Kitchen Table Chats #57 – How Big is a Bunch of Tarragon & More Questions

What we covered:

• Alison’s lunch and leftovers
• Andrea visiting a food desert
• How big is a bunch of tarragon…and why do recipe writers insist on being so vague?
• I am very new to being a supporter, but I would love to know about substitutions for different ingredients that seem pervasive. I am allergic to tomatoes, all citrus fruits, and mint. I feel like one or more of these are in everything.
• Wondering if you would do a podcast on non-sour dough bread making but with freshly milled ancient grains? Not everyone wants to work with sourdough and I am thinking using freshly milled ancient grain to bake bread would be a wonderful topic to discuss and an improvement over store bought bread.
• How to keep a classroom’s focus long enough to get book work done?
• What is a good reward that isn’t food or candy?
• I’d love to hear about how you guys involve your kids in the kitchen and teach them relevant skills. I generally find it so much easier (and often more enjoyable) to make everything myself, but am conscious that I need to teach them the skills to create nourishing food themselves, and also let them practise.

Resources:

Grand Teton cookbook

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Transcript:

Andrea:
Hello allison and happy end of summer to you.

Alison:
Gosh yeah it’s still quite hot here um but yeah it is i’ve noticed that the evenings are starting to get darker so i.

Andrea:
Know that it’s.

Alison:
It’s um on its way.

Andrea:
Out that’s the sign isn’t it how do you have a pretty big difference i guess i don’t know in your day length yeah so do we.

Alison:
Absolutely definitely i mean in in the summer you could stay up all.

Andrea:
Night it seems.

Alison:
Sometimes you know 10 o’clock and it’s still light and then in the winter four o’clock and you can’t see your hands sometimes it’s.

Andrea:
So funny i’ll tell my kids sometimes um you know right now is when uh we would be going to bed and they’re like no what and then in the, in the winter i’ll tell them you know right now is when we were just starting and they’re like what What? So, it’s fun. Well, did you eat before we got on today?

Alison:
Yeah. Yeah, we did. Just trying to remember what we all had. Rob and I had chicken liver, which I just fried. Gable won’t eat chicken liver on its own now anymore. So I actually got a kilo of chicken liver. The bag was just over a kilo. And I fried it all. And I gave Rob and myself a portion each. And then the rest of it, I’ve just about put it in the fridge. I’m going to make a pate with it, with some mushrooms, onions, allspice.

Andrea:
Oh, yes.

Alison:
And maybe a bit of yogurt. And then gave a willy that, you see. So tomorrow, he can have some pate. I’m all going to have pate. He had a tinned fish, which as I’ve learned, he likes mackerel in tomato sauce. And as I’ve learned on Discord the last few days, you can’t get, or Rebecca can’t find fish tinned in tomato sauce anywhere.

Andrea:
Hey, I have never seen it either. I didn’t add my comment to the fray.

Alison:
Well, Anita says you can find it, but only with soybean oil in, so she doesn’t buy it.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And it’s just normal here. It’s just fish, tomato sauce, and salt, I think, and maybe a bit of olive oil.

Andrea:
I mean, it sounds amazing. I would love it.

Alison:
Gabriel had that. He likes the tomato sauce on it. So he had that instead of the chicken liver. He had a slice of spelt sourdough. I had some multicolored quinoa with a bit of avocado. Wow, what a treat in it. That was leftover from breakfast.

Andrea:
How did you get the avocado?

Alison:
And… I got it from a store locally. I went in the store to get something. Like it’s got a post office in it. I went in there to get some paperclips. And I was just like, oh, I haven’t had an avocado for about a year. I’m going to buy an avocado.

Andrea:
You know, Anita bought us an avocado.

Alison:
Sometimes in moments of weakness that happens.

Andrea:
Once she was here.

Alison:
Don’t tell me.

Andrea:
We enjoyed them.

Alison:
It’s too much. I really love them. And what did Rob have? Rob had some leftover rice that I cooked yesterday with his in pork stock. And, yeah, that was it. The two of them had a slice of Tharf cake afterwards, which is one of the recipes that’s going in my book that I’m currently experimenting with. My oven has broken. It’s just been a saga here. I’ve got two ovens, one above the other, you know. One of them’s got a fan in, one of them hasn’t. We never use one without a fan in because it’s just horrible. The one with the fan in broke, possibly from overuse. But of course, because we’re renting, we can’t just sort it out. So it’s had to go, the electrician had to come and test it. And oh, yeah, it’s definitely broken. They’re telling the truth. And now he’s got to give them a quote. And then the letting agency has to tell us the landlord whether he’s going to do it. Then they have to go back to the electrician who gets the oven, who comes and fits it in. So for over a week now, we haven’t had an oven, which is a bit frustrating when i’m trying to hone some recipes and i can’t just use a different oven i can’t go no i won’t use a fan oven because i can’t compare that to the one i did before because it’s not the same oven, so anyway um there were two slices of this staff cake left which is a derbyshire um oat gingerbread and the boys had a slice of that each after this wow so yeah and we’ve got lots of leftovers.

Andrea:
My favorite word leftovers. Food for tomorrow.

Alison:
And it’s early for you. What have you eaten?

Andrea:
Well, I was actually going to tell you what I ate yesterday because Jacob and I had a long drive, about 12 hours. And on the way home, on the tail end of that drive, our cooler ran dry.

Andrea:
And I had two hungry boys in the car. So I stopped at a grocery store. I actually had to first look at a couple different towns to find grocery stores that would not be teeny, teeny, tiny ones. And then I found a grocery store. I stopped there. And it was your normal, large stocked grocery store. But I found myself frustrated by and sad by the fact that walking through there, I thought, okay, what can I find that I’m kind of willing to compromise on and eat? And even with dropping my standards, I walked out of there with like four things that I even felt like we could kind of eat. And it made me feel so frustrated because I thought everybody in this town is coming here to buy their food and… You know that lineup fallacy where they say if you line five people up and you say which one is the one who does the crime and people will pick one of them? And they say the fallacy is that you assumed it was somebody in the lineup. And I feel like that’s what the grocery store, you say go to the grocery store and find some healthy food. But what if nothing in the grocery store qualifies? And what then do you choose?

Alison:
And how long did you take searching for something? That’s the other thing.

Andrea:
Who’s got time to spend? Yeah, I didn’t spend a real long time. But I’m familiar with the American brands. You know, I walked down the aisle and I know, look at the top shelf because that’s where they put the dry biscuits that nobody wants. You know, the organic or fiber or whatever things people are less interested in. And then they put the flashy, interesting, popular stuff at the, you know, the eye level and the mid-range.

Alison:
And then the, you know.

Andrea:
Eye-popping candy cereal at the bottom where the little kids will see it and start screaming.

Alison:
Yeah, for the kiddies.

Andrea:
Yeah. Oh, there’s all strategy behind these shelves. But it just made me feel really sad because it also, Allison, as tends to happen to me in these situations, it puts such a fire in my belly for what we’re doing because, all around us, people are saying we can’t find good food. And I’m saying, yeah, I agree. But I think the lineup is wrong. The lineup is the fallacy. We can’t turn to these supermarkets and expect them to have good food. And it’s galling that small farms with good nourishing food are not necessarily in every town or every community. They could be there’s nowhere in America you know there’s we have some harsh terrain but all different things can grow in different places and and it’s um, But but it takes a lot, you know, when I think of the the western side of Washington, where I live, where organic food is very much du jour and, you know, small farms and farm stands are now popping up everywhere. But you know why they’re popping up everywhere is because people are demanding them and people are shopping from them.

Alison:
That’s good.

Andrea:
So we have to be patronizing. You know, if you have to buy 90% of your food at the grocery store, but there’s a one small farm that you can buy your chickens from, like, you have to do that. Because this is what has shaped these communities, like the place where I live, where this food is available everywhere. It’s because everybody wants it. They’re demanding it here. So, you know, farmers can’t make food and fling it into the void and pay their mortgage. You know, they have to sell it to somebody. So I don’t know so I came away equal parts frustrated and equal parts motivated, I feel like limited picking the people who.

Alison:
The people who use that supermarket they just, they don’t know anything different you know they don’t if they’re not exposed to something and if they’re not kind of shaken i always feel like it’s really frustrating with supermarkets because i want to stand outside them with great big banners saying, do you realize everything in here will kill you treats its employees do you realize that you know that there are trans fats in all of this stuff but of course you can’t do that because it’s private property so the moment you do that they’ll just throw you off call the police yeah so what chance what can you do you know can you stand on the road outside is it you know it’s just ridiculous why wear the t-shirt we carry the bag we do the podcast.

Andrea:
Yeah you know gary’s gary’s an evangelist going around telling everybody about the podcast making them like open it on their phone while he’s standing he’s like you have to listen to this.

Alison:
Podcast you will sign up.

Andrea:
Join now but um yeah so i i don’t want to fall into a trap of despair. And I don’t want anybody else to either, you know, because I’ve lived for portions of our marriage. We’ve lived in these areas which are classified as food deserts, where it’s just very hard to find quality food. And there are strategies. And you do have to do like backflips and cartwheels to get them sometimes. But some of those places that were food deserts where I lived, They are no longer because people in there were doing backflips for so long that they dragged the cultural movement into those spaces. So anyway, yeah. So what did I eat? I had cheese, yogurt, and weird almond crackers.

Alison:
Okay, weird almond crackers together.

Andrea:
Very unbalanced, interesting.

Alison:
And the boys were okay with it?

Andrea:
Yeah, they had bananas. I didn’t eat the bananas, but they also had bananas.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
And they were happy. Jacob was excited because how often are we buying crackers? Never.

Alison:
It’s a banana. Yeah.

Andrea:
Yeah. So anyways, and they loved the yogurt because it was like sweet. So. Anyway, anyway, so Allison, before we go to all of the, we have some really fun questions today. Francine’s, I literally laughed when I saw Francine’s. I was like, I know. And I thought of all the work you’re doing on your oat book and how you had, you know, your staff of people around the world measuring and weighing and, you know, shaking down, pressing and sending in pictures of their oats to you. I thought, okay, Francine’s going to really love your book. But um before we go to those questions i was wondering if we can update everybody on all the price changes and all of the things happening in the uh sponsorship community as well.

Alison:
Yeah yeah okay so um as of just after this podcast will come out the first of october the price for our lower two levels we’ve got um five levels now of support sponsorship companionship, and then fellowship which is a recent one, which is a bit up from companionship.

Andrea:
Yeah, community-driven one. Stewardship and mentorship. Thank you for everyone who pushed for that. Yes.

Alison:
The lower two, the sponsorship and the companionship levels will increase just a small amount. So the sponsorship will go up from $5 to $6 and the companionship level will go up from $12 to $14. It’s the first time since we started these back in 2022 that we’ve put the price up. And you wouldn’t believe how long we’ve not done it. We’ve talked about it for a while, talked about the need to do it for a while and watched our costs go up, as everyone has, you know, over the last couple of years. But we’ve decided just to put that small amount in from the beginning of October. If you’re an annual member, that won’t affect you until your renewal comes around. If you’re a monthly member, so you pay monthly, not yearly, and you want to lock in the current price you have, so the price of either $5 a month or $12 a month for the year, which would put off your increase until late summer 2027 you can do that by upgrading your membership to annual by the end of this month so before the first of october.

Andrea:
Okay i did not know that.

Alison:
That’s a good idea is that clear no that makes sense so so that in.

Andrea:
October the price is going to slightly increase and um, If somebody just moves to annual right now in September, you’re saying they would still have that price pre-increase that would roll over until next September.

Alison:
And also they get a little bit of discount because you get a discount for being an annual member.

Andrea:
Yeah. And we have a lot of annual members, which is really awesome. I really appreciate that. I’m the same way. I don’t like having, if I can at all help it. I mean, sometimes I do have some cases, like my literary life thing, I pay monthly for that. But usually I like to have one annual expense because I can kind of plan for it. But sometimes it doesn’t work out that way. Sometimes people are, you know, they’re better at managing things than I am and they can do it monthly. But that’s cool. Yeah. And it is so, everybody who is supporting us, I mean, Allison, I think we need to do more. Sharing of some of the letters that we get from people so that people who are supporting here the, the things that people are saying that the podcast is doing for them because sometimes i’m just floored at how much people’s lives have changed and, i’m waiting for someone to write us a letter and say they have a baby because they started eating ancestral food yeah well that’s what happened to me isn’t it so you know we know it can happen, yeah we i that’s that’s another thing besides the you know walking around the grocery store feeling like you know.

Andrea:
I’m being, you know, taken down by Virgil to the lowest levels of hell, then walking around the grocery store is depressing, but also seeing how many people in my life are struggling with fertility. And I know for a fact the foods that they’re eating are degrading their, you know, biological capability of reproducing. And I just want to scream, you know.

Andrea:
Butter stands between you, and your family. Like, let’s have some butter. Let’s take the canola off the plate. Let’s change some things. So it’s happening, though. Anyways, yeah, those are great updates, Allison. It’s probably about time to get things current. But yeah, that’s good. That’s good. Any other housekeeping enough?

Alison:
Do you want to dive into the questions then?

Andrea:
No. Okay, head first. In we go. These are good.

Alison:
Do you want to read Francine’s then?

Andrea:
Yeah, okay. Francine said, How big is a bunch of tarragon? And why do recipe writers insist on being so vague? She winked.

Alison:
Existential question there, really.

Andrea:
Isn’t it? How big is a bunch of tarragon? that that is a book i would read francine when you write your, book about you know home education farming and cooking and buying blood from the butcher i will read your book how big is a bunch of tarragon i i’m ready for it.

Alison:
It is a good name for a book.

Andrea:
Isn’t it definitely how big is a bunch of tarragon uh cooking cooking with strange bits down under.

Alison:
Indeed do you want to.

Andrea:
Answer this one Well, I’ll try. Okay. Francine and I have a pochant for the old books. We enjoy those. So I will say there’s two things that I see here. One is a lot of cookbooks assume or presume industrial or standardized products and cases. So like in the U.S., we have a stick of butter. If I say a stick of butter, everybody in the U.S. knows what I’m talking about. It’s a…

Alison:
Yeah, and I have no idea.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Well, I do know, actually, but I wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t buying a cookbook.

Andrea:
It’s a half a cup of butter and usually comes in a box of four and… And God forbid you are a butter company that sells your butter in any other shape than that. People lose their minds. They don’t, they’re like.

Alison:
I don’t know what to do with it. You wouldn’t ask your reader to use a set of scales at all, would you?

Andrea:
Apparently not. Alison, listen, we didn’t separate from the mothership so that we could go back to measuring things, okay? But speaking of, I have a cookbook here from Williamsburg. It’s the Williamsburg Art of Cookery, or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion, being a collection of upwards of 500 of the most ancient and approved recipes in Virginia cookery. Okay, that’s the title. So when your publisher says your title is too long, you tell them it could be way longer. In this book, one thing that I find so interesting in old cookbooks is while the modern cookbook expects you to have industrial food and standardized shop sizes old cookbooks assume you all have teacups of the same size, you have teaspoons of a similar size or you know how much a handful is or you just plain know so for instance, she says let’s see if i can i marked these i marked a couple different pages that i felt uh were significant um, But which recipe? I’ll know. Let me try to find it again.

Alison:
Mm-hmm.

Andrea:
Well, okay. Here’s one where she says, first, have a very clear brisk fire. Okay. To everybody who wants to know the temperature, I would like to bring back the brisk fire, the quick fire, the slow fire.

Alison:
Moderate oven.

Andrea:
The moderate oven.

Alison:
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read moderate oven in the last two years.

Andrea:
Yes, that’s 350 in American terms.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
So temperatures are sometimes based on how long you can hold your hand in an oven. You know, it can count to five.

Alison:
It can count to ten.

Andrea:
And then in this recipe, she says, whisk the eggs and then pour in brandy. Doesn’t say how much. She’s just saying pour in. they use the word cup and we have our standardized cup now but once upon a time it meant you know there was a tea cup and a teaspoon is a tea spoon it was the spoon you know that was of the size that you would have to stir your tea um, and, there’s a lot of alcohol in these recipes i’m just, Why did I mark this recipe? Well, anyways, I won’t read through them all on air, but the… The basic thing that I’ve learned from these old cookbooks is you just need to know. Like, they’ll say, first, make a gravy. Step one, make gravy. And a modern book will say, step two, open the cupboard. Like, we have such a different level of instructions. I think Mimi Smith-Dvorak, kind of addresses that in some of her interviews when she’s like, modern recipes just have so much detail in them. And I just got, I get tired reading the recipes. I totally know what she’s talking about.

Alison:
Gosh, you get tired writing the messages.

Andrea:
I’ll tell you that. I know. I know a cookbook author, and she has told me of the woes. That would be you, Alison.

Andrea:
But then in the 1900s, then I have a couple books. I have one here called Textbook of Cooking and one called Handbook of Practical Cookery for the Use of Household Science Classes. And these books…

Andrea:
Basically are the beginning of the precision era, as i think of it so instead of saying a spoonful a quick oven well i guess there’s still gonna be quick ovens and some of these things but um they yeah they don’t have temperatures but they, they try to be more precise so they have actual lists of ingredients as opposed to just a running recipe you know what i mean with the the ingredients listed throughout like yeah within it yeah yeah, so they’ve now separated the ingredients, and they’ve got measurements that are more precise, like a half a spoon or things like that, instead of, you know, sprinkle in or one bunch of tarragon. And they were attempting to make food cooking more scientific. And it seems like they’re also assuming, and it, you know, based on some things you and I both read, it seems like some people really did, they really didn’t know what they were doing. And so the older, the 1700s book seems to assume you’ve got a fair amount of skill. This would be like if I made something, like if you made a millet salad and I asked you how you did it, you would say to me, well, I cooked some millet and then I chopped up a bunch of this and I put that and that in, and I would copy you. That’s how the Williamsburg recipe is. Whereas the scientific versions are like, okay, you’re going to have one cup of dry millet.

Alison:
Lay 350 grams of millet.

Andrea:
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So as for the bunch, I think one bunch of tarragon and phrasing like that is assuming that you’re going to a market of some sort. And there’s a standardized bunch. If you go to the grocery store or a farmer’s market, you notice like herbs are kind of about the same size. And my thought is, I don’t think that the recipe writers think they’re being vague. I am very intentionally vague in my recipes as I have received letters about my recipes.

Alison:
Well, exactly. It’s giving you, it’s like poetry. It’s giving you the opportunity to interpret it how you wish to interpret it.

Andrea:
And there are wrong ways.

Alison:
I know that’s annoying.

Andrea:
There are wrong ways.

Alison:
But I think if you put, if you’re vague, you have to accept that there is no wrong way.

Andrea:
Yeah, no, you’re right.

Alison:
Because, you know, you haven’t specified. So you have to accept that however your recipe is interpreted, there is no wrong way.

Andrea:
Now, personally, my bunch of tarragon is based on how much I can take, and the plant will still survive after I’ve ravaged it. Okay, that’s another way of saying it. So I take some tarragon off the plant. My plant isn’t huge. If I took like a grocery store size, geez, I don’t know. But then if I measured it, that would feel… I don’t know how that would work. And then this is one thing that makes me crazy, Francine. Some people are like measuring chopped carrots. I’m like, OK, a lot is based on how finely you dice it. So you either need to give me like a weight measurement if you want it to be really precise. We cannot count on volume because it depends on how coarsely you chop it.

Alison:
But yeah, See, the amount of carrots I put in something depends on, I look at what’s already in the pan, and then I look at the carrots, and when it feels like the right amount, I stop.

Andrea:
When does it start slopping over the side onto the stove?

Alison:
Maybe some days I’m in the mood for more carrots, so I put more carrots in. I could talk about this question for hours, but I can’t because we’ve got lots of other questions to answer.

Andrea:
We’ll come back to it another time, Francine. Anyways, I hope that this did not answer Francine’s question. We will remain vague. And um i think i think.

Alison:
That i think that a bunch of tarragon is a mount that comfortably sits in your.

Andrea:
Hand oh okay wow that feels like a bunch this is already that would be my this is already then demonstrating francine’s point i would have said a bunch of tarragon was like a handful of the branches, that i could comfortably hold and then i would strip the leaves off those branches which would turn out to be way more than you could hold in your hand.

Alison:
Yeah, no, that’s what I mean. I mean, you have a bunch of tarragon, including the stems, and you just, it feels like a bunch in your hand. You know, it just feels right. It’s a bunch of tarragon.

Andrea:
Here’s a…

Alison:
And that’s how much tarragon I would use.

Andrea:
Here’s an English language funny for you, Alison. Um back when i used to buy lots of bananas um we went to the store the girls and i they were little and i said okay i’m going to go over here and get this, potatoes or something and i said can you put a bunch of bananas in the cart and so i came back there was like 10 bunches of bananas she’s, why is there so many bananas she said you said put in a bunch, yeah there’s a bunch that proves That’s Francine’s point. How much is a bunch of bananas? Get that one.

Alison:
You know, I’ve looked at cookbooks, I mean, aside from Apicius, who sometimes now I think is called Apicius.

Andrea:
What?

Alison:
Apicius. I heard him pronounced like that the other day.

Andrea:
That’s not right. That’s French, not right.

Alison:
Aside from that, I’ve looked at cookbooks, you know, just in the last week going back to 1380. And also, I have lots of Italian cookbooks. So you can imagine like the bunch, all the other words that people use for those collective kind of quantities. Imagine those in Italian and you’re like, you’re trying to learn all these different words. You’re like, what on earth does that mean? And it’s not even in your own language.

Andrea:
No.

Alison:
And I just think.

Andrea:
Well, and it’s, there’s a.

Alison:
There’s a spectrum of kind of art to science in cooking.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And, you know, the science is that, well, you’ve got to put all of the measurements and you have to put grams as well as… Ounces as well as cups because no one knows how to do anything anymore and that’s what you know publishers these days want yeah and the other end is the art where it’s you know the ingredients are in the in the prose and you’re just allowing for fluency, and it feels like, in the past those recipe books were like that because people knew how to cook people familiar, and and and it was okay they could they would know if they were over tarragon-ing their dish so be like no no that’s too much tarragon that’s gonna be too much, um but now we just don’t know, um yeah and and yet i still think, a modern cookbook can be produced as more as a piece of art and say a bunch of tarragon and be nice well.

Andrea:
Some some there are some books out there where they make a point of saying, you know like if If I wrote a book, I would say, however much herbs you usually put in, put in 10 times as much. Because our concept in the U.S. Of how much herbs to put on something is pathetic. You know, like a pinch of dried parsley. No, no, no. Let’s be shredding piles of leaves, okay? Let’s really make this worth our time. But zing. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But.

Andrea:
I feel like some of these are just some cultural ideas, like a handful, a cup full, a bowl full. These are some ideas that have shifted with time. And that wasn’t supposed to be an herb joke, but it could be. But if you go back through older books, you can almost see it moving. And then we hit the scientific era where it moves into standardized measurements, possibly because now, we are trying to disseminate recipes across a wider community, like a large country or something where nobody has any idea how much, you know, however much that Jim usually leaves on a ham bone. That much you know yeah so yeah i don’t know why recipe writers insist on being so vague but i probably will but i make a point of explaining why i’m vague like i might i sometimes will say you know if you need a starting point i would put in you know this much volume but um what.

Alison:
You have to convince.

Andrea:
Your publisher that that’s that’s that you exist and that’s valid will probably just be me and canva forever because of that yeah but uh no publisher would, publisher would look at that.

Alison:
And say you can do.

Andrea:
Whatever you want it’s wonderful there’s no rules anyway anyway let’s um this this kind of leads right into shayna’s question if you don’t mind me reading it i’ll just read it off right now yeah, shayna says i’m a i’m very new to being a supporter thank you shayna we appreciate it thank you i would love to know about substitution for different ingredients that seem pervasive i am allergic to tomatoes all citrus fruits and mint I feel like one or more of these are in everything, this is a great question Alison all right you start you you start off with this.

Alison:
Okay um so the tomatoes and the citrus fruit I have both been extended periods of time without, the mint I haven’t but we’ll get to that in a minute so tomatoes we cut from our diet at the very early stages of identifying that Gable you know had problems with his digestion.

Andrea:
And you were in Italy, I’d like to point out.

Alison:
And he, yeah, and he… He had a big problem with potatoes. We were able to work that out after a few incidences. And we thought, well, potatoes are nightshade, tomatoes are nightshade. Okay, he’s not healed yet. Let’s try and take all the nightshades out. So we took all the tomatoes out. It is hard. It’s really hard to exist without tomatoes.

Alison:
And… If you’re cutting nightshades out, it’s even harder because you can’t put the most obvious non-tomato, tomato-like thing in, which is red bell peppers. If you can have red bell peppers, but you can’t have tomatoes, then use bell peppers instead of tomatoes. They’ve got that sweetness. If you cook them down, they give a similar-ish flavor profile to tomatoes in cooked dishes. At the time, we weren’t able to do that. And so the only thing I’d say is, I mean, we just avoided the dishes that had tomatoes in or we changed those dishes to not include tomatoes. So, for example, as you said, Andrew, we’re living in Italy and Gabriel loves pizza. And for a very long time, we didn’t eat red pizza. I mean, white pizza is a thing in Italy.

Alison:
In every pizza restaurant you go to, there’s Pizza Bianca. It’s just there, you know. And so you can make pizza with white sauce on it. You can make pizza with just, you know, like we put pizza with lardo and sage on it, for example, or sausage. We’ve had pizzas with pear and sweet potato on. We’ve had tons of different white pizzas. And if you have a really good grain to make that base, then you don’t necessarily need to swamp it with all the different other flavors. If you have you know a spelt pizza base as we had often with lardo and sage for example, then the flavor of that ancient grain and the sourdough comes through so beautifully, that for for a long time you know we we didn’t miss the tomato we just enjoyed the beautiful freshly baked pizza dough um.

Alison:
So that’s what I’d say to tomatoes. Citrus fruits, I spent probably just over a year not having any citrus due to, identifying symptoms of interstitial cystitis, which is a problem that can be exacerbated by acid. Now, at that time, it meant no acid. So my automatic thing is if you can’t have citrus, well, I just say vinegar. You’ve just got to go to vinegar. in any like a salad dressing in any dish where you want to add, that kind of acidic tang then you can use vinegar and there are tons of different vinegars you know you can have pomegranate vinegar you can have white wine vinegar you can have apple cider vinegar you can have all manner of vinegars that you can use to vary the flavor and to play with um, at the time i wasn’t vinegar either and i tell you what that’s hard because you can’t have a salad dressing because you just you can’t have the acid no zip oh it’s hard and, and then what i did to try and make up for it was do what you suggested earlier which was just, put a ton of herbs and things because if you make a salad dressing with oil and some really good fresh herbs in it then you’re bringing flavors to that, um salad or to that sauce that you just that zing and you don’t you don’t it covers the fact that you’re going and where’s the acid where’s you.

Andrea:
Don’t miss it at all um we we’ve been making.

Alison:
Dressing.

Andrea:
I make a dressing on mondays right now i’ve been.

Alison:
Doing it for.

Andrea:
Like months now and i use francine a bucket of herbs yeah and kefir.

Alison:
Yeah. Yeah.

Andrea:
I mean, you could add citrus or vinegar to it, I guess. And kathir might be too acidic in your case. But I just don’t have an oil I could put in it. You could do it with oil. But the herbs, they’re so bright and colorful. Yeah. So when you eat them, you don’t find yourself just pining away for something. You’re just like, we just can’t stop eating it.

Alison:
So if it’s in baking, I think, you know, there are lots and lots of other flavors in spices to explore in baking. Yeah, you might not be able to replicate the citrus flavor, but, you know, you can play with allspice. You can play with anise. You can put caraway. There’s flavors that you can add to baked goods, which are sweet, that aren’t the same as citrus fruit, but do bring interest and tang to it. And the last one is mint. And I’ve never had a problem with mint, so I’ve never had to cut it. But, you know, in the last five years, I can count on probably the fingers of one hand, possibly the amount of time I’ve used mint. I just don’t use it. I don’t use dried mint because I think it’s rubbish. And I just haven’t had a mint plant. And so, I mean, I use tons of other herbs and spices, some of them fresh, some of them dried. And i think there’s a wonderful plethora of them and so again there i would just say play around.

Andrea:
And use some.

Alison:
Use some other spice let’s use some other herbs instead.

Andrea:
I don’t know if it’s everything in the mint family that shane is allergic to also any herb with a square stem is in the mint family as i learned at one point chickweed and others that you might not think of as mint um so uh, when we pick herbs i i like to roll the stem in my hand and look for that one thing i know is this in the mint family.

Alison:
Yeah okay okay.

Andrea:
Interesting i didn’t know that yeah.

Alison:
What about you andrea what do you um have to say to.

Andrea:
I would encourage you shana i i do feel i don’t know if shana’s in the u.s but if you’re in the u.s i i didn’t realize until i really started paying attention to it. Also, tomatoes are so ubiquitous. I mean, show me a restaurant table in America that doesn’t have a jar of tomatoes. I mean, ketchup on it. You know what I mean? Like tomatoes are everywhere. And, when we decided to go 100% no grocery store in January of this year, Then we very quickly ran out of all our tomato products. And so we were without tomatoes. You could have come over, Shana. We also had no citrus fruits because there’s nobody out here growing citrus fruits. And my mint was dead. So there was no mint either. So you would have been fine. You could have joined us for dinner. But you’re so right. The tomatoes are everywhere. So I started thinking more creatively, like, you know, what can I make that doesn’t involve tomatoes, but is kind of familiar or whatever. So, I’m with you, Allison. We did white pizzas. We did. Well, another thing I’ve done is learned from the Italians is, you know, not all pizza has cheese on it. and the Americans in the room gasped. But yeah, not all pizza has cheese. Not all pizza has tomato sauce. It doesn’t all look like that, you know, image that we have in our head of a New York style pizza or something.

Andrea:
I agree with you. Years ago, when I first decided, let’s not go to the grocery store and let’s just use up our pantry, then I did exactly what you said. I had these jars of canned peppers and I blended them up and made a sauce that would not work, like you said, if somebody had a general nightshade allergy. But the other thing that I’ve learned when you’re trying to kind of dodge a specific type of food… It tends to be something that’s really dominant in American culture, like wheat or corn. Then, I look for the cuisines that naturally don’t have those things in them. So I’m not going to be focusing on Mexican food. I might focus on like Nordic food or something that’s just… Or Indian food, perhaps.

Alison:
Because it’s not necessarily all tomatoes.

Andrea:
Yeah, different regions of India.

Alison:
Some of them do, but some of them don’t.

Andrea:
Yeah, exactly. And I was thinking about this, you know, Brittany, the other day, I was thinking, you know, she can’t have dairy and she can’t have wheat. And I was thinking, like ancestral Hawaiian food, there’s no dairy and there was no wheat there. So I was thinking, oh, you know, she’s in such a warm climate. I bet she could grow a lot of the things requisite for Hawaiian foods. And Gary went out to eat with a training group like two months ago. And I’ve never heard of such a thing, Allison, but he went to a Peruvian restaurant and he sent me a picture of the menu. And I was like, wow, all this food is, it’s not a weed culture. So then you don’t feel as bereft because you’re looking around and you’re like, nobody here eats tomatoes. Nobody here eats wheat. It’s not a thing.

Alison:
I’ve eaten in Peru. I’ve eaten in Peru.

Andrea:
Of course you have.

Alison:
And the food was fabulous. But my sister was with me. And the delicacy in Peru is guinea pig. And we went to this restaurant and she had guinea pig.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
I didn’t. I had something else. But the food, all of it was absolutely wonderful. And you’re right, there was no wheat. It was just, it was an amazing food. But yeah, she had guinea pig. I thought I have to put that in there.

Andrea:
Oh man, we got it. Caitlin, are you hearing this?

Andrea:
That’s crazy. That’s pretty funny. Anyways, yeah, I would look, instead of feeling, you know, instead of going to the room where everybody’s eating tomato, go to the room where nobody even has ever even heard of a tomato and you don’t feel bereft at all. The other thing that I would say is when it comes to allergies, complex sensitivities, avoiding things, which Alice and you and I have both, had to thread those needles with different things in our household, then.

Andrea:
The more you move towards as time, goes on and the more and more, and you may already be here, so this might just be me reinforcing what you already know, but the more and more you are cooking, and making everything yourself and you’re not buying packaged or prepared. Or processed foods, the easier it is to be really dynamic. And we have had all manner of people with different, you know, health issues and foods they need to avoid or intolerant to have come through the house. And it is so easy to cook for them because I’m putting everything in the pot. So there’s no question of, is this contaminated with this or that? It’s just, well, I pulled this out of the ground and this came from that guy’s farm stand and this came from that farm stand and you know so, it’s easy to move with avoidances when you are you know the more and more you’re out of the supermarkets which is a, A pleasant side effect that is not talked about. Alison, we need to revisit the supermarkets episode sometime and do like an update.

Alison:
Yeah, we will later this year, I think. Shall I read the next question so we can move on?

Andrea:
Good question, Shane. I like it.

Alison:
Yeah, thank you. Let us know how you get on.

Andrea:
Yes, please.

Alison:
I don’t think you’re on Discord.

Andrea:
Send in updates, yeah.

Alison:
But do just let us know.

Andrea:
Yeah, and if you do join Discord, let me tell you, you will not feel so weird. That’s definitely one of the best parts.

Alison:
And also, the people there will have some ideas as well.

Andrea:
Yeah, yeah.

Alison:
So ideas that we don’t have so yeah do if you’re not on discord and you, you fancy it then do get on discord okay cindy wells has asked a question andrew which i’m going to direct to you which is i’m wondering if you would talk about non-sourdough bread making but with freshly milled ancient grains not everyone wants to work with sourdough and i’m thinking of using freshly milled ancient grains to bake bread and, could you discuss it because it’s improvement over store-bought bread Absolutely.

Andrea:
It is. 100%.

Alison:
So I have virtually never made non-sourdough bread with freshly milled ancient grains, but I’ve already asked Andrea. She said she has.

Andrea:
Weird flex, Alison. Weird flex, but I’ll give it to you. I was like, I don’t know what it’s like to live down there with you guys, but tell me about it. I’m interested okay so um i was introduced to a concept in the peter reinhardt cookbook or baking book um.

Andrea:
Baking artisan breads every day or something like that. I forget. It’s like my, you think I know the title. I talked about it in one of our earliest episodes, five books that we love. And he does sometimes what he calls cheater bread, where he actually keeps a sourdough starter and he adds it to his bread to give it some tang, but he also puts in yeast. And then, So this is something you can do, which I have done many of the time.

Andrea:
You can add sourdough starter. You don’t have to add the sourdough starter. And if you want, Francine, non-vague instructions, then his book will give you very precise directions and weights and everything like that. But you can put yeast in the bread or in your mixture and put it in the refrigerator. He proofs all his dough at least overnight, even the yeast bread. So he proofs it overnight up to three days in the refrigerator. So it’s very slow. So it actually gets a lot of that soaking activity that you want, but it is going to behave just like a normal yeast bread. So that is probably what I would say is the best option if you don’t want to work with actual sourdough, like maintaining a starter. You could feed a starter every two weeks or something just to make sure it doesn’t run out and keep it in your refrigerator.

Andrea:
And add it in with the yeast and make his cheater bread. But you’re getting the soaking. You’re just not using the sourdough as your primary leaven. And I would even say you could do it with just the yeast and soak it in the fridge overnight, you’re going to get a lot of neutralizing activity. I suppose you could put in a little acid to break down the… The thingy, the doohickey that prevents the uptake of the thingy. But, Alison, help me, science.

Alison:
Phytic acid, you’re talking about?

Andrea:
Yeah, prevents you from absorbing your minerals.

Alison:
Sorry, I was enjoying listening.

Andrea:
Anyways, so yeah, I would recommend his book. He doesn’t instruct freshly milled grains, although he does i primarily use his 100 whole wheat as my guide, but i do it with freshly milled whole wheat so um, and i also see this is the problem allison as per francine’s question is that, i i’m like i have a little spelt left i have a little iron corn left i don’t, i just throw it all in i’m like i was putting some rye why not see what see what happens, um which, i i sometimes wish that I was less like that, but, it does produce some yummy loaves.

Alison:
Yummy breads, yeah, exactly. I remember when…

Alison:
When we were talking to Grand Tito on Ancient Grains, who used to sponsor the podcast, that whilst we were working with them, they brought out a book on baking with iron corn, which came from recipes from the kitchen of the wife of the guy, Jade, who runs that company. And I seem to remember having a preview of that book that most of the recipes in there are yeasted recipes. And so if you’re particularly interested in iron corn, Cindy, then it might be worth having going to look at that book i’m sure there are other books yeah because i always found when i looked at um.

Alison:
Ancient grain books that most of them weren’t sourdough i also think um cindy i have virtually no experience on this but i know that the people on discord the community do have experience with this you know not all of them make with sourdough and even some of the people who are making sourdough now didn’t use to make with sourdough and yet they’ve used ancient grains and some of them freshly mill. So if you, you know, have a particular place that you’d like to start or you want some advice on a recipe you could begin with, then do consider coming on Discord and asking because I’m sure there’ll be someone there who has advice, you know, specifically on freshly milled ancient grains and using those with yeast. I mean, my own thoughts would be, well, when I use freshly milled grains, I always have to give them more water than non-freshery meal grains so probably that’s the same with yeast.

Andrea:
And it is.

Alison:
With ancient grains I like to get to know each each grain and see how it works and I’m sure that would be the same with.

Andrea:
Yeast you know I work with spout I work with Emma let it sit and hydrate because you can’t get an accurate read on the dough this is another thing I love about Peter Reinhardt’s method of leaving it overnight is it comes out workable, um but never is the dough as stretchy it’s never going to be as stretchy as what you expect with the you know yeast or sourdough either way it’s not going to be stretchy like the, wheat flour but yeah jump on discord if you can it’s a it’s a good time you want to tackle brianna’s question.

Alison:
Yeah shall i shall i read brianna’s question um, let me read the whole thing and there’s kind of two questions in it um but if i read the whole thing it gives us a perspective to be able to answer both the questions okay so brenna’s questions um she’s looking for ideas to help, keep girl guides a girl guide group focused long enough to get book work done so they can work towards their badges, she was definitely going to use an adhd clock where she can set a timer and the girls can see the countdown for how long they need to pay attention for so 15 minutes or less, then after that they pull out a jar of fun where there’s popsicle sticks with names of favorite games that can be done after that so that’s our first question have you got some ideas to keep the girls focused long enough to get that book work done then the second part of the question, we’re looking for to do a reward system right now the idea is a punch card where for each day we can finish the planned badge work they get a punch, or brought their books we need them to do that for the badge work or wore their full uniform everything gets a punch enough punches gets to choose from a prize box.

Alison:
So the question is, what’s in the prize box? I agree with many of the parents about the fact that they’re not fans of bribing with candy. But then we don’t want to buy pointless trinkets that fill our landfills. And that will cost extra money. Too many of our troop, including the adult volunteers, are strapped for cash. What are some free non-food rewards that would get kids to pay attention? She’s got one group that’s 7 to 12 and another group that’s 9 to 12. So two questions. how to keep them focused long enough to get the book work done, which, you know, applies to anyone who’s homeschooling kids as well. And what rewards can we give that aren’t food or crap or rubbish, which applies to everyone who’s got kids or knows kids or has kids in their life. Andrea, do you want to speak to those two questions for a bit?

Andrea:
Yeah. Okay. First, I would say, Brianna, join us in the Charlotte Mason read-along. If you are willing to join us in the Charlotte Mason read-along, I will send you the book that we’re reading. It’s the Karen Glass book, and there’s a thread for it. If you want to do it, I will tag you. It’s a book that can be read in short bits and…

Andrea:
You don’t necessarily have to be in the discussion if you don’t want to, but it’s everything you’re asking about is discussed in Charlotte Mason, actually, because these are questions that have faced educators for a long time. And a lot of the methods we have used, which is, you know, drumming up external motivation and bribery, does not work for learning. And so I think Brianna’s just, she’s literally hitting the nail on the head with her questions so precisely. So Brianna, if you want that book, let me know. And the first part, the focus long enough to get the book work done, I would probably drop the time down to 10 minutes for the book work. And I don’t even call it an ADHD clock. It’s just a human child brain clock. That’s a long time to focus on one thing. I’d challenge you to even find an adult who was able to focus for 10 minutes most of the time. But just in this economy. But the 10 minutes…

Andrea:
On the book and then jumping up. And we have a set of cards that I had printed off from some online thing of these different, like, it’s sort of like a space walk themed. So they’re all kind of called space walky theme things, but I’m sure there’s bazillions of different ideas out there, but it’s like, you know, oh my gosh, Alice and Gabriel would love this. So we need a quick break. then you have to like pretend you’re in no gravity and jump across the length of something with as big of jumps as you can do right.

Andrea:
Or um you have to do like a shooting star which is you know jumping jacks or whatever um just so we’ll pull a card and do those activities just kind of get the blood flowing and everybody’s like laughing and hysterical falling over themselves staggering around. And then we can collect ourselves and move on to the next lesson. The other idea that Charlotte Mason is a big proponent of, which I think, Allison, you and Rob, I think, naturally do this too, which is that they vary the type of lessons. So you’re not back to back doing like the sitting and staring at figures type lessons. You know, you do some figures, you know, early on when they’re fresh, and then you move on to maybe a picture study, and, then you do a reading lesson, and then maybe we do something more varied, like, you know, drawing a bird or something. So… You know, change is as good as a rest type thing, varying. I don’t know what kind of book work you guys are doing. So that would probably be helpful to know. But Brianna, if you also want to bring these questions into the Charlotte Mason, discussion and talk about it, because you’re essentially talking about homeschool. You know, these are, like you said, Allison, these are basically just homeschool questions, how to educate children in a group. So that would be my thought for the first one.

Alison:
Yeah, I agree with everything you’ve said, and I don’t really have anything extra to add. So you can go on to the second part if you like.

Andrea:
All right. Rewards that aren’t food or crap. This is the right question. I don’t like doing rewards, period, for labor, especially class work. I know it’s very popular, but I don’t find it to be very effective. However, um it seems like this is an established cultural thing they’ve got punch cards um or they’re i have the idea of doing punch cards um this can turn into, virtue competitions maybe is the word i’m searching for you know the kids have a way of i i don’t know it you can check the boxes and walk away without the education is what i’m trying to se.

Andrea:
But if we’re going to absolutely do a reward system, I would have a giant box of books, honestly. I bet you could get books for free if there’s so many organizations that want kids to have books. There’s groups of moms who are de-stashing books. There’s libraries that give away books that are trying to get rid of books that nobody, you know, like all the good books that nobody’s reading because they need room for modern ones. Books are something that you can find that you don’t have to pay for. And once the word gets out, you will have more books delivered than you could handle. And then you’re going to get a lot of crap books, so you might want to filter through them. But I’ll bet you can have boxes of books. And you don’t have to split the books by ages because the kids can look in. A seven-year-old might want a book that’s more advanced than a nine-year-old wants. So I wouldn’t divide the books by age. I would just let them choose one.

Alison:
They get to pick.

Andrea:
Yeah. Yeah. But I do agree. I don’t like the idea of using food as a reward and especially candy. I just think that’s terrible.

Alison:
I think another idea here is to, give the people who’ve got that reward the option to have some autonomy. So there could be a time during the meeting or during the week and half an hour where something happens and they get to choose from within a list of things what that is. So maybe it’s, okay, we’re going to cook something next week okay well so and so won so they get to choose i love that which of these cookies are we going to cook or we get to play a game okay you get to choose which of these games we play because you won or you know you get some, autonomy over some community invite action you know you’re kind of bringing them.

Andrea:
Into participating with you in a way, Again, I just, I have this like aversion to the idea of reward for education. So I would also say that I would layer into here, just use the language of like the, the education is the reward. You know, look how lucky we are. We’re going to learn how to do this. You’re going to know for the rest of your life how to make a loaf. We’re going to learn how to make a loaf of bread. You know, there’s people who, you know, there’s starving people in Spokane that don’t know how to make bread or something. I don’t know. Like, just talking about the education and the way that that itself is a prize, a reward, like this is something people have fought and died for, you know, for children and girls to be able to read even, for the peasant class, all of us to be able to read.

Andrea:
This is something to celebrate and be excited about. So I don’t know. I would also use very conscious language when talking about the education. And if it does turn about that there’s going to be a reward for something kind of inadvertently, I don’t say, if you finish your school on time, then you get to go to the party or whatever. Then I don’t like to say that. But if that’s what’s going to happen, then I say something more along the lines of.

Andrea:
Um, when, when we finish our schedule on time, we’re going to be able to enjoy so much more free time that we will get to go do this fun thing.

Alison:
But, you know, if we move on and do this other thing.

Andrea:
That’s how I would probably say. Yeah, yeah, exactly. If we, if we drag our feet, we’re just going to kind of have to stay here for the rest of the, you know, whatever chunk of time and that.

Alison:
What she’s saying is, you know, they get a punch if they bring their books, you know, So you can imagine some of the girls are kind of coming in without the books that they need, and then they can’t do the badge work. Or, you know, they’ve got uniforms that they wear, and some of them are forgetting kind of like their necktie or maybe something on their uniform, their hat. And those things make, facilitate a smooth meeting. But also, you know, the uniform… That creates a community and an atmosphere within the group. And I wonder, in those instances, how would you deal with people who forget their books repeatedly or don’t have their full uniform?

Andrea:
This is kind of tough in the sense that you’re dealing with a bunch of kids, and you’re going to have a kid who comes in and says, I forgot my ribbon, but it was because it was in my dad’s car. And when he dropped me off with my mom, then they didn’t know. And it was So can I still get a punch? Because I’m really close to getting a book. What are you going to do? Your heart’s just breaking. You’re like, oh, kid, you know, I love you and I want you to succeed. So that would be hard for me personally. But.

Andrea:
Something that we could perhaps look at is there’s this, kind of this interesting social study that was done in a city where basically the entire city government agreed to instead of having punitive police force, they had a like a positive police force, if you will say. So instead of going around and – now, I’m not saying this would always work, but instead of going around and punishing people, they went around and they basically, like, rewarded people. Like, said, good job. You know, I saw you help that person. You did this thing. And it was kind of shocking how their statistics came out that people –, people were excited or more interested, I guess, in being approved of than they were scared of being punished. So that is a thought that would come to me is, you know, showing the girls when they come in, wow, you brought your full uniform. I’m so proud of you. I know that’s really hard to remember. I get distracted too, but I see that you remembered today and that’s two times you remembered in a row. I’m just so proud of you. As a child, it’s putting the autonomy in your court instead of, please, sir, can I have some more? I wore my uniform. Can you punch my car, please? It’s more of a, well, look, see, I am good at this. I do put my whole uniform on, and I did remember.

Alison:
I think it requires more active, conscious participation from the leaders Whereas, you know, if it’s a group with tons of children and there’s only two leaders in there, it’s really hard to, keep, maintain discipline in a group and also remember, things like that to be able to, you know, it requires a real conscious effort from the caregiver. You know, it’s easier to do the punch system because it doesn’t matter, you just punch. And then if someone else is looking after the group next week, they can punch too. And so that requires smaller groups which when it comes to doing things like this.

Andrea:
That’s hard.

Alison:
But still it’s something that we can aim for.

Andrea:
I agree allison this reminds me of the carrying capacity of the herd of cows which i feel like everything in life come back comes back to the capacity of a herd of cows which is this idea that um, This, you know, legendary dairyman has where he said, I think the maximum size of a herd is about 50 milk cows, because beyond that point, a farmer cannot reasonably know his cows. And that’s a hard idea to apply to things like, I feel like that applies to churches. You know, they get to a certain point. How’s a pastor supposed to communicate with that many people? Thousands of people.

Alison:
Any community.

Andrea:
Yeah, exactly. And then you have school rooms and stuff. And obviously, this is the thing teachers are talking about, you know, there’s too many children and not enough caregivers, but just keeping that idea in mind. And if it were me, I would have a notebook and I would, instead of having checkboxes, I would have just constant detailed comments that I’m jotting down about the children. Because you know that’s also a notebook you can hand to somebody who comes in, yeah but nothing’s gonna beat that farmer who shows up and sees the same herd every time so i’m.

Andrea:
I’m so i’m so impressed with brianna honestly allison she’s, i’m she’s brianna you are one freaking remarkable person the things that you were doing for your community i am just in awe of So huge kudos to you. And going to the effort of like, instead of just saying, okay, we’re going to give all the kids a piece of candy. She’s like, there’s something off about this. There’s got to be a better way. And like, this is the kind of thinking that most people don’t get to until they’re like on their fourth kid and they’re like, wait a minute, you know? So I love that you’re thinking about all this, Brianna, and that you’re pouring into these young girls in such a meaningful, positive way. And I know with your community at church and the care you have for the way everybody’s eating and cooking, and I’m just amazed and in awe. So huge kudos to you, Brianna. And let me know if you want that book.

Alison:
Yeah, we hope our little comments have perhaps sparked a few ideas to help with the girls. Do you want to read the last question, Andrea, from Marie?

Andrea:
Here we go. Marie says, Hi, Allison. I’d love to hear about how you guys involve your kids in the kitchen and teach them relevant skills. I generally find it so much easier and often more enjoyable to make everything myself, but am conscious that I need to teach them the skills to create nourishing food themselves and also let them practice. Many thanks.

Alison:
Yeah that’s a good question Marie. I know Marie has two boys and she lives very close to where Rob grew up.

Andrea:
Oh no way.

Alison:
At the moment. Yeah it’s a very very good question.

Andrea:
It is.

Alison:
And I kind of a rueful smile when she says she finds it so much easier and often more enjoyable to make everything myself yes you have to point it out, and obviously that that’s the case but I would say before I get into some practical stuff, that often when I make things with Gabriel something opens up that I wasn’t expecting to open up and I enjoy, being with him or making that thing with him yeah in a different way perhaps sometimes even more than I would when I’m doing it myself it doesn’t happen every time But prepare to be surprised, I think I’m saying there.

Alison:
From my perspective, yeah, it’s really important to get the kids involved. The first thing you need is just more time. So you can’t expect to do what you’re doing by yourself in the same amount of time if you involve your kids. You need to have three times at least the amount of time, if not more. And that involves planning. So in order to actually have that happen, you need to look at your diary, or I would say I need to look at my diary every weekend and go, right, what’s the situation next? Next week what days you know when when’s free Wednesday afternoons Wednesday mornings what can I do okay so look there’s a little slot here on Wednesday when Rob’s busy doing something and, we could do something here we could make something together so then I’m going to plan in my head roughly what we could do or how we could make that space and then that’s in the diary if it’s not in the diary it’s not going to get done because everything just gets you know it just all gets out of hand as we all know, um marie’s homeschooling so i know she’s got her boys at home so it can be done during the day as kind of part of a of a lesson i’ve got a whiteboard in the kitchen which i use for um you know shopping and reminding things but i also use it when i’m cooking with gabriel, if we’re doing we’re weighing something out and i’m wanting to to just do a bit of a sum or we’re looking at the way something’s spelt you know um something comes up we talk about something, while we’re preparing things.

Alison:
Um, so yeah, you need more time and you need to plan it. The other thing that, um, I find has helped with Gabriel is to get him involved in what actually happens in the kitchen. So to give him a choice or to let him choose from either a list of things that we could do or talk to him and say to him, look, we’ve got this time. We can make something in the kitchen on Wednesday. We’ve got to make something for dinner but would you like it to be meat would you like to make a salad well you know what would you like to make or we’ve got some time another day, let’s make something sweet that you and and rob can eat you know what would you like to make and we’ll sometimes sit and we’ll go through, some of my books particularly the pictural ones you know the ones i’ve got pictures in and we’ll go through them and gable just needs to know you know has it got eggs in it so we always have to look has it got eggs in it and because of course he can’t eat eggs but then we’ll go through a book and we’ll have maybe some of those little post-it note things bookmarks, and we’ll go through and he’ll choose three or four recipes that he likes as we go through the book and I’ll put the post-it note in and then we’ll go back and we’ll say okay out of these four which ones do you want to make and he’ll say I want to make this one and so then I make sure that we’re ready.

Alison:
So you know make sure that the kitchen’s clean make sure that the things that we’re going to use are easily accessible and then when I’m in the kitchen with him I’m always thinking two steps ahead of where he is, so you know I’m thinking okay so he’s he’s mixing the butter and the sugar or whatever together in the in the boner so next he’s going to need the cocoa oh but that’s going to be lumpy so I’ve got to get the sieve out, to kind of to so he or he’s going to have to get the sieve out so I’m going to have to make sure I direct him in the right way to so he knows and explain to him what’s going to happen to the cocoa if it doesn’t or watch him stir in and it’s all lumpy if he decides to use, the sieve um and so i’m, I’m kind of being, I’m, I’m facilitating him through understanding where he’ll go next and, and what he might choose or want whilst we’re working together.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Um, yeah, I think that’s it. At the moment, because Gabriel’s 12, what I’m trying to do is get him to take responsibility for one meal a week. So I’m taking a step back away from it.

Andrea:
He’s not 12, Alison. And saying to him. Are you serious?

Alison:
Yeah, he is.

Andrea:
I know.

Alison:
Yeah, he’s 12.

Andrea:
I know when his birthday was, and I know I knew that, but I can’t accept it. Sorry, he’s like seven in my head.

Alison:
Yeah, he’s 12. No, I know. He’s seven in my head, too. He’s a baby in my head. So he already makes biscuits, cookies. you know autonomously with with time that he’s got with all different flavors and he freshly mills the grain and last week i said to him you know sometimes people put miso in cookies and then two days later he’s made.

Andrea:
Some cookies they’ve got miso in them yeah um you know what also now let me drop into that that i do see that with my kids and i know you’ve said this about gabriel too, that they don’t and this is a general truth about kids but especially in the kitchen you can see it very tangibly they don’t have all the hang-ups that we have about things so they hear the idea and they’re like yeah let’s try it, i might overthink it like well it might not work i’ll probably ruin it then i’ll hit myself you know and they’re just like let’s give it a try and so that is a yeah it ends up.

Alison:
With lumpy cocoa in and then oh there’s a biscuit with these.

Andrea:
Little balls of cocoa.

Alison:
In it and it’s an.

Andrea:
Experience isn’t it so that that’s i just wanted to add that that That is something that I see.

Alison:
I agree. I think often I have to rein back my sort of anal, I want to control and have everything the way I want it. You know, I’ve had to constructively sit there and think, actually, no, just because that’s the way you want it done, Alison, doesn’t mean that’s the way it has to be done.

Andrea:
Oh, that’s the most painful truth of having children.

Alison:
It’s so hard. It’s so hard.

Andrea:
Just because you want it this way doesn’t mean that that’s right. Yeah.

Alison:
I want to hear what you’ve got to say. Just the last thing I want to add is that Gable’s now making meals, you know, for our main meal. And I’ll say, I’m trying to encourage him to use what’s in the fridge rather than have some idea of a recipe that he definitely wants to make, you know. So he gets used to both ways of cooking. And so I’ll say to him, look, in the fridge at the moment, we’ve got some ground beef, we’ve got some bacon, we’ve got this, we’ve got that. These are the vegetables. This is the carb options. You choose.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
And he’ll go ahead and make something. And that’s going reasonably well. We’re not quite on a smooth keel with it yet, but we’re getting there. So, yeah, I want to hear about your experience because you’ve got lots of different ages and them together as well, which is quite something. I know Marie’s got two. So she’s got two different ages to manage as well. So you want to talk about this a bit, Andrea?

Andrea:
Well, you are more organized than I am, Alison, it sounds like, in your strategy, whereas I’m just fighting for my life over here. And so I concur with everything you said, 100%. And I will just underscore what you said by pointing out that, like you said, Gabriel is now taking over a meal a week. What a huge blessing that is for all of you, because, you know, there may be a day you’re just going to have your head down working on a book and he’s going to cook every lunch that week and you’re just going to turn up, eat your writer’s meal and go back to work. You know what I mean? Or, you know, you’re going to need to be down resting or something or you travel. And I don’t know. Gabriel’s going to, you know, I don’t know, maybe go out on his own household sometime or something like who knows what’s going to happen. But he is being equipped with these skills. And this is where I would say, as a for instance, to call back to the reward thing, if you said to him, if you help me with this, I’ll give you a whatever, he would probably not even enjoy the cooking or be interested in the cooking. You know, there’s nothing to make a kid read less, for instance, than by rewarding them for how much they read.

Andrea:
I mean, studies show. This isn’t just my opinion. This is literal fact that, reading tanks, you know what I mean? There’s going to be the odd kid who’s like absolutely externally motivated and they’re and some they’ll be held up as the paragon of, virtue like look we rewarded this kid you know they read a million pages this summer or something but that’s not going to be the most people and that kid’s probably going to walk away and say I never read a book again I was so miserable but um, when you’re cooking for the joy of getting to eat the food there is the natural reward no reward needs to be offered. Guess what? You get to eat cookies when you’re done making cookies.

Alison:
Yay!

Andrea:
Say less. And then when reading or learning for the sheer joy of getting to the end of the story, guess what? When you get to the end of the story, you’re going to know whodunit. This is all I needed to hear. So, um… Maybe pulling that back in, Brianna’s question, as this is a very good example of where if you were holding out the reward, then he probably wouldn’t be taking over these meals and enjoying it the same way he is. Now, we’re at the point, the ages of the kids, where I have to assign sometimes kitchen work. Well, it’s like on a rotating schedule. I have to assign some kitchen work because there’s just the sheer number of people and the amount of labor involved. And so it’s not always just like oh we’re in here for the sheer joy of it but sometimes it’s just hey this is a task we have to get done and they do complain sometimes and gary or i will and it’s real hard not to fall into the lecture trap but we will sometimes say look.

Andrea:
Sometimes you do things you don’t want to do and that is a fact of life instagram that sounds like rob sounds like rob talking to gabriel we can record our lectures and share them They’re probably the exact same. You know, sometimes we just have to do things we don’t want. We have to do uncomfortable things. We don’t get to get, you know, I tell them all the time, in real life, if you don’t do the hard work, you don’t get to show up for the fun things because you don’t have the money to do it or you don’t have the time to do it or you don’t have the skill to do it, whatever it is. You sometimes just have to do the work first before you get to do the fun thing. So, you know, I can say that till I’m blue in the face, but nothing else. Nothing will… Drive at home like me not making cookies, and they have to make cookies if they want to eat cookies. So I would encourage you, Marie, that I completely agree it is so much easier by yourself. And sometimes I do want to just kind of be in there in my headspace, chopping and thinking. And sometimes I say to the kids, they’ll come in and say, can we help? And I know I’ve said before, I have this friend, she has 12 children, and she said, I have never said no to when a child asked to help she has never said no and all of her children are very good cooks but um.

Alison:
I think there’s one thing i just want to add there which is if, you know if you love being in the kitchen as everyone listening probably does and that time, you also need to make that time for yourself in order to not feel resentful when the kids ask for to come in and help because if if you haven’t then you’re going to just be angry yeah that that is that is well as scheduling that you need to schedule time for yourself.

Andrea:
I agree. That’s exactly what I’m driving at. Sometimes I do say no.

Alison:
So I didn’t mean to steal your thunder.

Andrea:
Andrea? No, not at all. No, you didn’t. I’m really happy to hear you say that because for you and I, it is kind of vocational in a way. And sometimes it’s your meditation. Sometimes it’s just that it’s your creative outlet a lot of times. How much is a bunch of tarragon. We want to think about these things. But sometimes I tell the kids, and I always hate doing this because I know that when they’re young and they’re asking to help, if you tell them no too many times, then you end up with the 16-year-old who doesn’t want to help at all. And when you always let them help, you end up with a 16-year-old, that was me, who’s making 100% of the meals and won’t let anybody come in the kitchen because she has a fantasy of being like a cook for a big house and like, I run this kitchen.

Alison:
She wants to be in Downton Abbey running the kitchen.

Andrea:
Could have wrote that script. But sometimes I say to the kids, you know, Right now, I’m on a really, really severe time crunch. That’s pretty much the only thing that will keep me from having them in the kitchen is I’ll say, I have to get this in as fast as possible. I love it when you help. I need you to help most of the time. But right now, I need you to go play with the baby so that I can just get this in the pot as quickly as possible so we can whatever it is we need to do. I wish I could say that I never say that. I wish I could say that I only say that once a month. But sometimes that’s just the reality of the situation. So, but like you said, Allison, buffering that with saying yes as many times as possible or inviting them in or, you know, commanding them as much as is necessary or possible, then it’s less painful for them, I hope. They can tell the therapist when they’re older when I say no. So yeah, just I agree. And Marie, it is hard. I agree. It is hard, but the payoff is there. You know, I was gone all day yesterday and Camille was, she called me with a question about where something was because she was making pancakes for everybody. So she, you know, she told me I made about a thousand pancakes, you know. So, which I don’t doubt. There was six kids here. But, you know, to be able to leave the 11-year-old.

Andrea:
You know, with the two-year-old and she’s making, now, Leah was here. There was an adult on the property. But, you know, I know Leah’s chasing children too. And, but to know that Camille was just so proud. And I told her, I’m so proud of you. And she was just so happy to hear that. And like, instead of saying, you know, believe in yourself, I was able to say, wow, you made a thousand pancakes for six kids. I’m so proud of you. Like you did something. You actually did something. You fed an entire family. You fed two families. You know, look at that. Like what is going to give kids a greater sense of, you know, their own self-esteem and their own inner locus of control than actually doing things to be proud of. So yeah, good job, Marie. It is, it’s not easy. Indeed it’s fun to wax theoretical about it oh and fractions yeah fractions are the actual kitchen fractions are such an abstract math idea, and you know you can get out the rods and everything to try to measure them which helps but i mean again where are we more interested in learning fractions than at the end of the lesson you have cookies come on.

Alison:
Yeah exactly perfect.

Andrea:
Yeah wonderful okay.

Alison:
Well that was a lot of questions.

Andrea:
So was a lot of talking such good questions i love the questions yeah i love the questions everybody asks i’m i i wrote down the ancient grains cookbook to put in the show notes so if you’re looking for that cookbook um we’ll have it in the resources here.

Alison:
Brilliant okay well thank you very much andrea i’ll see you next time.

Andrea:
That was lovely allison have a good afternoon evening day whatever it is, bye.