#131 – Behind the Scenes (The Parts You Don’t Hear!)

Ancestral Kitchen Podcast is five years old! A birthday that, when we started this adventure in late 2020, we could never have imagined. In this episode we will finally take you inside the podcast. You’ll hear what goes on behind mic including plenty of the disasters we’ve had. We’ll share with you three exciting announcements about how you can get more Ancestral Kitchen Podcast in your life, We’ll also go over all the ways we can support you (because we’ve amassed a lot more than just the podcast episodes). We’ll talk about what’s happened in our own lives in the last five years and finally we’ll share a few things we think you’d never guess!

To join the podcast community at the new Fellowship level, or at any of our levels, go here: ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/join

If you are interested in sponsoring an episode of the podcast, go here: ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/sponsoranepisode

To check out our sustainable, ethical merchandise, go here: ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/merch

Resources:

To access the podcast downloads mentioned in the show go to ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/downloads

To access the ancestral kitchen downloads mentioned in the episode, go to:

• The Beginner’s Guide to Rye Sourdough Bread
• The Heritage Oat Collection

Alison’s 10 Tips to Create & Maintain a Sourdough Starter

The rest of Alison’s courses can be found here

 

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Transcript:

Andrea:
Hello Alison, how are you today?

Alison:
I’m good, Andrea, how are you?

Andrea:
I’m also well. I ate breakfast, which is nice. So it was good. It was. I’m going to start though by asking if you ate.

Alison:
Yeah, I did. Do you want to hear my food first?

Andrea:
I do, I do.

Alison:
Okay. Yeah, my food was risotto. So I tried, because I knew we were recording on a Friday, which is not usual for us. And Fridays, I usually try to try to if possible just corner a little bit of time for myself um to kind of not be going at it all the time and so this morning I thought you know what I’m I’m going to ignore the things that need doing and I’m going to um do some crafty things which I did I’m I made myself a pair of earrings which you know with the rooster feathers from the rooster that we um dispatched at Nicole’s. And I’ve got to put a picture of them on Discord. And Nicole said, wow, they’re lovely. So I thought, you know what, I’ll try and make her a pair. I’m not any expert earring maker at all. But I tried to this morning start to make a pair of earrings for her. And I did a little bit of art. And then I thought, you know what, I’m going to make risotto. I’ve got enough time. So I made a risotto with some chicken that was off a carcass. And I put in the freezer previously. It’s kind of like saying this is for a risotto. And because it’s the end of the week, we don’t really have much food left because we’re going to the market tomorrow morning.

Alison:
So I didn’t have any greens to put in it. We’ve run out of greens. So I put leeks in and a bit of celery that I had to try and get a bit more kind of body. Then the arborio rice and the end of a packet of frozen peas to give it a bit more kind of colour. And then I had two types of stock. One was a chicken and the other one was a pig trotter stock that I made last week because we made faggots last week, which are an English kind of like scrapple in balls covered in cool fat and served with a pig trotter gravy, which has got tons of onions in it. And so from our farmer, Albert, last week I got some pig trotters and made a lovely stock with them. So we had sort of half chicken half pork stock in the risotto and then some tarragon the chicken that was left over and some garlic salt which Amelia a supporter who’s just over the border in Wales made and some white pepper which is my new, craze um sort of maybe taking over from nigella possibly what dethroned exactly.

Alison:
And um then i finished it with some cheddar that was actually from cheddar wow wow probably quite exciting for for you over the other side of the atlantic no kidding being found of cheddar actually from cheddar aged in um the caves at rookie hole which is like you know there’s lots of stalactites and things in there um you had a little bit down the top so delicious that was a long explanation of quite a simple dinner made from a chicken carpus and a bit of rice and whatever was left in the fridge do you ever think alison nothing.

Andrea:
Really is simple like if i just made.

Alison:
No if i just made.

Andrea:
A little broth with a little veg that that i guess on the face of it is simple but then when.

Alison:
I start talking.

Andrea:
About the chicken that chicken how we raise that chicken all the thoughts that went behind the food that we procured for that chicken you know.

Alison:
Yeah like.

Andrea:
It’s not so simple after all.

Alison:
No yeah I agree I mean I think it’s simple but the two different broths from different animals procured at different times and frozen and then you know the people who grew the veg for me and yeah the the rice that walking to the market to get Italy walking to the market, yeah, the cheese which had come from cheddar you know, and I kind of made a point of getting that one it is not simple, but, But hopefully, you know, when I present it at the table and everyone enjoys it and says this is wonderful, it kind of gives a semblance of simplicity because it’s just a bowl with some nice comfort food in it.

Andrea:
It’s because the most basic things are so comforting and they’re the best for us, you know. All these health problems and really what you need to be doing is hydrating. Yeah. Stop buying supplements yeah the simple is the focus, I had a I suppose simple breakfast also but also not simple I made myself a coffee latte I don’t know what you call it like where you froth, milk and put it into black coffee a.

Alison:
Shot just as you.

Andrea:
Put it into a single shot I didn’t make an espresso shot I just took some of the black coffee that I made for Gary and took like a half a cup of coffee and a half a cup of milk.

Alison:
Okay, that’s kind of, I don’t know what we’d call that because, so a latte would be a shot of espresso with milk on top of it, which is sometimes froth, but not much froth. Whereas a cappuccino is seriously froth, you know, you get your bit on the top.

Andrea:
It’s really, really, really fluffy. That’s like my favorite drink. So I was kind of going for that, but I didn’t have espresso. So any who’s, I had that and I had boiled eggs. I’ve been boiling eggs, trying now to boil eggs weekly. So that involves when we collect the eggs, then I have to have a certain percentage that goes to boxes that I basically hide in the back of a cupboard.

Alison:
I see.

Andrea:
Because if people see them, then they just crack them and use them, but I need them to age for like 10 days before I can boil them. So I have to have this rotation. And so those three boxes must be always refilled. So as soon as I boil them, I have to make sure I refill it right away so they can start aging. And so I had boiled eggs, 12 of those, obviously. And I made a flatbread.

Alison:
12 large.

Andrea:
Yeah, 12 jumbo is my preference. Double-yoked every one of them.

Alison:
12 dog eggs.

Andrea:
Oh, man. I made… For Easter, I was making flatbread to go with our roasted leg of lamb. And so then I wanted to try a gluten-free flatbread, but it was kind of a spur-of-the-moment decision. So I needed something I could come up with really quickly. And I made this recipe online and I adjusted it a bit so I could make it with lamb tallow and all the things I like. And you make the dough balls and just put them in a container and store them in the fridge. And then you just take one out and I flatten it in the tortilla press.

Alison:
Nice.

Andrea:
So there’s no, you know, rolling or getting things out. It just, you know, is gluten-free, so it smashes out really easy. And then I fried it on a pan with just a little lard. So I had this, like, crisped, hot flatbread. And then I…

Alison:
And what flours? What flours are in there, do you remember?

Andrea:
Buckwheat, teff… I don’t remember what all, but those are the two primary. In tapioca, brown rice, I think. Anyways, then I had that, so I had that flatbread and then I had the 12 salted boiled eggs. And then I had made this pate the other day. I saw, you saw it in Discord when I said I was making a soup at the same time I was making pate on another counter and I thought, let me just put some of this miso into the pate. Instantly obsessed. It is so good. It is so good. And then I had leftover.

Alison:
I’ve never done that.

Andrea:
No, neither had I. I had leftover breakfast sausage and I threw that in the pate. So it’s just got like these bits of sausage throughout it. I mean, it is beyond of delicious. And so I put that on the flatbread and had it with the coffee. It was pretty nice. Pretty nice.

Alison:
Sounds really good. So you’re ready to go. I mean, you’re seriously fueled for this episode. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
With those 12 eggs, I can go all day.

Alison:
Cool.

Andrea:
Yeah. Oh, gosh.

Alison:
So we’ve got, before we read the little review we’ve got, I wanted to talk about Discord a little bit. Tell us what’s happening on Discord, because you are the Discord queen.

Andrea:
Oh, my gosh.

Alison:
What’s the latest on Discord?

Andrea:
So much happening on Discord. How to keep up. Some of the conversations I just poked my head in because there’s a lot of them happening. And then some of them I’m posting miles of text. So it all depends on where the time falls. We are, so we’re doing a couple different book read-alongs in the group, as you know. And one that just started, some of the ladies started on their own, is reading this book about Charlotte Mason’s philosophies. and there’s a couple moms that are, learning about charlotte mason’s education philosophies and so they all kind of voted together to read this book and i have never read it so i thought well i’ll read this book about about it with them and so i’ve been really enjoying following along and kind of narrating to gary as we go there’s a okay we have in there a gluten-free baking channel as well as a regular sourdough channel and both of those are always active yeah the gluten-free one is really helpful because there are, you know, like Katie’s in there and she’s been baking gluten-free for a long time and she knows what she’s doing. And I’m in there and I don’t know what I’m doing at all.

Andrea:
And then Brittany’s in there sharing these amazing book recommendations and we’re just all learning together. So I think it was Kylie who said, it does feel kind of isolating sometimes to be, gluten-free or I would actually say that that was my experience before whenever I was gluten-free but this I’ll say round of being gluten-free as of last October I have not felt isolated at all and I think that it’s because there’s so many of us that are just cheerfully engaging with the ideas behind eating gluten-free and and instead of bemoaning what we don’t have we’re celebrating, what great things we can find. And that’s tons of fun. And then, of course, there’s a garden thread, Alice. I don’t know if you know, if you’ve seen that. I know you want a garden, so not to make you feel bad. I get jealous about this.

Alison:
So I’m just like, I don’t want to look at it.

Andrea:
I know, I look at everybody’s gardens, but people are sharing their gardens in there. And if you are a listener and you have a garden, please share the photos or like what you’re planting or what you’re growing.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
And this is Western Hemisphere Spring. So for our Australian members, it’s a different season.

Alison:
But yeah, winter’s coming for them.

Andrea:
Yeah, different. Anyways, it’s always happening in there. It’s fun.

Alison:
That’s really nice to hear kind of, you know, some of the highlights. Thank you. Do you want to read the email we received from Laura about the cookbooks?

Andrea:
Yes, this was so kind. Laura sent this email to us. I do love the cookbooks you guys put together, she says. I’ve made numerous dishes from your past cookbooks and downloads. The Swedish meatballs from the 2025 Christmas hamper were a huge hit at our final holiday gathering last night I will definitely be making them again yeah those things are good.

Alison:
That’s really nice I’m actually we’ll be talking I’m going to.

Andrea:
Talk about the hamper later on in this episode.

Alison:
Yeah exactly yeah that’s exactly what I was going to say we’re going to be talking about things like the hamper and our downloads later on so we’ll hold that thought for a minute I before we actually kind of open the door on what we’re talking about today I just wanted to remind all the listeners that between us we generate two newsletters and both of them come with free downloads so on the podcast website ancestral kitchen podcast.com you can sign up to our newsletter and receive a download for 20 steps to an ancestral kitchen which you can then pin up and when I went to Nicole’s house she had hers pinned up on the inside of her pantry door. And then my newsletter, which is at ancestralkitchen.com, the freebie is called Baking with Ancient Grains. It’s a 30-page PDF with lots of recipes and lots of information.

Andrea:
It’s very good.

Alison:
And so, yeah, you can go ahead and get those and also hear from us more regularly. So let’s dive into today’s topic, Andrea, which is something that is new. Yeah, we’ve never done it before. And frankly, it’s about time. Because, you know, we put this podcast out twice a month and have done now for five years.

Andrea:
Happy anniversary.

Alison:
Incredible. Yeah. Happy anniversary, Andrea.

Andrea:
That’s crazy.

Alison:
We put out our first episodes in March 2021. We started working on it in December 2020. And then finally got the episodes released in March 2021. Now I back in back in the day back in December 2020 and you know the time when we were working at the beginning of 2021 I never even imagined that we would be going five years later still I don’t know what I imagined I didn’t imagine anything this is the problem I have these ideas or I have I have a plan and I don’t think about I never think about the future I just think oh this is a nice thing to do and I don’t really plan properly did you think oh we’d still be going in 2026 Andrea or or am I just am I on my own and you planned the whole thing I couldn’t see.

Andrea:
An end to it because when I looked at ancestral food I was like boy there’s about 5,000 episodes we could do it’s not like if we did a specific super niche topic and you’d kind of run out of things to talk about so I didn’t really know what what or if any end point would be because all I could see was like, oh, there’s a lot we could do here. And then once you, Once you do them, sometimes I find we need to go back and revisit them, like the supermarkets episode or things, you know, we kind of have to circle back to them. Plus, you and I are evolving and developing our understanding and our philosophies as we go. And sometimes you need to come back and say, OK, this is where we were and what we said we didn’t know. And now we’ve learned some more and here’s where we’re at now.

Alison:
And now the input from the community as well of their ideas and their thoughts and their processes and what they know.

Andrea:
Yeah, I mean, just when you start thinking, I’ve got an idea on, I’ve got a handle on this thing that somebody comes in and is like, hi, I’m from this country and here’s what we do. And you’re like, I know nothing.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, five year anniversary. We’re going to be talking kind of, we’re doing this episode to celebrate that a bit, but also to share with you a little bit of what goes on behind the scenes, because it’s interesting and there are some fun things to share. The making of and also I know yeah exactly when I listen to things I always want to know what goes on so we’re going to be talking about some kind of amazing facts of the podcast and then we’ve got some exciting announcements about how you can get more of us and how you can get more involved with us and our direction going forward um later on in the episode we’ll share a, really quite long it surprised me and for you of all the things we have that can help you wherever you are in your journey plus we’ll give you some insight later on in the episode into how we’ve changed personally over the time that we’ve been recording so keep um keep listening for that let’s go to an ad break and then then we can dive in.

Alison:
Okay, so over the last five years, I looked up some stats for what we’ve created and really it was quite surprising to me. So on the main podcast, this is the one that you’re listening to at the moment, the one that goes out to everyone, we have almost 200 hours of recording. And 200 hours, if you put it back to back, would give you eight days and nights of continuous listening. Well, and that, I mean, you know, you start it on a Monday and you just played us constantly. You’d still be going the following Tuesday and you’d be listening to it all through the night as well. Maybe you’d be subliminally like taking it in and then you’d come out and you just know how to do everything.

Andrea:
That’s the way to do it.

Alison:
Exactly. And what’s interesting is that many people have told us that they listen to the episodes over and over again. So, you know, if you’ve listened to all episodes and potentially you’ve listened to them over and over again, you’ve done a lot of listening to us talk um which is just incredible um I wondered Andrea if you wanted to take a guess at how many hours of our live it has taken for us to plan record and edit those episodes because that always quite eye-watering to me no I I.

Andrea:
Don’t want to but I will say that all the time planning and recording has been quality time well spent with, Very good friend of mine. So as for the editing, Rob is on his own.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah, exactly. He’s just on his own with his computer. That’s nice. Do you have any highlights from these 200 hours of episodes?

Andrea:
Oh, my gosh. There’s so many highlights. I had a hard time thinking about this one. Of course, it’s, you know, with thinking in reverse order, of course, you’re immediately thinking of the things that just happened.

Alison:
Recent ones.

Andrea:
The interview with Tara was a highlight, a pinnacle, a peak in that it was something I had talked about with you from our very first planning meeting that I wanted to do. So that was incredible. And that just happened. And recording with Rob is definitely a highlight because you know how Rob is. He’s so funny. And the coffee episode. I don’t care if you drink coffee or not. You have to listen to that episode. It is so funny. Rob just is dry humor. Maybe it’s a British thing. I don’t know. But, um… You enjoy. I do. I do enjoy it. Yeah. There’s a lot of highlights and some of the highlights include remembering where I was when we recorded, like sitting on the floor or whatever.

Alison:
Yeah. Yeah. That’s true for me, you know, because I’ve recorded in lots of different spaces.

Andrea:
Yes.

Alison:
You know, we’ve moved countries in the process. But also, you know, sitting on, you know, when my body’s not been playing ball so well, I’ve been sitting on a great big inflatable bowl recording. I’ve used a Black & Decker work table that Rob has to do sawing on to attach things to. I’ve sat on the floor with cushions. I’m sitting at the moment in a garden chair in the bedroom that Rob and I are sleeping with the bed pushed up against the wall so there’s room. We have tatami mats and futon beds, so we literally lift them up so there’s room for us to work.

Alison:
There’s all those memories tied in to those individual recordings. You’re totally right. I feel like, as favourite episodes go, for me, I mean, there’s so many of them. There are so many of them. I really enjoyed recording episode 57, which was The Ancestral Food of Wales, because it felt to me, I mean, my granddad was born in North Wales, and really that’s the closest sort of heritage that I have. I don’t feel any other you know I feel in my body a sense of a connection to my granddad and his family that would have lived in North Wales for probably centuries before him and so I really enjoyed talking to Carwin who is just an expert on Wales and wonderful to listen to and just obviously there were oats in there which just added it added to it for me that’s such a wonderful episode, It was really, really nice. Rob had to work on that episode incredibly.

Andrea:
I remember.

Alison:
Carwin didn’t put headphones on and we had this echo all the way through and we wondered whether we could even save it. Thankfully, his long kind of going over it did save it and it’s actually quite good quality.

Andrea:
We cannot say enough things to Rob that were on the air in any decent fashion. He saved us many times. Some horrifying, mostly on my end, mistakes.

Alison:
No, sometimes on mine. Sometimes on mine.

Andrea:
Rarely.

Alison:
I also like episode number 60, which was the fermented drinks episode, because there were just so many fermented drinks, and we were like, bam, bam, bam. We couldn’t run out. Yeah, all these fermented drinks that you can make. Yeah, exactly. We need to do, what more fermented drinks can I make?

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
I think it’s another episode.

Andrea:
Oh, yeah, that would be good.

Alison:
What other fermented drinks can I make? I enjoyed the baking pans with Ellie, which is a more recent one, 110.

Andrea:
That one’s a good episode.

Alison:
It’s just geeky. We’re just geeking all the time. It’s nerdy to the extreme. Nelly is so knowledgeable. Exactly. She’s so knowledgeable.

Andrea:
Oh, I put in this shaped pan and this loaf and this temp and I found this crust. But when I did this and the chicken, you’re like, oh, yeah. This is the she knows what she’s talking about.

Alison:
She does, exactly. I also, I don’t know if I enjoyed them all, but I enjoyed 71, which was the interview with Abby Allen, who is at Piper’s Farm in southwest of England because she’s just amazing. She’s an amazing speaker. When I heard her talking, we were talking to her, both of us, and she just, I mean, she should be representing a country. She’s just so good. And so I thoroughly enjoyed that one.

Andrea:
Even when we were talking off the books with her, I was like, we could record this. You could sell this. It’s just so good.

Alison:
She’s so good.

Andrea:
Plus, I loved her sweater.

Alison:
How about you, Andrea? Have you got some episodes out of the hundred and however many it is that kind of stick out?

Andrea:
Oh, my gosh. Well, I really love the Christmas episodes. I feel like those are just cozy and special. And 38? Is a KTC replay that we put on the main feed during the summer. And I remember it was when you asked me about eggs. And sometimes just in the middle of the night, I think about that and I start laughing. So I like that one.

Alison:
I just have to say something about the egg episode. I think it is an absolutely hysterical episode, but I thought maybe it’s just me. You know, like people who laugh at their own jokes. And I thought, no, don’t stop going on about the eggs episode. It was hysterical to record, but maybe it was just a thing. I forget about it. Literally, I feel the same. That’s why I wanted to put it out on the main feed because it’s just so entertaining.

Andrea:
It is.

Alison:
To hear our back and forth about eggs. So if you haven’t listened to number 38, which was put out on the main feed, I think, last year. Was it?

Andrea:
I don’t even remember when.

Alison:
Eggs, eggs, eggs or something. Yeah, do go and listen to that because it’s fun. Sorry, I interrupted you. What were you saying?

Andrea:
No, it’s all good. The 53 is the raw milk one. And because raw milk is such a near and dear to my heart subject, then I particularly love that one because it’s…

Alison:
And that’s one of my most popular.

Andrea:
Yeah, I’m glad to hear it. And on that subject also, 61, which you recorded with Rebecca Holden, that episode made me cry. I love that episode. I love that one. And then I, it’s hard to say, but I think I would also throw on 103, which was our nourishing traditions, nourishing, something about food, 10 nourishing traditions, something about food.

Alison:
Just call it something.

Andrea:
The greatest. It’s just such a good episode where we talked about, and, you know, we are always banging on about, ancestral food is cheaper than processed food, you know? And I made that episode because I thought, let me actually… Find out and actually prove it. Is it or isn’t it? And so I priced out meals and compared them to, you know, the grocery store, the cheapest, cheapest versions I could find at any at the cheapest grocery store in the US. And we beat them. We beat them on all of them. So I’m really proud of that.

Alison:
That’s nice. That’s nice. Let’s talk about the private podcast at the moment as well, which is the one that goes out to all of our supporters who are in our community. So as of the middle of April, which is where we are now, there are 152 episodes or recordings or extras or after shows on there. And that is incredible, really. As well as these 800 hours of main feed podcast, we’ve also got 152 episodes.

Andrea:
Especially because we didn’t even know we were going to do that podcast. That was not in the plan. It just happened. It evolved.

Alison:
It just happened.

Andrea:
Because we needed overflow space.

Alison:
And I feel like that in that feed are some of my favorite recordings. Like you said, it’s chatting to a friend. I feel like we’re irreverent. We chat with fewer inhibitions.

Andrea:
Us? Reverent?

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
Never.

Alison:
Exactly. But I like the episodes on that feed a lot.

Andrea:
The one that you just put up with Nicole. Okay, anybody who’s on the private podcast does need to go listen to that one right now. I think it is number 152 because it is the newest one. Nicole, we’re talking about the rooster balls. I was literally laughing out loud in my car. And her parents’ love story. I could have listened to an entire episode about that. I could listen to Nicole talk about anything. But it was fun. Yeah, it was a good episode. It’s fun when I listen to you do an interview with somebody because I’m like, this is what it feels like to listen to the podcast. Like, I get to hear this.

Alison:
It’s like, ooh, new content.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Exciting. I haven’t heard it before. Do you listen to our episodes? That’s something that probably people kind of wonder. Do you actually listen to them or not?

Andrea:
Not really.

Alison:
No.

Andrea:
If you do one that I’m not on, I listen to it, obviously.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
Yeah. I used to have to listen to them. You remember when we did the show notes? Then we had to sit down and listen to the entire episode and listen for errors, make notes and things like that. Now we’ve got a new system where we can write things down as we go. We can leave little tags for Rob. It’s much better now. Um i went back and listened to a few the one with tara i re-listened because i felt like so much, came from her that even it listening to her closely in the moment i couldn’t take it all in, and okay when i listened to it again i felt like i got even more out of it you know things maybe layers of what she said that i wasn’t picking up the first time or whatever so sometimes i do go back and listen to them i was listening to a podcast of somebody once and it’s somebody i do not remember what podcast it was and i’ve always thought she sounds like me a little bit and i was listening to it and somebody came in and they’re like you’re listening to yourself on your podcast and i was like no this actually isn’t me.

Alison:
I don’t usually listen to them at all. Like you said, we used to have to because we used to go through them. And obviously, if there’s an error on one of them, sometimes we don’t know if it’s good enough quality and we have to listen to it. But other than that, I don’t listen to them. And we record so many of them because we record for the supporter feed too that very often when a podcast comes out, I’m like, did I say that? Someone says to me, I love the way you said that. Really?

Andrea:
What did I say? That was so great.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly. thing so um along with the main feed episodes and these private podcast feeds we’ve also got lots of downloads on our site if you go to ancestral kitchen.com forward slash downloads or in the menu of ancestral kitchen podcast.com choose the downloads option you will find many downloads a lot of them for all listeners there’s a milling guide there’s a winter eating guide there’s the ancestral kitchen challenge and there are over 40 downloads for companionship supporters um pdfs videos notes samples from guest cookbooks guest writing guest video demos, worksheets recipe books the stash that is growing on there is really quite substantial andrea you’ve been working with our output of recipe books and booklets i mean you’ve done the majority of the work on making them look beautiful and i know you’ve been kind of going back over them and trying to sort them over the last few months tell us what what you realized Well.

Andrea:
We have enough content for a huge cookbook, like we do. And I’ve thought before how nice it would be to pull everything together into one book. If you’re a publisher, please approach us about this concept. We have hundreds of original and delicious ancestral recipes that honestly, this is the thing, Allison, when I look at food in cookbooks, even really good cookbooks, it’s just not the way that food comes at you. Things are measured in grocery store sizes or grocery store cuts and shapes of things, and that’s not how most of us who are listening to this, we’re not getting chicken like that. It doesn’t look like that. And so the recipes in a lot of these books, you can translate them, but it’s a it’s kind of a mental effort to be translating constantly when you’re cooking. And as you know, having lived in different countries, but yeah, we have we have so much. I think it would make a beautiful, huge book.

Alison:
So, yeah, that’s in our future, perhaps.

Andrea:
Sure is.

Alison:
Which should be exciting. So, all of this has happened incredibly without us ever having met each other, which, you know, new listeners come in and they’re like, really? What? Not met. We started online. You know, we met online and then we communicated online and we passed ideas online and then we started recording. And so far, it has all stayed online.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
But during that time, during the last five years, there were times where regularly we’ve met twice a week on a video call.

Andrea:
For a long time we did.

Alison:
For many months, we met twice a week, every single week on video. You know, that’s how much time we’re spending together. You think about, you know, the friends that you see regularly. We’d be on the phone for like three, three and a half hours each time, twice a week, which is a substantial amount of time.

Andrea:
I told my mom the other day, I was like, I don’t think there’s anybody. I mean, there’s Gary and my mom that I talk to the most and there’s you. And I think you even eclipse my mom because some weeks we don’t get to have a dedicated talk. But then again, other weeks, we don’t work together for hours on end. So maybe it evens out. But it is pretty awesome.

Alison:
I definitely talk to you more than I talk to my mom. I don’t know. That doesn’t really mean anything particularly. But, yeah, I talk to Rob more and then Gabriel probably and then you. I think you’ll next one. So even though we’ve never met in real life, interestingly, we have both dreamt about meeting each other, haven’t we? Do tell the listeners about that.

Andrea:
It was wild because we dreamed it the same night. I messaged you. And I said, I had a dream that we met and that I just, like, we hugged for a really long, long time. And you said, what? I just dreamed that, like, I was meeting you at the airport and, like, I was running to meet you. It was just so crazy. I was like, did we, like, meet somewhere in the outer space?

Alison:
In some realm.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Yeah, some realm that we don’t know about.

Andrea:
So funny.

Alison:
So, yeah. Maybe we did. Exactly.

Andrea:
I, the episode, when you did the episode with Nicole, I was very jealous listening to you and Nicole prattle on about cooking together and talking and getting distracted. I was like, that’s, I like to think that if we get together, we’d be eating all this good food, but also would we even be cooking? It would be so distracting.

Alison:
Yeah. But if we do me or when we do me, we have to not like fill our time with tons of stuff, you know, because when I was at Nicole’s, I was there for a week and she had some ideas of what we could go. And do and each time we kind of said something i was like i just want to stay here and talk and cook.

Andrea:
Yeah you know yeah it was that’s that’s the best really rewarding you know that’s what leah does when she comes over we just stay here and we just we i i thought when i heard you and nicole that sounds like when leah comes over because she just she sits and she either she’s nursing a baby or both babies she nursed her baby and my baby last time and reads or we just talk and she just entertains me and I’ll be cooking and she’ll be chasing kids or whatever. Like, It just works out that way.

Alison:
Yeah, that’s nice.

Andrea:
I did definitely see myself in Nicole’s panic when you were coming over. I was like, how many times have I walked through my house without, what would Alison think? What would Alison think?

Alison:
I don’t know. Yeah, well, you know, obviously I’m going to come and I’m going to go, no, that’s horrible, that’s not right, that’s not right. And I’m not going to show you my house at all because, you know, you do exactly the same thing here.

Andrea:
Oh, geez.

Alison:
So anyway, let’s talk about the listeners now. we have amazing listeners in episode 122 we talked about you our listener more we have listeners in 68 countries you leave us reviews thank you for doing that and we read them if you haven’t left us a review yet check the show notes because that will tell you how to do it you send us emails you tell your friends about the podcast which is invaluable to us so many people who are listening to the podcast or who are supporters of the podcast have said to me I found out because my friend told me about you so many so that feels that’s like the best recommendation ever you know the best way of finding a listener ever and importantly you do the work in the kitchen which is keeping ancestral food alive and passing and nourishing friends and family and youngsters and keeping the skills alive and bringing back the skills and supporting farmers and looking after our soil and our environment and that is what we want that’s the whole reason behind this podcast so thank you they’re.

Andrea:
Probably doing that kitchen work right now.

Alison:
Yeah well they’re listening exactly and within our listeners we have amazing supporters who contribute to the podcast and become part of our community we have over 140 supporters spread over all the different levels and spread all over the globe and, As part of our community, some people just support us because they believe in what they’re doing and they want to give some of that energy back to us. But a lot of people join because they want to be part of our community. And in the community, we have the Discord forum, which we talked a little bit about earlier on the podcast, where we share what we’re up to. We talk about things that are going well. We ask questions. We rant because we know that we’re with friends within our community. Rant.

Andrea:
Never.

Alison:
Rant no no i don’t rant i never rant um so andrew you talked a little bit about discord at the beginning and to talk a little bit to us about how you feel it’s grown from the early days of discord when we first started it what’s changed so.

Andrea:
Much well the conversations definitely happen you know daily there’s conversations which is really.

Alison:
Fun to see.

Andrea:
Because like people just kind of chilling hanging out visiting and as i alluded to before there’s multiple different read-alongs that are running concurrently or have run at different times. And the newest one that started that I mentioned before on the Charlotte Mason philosophy was not started by you or I, which I thought was really cool. It was started by the listeners. They took ownership of it and made it their own. There’s been meetups in real life. We had a camp out here on the property with people from the area. I mean, people actually flew and drove in from kind of far too, but we had one here. Um, and then the discord is just, I mean…

Andrea:
You bring your troubles to the Discord, and you think nobody’s ever been through this or seen such a thing, whether it be what somebody said unthinkingly to your child or to you at a holiday party, or if it’s something that you don’t know is mold on the top of your ferment. People post pictures or share what’s going on. Their dough that didn’t rise or animals that in the barnyard aren’t doing the right thing or something. And people have I’m always shocked by.

Andrea:
The different experts that kind of emerged from the woodwork in there. So really thankful for everybody’s support. And, you know, Megan Francis, I did the tea episode with her. And she’s an amazing supporter, emotional supporter of the podcast as well. She takes our podcaster confessions and queries from the professional standpoint as well. And she is always sharing pithy questions in there. And she put up an article the other day on the camembert cheese crisis, which is an item I didn’t know existed. I mean, the cheese, yes, the crisis, no. And, you know, Alison, it was just like everything when you and I talk about food, it’s here’s what’s happening. And then just unraveling the ideas that came that led to it. And I mean, it was so I could sit down and read the article with like you and Megan and like that. That’d just be a really good article to read. Anyways it’s it’s it’s its own thing now and there.

Alison:
Yeah exactly it’s got a life of it of itself you know from the beginning when there were only a few of us and now there’s a whole lot of people talking to each other over their own kind of kitchen tables in quotes you know it’s absolutely amazing so um and it’s not it’s not some people feel um kind of intimidated at the beginning that It might be difficult to get used to, but really it is quite simple to get used to. And there are no adverts. You know, there’s none of the social media advert here, advert there. It’s only the people who are in the community who see what you’re writing. And there is no you being bombarded by people who want to sell you some stuff like on Facebook.

Andrea:
I mean, we’ll sell you stuff.

Alison:
Just us yeah yeah okay so also the community has live meetings once a month and I remember when we first started those live meetings we had just one supporter who came along Diana thank you because several months in a row you were the only person who came to those live meetings and it was an absolute joy to be able to visit with you for like you know an hour or just over an hour and just chat the three of us and now the meetings are full you know not you know we could we could have more but there’s so many faces that come up on my screen in front of me it’s amazing not everyone talks you don’t have to but you can if you want to and it’s just so nice to see faces and get to know people you know I know I’ve met some supporters but also I know I feel like I know supporters more because I’ve seen them faces and I and I’ve talked to them during those those live meetings yeah shout out to francine.

Andrea:
Ever since she joined she has been on every single live call except.

Alison:
She’s.

Andrea:
No she’s slamming the countertop as i say this um uh like two or three months ago something happened with her alarm, And it was so weird because Francine wasn’t there. And I was like, I don’t know if this meeting counts. Like, is this illegal? Are we allowed to post this? Because Francine wasn’t here.

Alison:
It’s the middle of the night for her because she’s in Australia.

Andrea:
I know, two or three in the morning.

Alison:
It’s like half of two or something. And so she always sets her alarm for it.

Andrea:
With like cats climbing on her and toads jumping past.

Alison:
Out on the deck. Because she doesn’t want to wake the house.

Andrea:
Yeah, in a blanket outside.

Alison:
So we have those once a month. There’s also the private podcast that we talked a little bit about earlier on. There’s so much wisdom on there. the intimate chats between just you and I you know sometimes I’m forgetting that we actually got recording buttons on consistently supporters tell us how much they get from those um episodes we also have the downloads which are extra support and ideas plus the release of any new material um Andrea do you want to talk about a little bit about how um what happens when we create something, and how it goes out to the podcast community.

Andrea:
The system we are currently using, which could change in the future, but this is what we’re doing at the moment, is when you and I put together a product that we’re going to sell, we…

Andrea:
We don’t always know when we’re going to do this because sometimes it takes us by surprise, like the pork book. We weren’t expecting it to turn into such a big book, but every day it grew. And so what we do is we send it out first to our supporters at the companionship and up levels. So the product goes out first to all of them as like a, I don’t know, like an extra freebie for supporting us during the making of it. And then it goes up for sale on our website. So supporters always get it first. It isn’t available later for supporters to go back and download, you know, just the people who are supporting at that time through that window of time get it. So then we kind of do the Christmas hamper is the same thing. That was an idea very near and dear to my heart that I really wanted to go put something in the hands of each of our supporters, but that’s really hard to do when everybody’s all over the place. And so I thought, what if I made something that was just for supporters and it doesn’t have a specific date, but it goes out in a short, short term download format where people can download it in the holiday season. And supporters are contributing to this thing. Yeah.

Andrea:
Because it’s growing and just every year we add to it. So it’s the same hamper, but kind of evolved and growing. So then classics are coming back up over and over. I always want to make the ideas I have of the things I want to make exceed my capacity at this time. But there’s so many great things. We’ve got that scone mini book that you came up with, with the gluten-free scones and the spelt scones. And we’ve got the Christmas pudding book that you and Francine put together, which is so awesome. We’ve got, I mean, guests who come on that have cookbooks always contribute a few recipes for us to publish for our listeners. So if you listen to us interview, you know, a cookbook author, if you’re a supporter, then you typically can always go in and download something from them, which is really awesome. And it’s just really cool. I love the downloads.

Alison:
It feels to me like, you know, the podcast started because of our desire to share our kitchens with each other and with other people. And with that value in my mind, the community that’s developed around it just feels amazing because it feels like a direct kind of engorgement of the energy of what we were feeling around what we wanted to do. Cool. Let’s talk a little bit about what goes on behind the scenes.

Andrea:
Here we go.

Alison:
So physically, you see sometimes podcasters who’ve got like the whole thing. They’ve got the lighting, they’ve got the desks, they’ve got the proper this and that and the headphones. And, you know, there’s a separate room and it’s soundproofed and it’s all absolutely perfect. That is not us. So we have no studio. It’s just us. And Andrea’s in Washington State and I’m in England. And generally, Andrea, you’re in your basement.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And so it’s quite dark quite often and I’m in a bedroom. And you have to remember that we are nine hours apart. You know, it’s not like we can just go, right, okay, let’s meet at 11 o’clock or two o’clock. It just, it doesn’t work like that. So usually it’s dark for one or both of us when we’re recording. We record at, get ready for this, 5.45 a.m. Andrea’s time. And so in the winter, Andrea is generally swathed in blankets because we have to keep warm. And as we get into like October, it’s dark for her and it’s dark for me as well. And I have to remember that it’s going to get dark. So what usually happens is when we start, it’s light and I’m like, fine, you know. And then halfway through, I’m like, oh, it’s getting dark. I can’t see the screen anymore. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t move because I’m in the middle of a recording podcast.

Andrea:
You’re underneath all the cables.

Alison:
Exactly. So what listeners don’t realise is that, I mean, I don’t have a desk when I record. I don’t have a physical desk to work at at all. And we don’t have a space that’s big enough for me to have that. And I like to be more flexible in how I work. So I’m sitting in a chair right now and I have three what can only be kind of described as microphone stands around me. One is holding a microphone. Another one is holding the device that I’m communicating with Andrea on and that the podcast has been recording on. A third one is holding my own ebook reader which has some notes on for the episode I have a pad on my lap and a pen on my lap I have a light to my right and then I’m got sort of boxed in in our bedroom I’ve got an easel to my left because I was doing some painting this morning and it’s all, it it’s not it’s not systematized and kind of clean it’s very um homely is the right word Would you think that’s a good word to describe it, Andrea Homely?

Andrea:
Yeah, I’d say cobbled together is how I usually feel. Patched together. Sending raw bits and pieces of things. And can you paste this into an audio format, please?

Alison:
So we are known for having technology issues. No matter how many times we do this, you know, a hundred and something episodes later, there is always something that goes wrong.

Andrea:
300 if you think about it.

Alison:
Exactly. If you add up the other podcast as well. You would think we would have it down. We would have it down. But we’ve changed equipment a bit because, you know, there’s equipment breaks and you want to get something a bit better. We generally have microphone issues.

Andrea:
As soon as we figure out a software, then the software changes.

Alison:
Then the software changes.

Andrea:
It doesn’t work with the equipment we had before anymore.

Alison:
Exactly. The microphone doesn’t plug in and we’ve no idea why. It’s because there’s been some update on the computer that we didn’t know about.

Andrea:
Zoom is downloading emoji packages for the 80th time. Oh, gosh.

Alison:
I had a period last year where my computer was just always downloading emojis and never ever finishing and we were like we couldn’t record because it was downloading emojis oh it was so terrible we just, But not only do we have microphone and tech issues, we also, what seems to haunt me, is drilling and tree-cutting issues.

Andrea:
I swear, there can’t have been a tree left in Tuscany by the time you moved out of there. So the first time we were recording.

Alison:
We decided we were going to do these live cook-ups where we cooked and videoed and talked. And this was in my flat just outside Florence. And I had a tiny little garden underneath. It’s a single window. They weren’t double glazed at all. And so I was probably about, I don’t know, nine foot as the crow flies from my garden. And as soon as we started recording a tree that had been just at the edge of my garden in my neighbor’s garden for all of the time we lived in that flat and it was a huge tree, someone just started cutting the tree down the moment we hit record.

Andrea:
Alison just goes, hi, and then, wah, wah. I was like, this can’t be happening.

Alison:
And it’s like it haunts me. When we were living in that flat in Pontesiello, which is near Florence, it had very low ceilings and there was a flat above us.

Andrea:
Oh, my gosh.

Alison:
The ceilings were probably only seven foot. And halfway through the summer, the person who lived in the flat above us vacated the flat and they decided to do an entire refit of the flat. So they had like a jackhammer up there.

Andrea:
Okay, so people have to understand, these things are built out of stone.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
Everything’s made of stone.

Alison:
It’s not like a normal European, like, you know, British house, which is more kind of insulated. In Italy, everything echoes. If you live in a flat with other flats, everything echoes like 10 times more than it echoes in the UK. And partly because the floors are not carpeted, they’re made of tile or marble. And so this flat was being done above us and they had a jackhammer up there and they were taking up the ceramic tiling floor and this was about a foot and a half above our head literally and we could literally we couldn’t be in the flat it was horrible it was the holidays just cruising we had to leave the train stations i don’t even know you even called me from a train station and we had meetings from a train from a train station platform because i had nowhere to be how.

Andrea:
Was Was it a 4,800-square-foot apartment? Like, how much could they be drilling?

Alison:
Oh, it was awful.

Andrea:
Every time we get together, they’re drilling for months. It felt like the ceiling was coming in. For months.

Alison:
And for some time, we used, because it was Easter holidays, we asked Gabriel’s school, because it was at the Steiner School at Florence then, if we could use the classroom. And so actually, most of the spelt book, which is in our shop, Sour Day Spelt Every Day, was written in Gabriel’s classroom in Florence, while our house was being subjected to the most horrendous noise. And it’s just like, you don’t realize the noise around you.

Andrea:
I couldn’t even hear you talking.

Alison:
Exactly. You don’t realise until you do video calls or you do a podcast. That’s just noise. Because I live around people. You’ve got a kind of a barrier around you, Andrea. You’ve got your wood and you’ve got space. But I live, and I always have lived, around people. And people are unpredictable and noisy sometimes. And when you’ve got a podcast, you’re like, no, I’m just about to phone Andrea, who’s 5.45 in the morning her time and I want to record. Now we can’t.

Andrea:
There were times we literally couldn’t. And I remember… It seemed so bizarre because we would get on sometimes and you would say, okay, it’s been eight days. They haven’t been here. And then we would start and they literally, they’d be like, what? It just was so, like, how did they know we were driving? And I remember you, Rob, would go up and ask them, okay, we’re going to, you know. And Rob’s a musician. He’s a professional musician. Audio is life.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
That was the wildest. The wildest. And then they take these four-hour lunch breaks and come back right when we’re going to start recording.

Alison:
About to start, yeah. It feels like, I don’t know, anytime you try and do something that’s challenging and hard, you come across problems. And it’s never simple. It might sound like we make it, hopefully we make it sound simple and easy and smooth.

Andrea:
Yeah, yeah.

Alison:
But it’s not. It’s anything but behind the scenes very often. I think we’ve come a long way.

Andrea:
Though, I can say. Oh, definitely. It is not like it was in the beginning, though.

Alison:
At the beginning, I agree. And partially that’s thanks to the community that’s enabled us to buy some technology, which is better than the technology we were using at the beginning. Yeah, exactly. So Rob, my husband, does all of the mixing for the podcast. And interestingly, he does it without using a visual mixer. So, you know, you can’t see any waveforms. He’s doing it on a Raspberry Pi computer, which probably, I mean, that would go way above my head. But it’s unusual. And we also have Ashley, who is an old friend of Rob’s, who puts the episodes, on our podcast host and on our website and he helps organize sending the emails and helps the community and then we have Megan who is a member of our community who runs a farm herself who helps with our project management software and kind of keeping us in order because yes we do have project management software to manage the podcast um she organizes the calendar and, says to us right what episode you’re doing next month we can’t get out but we have to make a decision um so that’s what goes on a bit behind the scenes we’re going to talk a bit more about that let’s take a break for a moment andrea.

Alison:
Okay so right back five years ago when we started this I thought okay let’s do a podcast but really it is so much more work than I could ever have imagined back then you know Ashley who I talked about just before the break and Megan both of them when they came on board you know when they started to see what was going on behind the scenes they were like oh my gosh I had no idea that a podcast was this much work actually I remember Ashley actually saying to me you know I was thinking about doing a podcast but when I saw what you do there’s no way I’m doing that okay thanks for that um each of the episodes that we put out generally they’re around 90 minutes aren’t they but I would estimate that a good easy podcast takes about 10 man hours to make so that 90 minutes is taking us for a podcast that goes well 10 hours we’ve got brainstorming to try and decide what we’re doing and then when one of us will research each podcast sometimes both of us do I say that takes about three hours maybe for a very in-depth podcast longer than that and then we’re planning it and we’re outlining it it takes us both two hours to record the podcast and then we’re writing and recording an introduction sorting out all the admin getting all the show notes Andrew your show notes must take a lot longer because they are epic show notes and then Rob is mixing the podcast on a simple podcast that takes him 90 minutes, roughly.

Alison:
And then 30 minutes admin to post in all the different places.

Alison:
And that’s without all the thinking in the shower, musing while my breakfast is going down, the problems when it goes wrong. We’ve had to, oh, frustratingly, totally re-record more than one episode.

Andrea:
I will never forget.

Alison:
Lovely episode. And it’s just… It’s been, it’s so soul destroying when you record a lovely podcast and both of you have carved out time to do it. And then there’s some problem with it and you’ve got to do it all again.

Andrea:
The pork episode. The pork episode. I remember we recorded that one. It was, we were batting each other on the back. Wow, he did such a good job. And then you told me you were sitting and working and Rob was working on the podcast. He came in and knelt down and took your hand and said, Alison, I have to tell you something. We can’t use the audio from the pork episode and then you guys had to call me and tell me i was like yeah but you know what allison our second recording was even better yeah.

Alison:
It was exactly.

Andrea:
It was even better so the muse wanted it to be perfect and that’s okay but it’s it is quite a shock when you’re like wait a minute we yeah what are we gonna do now we.

Alison:
Nailed that i know.

Andrea:
We didn’t So.

Alison:
As we’ve also said, you know, Rob sometimes has spent four to five hours trying to save the audio on some of the podcasts. And our research-heavy podcasts have taken much, much longer. And Andrea’s show notes take a lot longer.

Andrea:
Yeah. And Rob has gotten a lot faster. I mean, those four to five hours are still, those are just trying to save a podcast. But his general time, he’s cut down a lot because of ways, you know, either apps he’s written to find usual things that go wrong for us or keywords that you and I can put in to help him find certain spots to put ads and things like that.

Alison:
So, yeah, yeah, that’s helped. And Megan Francis, who you talked about earlier on the T episode, she really helped us about a year, two years ago, go through and trying to streamline our procedures to make it simpler. And that really helped us, didn’t it? So, yeah, thank you for that.

Andrea:
Megan, I actually would say listeners noticed too, because we got comments from people that it just seemed like it went up a notch. Remember somebody said, wow, I’m so organized, you know.

Alison:
Oh, yeah, exactly. We are. And I just recorded with Holly Howe, who this episode won’t go out for quite a while yet. An amazing episode about fermenting vegetables. And I sent her like the template with all the questions in that are coming from all the supporters. And the first thing she said to me was, wow, this is amazing. You are so organized. Well, we have to be. Yeah. We have to be to put an episode out.

Andrea:
I mean, at this point, we’re in only two different countries, but we were in three countries and three time zones. And, you know, there’s Rob was in Italy. Ash was in the UK. Megan’s over in the Midwest. I’m here in the Northwest. Like it was, we had everybody needed to know their… Their their you know place in the play.

Alison:
Yeah absolutely so that that’s the work that goes into each of the episodes that go out but we’ve also got the website which needs to be updated the emails that go out the tech issues that happen keeping everything up to date community all the administration um the community the support community is great because at the current level of supporters we have it covers the costs for all of our software the tech running costs and it pays for the running of itself so it pays for the running of the community and it pays for those helpers it pays for ashley and it pays for megan but andrea and i ourselves don’t currently receive any funds for the work that we put in personally to making this show um how.

Andrea:
Much do you how much time do you think you spend on the podcast yourself.

Alison:
You know i i hadn’t thought about this until i went to visit nicole yeah and nicole asked me when i was there, how how much time do you think you spend on the podcast and i started to say some figures and i thought oh no but there’s this and there’s this and there’s that and in the end she said write it down so i’ve got a piece of paper and i wrote down all of the things that i do and i put how many hours and i think i spend 35 hours a month gosh on the podcast yeah i would say from your.

Andrea:
Output at least.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
And this is, this is with you. You’ve done a good job of passing, you know, admin type stuff off.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
I’ve done very good to other people. Yeah.

Alison:
Yeah. It used to be a lot more. But still 35 hours. When I looked at that figure, I was like, gosh, that’s a lot. It’s a lot. Okay. So that’s a little bit about kind of what’s involved. Let’s talk about, I’ve got three exciting announcements of how you can get more ancestral kitchen podcasts in your kitchen, how you can help produce episodes and how you can help. You can even get your name on the show so let’s um kind of talk through the next section and um i will hit you with three exciting announcements i’m ready so how you can help us you can review us yes there are instructions on how to do that in the show notes if you’re on apple you can review us i think on spotify you can review you can give us a star rating and you can leave a comment on an individual episode even.

Andrea:
If you do this just a star rating on.

Alison:
Apple or.

Andrea:
Anything apple looks at them.

Alison:
The same difference and apple yeah apple’s.

Andrea:
All about those ratings so throw them on there.

Alison:
Absolutely you can tell your friends about us as i said earlier on that makes a huge huge difference yeah um you can tell your friends in real life or you can tell your friends online about us too yep you can send them a screenshot.

Andrea:
Or like the.

Alison:
Link to the podcast too exactly yeah you can purchase our books and our products. All the three books are available as one item now on the website. You can gift our books to other people as well if you want to give it to someone as a present. You can also purchase our affiliates, which is One Earth Health, the liver capsules, the Bokashi buckets, and the mock meal. We get a small kickback when someone buys those products. You don’t pay any more for buying them.

Andrea:
Okay, now we can add Ketchikan Sams to that list too.

Alison:
Ah, yeah, yeah. We should put that on the website because I don’t think it’s on the website.

Andrea:
Yeah, we better.

Alison:
Yeah, we’ll get that up. You can also consider joining the community and supporting us. You don’t have to join the actual community. You know, if you don’t want to come and do the Discord forum and you don’t want to listen to the other stuff, you don’t have to. Some people, as I said earlier, just support us. And some people support us and come and, you know, take part. And excitingly, you can now gift a subscription. This is a new thing that I only found about yesterday.

Andrea:
This is really awesome.

Alison:
We found out about yesterday, which is perfect timing for this episode. so we’ve actually had some people come to us and say look I want to buy a year’s worth of membership to your community for my daughter and Rob’s had to go kind of back and forth and organize it all but now there’s a little tick box on the website so if you want to go and join the community and give it to someone your daughter or your mother or your friend you just tick that box and automatically they get all the information about it and you um send us the funds I.

Andrea:
Think that’s such a good idea because um one of the gals who joined the community she might be the one that rob was doing the.

Alison:
Back of.

Andrea:
Her females with.

Alison:
Yeah and her mom bought her.

Andrea:
A year subscription to.

Alison:
It for.

Andrea:
A birthday gift and i thought that’s a really good idea because yeah you know how much stuff does somebody maybe want you know it’s hard to say how many things you might want to pack and.

Alison:
Move.

Andrea:
But she’s getting started in her life with her partner and cooking and running a household and things like that.

Alison:
And now she’s got all the support around her.

Andrea:
Yeah, everybody in there who can cheer her on.

Alison:
Exactly.

Andrea:
May I say all the awesome downloads she can get.

Alison:
Exactly. Yeah, exactly. The community has five levels. So, you know, however much you want to get involved and however much you are able to pledge, you can choose a level that suits you. So the first announcement I’ve got about this, which is very exciting, is we have a new level. We used to have four levels. We now have five people at our most popular level, which is the companionship, were asking how they could give more to support the podcast. So we’ve created a new level called Fellowship, which is one step up from companionship. The funds that come into us at this level go towards remunerating Andrea and I for the work that we put into the show. It’s kind of extra on the fact that at the moment the supporters are paying for our tech and stuff and the community. This level will give us extra funds so Andrew and I can actually receive some funds we also do have a level called stewardship which is another level above fellowship and we have several supporters of that level at that level.

Alison:
If you sign up to stewardship, you are actually contributing to two hours of work from one of us each month. So the money that you’re pledging to us at the stewardship level will pay for either Andrea to do two hours research a month or me to do two hours work and research a month, which feels, I mean, some people feel like they want to contribute and to send that energy back to Andrea and I personally. And at the new fellowship level and the stewardship level, you can do that these levels feel like they’re i mean to me they feel invalid in value yeah they they mean that we can feel good about what we’re doing in more ways than just being super passionate about the mission you know knowing that we are bringing some funds into our households for our time spent on the podcast i love it so if you aren’t a supporter and you would like to become a supporter you can go to ancestral kitchen podcast forward slash join if you are a companionship supporter now and you would like to consider moving up to fellowship on new level please think about it there are instructions hopefully in your inbox now if i can get organized to explain the mechanics of it you need to actually sign in to the manage your account section on our website and choose upgrade so make sure that you follow the instructions that you’ll find there, If you’re new, you just go to ancestralkitchenpodcast.com, join us, and everything’s all explained there.

Andrea:
Perfect.

Alison:
So, can I go on to our second announcement? Andrea, do you want to add anything to that?

Andrea:
No, no, I love that. I think you said it all so well, and I’m thankful to the… Um, the, the, the many supporters at the companionship level who asked, um, you know, what they could do, or could you Venmo us a coffee or, you know, what, what could they do to just sort of throw their weight behind the mission? And, and it really made me realize how serious people are out there about getting the message of ancestral food out to other people. And I, when you see somebody’s email where they tell you the things that their family has changed and what it has done for their health and their life. Then you realize, yeah, that’s why they want the message to be going out to more people, because… After a while, you start to realize, dang, this is really foundational. So I’m so thankful that those, you know, maybe they don’t all want to start their own podcast, but they’re here to, you know, like Ash, they’re like, I don’t know about that. But they’re here to help with this one, which is really, really fabulous.

Alison:
Absolutely. Okay, so that was announcement number one, our new level, our fellowship level. Announcement number two is we’ve enabled the possibility for people to sponsor an episode of the podcast.

Andrea:
This one’s cool, Alison. I love this idea.

Alison:
I know you like this one. This is your little pet one, isn’t it? In doing so, if you choose to sponsor an episode, you’ll be supporting us for the work that we do to produce one of our monthly episodes. So as we said earlier, that’s about 10 hours work a month. And you will be personally thanked during that episode. Unless, of course, you want to be a kind of one of those hidden kind of donors. Then you can choose that we won’t say anything. You can keep it quiet. But if you want us to thank you, we will profusely thank you because you will have paid for us to do that research to get that episode up and ready. So you might want to sponsor an episode because you want to drop in a mention of the aligned work that you’re doing there are so many of our listeners who are doing something that’s kind of parallel to the podcast you know they might be making um skincare that’s made of tallow they might be a nutritional therapist they might be like leah yeah having um you know um fish boxes that are sustainably sourced they might be doing tons of things so you could drop in a mention of the work that you’re doing you also might want to sponsor an episode because you want to shout out on the air and you want our deep gratitude which you will receive definitely yes um.

Alison:
You also might want to sponsor an episode because you want to feel like the funds that you’re sending our way result in something tangible. And they will. They will result in us receiving that energy for doing the research, you know, the 10 hours work for that episode.

Andrea:
Alison, I think the most tangible thing I’ve ever seen the funds ever go to was when somebody bought a mock mill. And so if somebody buys a mock mill through our through like you you travel through our link and go to mock mills page.

Alison:
And in that moment.

Andrea:
Purchase it mock mill actually sends us basically a sizable chunk and it doesn’t cost you.

Alison:
Anything and.

Andrea:
I remember what happened gabriel like locked the bathroom door or something you got locked.

Alison:
Out of the house.

Andrea:
Or something and you’re like well somebody bought a.

Alison:
Mock hill so we called a locksmith yeah i had to like come out and like.

Andrea:
Make a new key it was.

Alison:
I’d forgotten about that what happened was we were in our first house in stroud and the um the patio door the key got lost for the patio door i think possibly gable did something with it we don’t really know and then we couldn’t lock the door and we didn’t realize we hadn’t been able to lock the door the door had been open for like 10 days and we’ve been going to bed with the door open we had no idea and then one day i was like where’s the key my car i thought this door was locked where’s the key and turns out that the the key had gone missing we searched everywhere all around the house that was so horrible i.

Andrea:
Remember you like.

Alison:
Then i was sleeping.

Andrea:
Downstairs by the.

Alison:
Door like so what off that night rob slept downstairs and he moved all his drums to the door just behind the curtain so if someone tried to come in they would knock over for a drum kit and wake Rob up hopefully he’s quite a heavy sleeper but I was not sleeping down on the sofa no, because the locksmith is, couldn’t come to the next day. But the point of that was that we didn’t have enough money that month to pay for a locksmith to come and sort that door out. And the only reason we could get that locksmith to do that for us was because there was money in the mock mill account that people had paid when they bought a mock mill. So I was able to take that out and use that to pay for a locksmith to come and replace the lock on our door and we could lock in and I could sleep soundly at night.

Andrea:
But then when we met, like the next day, you’re like, I haven’t slept in three days. But thank goodness somebody got a mock bill. It was so crazy, the timing. So, yeah, that was wild. So tangible, tangible results, you guys.

Alison:
Absolutely, tangible results. So if you would like to consider sponsoring an episode, go to our website, ancestralkitchenpodcast.com. There’s an option on the menu titled Sponsor an Episode, and you can send us a note from the contact form there. That’s quite simple. it will come to one of us and we will get back in contact with you and we are also potentially accepting new long-term sponsors you know like we had one earth health and grand teton who have both decided to pursue other things now but we are extremely grateful for the time that they spent with us so if you have a company or you know someone who has a company who aligns with our values and you think would be of use to the people who are listening to us please do send an email to support at Ancestral Kitchen Podcast, letting us know and we will follow it up. Okay and now it’s number three andrea or have you got something else to say no okay number three this one is the most fun yeah this one’s really this is a long time.

Andrea:
I mean several years in.

Alison:
The long time in the coming several years yeah like this episode was supposed to go out about four months ago everything takes longer than you think there’s always something this this we wanted to do several years ago and we have not been able to do it up until this point and i’m very happy that we have. So yeah, the drum roll, this is when I need Rob. Where is Rob?

Andrea:
He needs to put his drums behind the curtain again.

Alison:
And then I’ll knock them over. Announcement three is that we have merchandise.

Andrea:
Finally. Finally.

Alison:
Finally. You can go to ancestralkitchenpodcast.com forward slash merch. I will put that episode in the show notes, that, sorry, URL in the show notes, and that URL will be in the show notes in perpetuity now. I’ll make sure it’s in the template. It’s taken us so long to do this because we did not want to have some sweatshop in China making T-shirts for us and not paying the people who are doing it and putting inks on it, which are plastic and polluting the waterways. And we just could not find a way to find non-plastic non-polluting clothes that will be available to people all over the world you know because i’m here in the uk continuously are you going to come out with.

Andrea:
T-shirts are you going to come out with bags.

Alison:
Like is.

Andrea:
It is anything in the offing and every so often we get together and and like gary and i look up websites you look up what and we’re just like i can’t we.

Alison:
Can’t find anything put.

Andrea:
Our name on.

Alison:
This product that.

Andrea:
Is the antithesis of what.

Alison:
Yeah everything.

Andrea:
We believe is and then sell it to advertise what we believe like.

Alison:
We just can’t do it it’s just so that’s why it’s taking a very long time exactly but finally i found a company called t-mill and i’m just going to give you the rundown so listeners understand just what this company do and how great our merch is so sustainable review gave this company t-mill a great environmental rating they are certified gots which is global organic textile standard on all of their products that certified Ensure that every stage of their production, from organic cotton farming to final garment manufacturing, meets strict environmental and social criteria. There’s no harmful chemicals and they promote soil health. The company itself operates entirely on renewable energy, including wind and solar power, and uses a closed loop water system, which takes their wastewater and recycles it, which means they’re not using as much water as other clothing companies. Their dyes are non-toxic and low impact and used on their products but also in all their printing and that means they’ve got less pollution with their actual inks their packaging is plastic free i have had some of their stuff come here and it’s in paper bags 100 recyclable they are a pioneer in circular economy allowing customers to return worn garments this is really quite cool they’ve got particular garments that.

Alison:
When it’s worn out you can send it back, for no cost to you and they will cycle that and will make it into a new product i also saw something on their website that you can send other products back to them and they’ll recycle them nice so i’ve got to look at that they are carbon neutral with a supply chain that’s designed to not have any waste from from the from the outset that’s really important because i’ve seen companies who are.

Andrea:
Carbon neutral but it’s just because they bought like a million acres of.

Alison:
Forest somewhere not.

Andrea:
Actually because they eliminated waste from the supply line so.

Alison:
I designed it from the ground up to be like this you know i’m really not just trying to get to some standard um we have some beautiful clothes available and we spent a lot of time we have spent a lot of time together over the last six weeks yeah trying to get the site to look nice okay but that’s been really fun allison you cannot it has been fun oh it has it has been fun deciding whether we wanted you know the logo how we want the words to look what font we’re going to use and then rebecca on the spot like fixing.

Andrea:
Things for us making our.

Alison:
Yeah Rebecca Lett who’s a supporter in Ireland helped us with the logo getting the logo up there there is an apron which is cool because I’ve wanted an apron for so so long that was the thing and if you go to the site you’ll see me modeling the apron it’s a great picture and you will see it’s pristine our Gable as well yeah Gable as well it’s quite big on him because it’s an adult apron but it’s so cute and and it is pristine there is not a mark on it I’m I’m sure it won’t stay like that for long. But yeah, if you get our apron, take a picture of it before you spill egg down it, because that’s what I’m going to do. And then send us that picture because we want to have pictures of listeners using our gear, wearing our gear on the site.

Andrea:
But also send us pictures of your apron when it’s all messed up and we’ll have like an apron competition.

Alison:
Well, I think we might. I think we have a competition. Yeah, exactly. We could possibly have a competition for the most messy aprons. You know, I’ve only had this apron three weeks and look at how messy it is.

Andrea:
I cook a lot. I told you.

Alison:
Exactly. There’s also a market bag, which when I got the first sample of it, you were looking at Andrea and saying, you know, it’s solid. It’s got really strong handles. It’s got a panel in it. So it’s not just, you know, one seam at the bottom. It’s got a panel so it’s wide.

Andrea:
Yeah, stuff doesn’t slobber the whole time.

Alison:
Exactly. um so those are the two things i like best there’s cups there’s sweatshirts there’s men’s gear there’s children’s gear there’s t-shirts there’s there’s just tons of stuff tons of stuff.

Andrea:
I’m amazed about what they’re able to do and and we had if you’re listening to the if you don’t get on the live calls that we do with our supporters once a month you can listen to them on replay and if you listen to the replay of the march no yeah the march one we brainstormed some ideas on there. And you were traveling back from Nicole’s that day, but everybody brought in, you know, really great thoughts and was excited about it, which was fun.

Alison:
Yeah. Yeah. I’m excited about how everyone’s excited about it. So what’s important to say here is the clothes are not what you’d pay for a high street, non-organic sweatshop t-shirt, because that is not what those clothes are. They are not from a high street. They are organic and they are not made in the sweatshop. So when you go there, you know, if you compare it to a t-shirt from Walmart or, you know, the equivalent over here, then it’s not going to be the same because it’s not that thing. It is something that someone’s created with love and care and care for the environment. 15% of every standard purchase on that site goes to the podcast. So I’ll say the URL again because people might want to go and look at it now while they’re listening. Ancestrialkitchenpodcast.com forward slash merch, M-E-R-C-H. And anything that you buy on there that’s a standard product, we will receive 15% of what you pay. That will go towards funding the podcast.

Andrea:
Yeah we’ve.

Alison:
Also got kind of a special option on there a donation option andrea could you talk a little bit about that.

Andrea:
Yeah this was an idea that we brainstormed with supporters who were again asking is there other ways they can support the podcast we came up with the fellowship option for them but also we decided to design some special products that are priced at the maximum basically of what T-Mill allows. So then you’re buying this kind of special niche product. Maybe some of them will only be there for a short time and you get, to know that like you’re giving a larger portion, like a larger percentage will be coming back to the podcast. So basically T-Mail lets you say what percentage you want to come back to you. And right now we just have it set at 15%, but we picked a couple items and we’ll just say like a higher percent is going to come back to us. So you can go and see, they’ll cost you more and they’re essentially just going to be giving a donation to the podcast.

Alison:
Yeah so those are labeled as donation items yeah they’re specially labeled you will see those they cost more and they’re labeled so you can find them so i just i’ve had some samples of this and i’m wearing it and taking the bag to the market and and it just feels so amazing because you don’t feel swathed.

Andrea:
In guilt honestly.

Alison:
No absolutely when you put it on and and i don’t have to you know i can people can find out about the podcast without me having to even talk about them and it’s a passive way you know i feel like a lot of the designs we we we paid extra so we could have designs on the back because i feel like you know when whenever i’m looking at people with things written on them i don’t necessarily always want to stare at their front because they can see that i’m staring at them whereas here it’s on the back yeah and so whenever i’m turning around you know potentially all these people at the at the stroud farmers market are seeing that um passively that I’ve got a podcast that’s amazing.

Andrea:
I’m just picturing you like slowly turning around the phone.

Alison:
Exactly.

Andrea:
Everybody.

Alison:
The reveal.

Andrea:
But if you get something from here, or maybe I should say when you get something from here, when you treat yourself, then if you take a picture of yourself wearing it, send it into us because we have these sort of standard model photos that the website has. But we would love to put our real people up with the real clothes and real life. So.

Alison:
Absolutely. So go and take a look at the site. There are a few photos of us wearing the stuff, but like Andrew said, we want to put more up. It’s ancestralkitchenpodcast.com forward slash merch. Okay, that’s our three exciting announcements. Let’s take a break. Okay. So before we end, we’ve got some more exciting things to talk about. I wanted to run down all the ways that we can support you, the listener. So each of these is an individual thing, and there will be URLs in the show notes to access them.

Andrea:
This was a long list.

Alison:
If I haven’t explained where they are. It is. So I’m going to go quite quickly through it. So all of our episodes, you know, just go back, listen to them all. Listen to them again. People do. They’re all there.

Alison:
There’s hundreds and hundreds of hours, as we said, eight days and nights for you to listen to of support there’s the 20 steps 20 small steps to ancestral kitchen which is available on ancestral kitchen podcast.com the banner at the top will you put in your details and we will send that to you there’s our newsletter if you think you’ve signed up for it and you’re not getting it do check your spam then we’ve got downloads on the site that for are available for everyone there’s the ancestral kitchen challenge if you go to ancestral kitchen podcast.com forward slash downloads you will see them all there’s a 50 ways to save money download there are read-along downloads there’s a winter eating guide there’s a milling guide that we put together and there’s there’s more so you can go down you can go and download those to your own computer stick them up read them whatever you want to do on my site which is ancestral kitchen.com without the word podcast the um free um guide baking with ancient grains is available at the top. Again, you’ll see that on any page. There’s also a beginner’s guide to write sourdough bread, which I will link in the show notes. There’s an oat collection with three heritage oat recipes that I will link in the show notes. There’s my newsletter, which comes out every two weeks. And then I’ve got so many blog posts on there now. I think when I was in my software management for my site a couple of days ago, I think I’ve almost got 1,000 blog posts, 950-somethings.

Alison:
So you can search on my site. I do highlight in my newsletter blog posts, you know, because there’s so many in the past. So if you’re on my newsletter, you will kind of get sometimes every time I get it, you will see three or four that I’ve pulled up from the archives to be shown because they’re full of recipes and support. And then we have lots of low cost or free courses. So on the Fermentation School, FermentationSchool.com, you can find my 10 tips for starting and maintaining a rye sourdough starter, which is free. On my site, AncestralKitchen.com, I’ve got Make and Maintain a Rye Sourdough Starter, which is a donation course. I have a free course, which is a video called Fermenting Oats, another free course, which is called Fermenting Ancient Grains. I have my chocolate course, which is very low cost. I have a Bose course, a Suez course, and then at the top of my set of courses, the longest and most in-depth one, but still really economical, is my Rye course that, I mean, if you learn how to make sourdough Rye, but it will change your life.

Andrea:
All of those courses are… Excellent courses and i will say that i hear rave reviews from everybody who takes them, although we are working on getting our reviews up they are really really awesome and you know britney has pointed out and many people have pointed out geez allison is really thorough.

Alison:
Yeah yeah i am.

Andrea:
You’ve got the receipts in there that’s for sure yeah.

Alison:
Interesting talking to chelsea green the potential publisher for my book you know they they have fed back to me that my gosh you are thorough and you know making sure you’re doing it properly and i’m like well that’s.

Andrea:
That’s how i do everything and this is coming from a publisher who’s working with authors who are supposed to be very thorough and they’re like of the thoroughs you are the thoroughest yeah you’re thoroughbred allison so.

Alison:
We have um three cookbooks the first cookbook is meals and the ancestral hearth then our spelt sourdough everyday cookbook written in gabriel’s school while my.

Andrea:
House was being demolished almost diseases like some kind of a fairy tale recently.

Alison:
The pastured pork cookbook that’s our most recent one and then we have the community which you know for um supporting us at whatever level you can afford will give you incredible support back andrea do you want to add anything to that list.

Andrea:
Yeah just above all the thing to support the podcast is living ancestrally really truly because your testimonies of how the podcast has helped educate and support you and then all the ways that your life has changed as a result of that that is what fuels our fire allison and i read the emails and the reviews together and megan too or rob will sometimes get one sent to him and send it forward to us and be like you guys need to read this on the air I mean, those, those things really are the, I don’t know how to say it without falling into a cliche, but it’s like the wind beneath our wings or something, you know, when you read that and you just think, oh my gosh, they haven’t bought bread in four years. Like that’s what I’m talking about.

Alison:
Incredible.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Okay. So let’s dig in a little bit more with something I said that we’d get to at the beginning of the episode. We’re finally getting there. It’s been quite a long journey as the podcast has been. Our lives over the last five years. So the highs and the lows, what do you think the highs and the lows of the podcast have been for you, Andrea?

Andrea:
Oh, gosh. Well, the lows were re-recording the liver and the pork episodes, losing our internet multiple times during recording. I’m just putting my head down on the table so I don’t scream. Probably some of the, I think I’ve sent audios to Rob before and been like, can you cut off the last 30 seconds? Because I was just like, what is happening? Forgetting to turn in my notes or not doing a task that was my responsibility. But this isn’t really a low because it’s become one of my favorite things. But in our first year, somebody complaining in a review about me cackling on the podcast. I was like, yeah.

Alison:
Cackling.

Andrea:
Cackling.

Alison:
Andrea, how dare you cackle.

Andrea:
Well, it’s a gift for living around chickens. I’d say some of the highs.

Alison:
You know that Nicole said to me in the past that she really likes your laugh. So maybe that’ll balance it out.

Andrea:
Yeah, we’re even now. Does she like my cackling though? So some of the highs Getting a new microphone I felt like that, transformed our experience yeah our really long and hilarious meetings where we get super just goofy and weird um like maybe it’s been too long since we’ve seen the light of day or something and then just getting to know you and rob and gabe better over the years spending time you know gabe popping in and popping out showing pangy and the different creatures that are populating his life at the time knowing that I have a weekly therapy meeting planned every week because that’s what it feels like and just meeting so many people through the podcast that I never would have otherwise met and getting to talk to the guests that we’ve talked to you know there’s so many that come to mind Karima and Christine and just so many people that I never would have met otherwise I.

Alison:
Agree I mean for me the highs are definitely the relationships you know the relationship that we’ve built and what we’ve built together out of it you know the building something creatively together that is more than just.

Andrea:
Yes one.

Alison:
Person on their own and then that extends into the community and what that community is together with all of the knowledge and all of the support is just I never would have met those people like you said I never would have known them and that, It feels incredible that there are these people who have the same values as us.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And they’re working hard in their kitchen every day.

Andrea:
Yep.

Alison:
Like we are. That just feels amazing. So in your own life, Andrea, what’s happened over the last five years? How are you different from now, from how you were five years ago?

Andrea:
You know, it’s kind of funny that you said this because just a couple days ago, I think it was Molly on Discord was saying, I can see how much you’ve changed over the podcast, Andrea. And I was telling her, Like I’m, I’m amazed that she could notice, but I, I said, I know what’s changed in me, but it’s interesting that she could see it too. And it feels like there’s a lot of things that when I started, they were like ideals of mine that I was trying to get to that. I look around and I’m like, wow, that is like how that is my way of life now. And there’s obviously there’s always more. We’re always striving and reaching, but, but it’s interesting how many things in the beginning I thought I I want to be that kind of person and now that that is what I’m doing, as far as tangible like outside life things a lot of the farm stuff you know we were new here, we’d only been here for a year when we started recording and now every year more has changed we had a baby born here on the farm our fourth child um, I’m just getting clearer on what I want out of my ancestral sort of lifestyle. And I’m getting better at dropping the things I actually don’t want in my life. But I didn’t know how to drop before.

Andrea:
And obviously, being world famous, I just can’t go anywhere in town without people saying, oh, you’re from your podcast. Yeah, I see you. You’re really big in Belgium.

Alison:
You just wait till you wear your sweatshirt.

Andrea:
Oh, yeah. All the paparazzi will be everywhere. And feeling like, really, maybe I am a weird person, but I’m not the only person who’s over here throwing away holiday candy and trying not to buy tons of toys and saving garbage out of the kitchen to make broth with.

Alison:
Yep. Absolutely. Wow. Five years is an incredible amount of time.

Andrea:
I could start a list of things for you. That’s a lot.

Alison:
Like, I feel like the biggest thing is we don’t live in Italy anymore.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
You know, and we’re back in England and now Rob’s mum is living with us.

Andrea:
Multi-generational.

Alison:
You know, we don’t have a big space here at all. Trust me, we have a two and a half bedroom. Scabble’s in the half, which is why I’m in a bedroom now. You know, so yeah, that feels incredible. I no longer live in Italy. And that’s a change in my identity because it was a big part of my identity being an English person living in Italy and I’m no longer that person anymore. And that’s taken a lot of shifting and a lot of shifting that’s still happening inside me. So it feels like the podcast has been the fundamental stability through the whole thing. You know, this has been the same. My relationship with you has been maintained. Everything that we put out twice a month is the same. And that has all shifted around over the last few years. Gabriel was six when we started.

Andrea:
I don’t even think about that until I look at the pictures from the beginning. And somebody said that the other day. Who is it?

Alison:
Katie on Discord.

Andrea:
Yeah, Katie said, oh my gosh, little tiny Gabriel in that post, in those pictures. And yeah, she’s right. You know, you forget until you go back and you’re like, whoa.

Alison:
He’s small.

Andrea:
He’s just a little guy.

Alison:
So he’s just had his 12th, which is just, I mean, half the time that he’s been alive, I’ve been doing this podcast virtually, you know, which feels incredible. We’re homeschooling him now, which we weren’t back then, which is a huge shift. I’ve turned 50, which just feels incredible. Now, I can’t quite believe I’m 50 and that’s happened, you know, whilst still building this. Um what feels important to me over the last five years is now that I know what I’m doing is important before we started the podcast I was just like oh it’s just it’s just me doing it you know it’s just me in my little kitchen or I would say to Rob often oh what I’m doing nothing is nothing special you know yeah I’ve just learned how to make my sourdough bread and I’ve just learned it doesn’t matter it’s nothing special and now I know that what I’m doing is important what we do in the kitchen every day is important and I get to tell you that I get to talk to you about that and and I so believe in it and that just feels like it’s filled a part of me that.

Alison:
I didn’t know was deflated before you know um I feel like the process of doing the podcast and making decisions I feel like my integrity has been tested over and over again the way I work has been tested letting go offers things that we exactly down and just don’t feel right um I feel like you know learning to work with you and the differences and learning to to see that the differences between us are really they are what makes the podcast because you just you would decide things or suggest things that I never would and I suggest things that you never would for sure and so each of us is bringing things to the table that makes it more than just one of us which feels incredible there’s a beauty in that there’s a real beauty in collaboration and I hadn’t collaborated with anyone at the levels that I’ve collaborated with you over the last five years is incredible considering we’ve never met you know and that feels really important um I’ve got so many more like minds that I never knew and never talked to and never got any joy from before. And I really feel like I belong here. So that’s really positive. And I’m writing a book, which is just, it just feels incredible. I love to write. I love to research. It’s when I feel most peaceful and happy. And it feels incredible to find this information and translate it through my love of being in the kitchen into something that’s doable and also share the stories around it. And that, I mean, I just was not doing that.

Andrea:
It shows in your writing too, I will say. And… Anybody who is considering the Discord, I will say, Allison posts her recipes that she’s working on in there for us all to test. And then people test them and come back with pictures and comments and questions on the measurements and all these sorts of things. Like, by the time the recipes go into this book, they will be handleable by anybody in any country, which is really awesome. Because that’s a significant amount. Yes. How could you make each one 20 times, you know, but people are making them. And you’ve shared some of the chapters and portions of essays and things with us, which we’ve been able to read together as a group, which has been really fun. We will be doing a group reading when the book comes out.

Alison:
Yeah, I think so. I won’t be able to stop myself.

Andrea:
And we’re going to get the author in there and we’re going to get her to comment.

Alison:
Really? Okay. So let’s just round up. I’ve got a couple of questions for you, Andrew, before we finish. So listeners do go and check all the show notes for all the links to the wonderful three announcements. And thank you ever so much. So, Andrew, my first question for you is, what do you think is one thing the listener would never guess about the podcast?

Andrea:
I would never guess about the podcast. Probably how much, how little we edit. Like, Rob, he does not cut us up. He does not condense space. If we say things kind of weird, it just goes on the air. And probably also how much we don’t use our screens when we’re recording.

Alison:
Yeah how.

Andrea:
Much we we would like to learn to record like video and it’s kind of a hurdle we haven’t made it past because we don’t watch ourselves and we don’t.

Alison:
Have cameras.

Andrea:
On each other when we’re talking it’s just not part of our workflow so that would probably surprise people.

Alison:
I think i i knew i was going to ask you this question i didn’t even know what my answer to it was but i want to add something which is i feel like the listener would never know that that, Rob and I talk about listeners and the responses and the emails and the discord all the time you know whenever we get time to talk maybe Rob’s washing up in the kitchen and like literally it happened today Rob was washing up and I was making the risotto for lunch and, I’d walked down something to listen to and I saw he was in there. I was like, oh, I’d like to just chat. You know, I’ll stop my thing I’m listening to. And we just talk and we talk about the podcast. We have ideas. We talk about something someone said to me. We talk about something in the Discord. We talk about something you’ve said, Andrew. We talk about, you know, what’s happening on your farm. And I share that with him. It’s become just a part of the fabric of our life.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Our lives, which is incredible.

Andrea:
You know, Gary says to me sometimes, you don’t know it, but I’m out there plugging your podcast everywhere. You should be talking about it more. It’s a really good podcast. And so anybody who meets him, they come over to me like, wow, you have a podcast? I’m like, I see Gary got to you.

Alison:
He’s there before me.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Okay. And the last thing that I wanted to ask you was what’s one thing the listener would never guess about us?

Andrea:
You and me? Probably. Maybe they do guess this from the very beginning of this episode. But it’s how much we read each other’s mind and we think and agree on the exact same thing. As you pointed out, we do have significant differences, both in work styles and in, you know, you’re over in the UK slash Europe and I’m in the US. So that colors the way we think and see things, which I think also adds to the texture of the podcast. And my sister was saying she feels like it keeps it from being super ethnocentric or biased in one direction. But also just like matters of opinion and taste, you know, like we both said.

Andrea:
From the beginning we were not compromising on the merch we’re not going to get some yeah like crappy thing that neither of us is proud of putting our names on we will rather have nothing which we did for five years we’d rather have nothing than inferior which is probably indicative of how we run things in our kitchen in our life a lot too yeah but like like the font for the podcast you know yeah we’re like rank rank these 12 fonts in order and we the same order or you know rank which of the hand-drawn pots you want to because of course we immediately knew both of us like no ai this will be a hand-drawn pot for a logo don’t know if you guys know that allison drew that pot and then rebecca let cleaned it up for us to make it you know postable into graphics and things but um you know we both liked the same one and for the same reasons. And if you have a cold, I have a cold.

Alison:
Yeah, that is the weird thing. There always seems to be processing similar things at the same time, you know, in parallel.

Andrea:
Yeah, you hurt your left arm, I hurt my right arm. It’s bizarre how many things like that.

Alison:
And I wonder whether, you know, back in like November 2020, when I’d been wanting to do a podcast for a long time and I’d even recorded myself on my own and thought I can’t do this feels yucky rubbish don’t like it need to find someone and I remember complaining to Rob and saying how am I going to find someone this is ridiculous I’m never going to be able to do this podcast I’m not going to find anyone and then I just had to leave it for a bit and then you know when when we did meet online, And I just kind of knew that you were the right person to ask. And Rob was really surprised. And I said, I’m going to ask this Andrea if she wants to do a podcast. And Rob was like, really? You sure? And I just feel like I knew. And I wonder whether this kind of sense of we’re similar in a lot of ways, in an alignment in a lot of ways. I wonder whether somehow my cells or my aura or something just kind of knew that.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
You know, and therefore was drawn to you in a way that enabled me to feel confident asking you, you know.

Andrea:
I don’t know what it was. Because I, it’s not like we’d been talking online for hours and days and days and had miles of text between us actually at that point.

Alison:
No.

Andrea:
And I remember thinking about it and just feeling how right it felt for me. And then we started like immediately. And then Rob had to draw me a literal picture of how we were going to work.

Alison:
I remember that.

Andrea:
I wish I still had that picture.

Alison:
Put this cable in here and then plug that in there.

Andrea:
The little people drawing like with the headphones were so, it was like something out of a children’s illustrated book or something. But the illustrated podcasting guide or something.

Alison:
For Andrea.

Andrea:
Yeah, especially for me.

Alison:
Cool. Okay, we’ve been talking for a long, long time. I don’t just mean five years. I mean just now. So probably we should stop. And thank you very much for this episode. And thank you to all the listeners. And take those three announcements and do with them what feels right to you. And I’m excited to see where we go from here.

Andrea:
Thanks all. Bye, Alison.

Alison:
Cool. Bye.