#118 – At Least a Dozen Treats for Ancestral Kitchens

Ancestral food is not just all livers and bone broth! You not only can find amazing treats and desserts in the ancestral food world, but this is where delicious, comforting goodness was invented. The modern and industrial versions of sweet treats are like looking through a glass Pyrex pan darkly, and when you are introduced to the ancestral food world and the amazing ingredients we have available to us here you can in fact meet the richness and goodness of delicious treats face to face.

In this episode we share some of our favorite treats including a range of baked, custardy, dairy-free, gluten-free, or egg-free treats to keep you going all winter and into the spring. And the question I know which is burning in all of our hearts, is chocolate part of an ancestral lifestyle, can it be part of an ancestral life? Find out in this episode.

We also included a few of our favorite hot beverages – on a cold rainy day there is nothing better than wrapping your fingers around a hot steaming mug of something delicious and nestling in with a good book for a long afternoon … and then of course you gotta get up and put on your overalls and your hat and go back out into the rain and do the evening chores but that’s ok, you’ve got something delicious to come back inside to!

For supporters of the podcast there is an additional download with a couple extra recipes for you (thank you for keeping us on the air!), and for everybody listening be sure to check the show notes, we linked the heck outta this one. Let us know if there are other sweet treats we should have mentioned or that you love!

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For US listeners, we recommend Grand Teton Ancient Grains. They sell regenerative, organic flours and berries that can satisfy all your baking needs. Stock up and get free shipping at AncientGrains.com

What we talked about and resource links:

• Tinaktak (Primal, Whole 30, Paleo, Gluten-Free, Grain-Free, Dairy-Free, Egg-Free, Soy-Free)
• Bonus download for supporters www.ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/downloads
• The principle of ingredients
• Valerie MacBean, Coconut Cookery
• Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig
• Ancestral Cookies
• Wholegrain Einkorn Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Jumbo Chewy Sourdough Oatmeal Cookies from our cookbook
• Meals at the Ancestral Hearth
• Comfort Foods episode
• Annual Christmas Hamper for supporters
• Rushbearer’s Gingerbread
• The Prelude, by Wordsworth
• Tapioca Pudding
• Creme Brulee/Custard
• Spelt Sourdough Carrot Cake
• Bean to Bar Chocolate (subscriber’s to Alison’s newsletter get 15% off! www.ancestralkitchen.com to subscribe)
• The Secret Life of Chocolate episode
• GAPS Apple Crisp (gf, df) I said in the episode there was no recipe but I typed one up!
• Rachael’s Bone Broth Hot Chocolate and linked in Plan to Eat
• Best Cheesecake Ever
• Ricotta with Honey or Berries
• Creamy Maple Eggnog (Andrea’s long-lost prodigal recipe)
• Creamy Raw Eggnog
• Sweet Cheese Topping from Nourishing Traditions, page 541
• Raspberry Panna Cotta – can be made with coconut milk
• Raj’s Chai
• Everyday Luxuries episode
• Honorable Mentions that didn’t make the main feed:
• MUFFINS – but make it ancestral. Yoghurt, kefir, sourdough, fruit, scrambled eggs, meat, dried fruit, crumble topping, granola topping, butter, spelt, einkorn, etc. Move slowly when making changes to family favorites, and manage expectations.
• Sandy Debris Chocolate Chunk (what a terrible name) on my old blog With some kinda hilarious and nostalgic (for me) photos
• Kathie’s Lavender Hot Toddy
• My old favorite Paleo/GF Brownies
• Coconut Truffles – kinda like an almond candy bar (is that a thing in the UK?). Lots of ways to make variations.
• Anita’s Desserts – all SO good

 

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Transcript:

Alison:
Hello, Andrea.

Andrea:
Hello, hello. How are you?

Alison:
Yeah, I’m good, thank you. How are you this morning?

Andrea:
I’m feeling contagious.

Alison:
Oh dear, in a good way or a bad way?

Andrea:
You’ll find out when we get to the review.

Alison:
Okay, okay, that’s good. Have you had some breakfast this morning or not?

Andrea:
No, I haven’t, but I had the most delicious dinner last night, which is one of our new favorites. Um it’s called tinic tack and okay it’s uh let’s see if i can look up where it was from i do know that’s.

Alison:
An unusual name.

Andrea:
Yeah so it’s uh oh from guam so it’s a dish from guam so it’s part of what’s called Chamorro cuisine, which I may be pronouncing completely wrong. And it’s basically you cook some onions, garlic, some spices, ginger. Yeah, onion, garlic, ginger basically is the primary seasoning, at least in the recipe I have. And you cook some ground meat. And we used venison from leah’s family that they brought down to us and pork from our milk milk gal she raises pigs that eat any cast off milk basically and then you have let’s see you throw in fresh green beans which are in season right now so i’ve been picking up at our little neighborhood farm stand, and diced tomatoes from a can, or you could use, you know, something else, but that’s what I used. And coconut milk.

Alison:
Oh, okay.

Andrea:
I know, that’s where it gets exciting, right?

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
I’m just thinking what else I put in. I put in the liquid aminos from Bragg’s, which is like a soy sauce made out of coconut.

Alison:
Yeah, I’ve seen those. I’ve never used them, but I’ve seen them.

Andrea:
Yeah, they’re good. they have that salty umami flavor to them um, And basically, it all simmers together, and then you eat it hot, and it is so ridiculously good. It also freezes excellently. So, I made a large enough batch that I used five pounds of meat and four of the bundles of beans. And then I also threw in, I had a really big, I know, I had a huge kohlrabi. So I put that and I diced that in because the last time we ate it I thought man this would be really good with a potato or something in it yeah and you could serve it over rice but we just had it you know out of the pot last night no rice or anything with it I mean I said potatoes as.

Alison:
Well I think jacket.

Andrea:
Potato oh oh yeah good point that’s a baked potato right yeah that’s right jacket potato okay yeah yeah no it’s so good so i got it from this online blog i forget who shared somebody shared the recipe with me and i’m sorry that i can’t remember who it was but we just love it now and i put the link to the recipe in the show notes if anybody else wants to make it you know it was pretty pretty tasty we.

Alison:
Were talking about coconut on discord on the discord community forum a couple of weeks ago and it reminded me that um i haven’t made coconut milk kefir for ages and.

Andrea:
I’m just i’m.

Alison:
Not so good on dairy the more i have dairy the more i realize i’m not very good with dairy and um i’m after having been you know histamine kind of probiotic free for quite some time as listeners to the episodes that have just gone well no i’m sort of bringing back some probiotics back into my life and trying not to be quite so.

Alison:
Really rigorous logistic focused on them just being a bit more easygoing with them and i thought i really fancy some coconut milk kefir and so i looked at the coconut milk i could get and it hasn’t got any of those kind of additional um you know things in it that aren’t very nice gum and yeah exactly it’s just a just a coconut milk now obviously it’s separated in the can i mean it’s been in a can which is not ideal but you know um i heated it up slightly to stop it being just a big blob of cream and then a little bit of milk and then I made a coconut milk kefir last week and it’s really really good we’ve got um I feel that discussion could go on for so long you’ll have to stop me um we got some new milk kefir grains and they are brilliant compared to our last ones the last ones really like sort of surviving with for the last you know four or five years wondering why on earth they’re just not growing getting all upset.

Alison:
When we drop one down on the sink by mistake you know all that lot and in the end I was just like we’ve got to get some more of these they’re getting sort of less and less and less because they get stuck in the cream and Rob eats one by mistake you know and all that um so we’ve got some new ones and they are so much better they’re bigger and bigger like we can’t keep them in the old container we used to we’re not using them we’ve got to keep in a bigger container and they just work just incredibly quickly on the key fit and incredibly well and so I just dumped them in the this coconut milk for a day and then I’ve now got this really nice little stash of coconut milk kefir that I’m having the odd spoonful of.

Andrea:
On things well i will say this for whoever needs to hear it i will say this once again if you are trying to make tb coast or water kefir or you’re trying to make milk kefir and the grains are just not behaving but you’re sure you’re doing it right it’s not you it’s the grains all grains are not equal i know that unequivocally now i think you and i have both been making kefirs of some sort for what years now at least and after seeing a variety of them, pass through my house and the way they’ve behaved differently i can without a doubt say there are vigorous and hearty grains out there that you just cannot kill if you try to and then there are tender delicate fragile ones that you feel like you’re keeping alive on a shoestring yeah and i have had both and i have definitely been the same person the whole time and yeah i can see the conditions that they were under and yeah i don’t have a microscope to look at the communities that are thriving or not but i definitely know they’re not you know the difference exactly yeah we just now.

Alison:
We’re just abundant with these milk kefir grains which is great Anyway, that was an aside. Would you like to hear what I ate?

Andrea:
Yeah, I was going to say, but that isn’t actually what you ate, is it?

Alison:
No, it isn’t. No, it isn’t. I need to hear. Yeah. Life is a bit of a chaotic mess at the moment here because we’re moving house again. And so there are boxes and we’ve been fighting with AI referencing agencies, which are awful. What does that mean?

Andrea:
What does that mean?

Alison:
It means that because we’re renting, we have to give a load of references. You know, we have to reference our income and who we are and et cetera, et cetera. And so they know that we’re not some horrible money launderers and they don’t do it in person anymore they have a bot what you have to interact with like a chat bot you know and so it asks you the questions you give it the forms and if it doesn’t fit in it to its tiny little box of you know this is what the bot’s allowed to accept then it says sorry we we can’t pass your things and you’re like okay here’s another vote no sorry we can’t pass this okay is there a human i can speak to anywhere and then you you speak to the human in the end and they’re like oh but this this and this and you’re like but actually this this and this and they go oh okay then you think we’ve just been fighting with your bot for the last three days oh my god you know it’s just oh that sounds like the.

Andrea:
Most dystopian nightmare.

Alison:
Oh it has been we thought we thought italy was high in um bureaucracy but it seems like the kind of covid ai bot situation is now taking over the world, Anyway, so it’s just life is a bit topsy-turvy at the moment. But I’m trying to be in the kitchen as much as I can because I know that that’s what keeps me grounded and makes me feel just myself. You know, so even though it’s chaotic. Today I made a risotto. I… I’ve been making risotto quite a lot the last three or four months. We really like it. And we, last night, we made, we put the oven on to make a throdkin, which is an oat dish with bacon on the top, because it was Rob’s birthday yesterday and he wanted it for his birthday meal. And at the same time, I thought, oh, I’ll just put some of this squash, because squash has arrived at the market. I’ll put some of this butternut squash in the oven at the same time to roast it, and I’ll use it for a risotto tomorrow.

Andrea:
Gosh, this sounds so good.

Alison:
House we had some chicken stock out of the freezer yesterday um and arborio rice and um the butternut squash and then i i thought there was some kale in the fridge but when i opened the fridge drawer there wasn’t any kale so there was however about a third of a massive courgette so i chopped that up put it in and then i turned to my bag of frozen peas because i wanted something else green in it um and the butternut squash had been roasted with rosemary and olive oil and i put some sage in and some garlic salt which amelia um a supporter gave us and then we grated some um pecorino romano on top of it which is a hard sheep’s cheese a bit like parmesan but not quite as strong and not cow sheep instead and um a bit of parsley from the garden was absolutely delicious And I made double. I didn’t make as much as you did, but I made double. So we’ve got some for tomorrow, which was, yeah, it was really nice.

Andrea:
That sounded amazing.

Alison:
Really, really nice.

Andrea:
It sounds like an absolute comfort food.

Alison:
What you described. That’s kind of why I like risotto, because it’s too easy for me to rely on the same old comfort foods. You know, bread is obviously a comfort food, especially with butter or ghee. And anything creamy is a comfort food for me hence the coconut kefir but anything creamy but risotto it doesn’t sort of lead me down those usual comfort food routes it’s something that i can make that i can you know put in whatever’s in the fridge and it’s still got that creamy thing because the rice does it and everyone likes it and especially with cheese on the top that’s always mad for it gabriel is now a confessed cheese addict he just he says i’m addicted to cheese i know i am i just can’t help it um so he it’s a win for him i’m addicted to cheese cheese and crystals what do i need oh exactly cheese crystals um so yeah it is a comfort food very much so and i think it when we’re going through a kind of a challenging time and things are shifting for all of us you know and for him too and he’s only you know it’s hard for him um and i’m fed up and moving and rob’s fed up and moving it’s just like bizotto just makes it all okay you know.

Andrea:
You know, I think we alluded to this in our comfort food episode, but comfort food sometimes takes a hard rap. Like people say, you know, you shouldn’t eat your emotions or whatever. I beg to differ. Sometimes that’s exactly what you need to do. And what we need is the proper ways to eat our emotions, non-industrial ways, because food is a safety signal. Food is soothing. Food is calming. And those are good things and that’s part of what it should be doing for us and i was wondering on this note if you do you want to read we have a review which i just saw yesterday um and i sent you and i was wondering if you could review it or review it if you could read it um if the, device you have over there will allow you to yeah.

Alison:
It will it will we’re sorted so this is from hannah who is in Arizona, you said, didn’t you?

Andrea:
Mm-hmm. Yep. The desert.

Alison:
So she, we believe, is a supporter. We have lots of Hannas in our supporter network.

Andrea:
You’re right. We’ve got one in Belgium. I don’t think of them as all Hannas because they spell the name differently. Right?

Alison:
Okay. That’s the only way you can tell. We’ve got lots of Hannas and lots of Katies. So if you want to come and join the Hannah-Katy party and you’re called Hannah or Katie, if you’re not called Hannah or Katie, you’re welcome. And we thought initially it was all because we’re both A, Alison and Andrea, but now we’ve got lots of other names too. Anyway, okay, so Hannah has titled this review, Inspiring, Knowledgeable and Encouraging, which is a good start. And she says, where do I begin? Alison’s calming voice, Andrea’s contagious laugh, or the rich storehouse of knowledge, inspiration and encouragement. I am so thankful I found this podcast. I have listened to several homemaking and cooking from scratch podcasts throughout the last few years, but they always left me still wanting.

Alison:
The Ancestral Kitchen podcast, however, has deepened my knowledge of what real nourishing food looks like. It’s challenged my thinking in regards to sourcing locally, even in a desert, going against the grain of society. My family thinks we’re extreme and even the trouble with modern consumerism. What I love most about this podcast is that it’s all delivered in a fashion that would never make me feel bad for not doing it all but rather inspires me to take one more step in the direction that I want for my family’s health thank you ladies for the laughs the inspiration and making ancestral eating and living practical to the everyday family living in a modern world.

Andrea:
Oh, that is so gracious.

Alison:
Isn’t that lovely? Thank you.

Andrea:
First of all, she can do some writing. That would be amazing.

Alison:
Yeah, definitely.

Andrea:
I like that she picked up on themes that you and I explicitly put into the podcast. We, you know, when you talked to me about what your vision was for this, because this was a vision that you had in your head for quite some time before we started. Our collaboration you said i have looked everywhere for an episode or a podcast like this and i can’t find one.

Alison:
Yeah and you wanted.

Andrea:
One that was yeah i think we’ve both had enough of the critical, in our life from ourselves and the you know the judgment that people pass on everyone for not doing this or for doing that.

Alison:
I think i think i wanted something that was just fun you know yes it’s sometimes hard work and there’s often judgments to be made that we perhaps don’t want to make and it it can be a fraught situation with family’s health to look after and time and budget, constraints and i just but yeah in the midst of all of that which both of us and all everyone listening experiences um it’s just joy the joy of being in the kitchen the fun of it and and so things are so much more fun when you can share them with someone and I think really that’s what I was looking for so that kind of non-judgmental atmosphere that that Hannah talked about in that review is just I mean that’s how I want it to be you know just friends together you know.

Andrea:
I agree. And that’s why I said I felt contagious, because of my contagious laugh.

Alison:
Your contagious laugh. And I have to really do my calming voice.

Andrea:
Yes, keep us calm, Alison. Keep us calm.

Alison:
Okay, so we are talking about something very exciting today, and something kind of on the theme of comfort food. So go ahead and tell us what we’re covering, Andrea.

Andrea:
So we’re talking about treats today. These are the little indulgences that can come into the ancestral kitchen. And far be it from me to ever adhere to a diet that wouldn’t allow me to make little treats in the kitchen because that is so much fun I honestly don’t even know if it’s more fun to make them or if it’s more fun to eat them I thought I would be or watch someone eat them yeah and the more kids you have the more people you’re watching eat it and you’re like oh this is very rewarding and so i wanted to talk about treats today as well as just the general idea and the way that the treats can be so nourishing for us and they’re actually i didn’t think i would have a download for this episode but i was trying to find a file that i had created a long time ago with um the eggnog recipe and the, uh, just a couple of recipes that Hannah and I used to make all the time. I mean, all the time. And I haven’t been able to find the file for the longest time. And I finally came across it yesterday. And I just about flipped, flipped over to the handstand. I was so happy. And then I thought, oh, I’ll just throw this into a PDF and drop it, um, for the supporters. So I already…

Andrea:
In the website so if you’re listening to this and you’re a supporter you should be able to log in and download the file it’s from so it’s already is it wow yeah yeah it’s from one of my old young living classes and um i had made it kind of based on everything hannah and i were doing at the time, which included lots of fall beverages and uh it was just it was just really fun class and so So that link is in there. But the recipe that I’m going to share for the eggnog, I have it here in the show notes for everybody. So you don’t have to be a supporter to get that, but you’ll get the whole file if you want, if you’re a supporter. So, yeah. So if you’re ready, I think I’ll take a quick pause and we can dive in.

Alison:
Great.

Andrea:
So I wanted to start with just the principle of upgrading your ingredients. There is a quote from Nourishing Traditions, which is actually from a book called Coconut Cookery by Valerie McBean. And this quote has been taking up real estate in my head ever since I read it. Valerie says, she’s talking about fat. She says, with such primordial craving for the substance, does it not make sense to honor our bodies with the purest our purse will allow? I feel like that has become a driving principle for me with everything when i’m looking at something i think is this the purest my purse will allow like is this am i doing the extent of what i can to support us and in the discord i posted a picture a couple weeks ago let’s see it would have been in the beginning of september and it was a picture of butter and I felt like it was such an illustration of this principle. When we had our camp out here, um.

Andrea:
My friend Rachel came out and she, since she was flying in from California, she couldn’t really bring food that she had made. But what she did was she placed an order from Azure Standard and she actually ordered some dairy products that are from a farm that’s pretty close to where she lives. And she ordered this butter called Petaluma Gold, which is from a place called Petaluma in California. And in California, we have this unique kind of, you know, grassy around situation and the butter. If you’ve seen the picture, well, you’d have to turn your phone off of gray screen if you’re a gray screen phoner. But the picture shows the butter is this dark gold color and when we put it in the pot to melt it it Allison it looked like pure ghee melting it was just and and then we we were all hovering over the pot smelling it because the aroma was so magnetic and it it made me realize oh this is what the popcorn companies are trying to do is this is the smell of butter and at the same time And we had another camper here who had bought, and then they left, you know, some of their food with us. And one of the things was a pack of butter from this brand called Land O’Lakes. And so it’s basically your, you know, the standard butter you’d get in the grocery store.

Alison:
Okay, yeah.

Andrea:
It looked snow white next to this butter. It was, I mean, it’s so pale. No, I mean, hints of, hint of yellowish, maybe. And as I looked at those two butters, all I could think was, honor your body with the purest the purse will allow. Because that butter, that dark yellow butter, I know it’s rich in beta carotenes. I know it’s rich in vitamin A. I know it’s rich in vitamin D. Like, you know exactly what you’re getting. And it’s literally medicinal butter at that point.

Alison:
And the flavor, the satisfaction that you would get from that, the things that will hit in your psyche, that they won’t quite hit it with the other butter and you’ll keep going and you won’t know why.

Andrea:
No, you’re right.

Alison:
That’s huge.

Andrea:
So hearkening back to the comfort food comment, like you said, you’ll keep going and you don’t know why. When you have such high-quality food, it’s hard to come into it with the same sort of binge food. Binge modality. And I say this as somebody who used to binge hard, so I know from what I’m talking about. So this butter just felt like the most vivid image I have ever seen of that quote from Valerie McBean. And I brought it into the conversation on treats today because the price of that butter is obviously higher for the butter from the Petaluma gold. So you wouldn’t necessarily say, oh, this is the cheapest I can get, but it is the purest the purse will allow. And when we make our sweet treats, we use really high quality ingredients, which makes them much more expensive. You know, our cookies are definitely, I mean, you could eat our cookies as medicine, but they aren’t as cheap as if I was just going to go get like a milled white flour and Land O’Lakes butter. But the satisfaction you’re going to get out of it.

Andrea:
And then when people ask me, oh, what’s the recipe for these cookies? They’re so good. I always start with, well, you have to get really good ingredients and nobody seems to latch onto that as much. But this also helps to moderate the amount of sweets that come into the house or onto the table because they are expensive. So I just wanted to preamble with this.

Alison:
Yeah, when we get to the chocolate section, I will be pulling on so many things you’ve said, because I totally agree with it, with everything, definitely. Okay.

Andrea:
It is one of those things that I feel like brings a natural order back into the world.

Andrea:
If anybody’s read old books, you know how sweets were so highly prized and so rare to encounter and so precious and valuable to acquire. And this puts them back, you know, I don’t think we’re even quite on that level, but this puts them back into that ordered love space. So I was just hitting all those points because I wanted to start this treats episode out by saying cookies are an easy ancestral win they don’t have to rise and they can tolerate a lot of stuff being mixed into them and there’s about a billion variations you can do so you can really fiddle around with your flowers they don’t have to be high gluten flowers and you can fiddle around with your fats and see which ones flatten out the way you like it. And you can fine tune what works for your family. So when I use, I have been asked million times for my cookie recipes, and I don’t think I’ve ever written them down. And maybe one day, Allison, you will force me to do so, and that would be a good thing for me. But we’ve used, when we make cookies, I’ve used butter, I’ve used lard, I’ve used palm shortening. I’ve sometimes put all three in. If I don’t have enough of any one. I almost always, I lean heavily towards einkorn flour because it makes such a chewy, perfect cookie.

Andrea:
And cookies are easy to make sourdough. I always just throw in, you know, whatever, some scrap of sourdough that’s on my counter and then put the batter in the fridge overnight. And I never bother to mix and bake them on the same day. So the cookies are already soaked and it’s just really easy to make cookies wonderful um.

Andrea:
You can use einkorn flour on a one-to-one ratio for regular flour in recipes, and I use whole einkorn flour, not the refined einkorn flour. And you can use coconut sugar one-to-one if you want to. You can use grass-fed butter, and of course, we use all our own eggs. So the cookies are just full of flavor and chewiness. I’ve never had a cookie that flopped, except for with a broken oven.

Alison:
Yeah okay and.

Andrea:
Um i have a bunch of cookie recipes that are saved in my plan to eat app that i know a lot of a lot of our listeners use that too um but i don’t necessarily make them the way that they’re saved in there i do need to.

Alison:
Yeah make.

Andrea:
The modifications but i just look at it and i you know.

Alison:
I can translate.

Andrea:
It in my head.

Alison:
Yeah it’s.

Andrea:
Like when you read your italian recipe and you just kind of translate it into english in.

Alison:
Your head.

Andrea:
You don’t bother writing it down Allison you have an actual cookie recipe.

Alison:
Which happens to be einkorn yeah um I created that with um the Grand Teton einkorn grain in mind because they sent me some samples of their fabulous grains I just made a rye bread with some of their rye and it um drops really good um the recipe that I came up with is no egg because gable can’t eat eggs and so the cookies or biscuits as we call them in the uk that come out of my kitchen generally aren’t chewy because it’s the egg that makes them chewy so these cookies are crunchy they’re kind of melt in the mouth you they’ll snap when you break them and you put them in your mouth and they’re crunchy and they stay really crunchy for at least three or four days and then they kind of when you when you crunch to them they kind of melt down on your tongue now i made with icorn but we’ve since used up all the einkorn um and i’ve made them with spelt and the boys really love them with spelt too they’re chocolate chip cookies um and they’re whole grain that i put through the mock meal you know from the actual grain but you could make them with whole grain flour you know that you’d purchase if you don’t have a meal and we will put the recipe for those whole grain einkorn chocolate chip cookies without egg into the show notes so you can have a go at those if you want.

Andrea:
Perfect. You know, I did make for a number of things, a number of reasons. I was making dairy-free, egg-free cookies for some friends and I used flax eggs and palm shortening instead of butter and eggs. And they were actually very chewy. They were really good. So I don’t know if the flax brings the chewing eggs back in. I don’t know. but probably because it holds.

Alison:
The moisture so probably.

Andrea:
It does yeah like psyllium husk kind of situation yeah yeah okay there’s another recipe if anybody has our cookbook meals at the ancestral hearth if you don’t have it you can get it i do recommend it obviously but i have in there my jumbo chewy sourdough oatmeal cookies which are gigantic you know i mean you don’t have to make and gigantic but come on it’s really fun and they are sourdough and that’s kind of a basic cookie recipe that you can rotate around and do lots of different things with and um, in the cookbook i make also our fermented ice cream and make them into ice cream cookies sandwiches yeah that’s just bonkers that’s.

Alison:
Like a treat treat treat that’s a.

Andrea:
Treat i know really really need a treat it takes so much planning ahead for me to have something like that because i have to have like the the odds of having all the ingredients available at the same time and then the energy to make them but it’s not as hard as it sounds because you can make the cookies kind of whenever and i stick them in the freezer and then when you make you want to make the sandwiches when you’re churning the ice cream so the ice cream’s not like really hard yeah so then if the cookies are already frozen it’s actually a little bit easier but but that is a treat on a treat yeah and I was gonna say Allison actually that freezing cookies I freeze them on sheet pans and then I pile them into bags but this is a really good fast food and so.

Alison:
You mean you.

Andrea:
Freeze them after you’ve.

Alison:
Cooked them or before you’ve cooked them.

Andrea:
Yeah these are one of the rare baked things that I actually cook first and freeze. Although I do often freeze just raw dough in a container or dough shaped into balls. But I would actually say that these cookies that I make stand up quite well to being frozen and thawed. So that’s something we like having on hand. Okay. As the season approaches, the season being Christmas, I also wanted to mention that every year, Allison and I, we put out what Allison has so delightfully and calmly termed the Christmas hamper. And I just think it’s the cutest name ever, but it’s basically a collection that we just keep adding to every year, so it just gets bigger. But it’s contributions from listeners all over the place for holiday recipes, holiday ideas, gift ideas, handmade gifts. And it includes an article on cookies and things that we swap over and then a couple recipes that I did actually manage to write down. So if you remember around support around the holidays, you’ll get that turning up. And Allison, your holiday TV ghost is in there.

Alison:
Yeah my tippicoster is in there my water kefir Christmas recipe water kefir which is oh just different just really different and really nice also in there is a recipe for rush bearish gingerbread which actually is called grass me gingerbread in there but having done more research on it for my oat book I’m not calling it grass me gingerbread anymore it’s a whole story behind that it’s a it’s kind of um it’s a crispy oat sort of biscuity treat and I make it with lard but I have also made it with butter and coconut milk and both again coconut oil rather and both of those work and it’s got spices in and molasses and it’s really really delicious there’s a recipe for it in the hamper as you said um turns out that grassmere gingerbread was trademarked by a company um quite recently to a recipe that apparently was the original recipe developed by a woman who lives in grassmere which is a little town um in the north of england where wordsworth lived and wordsworth is buried um but, Yes, you would love to go there.

Andrea:
You know I would.

Alison:
Gingerbread’s been made in that area for a very, very long time. And originally it was made with oats because wheat was not grown or available in that area. The recipe that’s been trademarked as grassroot gingerbread is made with wheat and is not made how it would have originally been made. They said the first recipe came from this woman in some time in the s, but actually it was made for centuries before then. And what’s interesting about the title, it was originally known as Rushbearers Gingerbread because the churches in Grasmere didn’t have flagstones on the floor. They were just mud floors. And in order to make the environment for the services inside the church more hospitable, they would lay down rushes every once a year in the autumn onto the floor, which would just kind of keep the dirt down make it warmer make it nicer for people to tread on and so there was a big kind of ceremony in the autumn where everyone would bring rushes particularly the children to be laid down in the church and then as a thank you at the end of that they would give all these children gingerbread which was the local speciality and there’s actually a bit in.

Alison:
Wordsworth’s sister’s diary saying that William really liked the gingerbread and she was going out to buy some from some lady in the town who made the gingerbread um so i’ve stopped calling it grass smear gingerbread because that’s been trademarked instead i’m calling it rush bearers gingerbread um anyway long story there is a recipe for it in the hamper and it’s it’s, really really delicious it’s you know no wheat so if you can’t eat gluten there’s just the oats in there you can get gluten-free oats and it’s really crispy and just, reading, reading more-ish. So I wanted to add that one as well in The Christmas Hamper.

Andrea:
So catch me this winter reading the prelude, which I’ve always wanted to read, and eating his favorite.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Gingerbread. Ah, I just love this. I love, I love a theme. Okay. Let’s take a quick pause, Alison, and then come back. I’ve got some more stuff to talk about. All right so this we are going to transition away from, cookies and talk about tapioca pudding so there is yeah i know i love tapioca pudding not everybody does but tapioca pudding, um i think i’ve talked about it on here before and i’ve i’ve again i’ve never actually written my recipe down. But Anita makes it pretty much identical to the way that I make it, except I don’t actually usually measure it. And when I make it, I put in a little honey and a little maple, both, so that neither really dominates. But you don’t have to do that. So I put a link for that in the show notes.

Alison:
So you put a link for Anita’s recipe in the show notes.

Andrea:
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Alison:
Excellent.

Andrea:
And it is full of egg yolks and a couple whole eggs and lots of milk. So it’s a nice filling dish. And then if you like custard or pudding, but you’re not down with the tapioca texture, there’s also… Plain custard or creme brulee. Because did you know, you don’t, excuse me, I don’t know, I’m hiccuping all of a sudden, you don’t have to make custard with sugar. You don’t have to add any sweetener at all if you don’t want to. And I know you’ve talked about this before, Alison, the farther away you get from refined sugars, the more sensitive you are to the sugars in things. And then when you have something like, like a steamed milk or heated milk, you the sugar stands out to you more absolutely.

Alison:
And especially if you.

Andrea:
Um kind.

Alison:
Of enhance that with if you choose a tiny bit of vanilla with tiny tiny bit of salt.

Andrea:
It just turns the color on and it changes.

Alison:
The flavor or a little bit of cinnamon just mixed in.

Andrea:
You know.

Alison:
And and it brings another kind of edge to it which means that for me um i can enjoy that as a as a treat without having the sugar flavor in it at all.

Andrea:
Yeah yeah no negative effects for you you can if you’re making custard you can add a little honey or a little maple maple if you want to bring out or if you want to include more flavor or sugar i should say not flavor and or you can use coconut sugar if you have access to that or you can make it without adding any sweetener and then still put the coarse sugar on top and burn it if that’s you know the vibe that you’re going for but custard without sugar is a favorite first food for babies around here. And when I make it, I usually, I don’t have the little, you know, have you seen the little like creme brulee type pots? So I don’t have those, but I just make it in small jars. And then that’s convenient because I can make a whole bunch at once and then put lids on half of them and put them in the fridge and then we eat the rest, you know, after dinner or whatever.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So it’s convenient. I put a recipe for that in the show notes it has sugar in the recipe so you just have to decide if you want to leave it out or um put it in it’s just the recipe as as written allison you have a carrot cake recipe that has become quite popular among listeners and um you actually you have it in your cookbook but you also have a link to it so could you talk about that a little bit.

Alison:
Yeah, so we’ll put the link in the show notes for the sourdough spelt carrot cake. It’s something that I originally came up with for one of Gable’s birthdays. Again, it’s got no egg in because he can’t eat egg. And, you know, usually we rely on eggs to rise cakes. But I thought, well, hang on, sourdough does a really good job on my loaves. Why can’t I do a good job on my cakes too? So together, kind of asking him what he wanted, he said he loved carrot cake. I started experimenting with my beloved spelt and came up with a carrot cake which uses.

Alison:
Spelt and sourdough to rise with no egg in again it’s got lard in but you can make it with butter and you can add in almonds raisins lots of different things if you want to um as you said the recipe is in the spelt sourdough everyday cookbook which has surprised me by how many people have bought it i thought you know it would be nice to add this cookbook with all my recipes into our collection so we have two cookbooks not just meals at the ancestral half but a lot of people have bought that cookbook um and the feedback we’ve had has been really amazing that recipe is in there um and also in there is a recipe for spelt sourdough chocolate cake that recipe is not on my site whereas the um carrot cake is on my site and we’ll put a recipe for that in the show notes so if you just want to make the carrot cake you could, um go to the show notes look at the recipe um if you’re more interested in spelt then you could get our cookbook um and that will give you the chocolate recipe too as well yeah you thought you.

Andrea:
Were writing a hyper niche book that .

Alison:
People would.

Andrea:
Be interested in when.

Alison:
You did that book And loads of copies are sold.

Andrea:
I think Spelt, you’re just popularizing it, Alison.

Alison:
Yeah, and I wish that, you know, in a way, I would like to be able to get it out beyond the current listeners of the podcast. But the thought of putting it on Kindle desktop publishing or something like that feels kind of dread. So at the moment, we’re reaching who we can reach. Can I talk about chocolate here? Is there a little?

Andrea:
Can I talk about chocolate, she says.

Alison:
Well.

Andrea:
First of all you have an entire episode on chocolate which thank.

Alison:
You for.

Andrea:
That gift to the world but yes please talk about chocolate because i i do need to hear about this.

Alison:
Yeah so the episode on chocolate is coming out next month which is going to be really really lovely because i was there i know um but i also wanted to talk about chocolate as a treat and really i wanted to just echo everything you said at the beginning with that quote about the purest form of something available that the pocket can afford and my experience with chocolate is so much like that you know when I was twice the way I am now chocolate was just bought from a supermarket and absolutely loaded with sugar and just filled in this hole and now chocolate is a completely different food stuff for me you know we buy the beans we roast the beans we spend the time taking the shells off the beans and then I grind those beans up at home using the equipment I have in my kitchen and then I can put whatever I want with it so if I want to make chocolate with no sugar at all I can make chocolate with no sugar at all if I want to put in five percent I can put in coconut sugar I can put in you know standard kind of golden sugar I could put a mixed honey into it I can put orange peel vanilla salt nuts whatever I want to.

Alison:
And the way that I eat chocolate, having done that, is just a world away from the way that I used to eat chocolate. And I think a lot of us have in our past, you know, interacted with chocolate. The fact that it’s the best form that the pocket can allow means the flavours are incredible. And the fact that i’ve made it from literally having the raw beans shipped to my house.

Alison:
Makes the value of it so much more and we don’t have it all the time because we only have it when i’ve made it and so it’s it’s like you’re saying it’s that treat that that comes into your life and you enjoy it and it’s nutritious and you’ll hear in the chocolate episode next month just how nutritious um nutritious pop you know proper chocolate is um so yeah do listen up for that episode next month and do remember that I have a course which is a series of zoom, recorded videos that I did live with some people who wanted to learn how to make chocolate a couple of years ago and it will take you from literally choosing a bag of beans and having them delivered to your house through to actually making your own chocolate and eating a bar of chocolate, that was made by your own hands. That’s a really affordable course. And if you’re on my newsletter, you can get % off the price of any of my courses. So I would just truly recommend taking that journey with chocolate because once you’ve done it, you just never look at chocolate the same again and the flavour will absolutely blow your mind. So yeah, chocolate is one of my, definitely goes in my at least a dozen treats for the ancestral kitchen for.

Andrea:
Sure i think you called the course bean to bar too which.

Alison:
Is exactly what.

Andrea:
Happens you start.

Alison:
With the.

Andrea:
Beans you end up with the bar and you mailed me some of that chocolate from italy and i got to experience your own handmade chocolates they were so cute the.

Alison:
Whatever little.

Andrea:
Molds you used they were adorable.

Alison:
Yeah i bought some little um silicon mold things um for them it kind of gives you that.

Andrea:
Feeling like you know the the chocolates from the shop that look so good and are so disappointing when you actually eat.

Alison:
Them yeah so.

Andrea:
It gave that feeling of having the little selection of treats do you ever stick things on them like i think you’re the like nuts or something.

Alison:
Sometimes i stick things in them because the silicon molds that you use you pour the chocolate in and therefore the the chocolate actually sets upside down so if you want to put something on top of it you’ve got to put it in the bottom of the mold and then pour the chocolate on usually i put a nut in them and then the chocolate kind of just melds its way around the nut and the nut ends up being in the middle you know but i guess i could sprinkle cinnamon on the bottom of the mold or sprinkle some orange peel on the bottom of the mold um oh that’d be good which would be really nice orange peel in homemade chocolate is amazing absolutely amazing well.

Andrea:
That was a great tip from katie one of our um supporters in.

Alison:
Discord she was saying yeah.

Andrea:
Save orange peel in the freezer if you’re you know gonna peel an orange but you’re not necessarily gonna use the peel right away and I thought geez I don’t know why I’m not doing that that’s a really good idea.

Alison:
Yeah I mean we’re doing that with you know vegetable scraps we’re doing that with bones we’re doing that with everything but orange peel is such an amazing resource that can be used in so many things just to brighten that flavor and it’s too easy to just peel the orange and forget about that peel and just put it in the compost you know yeah well.

Andrea:
I’m really glad that you mentioned the chocolate actually specifically because I know chocolate when it comes to ancestral food has kind of gotten a bad rap.

Alison:
And yet it.

Andrea:
Is such and ancestral food. And we were literally just saying, Ellen and I, Ellen is a listener of the podcast. Hello, Ellen. And she is the one who wrote one of those lovely spelt cookbook reviews. And she and I were saying last night, if chocolate makes me a heretic, then call me a heretic.

Alison:
But it doesn’t.

Andrea:
It doesn’t.

Alison:
Listen to the episode next month. You will find it doesn’t.

Andrea:
I know it doesn’t. I’m just saying in the world of ancestral food, chocolate kind of gets a hard knock and I don’t understand why.

Alison:
We’ll talk about that in that episode. I think it’s one of the first things I talk about. I say, look, in the ancestral food world, this has been kind of…

Andrea:
Vilified.

Alison:
It’s not quite the right word well yeah there we go vilified we both said it um and and it shouldn’t be um and we talk.

Andrea:
About that.

Alison:
Specifically next month so yeah.

Andrea:
How else can we vibe our ancient aztec king energy without cacao okay i’m gonna take a quick break allison and then we’ll come back and i’ve got even more, okay i’ve got a couple recipes here including some beverages because a list of treats is not complete without a beverage. If we’re reading Wordsworth Prelude and we’re eating Wordsworth’s Rushbearers gingerbread, then we need something to drink with it, right? So that’s coming up here. And I’ve got links for these. Well, some of these aren’t really recipes, so there’s no like written recipe. I’ll just tell it to you. And then there’s links for the recipes. So one is the gaps bake. I don’t really know what else to call it, but I first made it when I was on gaps and you’ll core and dice your apples, throw them into a pan of some fashion. You will crush some walnuts or pecans. If you like, it is optional. I’ve done it without them when I have nut sensitive of people in the house, but I personally absolutely love the little crunch that they add. And then you’ll throw those across the top.

Andrea:
You’ll combine whatever spices you like. I like to grate fresh nutmeg over the top. You can sprinkle cinnamon over the top. You can kind of do whatever floats your boat. And then if you want to, you can drizzle honey across all of that. And then you can put a lid on or not it’s up to you I usually use a lid just because of the container I’m typically baking it in has a lid and put it in the oven and, And bake it until they’re nice and tender. You can bake it all the way until they just completely fall apart, or you can bake it until they’ve got, you know, like a little apple crisp shape still looking to them. You can, when we have rhubarb in the garden, I dice in rhubarb. You can dice in pears. You can sprinkle in dried berries if you want like little burst of chewy brightness here and there. Your mention of orange peel now has me thinking I should try this with some orange peel on top or some lemon peel. That would be amazing. And it is so delicious. But if you just really want to send it, then when you put it in your bowl, you drizzle some cream on top. And then that’s really all you need to know. It’s quite delicious.

Andrea:
Everybody wants to know the temperature you bake it on. So I do want to say that my oven was broken for a straight year and you couldn’t change the temperature. You could only bake at Fahrenheit. Yeah, it was on or off. And guess what?

Alison:
That’s a good temperature for it to be stuck on.

Andrea:
Isn’t it?

Alison:
It’s the perfect temperature.

Andrea:
It’s the literal little of the room. That’s what I was going to say. I was going to say, I don’t know. I just throw it around , pretty much everything. I have roasted turkeys. I have That’s in English language. In English. In American. We call it . We like big numbers. But that is pretty standard temperature, I guess. So I don’t really know what temperature, if there’s a prescribed one, but just put it in a hot oven.

Andrea:
Okay, so next I want to introduce Rachel’s hot chocolate. And I’ve got a link to this because it’s on her blog. So I’ve got a link to this in the show notes. And it’s a bone broth hot chocolate. So this is if you’ve ever made a bone broth that you didn’t load down with garlic and onions and herbs, but you just have a nice neutral one, maybe just a stew hen that you simmered or something, and it isn’t super loaded with flavor or herbs, then you can use that stock and you can package and label it separately as, you know, neutral broth or something if you want to. And this is also why oftentimes when I’m making batches of broth to put away I don’t actually really add much to them if anything because when it’s mostly neutral then I can do what I want with it later but her recipe which is linked in the show notes is bone broth whole milk so it’s three parts bone broth and one part whole milk so it’s mostly broth and then she said you can add a little molasses if you want.

Andrea:
For flavor or sweetness, a sprinkle of bee pollen, a whack of honey. That’s her measurement, which I really like. And some butter, a heap of your raw cacao powder. And she said you can add vanilla if you want. She doesn’t right now, but you can if you want to. And warm it until the butter melts and the drink is warm and then drink and enjoy. And it is quite delicious and it’s very filling because of course it’s super high in protein yeah protein both broth and milk in there so that link is in the show notes for your i’m thinking you could make that.

Alison:
With coconut milk and coconut oil if you don’t want it to be dairy free.

Andrea:
And if.

Alison:
You didn’t want chocolate carob would go really nicely with that as well i imagine.

Andrea:
Carob would go really well yeah and carob i feel like pairs really well with bee pollen slash or nutritional yeast if you can get your hands on one without the artificial, niacin or whatever yeah the um carob in itself.

Alison:
Is sweeter than cacao so.

Andrea:
It can.

Alison:
Bring sweetness when you know when you want that without having to add another form of kind of sugar which is nice.

Andrea:
Okay the best cheesecake ever this recipe comes direct from anita it is wonderful and the link is in the show notes and i okay i yes we we were having a wrestling of the mind trying to decide if it was the best dessert like if it overcomes my love of fruit pies, and here’s the thing the cheesecake is so much easier to make so fruit pies I love fruit pies but they’re just kind of rare because they’re kind of a lot of effort yeah but this cheesecake you don’t make a crust for it I mean you could if you wanted to but I don’t and it just has what four ingredients and it’s so simple so good and it’s so filling and you can put as much fruit in or on it as you can tolerate so i put the link to that in the show notes thank you anita for that amazing recipe is a family favorite and it would go well probably actually now that you say that now that i say this next to a piece of crispy gingerbread oh geez yeah i don’t know why i never thought about that before creamy and crispy the cheese with the gingerbread.

Alison:
Yeah very nice.

Andrea:
Okay, here’s another quick treat that has no recipe, Allison. This could also pair with your gingerbread. But it’s just if you make fresh ricotta and you put some fresh crumbled ricotta in a bowl and you drizzle a little honey or pile some berries on it, it just magically turns into a sweet treat.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So good. So that’s a little treat to keep in mind. Ricotta is so easy to make. I’ll put the recipe that I use for ricotta in the show notes. It’s, I like to say never fail, even though that’s kind of a dangerous phrase to say.

Alison:
But.

Andrea:
I’ve never had a failure with this recipe, and it uses the milk. It’s not whey from cheese like a traditional ricotta would be. It’s just actual milk. Mentioning again your tibicos in the hamper.

Alison:
Oh, as a drink.

Andrea:
Yeah, of course. Yeah, I just had it in my notes for beverages. So, the long-lost recipe for eggnog.

Alison:
Yay!

Andrea:
Link is in the show notes. This is a cooked eggnog. You could turn it into a pudding if you wanted to and have eggnog pudding you could pour the entire thing into your ice cream churn and churn it as eggnog ice cream you can just drink it you can add brandy or rum or whatever is the traditional thing to put an eggnog i don’t know if you want it alcoholic or you could just drink it as written and it’s delicious i use essential oils as spices in it you don’t have to if you don’t want to you can just use powdered spices or you can put fresh ones whole ones in and let them steep i mean eggnog can handle a lot of flavor and it can handle a lot of variation i use like it’s i say in the recipe you know x parts milk x parts cream really i mainly just pour off the top of the jar but i didn’t really know how to describe that in recipe format. So I just like it to be really creamy and thick. And, um, that is in that file that I said, Alison, I turned it to the PF and put on the WordPress download website situation, the treasure trove.

Alison:
I don’t know what to call it. That’s ancestralkitchenpodcast.com forward slash downloads.

Andrea:
Okay, that sounds better.

Alison:
For the uninitiated.

Andrea:
Alison, you’re, you’re calming me. Thank you. So, Hannah, we’re never going to drop it. We’re never going to drop it. We’re going to keep those distinctions forever. So that’s there. I also included in there the ginger lemon turmeric tea that Hannah and I made basically day and night when we were on GAPS. And her maca mocha. And then there’s like instructions for making bayberry candles and cleaning scouring powder. Just there’s a lot of random stuff in there. So I just slapped the whole thing into a PDF and threw it up on the download. So eggnog also can be made raw. So there are different benefits and things you can get from raw food, raw egg yolks, things like that. We know.

Andrea:
And if you’ve ever read Farmer Boy, then you remember the pivotal culture and life-shaping moment when Almanzo was sent out to the field with a bucket of eggnog, creamy, foamy, with the flecks of cinnamon on top, and how he stopped because the bucket was so full, he had to stop and drink some just to make sure he didn’t flop over the edge. So, as one does. So, this eggnog that I’ve linked, the recipe’s from Monica Corrado, and it is more so that recipe that he was describing, or that his wife was describing there, which is raw egg yolks, raw milk and cream, and then whatever kind of spices you want to mix into it.

Andrea:
That really is a treat that belongs in the spring eggnog generally speaking is a spring treat because that’s when your cows have so much yeah cream and so much milk and as we know the anglo-saxons called that i think it’s april that they called try milka which is because you’re milking your cow three times a day because she’s got so much milk but um that’s when you’ve got a lot of eggs and milk so really i think of eggnog as a spring thing but i know it’s kind of traditionally.

Andrea:
Drunk in the winter for, modern purposes, which I suppose came from because there is a ways to preserve eggs in a lot of alcohol. And then you can add milk to that or cream. But anyways, that link is in the show notes. So you can make that one too. Okay, sweet cheese topping. I just had to throw it in here, Allison. It’s not really a dessert on its own. But let me tell you, I had the Nourishing traditions book for many and many a year too many before I actually made the sweet cheese topping and I regret not making it sooner it’s on page and it has all of two ingredients cream cheese and honey gosh and you I know I know you beat them together and then you’re supposed to put them on things and that’s all I’ll say that.

Alison:
Kind of makes sense you know and I think it’s so simple a bit like the other sort of ricotta and berries.

Andrea:
And things you.

Alison:
Were talking about. Often with the spelt sourdough carrot cake, I would make a topping for Gable, which is cream cheese and honey mixed together and spread on the top. I think that’s possibly in the cookbook. I can’t remember. But yeah, that’s just a classic and so easy because usually there’s honey in the cupboard. And then if you just happen to have the cream cheese, two minutes and it’s done.

Andrea:
God loves you. and you’re his favorite you immediately know that is so good and you can of course put spices on top of that or you could serve it with i don’t know fruit or something if you had some apples you could slice up i suppose when i mixed it i was obviously mixing it to go on top of the gingerbread cake from nourishing traditions which everybody knows i love so i didn’t put in this list because i’ve talked about a thousand times but yeah um i ended up eating a significant amount straight out of the bowl. It was really good. Gabriel and I have that similarity where we like to just stand in the kitchen and eat out of the bowl.

Alison:
He doesn’t like me to scrape the bowl out too vigorously.

Andrea:
Oh, no.

Alison:
Oh, no, please don’t. Stop scraping. I’m licking up. Stop scraping it now.

Andrea:
You’re not leaving anything for me. Leave some in the corners of the field, mother. I must glean.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
Another cream heavy, fruit heavy. So cream and fruit It’s just such a perfect pairing. And this is another recipe from Anita, and it’s for panna cotta. She calls it raspberry panna cotta because that’s what she used in there. Obviously, as she does tell you in the recipe, you can use whatever fruit floats your boat. But panna cotta is such a delicious little treat. Again, you do not have to sweeten it because there’s fruit in it, but you can sweeten it if you want to. But it’s got cream and gelatin and just so much good stuff in it. So it’s a very rich, nourishing product. Dish. And again, I make it in little tiny jars. So you can just put lids on it. Actually, I made it for a one time for a baby shower. I made a bunch of jars and put lids on it. And I was like, wow, how smart am I? That’s so easy to transport and take it to the party. So that’s another good little dessert. Have you ever made a panna cotta with coconut milk? I cannot think why it wouldn’t work.

Alison:
I think it would work though. Definitely. I mean, because it’s the gelatin that’s set in it.

Andrea:
I can’t. It’s the gelatin that says it. Yeah. didn’t work yeah yeah i kind of want to try that because i got a collection of coconut milk jars from azure because i wanted to make this big batch of the tinnit tack that we had the other night okay and then you all had been talking about making coconut milk kefir so it kind of inspired me so now i feel like i’m on a coconut milk kick sort of vibe and so now rice pudding with.

Alison:
Coconut milk is really really.

Andrea:
Good oh what we haven’t talked about rice pudding yesterday no yeah it’s very good well we talked about risotto which is like the savory version of rice pudding um just add rice pudding to your list everybody because it’s amazing um coconut milk rice pudding okay i’m gonna be trying that, i need to get my hands on arboreal rice so that’s the one thing i never ever have on hand.

Alison:
Do as you have that.

Andrea:
They do they do you can use canarolo.

Alison:
As well there’s there’s two there’s there’s two kind of risotto rices i prefer arboreo and it’s more easily available here in the uk um.

Andrea:
Yeah i’ve never heard of the other one so i don’t know how available it is the last thing i wanted to put on here was one final beverage and this we had the most delightful, camper who she came out and stayed she came she was in the area for a friend’s wedding and she stayed out here for over two weeks and she came up and made us a traditional um Indian chai I don’t know gosh she probably told me kind of where there’s so many variations of this chai I’ve heard it called milk tea a bunch of different things that people call it or different names and spices it gets, but it is quite simple at its base. So, um, she came up and what she did was she took my pot, she put it on our kettle, I don’t know if I had the word to say is, um, like a.

Andrea:
I told her, just tell me what it is that you need and we’ll see if we have it. And so she took whole cardamom and she kind of pounded it in the mortar and pestle. And she wanted star anise. I was flat out, but she does put that in. She took a cinnamon stick and she, I think she kind of pounded that a little bit too. She took fresh ginger and like peeled some strips off of it. And then we put in, gosh, I think that was all the spices that she used. But of course you can do whatever floats your boat and then she put in black tea loose leaf and then milk she put in milk and then just let it simmer for a little while and then um you could simmer the spices much longer if you wanted to and then add the tea in later but she simmered it and then she poured it just through a little tea strainer into the individual cups and she said she likes to make it without any sweetener then everybody can sweeten it if they want to yeah if you’re using very fresh milk it’s going to be quite sweet even without adding anything, especially as now I know you pointed out like with the cinnamon kind of brings that out yeah so many.

Alison:
Of those spices are really sweet I absolutely love chai and as.

Andrea:
Someone who doesn’t.

Alison:
Have sugar it’s one of my kind of go-to sweet treats and.

Andrea:
You know sometimes.

Alison:
I make it with the spice is fresh sometimes I use a pre-made mix um and I often make it just with water not with the milk I often make it with oat milk I often just put a little.

Andrea:
Bit of water in oh my gosh that sounds so good I.

Alison:
Don’t drink black tea um I make it with red bush tea when I make it myself and it just it’s such a lovely drink it just is it feels like just a hug in a cup you know that’s what I.

Andrea:
Absolutely.

Alison:
And making it yourself. Your whole house smells of it. It’s wonderful.

Andrea:
I know. It’s literally magical. I can’t wait until we have the wood stove running during the winter because then I can just throw a pot down here and… Where I am in our basement is next to where you walk out the back door and you slide, take your sled and you go down the hill in the snow. So it’s perfect to have something on the stove down here because when everybody comes in, you know, with their face bright red and their fingers bright red and snow packed into their. Exactly. They’re all blue and red and then they can come right inside and there’s something on top of the stove, which is really nice. But yes, the chai is something that’s also you said it feels like a warm hug. Chai is very much as i have learned from friends that come from you know still more traditional type of living conditions in different countries in africa and things like that and they say oh you would always have chai on the back of the stove because you want to always be ready to serve it and yeah that is that warm hug that you can give to the guest when they come to your houses having some chai. And I do like, I’m glad you said that about using the Ruobos or the Redbush tea, because that doesn’t have the caffeine in it. And if somebody is highly sensitive to caffeine, and can you just leave, you can leave Ruobos and you don’t have to strain it out right away.

Alison:
No, it doesn’t come, it doesn’t have that kind of, sometimes, you know, black tea has that really tannin and you have to take it out. You can leave the Redbush teabag and it doesn’t have that effect.

Andrea:
Yeah. Oh, that’s really good. What I had done with the gals who taught me, chai in the hospitality sense for the first time was they would make it and strain it and then put the pot onto the stove in the back. And I suppose if you have like a stove with different, not like burners, but… Like aga type or wood stove or something like that then you put it in in a not really hot place and you’ve just got that deliciousness but all of those spices are so good for your digestion yeah and good for your you know actually things like cinnamon and ginger help keep your own temperature up in the winter and cinnamon actually.

Alison:
Has been shown to help with sugar cravings you You know, so if you eat cinnamon.

Andrea:
You’re less likely to crave sugar. It helps with your blood sugar, doesn’t it?

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Yeah. Yeah. So lots of good things there. And that is the last treat that I brought in to close this episode. So that was at least a dozen treats that you can put in your kitchen and hopefully a variety of gluten to non-gluten, dairy to no dairy options. So everybody can find something they like. There was, when I started making a list of treats, Allison, I found a lot that I wanted to put in, but I didn’t even mention them all here. So I put even more in the show notes than what we talked about. Some honorable mentions, including one from my old blog, which has some hilarious and kind of, for me, nostalgic pictures from when Jacob was a baby. So that’s what I got, Alison. That’s what I got today.

Alison:
Wonderful. I also wanted to do an honorable mention for an episode that Rob and I recorded a year or so back, which is called Everyday Luxuries. So if you want to dive even further into how to bring that sense of treat, that sense of luxury into your everyday ancestral kitchen, go back and have a listen to that one too, because it’s a good episode.

Andrea:
And if you’re listening in real time, coming in, I think two weeks is the chocolate episode with Marcus. And if you want to hear him while you wait, you can warm up by going back and listening to one of our very first episodes with Marcus… He is an amazing herbalist, and he wrote an amazing book. And that’s a really, really fascinating episode. And I recorded it sitting in the front seat of my car, like down the road, because there was a brownout. There was no internet. And Rob had to save us on that episode because I turned off my microphone for a while.

Alison:
It feels like we were just little girls back then. And it’s been so long now doing this podcast and you think, gosh, that was a long time ago.

Andrea:
Yeah, that was, it was, it was another time. It was difficult, but you know what? Rob really made it sound good. So thank you to Rob for saving us.

Alison:
Yeah. Wonderful. Okay, anything else you want to throw down? No, it’s just been really delightful to listen to all of these. And thank you to everyone who’s helped give us ideas. And yeah, thank you for putting all of the stuff together in the show notes, Andrea. That’s really helpful.

Andrea:
Yeah, and if you’re in the Discord and listening to this, let’s share all of the sweet treats that we like together and just grow our list of treats. Awesome. Thank you, Alison.

Alison:
Brilliant. Thanks, Andrea. Bye for now.

Andrea:
Bye.