obviously, as one does. But I need a lifetime. I just needed the ideas presented to me so that I could take the rest of my life and just engage in those things. So beautiful, ladies. I wish Leah was here for the wrap-up, but I’m so thankful for what she was able to contribute. And And I appreciate you ladies putting your hearts out here and taking the time. I feel like we could just do this again for another three hours. So, yes, another camp out, more food. Yeah, and I liked that Leah said, I’ll say what my favorite thing was on the weekend. That’s the question I should have asked. What was your favorite thing we had on the weekend?

Speaker:
It was smoked salmon. The smoked salmon was.

Speaker:
The smoked salmon spread. And the smoked black cod, which I’ve never had before. Yeah, I could live off of that. We made smoked salmon dip, y’all listening? And I was dipping smoked salmon in smoked salmon dip. Like I was just going full meta. I couldn’t. Yeah. So thank you, ladies, for joining me today and for everybody listening. Thank you so much for tuning in. And if you have questions, please do get them to us because this is something that we talk about. And in the Discord, we talk about it a lot. We have a home education thread for these kinds of questions, too, when it comes to the school specifically. So, all right, everybody, thank you and have a great day.

Speaker:
Bye.