Kitchen Table Chats #58 – Eating Out for Special Occasions, Art for Money, Oat Book Update

What We Talked About:

• Andrea actually ate breakfast
• Alison’s easy lunch
• Rob and Alison’s anniversary date and special meals
• Living as an artist
• The nature of art and income
• Staying true to your center
• Alison’s oat book update and news from the potential publisher
• YouTube Link mentioned

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Transcript:

Andrea:
Hello andrea hello allison did you know that i dreamed about you like half of last night.

Alison:
Oh did you was it.

Andrea:
Good did i did i do anything embarrassing or no you are helping me over you know messages and i was trying to basically buy tickets to go to england and you also i i don’t know why but you needed me to buy some kind of a heater or something Because I was cold.

Alison:
Probably.

Andrea:
That’s usually my fear of being cold. So you were telling me, like, if you go to this website, this is a certain kind of heater that you can use here. And I was, like, trying to read it. And I was like, wait, there’s, like, parts. I have to buy parts. This is complicated.

Alison:
You’ve got to build it. Bring it over and let Gable build it.

Andrea:
A muddled dream of tickets to visit you and technology confusion, I suppose, that all makes sense.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah. It makes sense.

Andrea:
It does make.

Alison:
Sense doesn’t it.

Andrea:
Completely gosh anyways that was my night how was yours.

Alison:
I didn’t dream about you.

Andrea:
Not not tonight anyway i.

Alison:
Don’t think i dreamt about anything last night which is unusual.

Andrea:
I dream quite.

Alison:
A lot but or i remember my dreams quite a lot i should say because we all dream.

Andrea:
Yeah yeah um.

Alison:
So have you had some breakfast yet or are.

Andrea:
You still running on yeah no i had a good full breakfast i made okay, i had bought this past week a loaf of gluten-free sourdough bread and then I sliced it and put it in the freezer so I took a slice of that out and I toasted that and I had made this mixture of tuna and um you know spices and peppers and things like that and I put that on top and then I put a piece of cheese on top of that wow so it all got toasty and melty and then I made myself some coffee, well I heated up like Four ounces of coffee that I had already made before. And then steamed some milk to go with it.

Alison:
Sounds delicious.

Andrea:
It was a really delicious breakfast and Gary came home from work and we sat and chatted a little bit. So, yeah, it was good. I feel quite full and ready to go.

Alison:
What’s the gluten-free sourdough from your artisan bakery made of? Do you remember?

Andrea:
So, this is actually from a different bakery that I haven’t been to in a long time. I haven’t been to this bakery since I was pregnant with Kenton, actually. And it’s because it’s so far south of me. I just never go that way. But I was going down there for a different purpose. So I looked in the bakery and they had a gluten-free loaf and it didn’t have the ingredients listed on it, which I thought was kind of interesting. But I was so interested that I was willing to gamble on it based on the name of the reputation of the bakery, if you will. And it was actually quite good, I must say. I’ve had two pieces so far. Yesterday I made a piece into French toast. And then today I had the piece with the tuna. So quite good, I must say. A nice chewy texture that reminds me of, you know, the kind of chewiness you get out of gluten-free sourdough that you don’t. No, the chewiness you get out of sourdough that you don’t really get with gluten-free breads, which, you know, toast up quite nice and all butter, just slightly more crumbly, if you know what I mean.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah. I know exactly what you mean.

Andrea:
So it was kind of fun. Fun little adventure.

Alison:
Sounds good.

Andrea:
How about you? Did you have lunch?

Alison:
Yeah, yeah, we did. Gable and I have something different to Rob. Rob had leftover rabbit, which I put into a kind of a casserole on Sunday. I cooked that. Mrs McGregor. It was very gamey because the rabbit was wild. And I don’t know if the time of year or, you know, the size of the rabbit makes a difference. And Gable and I weren’t so keen on it. So Rob ate all the leftovers, as he always does.

Alison:
And so he had leftover, yeah, leftover rabbit, which was cooked with kale and onion and some stock in there. And he had leftover rice as well. Whereas Gable and I had leftover beef from a joint that I cooked ages, not ages ago, but last week sometime. And I actually froze some of the meat after cooking. Sometimes I do that. And it defrosted, I sliced it first. It defrosted absolutely fine. Gable had his with spelt sourdough bread and purple cauliflower I cooked. And i had the purple cauliflower and i had a kind of a pizza bread gluten-free pizza bread that i’d made which wasn’t really a pizza bread because it didn’t puff, as anyone who’s been on discord on that thread will know just a flat bread just a flat emphasis on the flat yeah and um i had some chicken smolts left over, from um cooking some chicken so i spread that on top of the gluten-free, flatbread thing and put a thick slice of the beef on the top and then horseradish on the top with it.

Andrea:
Oh my goodness, beef and horseradish.

Alison:
I’ve actually got another meal to tell you about if you’re in the mood for listening to some more delicious food.

Andrea:
This is literally my entire job, Alison. That’s all I want to talk about. Please tell me.

Alison:
What a hardship. So Rob and I We celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary over the last month and, we decided to go out and eat something really nice and we stayed away from the house for one night. And then we had breakfast in the morning as well at another place. So anyway, the restaurant that we went to was called The Shed and is in Swansea, a place called Swansea. And it’s run by a guy who used to work in the kitchen of Fergus Henderson in London, who’s the kind of nose to tail guy. He’s written several books and is quite famous as kind of doing, you know, nose to tail food and things like that. So, this guy now owns his own restaurant called The Shed in Swansea. And the menu had things that you wouldn’t see in a normal restaurant. Crispy pigskin. I thought, gosh, I’ve never known anyone make crispy pigskin apart from me. And it’s on a menu. Yeah, so crispy pigskin was on the menu and black pudding.

Andrea:
Did you feel a little posh when you saw that? And you’re like, that’s just my everyday, but okay.

Alison:
I know. I’ve done that. Yeah, I’ve done that at home, you know, feed it to my kid when he went to the cinema.

Alison:
And also, yeah, black puddings, there was a blood pudding on the menu, and various different things that, you know, are not kind of normal. Anyway, we went at lunchtime, because we just, we never eat out in the evening, so it was too late, and we eat our main meal at lunchtime. So, Rob had two things from a set menu. There was a set menu, which was a bit cheaper. And he had, to start with, he had sardine fillets, which were done in something they called a mojo verde, which was like a green sauce, you know, verde sauce. And some peppers, some hot green peppers sliced on it and some other kind of things, sort of dressing-y things, which he said was delicious. Then he had cold roast lamb so swansies in wales and wales is known for its lamb, he had cold roast lamb with um chips that were cooked in tallow and then he had this kind of spicy mango dressing thing with it which he said was delicious, um they gave us both gluten-free bread which um i asked them where did it come from because it was really delicious had caraway seeds in it, um and i said oh where does this bread come from because it’s a local bakery i’d get myself a loaf before we head back and she said oh we make it in-house and we can’t we can’t sell it because we haven’t got the, permissions whatever to sell it I said oh it’s very nice thank you um.

Alison:
So we had yeah we had both had gluten-free bread I didn’t choose anything from the set menu mainly because I didn’t want two courses I just wanted one really um, and I had the most delicious lamb i have i think ever ever eaten, it was on the specials board and it the cut was called barnesley chop and i had to ask what a barnesley chop was, and it’s kind of like the equivalent of a t-bone on beef you know it’s got the circle bit at the top and then the bone that comes down the middle and you get meat either side, When we walked into the restaurant, the kitchen was all visible, and there were about maybe five guys working in the kitchen, and virtually every one of them had a big slab of raw meat in front of them. One of them had like the ribs, and they were doing things with big cleavings.

Andrea:
Oh, so they get the big pieces, and then they kind of cut them into their signature shape.

Alison:
They do the butcher there to do their own ones. Anyway, so this lamb was just divine. It was so melt in the mouth. You know, I cut a piece and put it in my mouth and it almost disintegrated. It was so tasty and so soft. And they had just a reduced kind of, you know, due of the broth with it, which was just amazing. I mean, just like the most wonderful, not too much, but enough.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Beautiful. And then with it, there was a French bean kind of side dish, which I’m going to try and I tried to replicate and didn’t do very well. So I’m going to try again. It was French beans, which I think maybe you call green beans, like, you know, the sort of tubular buns that are smooth on the outside, not runner beans. Right. And watercress cooked into a sauce that, Definitely had a bit of garlic in it and some red onion and mustard and cream. And it was all kind of melded together. And it just, oh, it was really, really wonderful. I had some red currant jelly on the side, which was too sweet for me. So I didn’t eat that. But I’m sure it would have been lovely with the lamb if I ate sweet things. And a little potato cake, like a square potato cake, where they’d cook some potatoes. Potatoes probably quite firm potatoes because then they then put put it through a mandolin or somehow cut it really really thinly oh and then laid it all together, and then from there they obviously somehow cut those layers into little squares because i could see the um oh my gosh the potato, as you looked at the square of potato cake i could see it vertically going down so potato layer yeah potato laminated.

Andrea:
Potato dough or.

Alison:
Something yeah amazing and that was fried so it was really just so delicious so lovely um, and so i’ve been inspired to try and figure out that green bean side dish because, gable generally won’t eat green beans and i i know if i put them in a sauce like that he will eat them yeah like seriously.

Andrea:
Serving that over heart or something.

Alison:
Oh yeah it would be amazing the depth of that heart meat with it um so i had a go but i didn’t have any cream i did it with mustard and um i didn’t have watercress i put something else in i can’t remember what it was i think it might have been a bit charred, and um garlic and onions and gabriel ate about 80 of it and i thought if i put cream in it i’ll get that 100 more going he did.

Andrea:
Like it how was the experience in terms of you went somewhere you didn’t cook.

Alison:
Food appeared i was lovely you know we had a drink too we had We had a drink, which doesn’t happen very often. The last, I would say, the last, year I’ve been not trying is not the right word I’ve kind of opened a space a little bit for some alcohol in my life um, and so at the beginning that was very slow because obviously I had no tolerance at all yeah um, now having maybe had a drink a couple of times a month, um I’ve got more tolerance um and it just yeah it was we had a drink it was relaxing the waitress was, attentive but not too attentive all the guys in the kitchen you know i talked to them before and afterwards they were they were lovely oh it’s amazing it was it was really nice to sit down and have someone bring food, and to relax and you know and and for it.

Andrea:
To be good you know.

Alison:
Not It’s just a bitter disappointment. Not horrible. I mean, we don’t, we just don’t go to places because over and over again, we’ve had disappointing meals. Or we felt ill afterwards because it’s too much, too much salt. Simple as that. It can just be too much salt. And then we feel rubbish afterwards, you know.

Andrea:
Drenched in salt, soaked in some kind of a rancid oil, you know.

Alison:
Yeah. Just horrible.

Andrea:
Given a fancy name. But no, not this.

Alison:
So it was really lovely. Then, that evening, we knew that we were going to have breakfast out as well. And I said, so, you know, there’s lots of places where breakfast is just dodgy, you know. And I said, okay, so look up cafe kind of local food. Because I said, look, there’s lots of local food around here. It’s a place with lots of farms and a local food scene, enough to, you know, host that restaurant that was amazing. There must be a cafe that does local food. So we found this one, which we then had to walk to in the morning. And again, it was just amazing. We were so lucky with what we had. It was called the Square Peg. With the idea that it’s a different kind of cafe, you know, it’s not where you’re going to find the usual food. I mean, that feels like a vibe. Exactly. I was like, called Square Peg, yeah. Let’s go there.

Andrea:
Yeah, I’m into it.

Alison:
That feels like, me. I’ve often called myself, in relation to my family of origin, you know, a square peg in a round hole. And so I felt like, that’s my kind of place. Anyway, so they –, They had redbush tea, which is always a plus for me. I’m like, finally, I can have a cup of tea. No way. Because usually there’s just English breakfast and I don’t have caffeine or there’s peppermint. And I’m like, I don’t want peppermint again. Yeah.

Andrea:
No, not one more time.

Alison:
And so they had redbush and it was loose tea. It came in a teapot as loose tea, which was really nice. Anyway, they had a menu which had a few dishes on it, but they were all kind of the same thing. So they didn’t the actual food that they were you know procuring and presenting, wasn’t tons and tons of different options yeah you know i always feel a bit.

Andrea:
Don’t we know this.

Alison:
You go to a place and there’s all these things you think have they got all.

Andrea:
That you know it’s just frozen 50 different kinds of exactly meat or something but you know what i know you and i have said this and i i feel like this restaurant is, is a chance for us to point it out that if you are a true master you can take the same thing and it can show up on the plate many different ways almost unrecognizable forms as you know different things you know shredded under cream sauce or a piece next to your stacked fried potato or yeah you know it can all be the same thing but it just looks so different oh keep going okay this is the star.

Alison:
Of the breakfast that both rob and i had in We had different breakfasts, but they both had smoked Gower bacon. Gower is the region of Wales where Swansea is. It’s called the Gower. It’s part of the coast. And the bacon was delicious. I don’t usually have smoked bacon. I usually choose unsmoked. This was delicious. And bacon in England is sort of different cuts to bacon in the States. It’s not thin. You know, it’s not thin and streaky. It’s a proper big bit of meat, a bit like Canadian bacon. but it’s got a lot of fat on it too.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
So it was thickly cut, thicker than I’m used to, three great big bits usually. Like sometimes you get two when you have breakfast. It was three really solid bits of bacon. And I had a really big hunk of gluten-free bread on the bottom of the plate, which was like, it wasn’t a tinned loaf. It was like someone had shaped it into a batard, you know. Like a freestanding. Yeah, it was a freestanding. It had that tiger bit on the top. I don’t know how they do. You know, the tiger crackles you get on top of some of the notes. It has a tiger crackle on it.

Andrea:
How are these people doing this?

Alison:
I don’t know. That was from a local bakery. Of course, I should have asked them, shouldn’t I? Then on the top of that were two poached eggs done beautifully. You know, so the yolk kind of ran out as soon as I opened them. Done in water, you can see. Loads of parsley. Three bits of bacon. And then this amazing array of sun-ripened tomatoes that were in oil. So they had all kind of garlic and the delicious oiliness of them and the sweetness. And then a parsley uh dressing which has a slight chili note all over the top of it that.

Andrea:
Sounds so good and.

Alison:
Beautiful similar thing colorful yeah it was it was green and red from the bacon and yellow from the yeah from the um eggs yellow and white from the eggs it was just delicious rob had the sour the gluten-free sourdough on the bottom, and he had bacon then he had this cheese which is pronounced tie v but spelt t-i-e-f-i which is a local cheese and that was melted all over the top of it so his was kind of a bacon and cheese thing on then he had the same dressing the parsley kind of chili dressing on it, it was delicious and it was so it was a place that you walked in and the woman behind the, the um till was just beaming you know and she was so down to earth and yet welcoming welcoming and really respectful and, just smiling and lovely there wasn’t there was just such a friendly atmosphere loads of people came and went we were in there you can see it’s really, well frequented and the sign out the front it’s only a little place said um cue here for a table and we’ll seat you as soon as we can so you can tell they’re obviously busy yeah when because there was only maybe, 10 10 tables in there i think um.

Alison:
And yeah it was absolutely delicious we we somehow we ended up with only really out the house for 24 hours with two of the nicest meals we’ve had for such a long time and there’s not many restaurants we can go to you know rob especially kind of, says well there’s one in florence called divina pizza that we absolutely love yep um, but really we’ve only been we could easily count the restaurants that we would go back to happily and pay their fee on the fingers of one hand happily you know it’s not, yeah there aren’t many of them and and both of them were absolutely wonderful, i mean off the cuff i can.

Andrea:
Only think of one but.

Alison:
Yeah i mean.

Andrea:
The thing is i know that they must be out there i just i’m.

Alison:
Gonna have.

Andrea:
To have You know, if you say hit or miss, that means I’m going to have to have misses.

Alison:
Yeah, misses, and that’s depressing.

Andrea:
That’s so depressing. It’s depressing, and how many misses do you want to have where you paid money for a really bad stomachache in order to be disappointed? Like, it’s just risky. And so, in a way, you have to rely on people who eat similarly and ask them. But I also find people who eat similarly often say, well, we just eat at home. Or, um, they don’t mind you know maybe it’s easier for them to tolerate if a restaurant is.

Alison:
Yeah i think that’s probably the case they don’t get bothered.

Andrea:
By it yeah yeah i wonder i’m wondering how you felt when the egg came out and it was perfectly cooked i was wondering if you’re a little nervous because i would be.

Alison:
Oh yeah always i’m always nervous when i cut into a poached egg yeah because i just like this is the test am i going to come here again am i going to eat your egg am I going to think you’re a decent place because I just kind of I mean I would forgive a restaurant if it’s not, runny you know as long as it’s not solid really hard dry probably but if some of the yolk comes out not all of it I’m going to think well okay you know maybe there was a bit of a wait time before it came to the table yeah um but, I feel like because they only do a few different things they’re very good at them and so they know how to poach an egg properly you know So when the yolk came out, I just thought, oh, this is going to be a good breakfast.

Andrea:
Yeah, I would have felt the same way. And I feel like there’s this idea people have when they go to a restaurant that, you know, maybe the more variety that the restaurant has, the better, or maybe, you know, the bigger the dishes, the better. I know. And in reality, you think, okay, you can’t be that good at all these things. You can’t have a pastry chef and a pizza chef and somebody butchering your meat in the kitchen. And you can’t have all those things in this little kitchen. So that’s where you end up with just a bunch of frozen stuff that comes off of a truck. But this sounds like… Very good experiences. And I wonder if Italy feels a little bit like an ex-girlfriend that you left and now you’re into wine.

Alison:
I think that the restaurant that I mentioned before, Davina Pizza in Florence, will probably be Rob and I’s favorite restaurant for the rest of our lives. Oh, I don’t doubt it. The couple who run it are amazing. The food that they do is amazing. And it’s in such a nice part of Florence, not the touristy part. You know more the the locals part it’s it’s got so many memories of the two of us and three of us going there and and it just it’s wonderful.

Andrea:
Of life that you were.

Alison:
There yeah exactly and you can get pizza there for you know 12 pounds you know 15 dollars and and it just you don’t have to break the bank to go there and yet they care so much about their food, um so i think that will probably be our favorite restaurant forever but it’s still nice to find places where you can eat well, and actually enjoy it’s proper food and people who actually care about what they’re buying and what they’re putting on your plate and cooking it so well you know.

Andrea:
Yeah it’s so rewarding to see that oh there really are other people who care to the point that it’s part of their business model yeah you know that they’re they’re, they’re the kind of person who wants to share the food with other people in this way.

Alison:
Yeah you.

Andrea:
Know you and i are going to talk and teach about it as much as we can and then other people are actually going to be cooking it and putting it on the table for someone to come and pay.

Alison:
And experience it. Yeah the fact that that little coffee shop that we went to for breakfast I just, you know I would go back there just to go to that coffee shop because it’s just it’s a woman who’s just decided this is what she wanted to do and and it’s an amazing she’s created amazing space that support all the local businesses, and provide really nice food and a space for people where they feel welcome it it, yeah It makes your heart sing, you know?

Andrea:
How does it feel to be a small… Artisanal cheese producer and you know the restaurant near you is buying steadily from you even though they could get it cheaper from some.

Alison:
Manufacturing truck but they’re.

Andrea:
Choosing and oftentimes I really feel like those, I don’t know how but I feel like those changes those those increases don’t always necessarily show up in the price of the food you know the food you’re describing is about the same price as probably you would pay at a place.

Alison:
Somewhere else does the other place.

Andrea:
Just have a thicker margin i don’t.

Alison:
Know i you know there was a in the little room we stayed in there was an advert for a place that’s around the corner that we passed when we walked on to the ones we went to and, and it and the menu was there and i looked at it and the breakfast was like 10 10 50 as opposed to the 12 something that we paid each and, none of it was local i mean it didn’t say anything about local and you know they get it from some some large catering supplier yeah and it was a bigger place and we walked past in it had much bigger tables and it does you know lunch and dinner and well and cocktails in the evening, you know it’s a bit of kind of everything and they’ve got a grill, and and i think i think probably they have, they don’t make as much money and therefore they don’t pay their staff as much and their staff are not as happy as the staff that were obviously happy in this turnover you went to, and and they have yeah because they’re because they’re bigger they’ve got more people coming through so they’re able to make more money that way, um but it’s just so uninspiring to see all of these places, with all of this abundance around them that they’re just blooming well ignoring you know Right.

Andrea:
You’re in Wales, in the heart of some of the most famous food in the world. And yet you’re just, you’re going to order something that came, that’s the same thing people will be buying in Waitrose or whatever the grocery store of the area is. It’s like, really? You just got the, I mean, if you go to these catering type stores, that’s the same thing. You know, they sell the same tubs as you buy at the grocery store, except gigantic. You know, it’s the exact same brand.

Alison:
The same manufacturer. The restaurants, you know, like baked beans tins that are about the size of a house.

Andrea:
Yeah. You’re telling me I can just go buy the frozen thing, microwaviate it myself, and then put the same sauce on it that you bought out of a bag. Like, thanks, but that’s not.

Alison:
The scary thing is that most people don’t really notice the difference or don’t want to notice the difference. So they’ll just eat that food and think they’ve had a nice meal out. And you think, what?

Andrea:
Well, if somebody’s palate is tuned that way, then more often than not, I hear them say, well, I actually prefer, this version, the version, say, the store you walked past. They might say, well, I don’t have that highbrow taste. I actually prefer this. I’m just a normal bloke or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And this is fine for me. And it’s like, well…, You know, we encounter that with education and children, too, when they say, well, they just prefer, I just prefer reading this type of, you know, very monotonous book.

Alison:
Really? Gosh.

Andrea:
Yeah, you know, like badly written stories and looking at poorly done art. And you’re like, did you try? Did this person put out an effort? You know some of the statues and monuments you see going up these days i’m like i i don’t know about that like can we go back to like 3 000 years when statues looked good but um, i don’t know but people say oh you know i actually prefer it it’s like well

Andrea:
i don’t know that you prefer it i think you’re just used to it and yeah and it’s so it’s familiar.

Alison:
You know i was thinking about that in terms of, what you were saying about the art, you know, the fact that, and again, this is going to seem like quite a tangent, but it’s not really. I’ll get back to why it isn’t a tangent. I was having a discussion with Nicole, one of our long-term supporters who lives in Italy, who you may well have listened to me chat to on an episode that came onto this feed.

Andrea:
You have to go listen.

Alison:
To go back and listen.

Andrea:
I slept so much during that episode. It was so good.

Alison:
And we were talking about kind of art as a piece of art or as a way to kind of make money. And I said that Robert said that he had heard an interview with a guy who made Patreon. And he’d said, you know, well, when you’re making art, you’ve got to think about the end result. You’ve got to think about the money. Think about the market. Think about the impact you’re going to have on it. And… I didn’t hear this interview, so I can’t actually verify that, but that’s what Rob said. And you’ve got to have this end in mind all the time.

Andrea:
We can trust Rob.

Alison:
No, because you end up with something that is not a piece of art. You end up with something that’s just made for a market, made for, and it is never what it could be. It is never, it isn’t a piece of art. It’s something else.

Andrea:
Agreed.

Alison:
And I feel like it’s the same with food. You can draw the same parallel as food that oh yeah that you know if it’s for if it’s for making money which it has been mostly since the industrial revolution then it’s not food it’s for something else the aim is for something else over there which is not food, whereas if you’re if you’re brave enough to set up a business or be a farmer or someone who’s doing it not for the money, but for something else for the actual food it doesn’t mean that you can’t use strategies and learn the way that you can best market that product and and how to find the people who will connect with that product but still, it’s the product and the quality of the art that you’re producing that’s that’s driving you and therefore, it’s something that humans can transform humans whether it’s a nice meal or amazing piece of art it’s it’s transformational rather than a commodity like you just said oh.

Andrea:
I cannot agree more i was really surprised when you said that the creator of patreon said you.

Alison:
Know you have.

Andrea:
To think i mean i guess that’s kind of his angle but.

Alison:
I have to go back and look and try and say to her, where did you feel that interview?

Andrea:
I don’t think there’s, I mean, every, okay, Michelangelo had to paint the Sistine Chapel. Was he excited about it? No. You know, yes, he did have to make money. So, of course, you have examples of artists having to do things for their patrons. But, you know, they did that big study one time on art where they evaluated all these pieces of paintings and on, I don’t know what kind of rubrics they used, but we’ll say, you know, creativity and all these things. And what they ended up discovering at the end, because at the end, they then went back and marked out which ones had been commissioned work and which ones were, you know, just done by the artist.

Alison:
Okay, interesting.

Andrea:
And the ones that were commissioned were, as a whole, slightly lower in terms of this rubric that they’re measuring by. I wonder if somebody out there knows what study I’m talking about. I remember reading about this and just being kind of stunned because, you know, stunned but not surprised.

Alison:
Yeah, yeah.

Andrea:
And when you think about, you know, you sometimes look at these paintings and, you know, the kids and I do picture study and you sit and you look and you look and you look. And I mean, the longer you look at these paint, like, you know, Alison, I told you that I wanted to go see those three French Impressionist paintings for my birthday. And I was like shaking when I walked into the museum because I was like, I’m about to see them. I’m about I’m going to be right in front of them.

Andrea:
And when I walked into the room where they were, I just like tears just burst into my eyes because I was like, wow, I’m right here with them. There’s nothing between me and them. This isn’t a print. This isn’t an image of the painting. This is the painting. This is where the master himself was working on this piece. And the one that just took me away was this Renoir, people picking flowers. And it’s a man and a woman in a garden picking flowers.

Andrea:
And so I wanted to use that one for my picture study. We all brought our notebooks and our pencils. And so we sat there and everybody kind of picked their painting to look at and kind of which one they wanted. Nobody was really interested in the, there was the Battle of Love by, I can’t remember who now, but yeah. Let’s see. Henri Matisse was the woman sleeping. And then the battle of love was… Somebody listening knows who the artist was.

Alison:
I’m shouting it.

Andrea:
Nobody was really enamored of that one. It was a bunch of naked people wrestling in the woods. Which is interesting enough, but for some reason it just didn’t captivate any of us. And then Adelaide was absolutely captivated by the woman sleeping, and I was completely captivated by this painting of people picking flowers. And the longer I sat and just looked at it, because, you know, when you do a picture study, you ask yourself, what do you notice? What do you see?

Andrea:
Does it remind you of anything? okay don’t ask what was the artist’s goal what year was he born yeah yeah you know what were his political and religious beliefs like we’re not even asking that we’re just saying what do you notice and as i sat there i was just like could just feel over and over again the tears just welling up in my eyes but just the sheer beauty of it and then the, the story that he i could start to see starting to rise up off of the painting just by sitting and meditating on it for some time, you know, not just kind of glancing and saying, oh, what pretty flowers, and then moving on, but just spending time with it, really, not even getting to know it, because I’m not even at that level, you know, it’s not like I spent, you know, years restoring it or something, but just getting to know it in a way, and oh, man, I mean, you think of this artist, of course, they have to make money at the end of the day, but they go out there and they’re just like the muse is speaking to them. And speaking of finances, let’s, you know, these artists sometimes paint things that get them imprisoned or, you know, they compose music that, you know.

Alison:
Yeah. Makes everyone more power the first night.

Andrea:
Yeah, people leave. Yeah. I mean, sometimes it is very much. And, of course, there’s always people in their life saying you need to do something more popular. You need to do something people like and I just don’t I just don’t oh man, I don’t I don’t I don’t know that you can spend a lot of time around true artists and then come away saying like yeah it’s really all about the finances, there’s a reason there’s a trope of a struggling artist you know because they’re like well I would rather not eat then, you know who who is that artist that I think he was one of the romantics or something who like wouldn’t sell his paintings and he was just like making paintings and refusing to sell them. And people would be begging to buy them. And he would have them come over and look at the paintings. And then he would just say, and by the way, you can’t buy it. He couldn’t even feed himself. He was hand to mouth, you know, but it was like, my art isn’t for sale.

Alison:
You know that I was listening, I think we’re getting off on a tangent forever now. I was listening to the radio the other day. I listened to the radio all the time, but they played Ravel’s Bolero, a famous piece of music that everyone knows and everyone loves it. And the person who was presenting the radio show said that, at the first performance of Ravel’s Bolero, there was a woman who shouted out you’re mad this this music could only be written by a madman it’s rubbish it’s written by a madman, and Ravel was told that later on he was like ah a lady who gets it.

Andrea:
I love that I love that so much.

Alison:
That’s that is stunning that is stunning.

Andrea:
Instead of saying, how dare she? My sister told me a story of a composer whose name you would know, but I can’t remember, but I will say 1800s. And he went to listen to a Beethoven, I believe, a Beethoven symphony. And he’s sitting there with like stern look on his face and tears pouring down his face. And somebody next to him said, sir, are you not enjoying yourself? This is a beautiful piece of music. And he said, do I look like I came to enjoy myself?

Andrea:
Oh man the color all these artists and before we leave the the tangent that we’re on i will also say that just another fun and entertaining piece of um musical lore that i learned from my brother and sister so my sister and her husband are both professional musicians and i went to a concert, where my brother-in-law was the pianist, and they played this incredibly intense Brahms concerto, I think. I’m not super good on knowing all of these terms, but I definitely love to sit. And it was one of those pieces where you sit there and you just, your eyes are closed, you can’t even move your body, you’re like out of your body listening, because it’s just, it’s stunning, And it’s one of the most intense piano pieces. I mean, I told my brother-in-law, I expected to see sweat running down the back of his nice shirt and jacket when he stood up because of how intense the piece is. I mean, the pianist, they’re like panting when they’re done, right? Like your whole body’s in it. Well, apparently, so he plays, it’s a quartet, so he’s playing with a cello and violin and a viola, if I’m remembering right. And…

Andrea:
Apparently, during a rehearsal, Brahms is playing the piano piece, and he has his cigarette clenched between his teeth or whatever, cigar, whatever it was. And he’s hammering away at the piano, and the cellist complains and says, Oh, you’re playing so loud, I can’t even hear myself. And Brahms says, How nice for you! Oh my goodness.

Alison:
Gosh.

Andrea:
These artists. No, not in there for the money. Hey, it has to pay. That’s an interesting dichotomy with business and passion and combining the two of them. And I remember Gary Young always saying that the goal is people, not profit. And people would say, well, you have to make money. You’re a business. You’re selling essential oils, obviously. And he kept saying, yes, but the point isn’t the profit. Once you make the profit, the point, you’re just, you know, those companies on Wall Street that say, hey, we could ravage this country and it would increase our profits. So let’s do that because the only goal is profits. Like the podcast, we have to make money. Obviously, we have to pay our people that work for us and getting to the point where we’re starting to pay ourselves too. And we have to pay bills, you know, pay for the recording equipment and things like that. So yeah, we have to make money. But if the profit was the only point, we wouldn’t have started the podcast, you know, we would have, I don’t know, gone and done some mundane thing that, you know, maybe pays more for the hour or something. But the profit, it had, you know, you’re greasing the wheels, but.

Alison:
The point.

Andrea:
Is something so far beyond that’s interesting that the patreon guy said it no wonder we got off that platform.

Alison:
Maybe i’ve just completely like dissed him by taking him out of context or it’s kind of like chinese whispers to rob listen to it however many years ago through to me and i’ve applied it to some other situation so right yeah um i don’t know anyway um, before we before we move on to another topic i do want to just do an admin thing which is to remind everyone who’s listening, that an episode went out on the main feed, i think a week ago hopefully if i get my timings right yeah which has with it an updated revised new edition of the treasury of ancestral menus, that you wonderfully put together andrea with a whole load more menus in it and more recipe ideas. It’s many more pages than it was. And that will have come out to you. Listen to this. In an email probably last week.

Andrea:
Yeah so.

Alison:
If you haven’t seen that yet if you haven’t listened to the episode go back and listen to it because it’s wonderful, but if you haven’t seen your own kind of pdf copy of that revised um inspiring menus document do go back if you can’t see the email look in your spam um because you’ve got um a copy of it there.

Andrea:
Yeah to.

Alison:
Um to be.

Andrea:
Inspired you want to see the updated one it’s there’s a lot more in it, so we and the pages we added in if you are one of the people who printed it we kept the new pages together so you can kind of just print the pages and drop them into the middle yeah brilliant so it um it’s easy, easy it’s not like we scattered it throughout and you’re gonna have this complicated process yeah which probably i imagine allison that will update it over time you know we’ll, i don’t know at what point we’ll have to break into separate editions or something or maybe, i don’t really we don’t really know how it’s shaping out we’ll see what happens maybe we won’t do more maybe we will but if we do do more then we’ll probably keep it in the same kind of order where you could just print the new ones and drop them at the end.

Alison:
So we’re already.

Andrea:
We’re already 40.

Alison:
Minutes in um.

Andrea:
This is a good episode.

Alison:
I should i talk about um a bit about the book for a.

Andrea:
Little while yeah i wanted to ask you so we’ve you and i’ve had some chat over you know, the ethernet about the progress on the book and what’s happening there but it’d be nice to be able to talk about it in person and also to update all our listeners who i know are highly invested in your book process so yeah, maybe bring us all up to speed and then yeah i want to hear more in person from you so.

Alison:
So writing wise, I’ve finished the bread chapter, which is the biggest, will be the biggest chapter. I’ve also finished the porridge chapter, which I didn’t think would be anywhere near as big as the bread chapter, but it actually is quite big. Then I finished what is…

Andrea:
Well, Alison, your porridge episode.

Alison:
Yeah, well, exactly. And there’s a whole lot more.

Andrea:
That one grew and grew and grew. So I’m not surprised because you have gone so far and so deep and so into the…

Alison:
Crumbling documents about porridge.

Andrea:
I’m not surprised.

Alison:
But i’m excited um and i’ve also finished a chapter that i’m calling treats, because i didn’t want to call it desserts because it’s not desserts but it’s it’s food that would have been treats and which has sweet recipes in it and at the moment i’m.

Alison:
Sitting squarely in the kind of the other savory things chapter which is, quite a um sprawling chapter at the moment with lots of potential options and ways that i could go and lots of quite complicated dishes, so i’ve come up with a couple of recipes so far which have gone across to katie who’s in germany who’s been wonderfully doing all my testing for me and i’m as people will know on discord i’m if they’ve been checking the the feeds, that i’m trying to get hold of some fresh pig’s blood at the moment for my farmer in order to, try out a recipe for, black pudding or blood pudding. I’ve gone through so many different recipes and I’ve come up with what I’d like to try first, which is a really simple recipe because I wanted it to kind of reflect what a cottager would have produced. You know, they wouldn’t have had access to all these spices and all these other things. They would have just killed a pig and made black pudding. So I’m going to try a very simple recipe, which is based on one from Wales. But I’m waiting for the blood every week kind of things move forward with that and I’m also going to have a go at a haggis we did make it at the UK meetup that we had last year but I want to make it again, and test a few other things myself so that’s why I’m with that so.

Alison:
Writing wise I’ve worked really quite hard over the last six months because I’ve been in negotiations with Chelsea Green, I contacted them with my first proposal in November last year and then had a Zoom call with them in December and, And then they said to me, we talked about various different things and, you know, the design, the marketing, the content. And it kind of became clear that they didn’t really want to change the book at all, which was really wonderful.

Alison:
And we talked then and I said, well, I need at least 18 months to produce the rest of the manuscript. Frankly, I was a bit scared about saying 18 months at that point. And they said, well, we usually sign at 12 months. so come back to us in six months time and and flesh out how you want the the design of the book to be so in the meantime i’ve been just writing and thinking about you know the design that i wanted realized that i, at this stage would prefer illustrations and found an artist got some sample work yes sent it all back across to chelsea green um last month, and then had more correspondence back and forth with them and the two editors who i’ve been talking to and then they came back to me last week and said that they don’t want to sign me because I won’t travel to America, which was somewhat of a shock and I don’t think I’ve quite recovered from it yet but generally it took me about it’s taken me about a week to to kind of be just about okay with that decision um because I’d I’d, thought about whether i was willing to travel to the states for a very long time it was the one question you know because i talked to you about it yeah like we.

Andrea:
Went through all different scenarios and.

Alison:
Possibilities options of coming and staying with you and and when i was and went to nicole she had all these other options about getting an rv yeah yeah, we just we talked about it so many times and and i thought about it for months and months and months and months and i decided that, i i need to honor my own who i am and my own needs and i feel like there would be such negative consequences for me, as the human that i am traveling to the states because of the the plane that i don’t want to go on because of the, timing difference the jet lag because of the unfamiliar places i’d have to stay in and i’m terrible at staying unfamiliar places because of the, going out in the evening standing in front of a load of people under goodness knows what lights when usually I shut down after you know tea at half past five and I we don’t have electric lights or we have the blue light glasses on and I just read because then I get to sleep all right the sort of, just flying over and ended up in some place and then having to fly from city to city, within I think it you know I’ve looked at book tours and people have like you know 10 dates in two weeks so you have maybe two days in one place and you fly to some other place and you fly to another place and, i it would just destroy me it would absolutely destroy me added on to the fact that i am, i just don’t want to.

Alison:
Use the pollution that that that um plane travel produces and how i feel about the personally about, climate change i i just don’t want to get on a plane it feels wrong to me. I feel like why should I, why should I be doing this? And everything about the arrangements and the traveling and the going out and the lights and the food, it all is something that will completely unsettle me. And I’m such, I’m an HSP, a highly sensitive person. And I’m like the highly sensitive end of the highly sensitive person. And I just knew it would not serve me.

Alison:
And potentially we thought about could I take Rob if I took Rob I’d have to take Gable they’d have to pay for the flights we’d have to pay for, them to stay in hotels it ends up you know costing thousands and thousands and thousands of pounds just to have them there and they don’t solve the problem of going out and sleeping and everything else, besides which they don’t want to come or Rob doesn’t anyway so um, I did think long and long and hard about what you know how I felt, about doing that or not doing that and i think you know if if i’ve been 21 not 51 i probably would have had a different answer or 31 not 51 but i’m 51 and i’ve been through a lot, doing that sort of thing and understanding how i pushed myself and seen the consequences of it and i’m just not willing to do that anymore i will no i know who i am and i wish to honor my own needs and my own being so, my decision was no and unfortunately that’s meant, that although I thought at the beginning there was the potential for them to say yes because they told me in December that um they had signed, UK authors who had not been willing to travel.

Alison:
When it came to me the um they said that, Although they had signed them, the marketing team said that they had not had really much luck promoting UK authors who won’t travel to America. And I think that kind of means they haven’t made the money on the books that they wanted to make based on their own model. You know, maybe there are other companies in the States who have other, you know, more developed channels that are virtual, you know, like press and, you know, getting on podcasts and other sort of interviews on radio stations, et cetera. Chelsea green don’t their their model for marketing is through in-person events.

Andrea:
More so because i’m.

Alison:
Not able to do that they said no.

Andrea:
Which i don’t i don’t dislike or begrudge them that they like the in-person thing it just yeah is so surprising to me um, that it is like i don’t know I had told you the other day I can’t I don’t think I’ve ever you know gone to a book signing and bought a book because an author, was there in person and it made me wonder is that is that how most people are getting their books like I had no idea but I’ve never.

Alison:
Done it either I’ve never.

Andrea:
Been to a signing.

Alison:
And bought a book but as.

Andrea:
You said we don’t own microwaves so we’re kind of Exactly.

Alison:
But we do have a lot of books. We do have a lot of books.

Andrea:
Yeah, we do have a lot of books. Yeah, and I feel like I don’t know that I particularly know anybody who’s said like, oh yeah, I’ve gone to these book signings and that, you know, if I was somewhere and there was a book signing, I would be like, oh, this is cool. You know, I’ll go check it out. But I haven’t particularly ever scheduled one. So I found that very interesting. I just didn’t know that it was such a significant part. And I honestly… Can’t say that I’ve ever seen other authors doing it. Like when Tara put her book out, I saw her talking about it online and she said, I’ll stay on Instagram and share about the book and then I’ll get off Instagram once I’ve kind of done my due diligence.

Alison:
That’s what I thought. I did think about Tara because she published with Chelsea Green.

Andrea:
Yeah, I didn’t remember seeing her ever travel.

Alison:
She’s an U.S. author, isn’t she?

Andrea:
No, she’s Canadian.

Alison:
Oh, she’s Canadian.

Andrea:
Yeah, so I don’t know, but… I have no idea.

Alison:
Interesting, isn’t it?

Andrea:
Yeah. I didn’t realize Chelsea Green published her book, too. I suppose I could ask her over email what her experience was. But there are other publishers. But, yeah, that was a surprise for me because

Andrea:
I just didn’t know it was so relevant, you know, the whole travel thing.

Alison:
Yeah, no, nor did I. I mean, I knew there was a chance that that would be a problem. And so that’s probably why I deliberated for so long. Um and also because i know that you know someone someone, who possibly wouldn’t eat at the same restaurants that we went to in swansea he would eat at the other restaurant would say to me oh my gosh allison what on earth are you doing that’s crazy you know of course you’d want to go to the states so you know that i’ve got that in my mind as well um yeah but well i would have said.

Andrea:
If you said i’m going to go hop on this transatlantic flight and i’ll be flying every two days i would have said rob.

Alison:
You need to help her she’s bonkers.

Andrea:
Because i know what would happen like that like you said maybe for 21 you know but.

Alison:
That’s yeah that’s.

Andrea:
That’s an intense schedule for.

Alison:
Anybody much.

Andrea:
Less somebody who’s very sensitive.

Alison:
Well i looked at paul king’s north after he did he did a tour and he came back and he was just like i am i can’t do my sub stack now because I’m sure I’ll recover from what happened to me when I did my book tour. I just, I can’t do it anymore. I have to stop and withdraw from the world for a little while.

Andrea:
Can you imagine?

Alison:
So, yeah, I feel like in a way I’m glad I… Know myself that well and i’m willing to stand in my convictions and not commit to something that i know will be bad for me yes because you know of the chelsea green thing you know it’s a big, major publisher um a good publisher too.

Andrea:
I i like them and their books you.

Alison:
Know yeah exactly they’re the only publisher i aimed for because i was just like yeah you know but why would i Printing.

Andrea:
Their ink, everything about them is so solid. Yeah, yeah.

Alison:
So it’s a bit of a shock because I’ve been pointing in that direction for like a year now. And now I have to go, oh, I can’t point that way anymore. I need to point some other way. But I don’t know quite what other way I’m pointing at the moment. So I’m allowing myself, I think, to kind of just do nothing for a bit. Because I feel like knowing that that pressure was on to have to finish that manuscript, I was pushing myself in ways that were not good for me, and it’s only upon letting go of that that I realized through the relief in my body how much I was pushing, and that’s not a good thing and I feel like it’s because so much of it’s unknown I’m not just creating some, book where I you know make a carrot and coriander soup you know I can look up 10 different recipes and choose something i’m, i’m going down some rabbit hole someone else i don’t know where it’s going i don’t know if it’s going to take me you know 20 goes to get a recipe right or three you know i just don’t know if i’m going to end up reading something and it’ll open up a whole nother, kind of thing that i’ll have to go down and so and i want to honor that i and i could feel i was panicking about.

Alison:
I’ve got to just keep going with this because something might happen and i won’t be able to to finish the manuscript in time and then what happens whereas now i feel like oh i I can just, I don’t have to do it in the next 12 months now. I can just slowly get on with it. And if something appears, then I can honor the fact that something appears and give that my time and energy and research if that feels like the right thing for the piece of art. Um which is good but at the moment i’m just like um, i’ve been working too hard too much and it’s been pushing it’s not necessarily the book it’s all the other things around the book that i do the other stuff that i do that’s been just pushed and pressured and pressured and pressured where yeah i don’t need it to be and i don’t want it to be, and now i just want to go i don’t want to do anything for a little while i just want to be okay with just sort of knocking around and getting on with the things i have to and then we’ll see what happens yeah oh that’s.

Andrea:
I think that’s important and and and it is it is interesting you know when you listen to historian type authors, who share about their work and they say well i i think i heard after we after we listened to that um zoom call with penguin or.

Alison:
Whoever yeah yeah.

Andrea:
Um i looked up, two of their authors who.

Alison:
Did an interview.

Andrea:
Together on YouTube. And I listened to the interview and one of them was saying, well, you know, I was pretty close to the end of this book, I thought. And then he basically met a family member of one of the people and found that they had a chest full of documents. And he said he had to call the publisher and he said, I have to pursue This, is unprecedented and unknown, and I can’t just leave it, of course.

Alison:
Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
So it does happen, you know, it does happen.

Alison:
But so yeah you.

Andrea:
Have you’ve been pushing yourself at kind of a clip which is only sustainable for so long.

Alison:
Yeah you know it’s good because i got a lot done you did in the time that i was working on but it also means now that i’m just need to not do anything for a little while i think yeah, yeah let things settle yeah and yeah exactly.

Andrea:
And then i feel like in those spaces sometimes when you make the room for that then the way starts to come clear again.

Alison:
Yeah that’s what i’m hoping I’m hoping that just if I give things space and allow whatever wants to just develop, develop, without too much stress, then hopefully the way will become clearer without me having to go digging for it or, you know, seeking it kind of thing.

Andrea:
Pushing, forcing it.

Alison:
Exactly. Exactly.

Andrea:
That’s important.

Alison:
But yeah, as far as I can see.

Andrea:
That’s good to hear the update, though.

Alison:
As far as I can see at the moment, it will still be published, but we’re not quite sure how yet.

Andrea:
How or who or when or where. All the things that are so nice to know and think you have one markdown.

Alison:
We all want to know them, but no, the world doesn’t give us those things all the time, which is frustrating.

Andrea:
Yes, how annoying. People don’t always do what I want.

Alison:
I know, I know.

Andrea:
What’s up with this?

Alison:
So, do you have other things you want to talk about? We’re almost on an hour, but we could talk something else if you want.

Andrea:
Oh, man, man. It just feels like it’s been a really good summer, busy summer. I feel I miss our lives. This is the first time we did two months without. I think it is good to force a rest upon ourselves. And as it turned out, you needed time for the book stuff. And so all the timing always works out perfectly for us. Um but boy i can’t wait to get back onto the live so if you’re listening to this then you’ve already had our live yeah back in september we yeah um we’re recording this right before right beforehand that that would happen actually but um, But it is so nice to see the faces, and I just realized how important it is to me to get that connection with everybody that can hop on.

Alison:
Yeah, I agree.

Andrea:
To hear the voices and, you know, what’s happening in everybody’s world and the triumphs and books people are reading and the failures in the kitchen. Yeah. All of those things that help us not feel so.

Alison:
I don’t know, alone.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
Different. I agree. I agree.

Andrea:
So, yeah, we’ll be having this texting me yesterday and she said, I wonder if I’m crazy. And I said, well, yes, you definitely are.

Alison:
But.

Andrea:
It is the only way to live.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
But exactly but yeah so.

Alison:
Yeah we’ll have one of those all the way up to you know at the end of the year now.

Andrea:
Yeah um.

Alison:
And we kind of have a shape of the episodes mostly kind of halfway to the end of the year at.

Andrea:
Least i think so um so you know a lot of episodes have just kind of presented themselves to us and yeah and been like oh we have to put this on the schedule and so you know of the, they’ve um you know you did the interview with holly i did the interview with sam like those those just came up so organically they just had to happen um,

Andrea:
You know, we talked about the treasury and like some of this stuff. It’s like, man, this podcast is starting to write itself.

Alison:
Yeah. But not from AI.

Andrea:
Not from AI. No. This is from our natural intelligence.

Alison:
Gosh, imagine if it could write itself and then record itself and then mix itself and then put itself up online. And oh, my gosh.

Andrea:
I was so sick the other day. I was trying to find a poem that I can only dimly remember. And I was trying and trying to find it. So I couldn’t find it where I was looking. And so I looked online and I kind of said like a poem like this to see if Google could kind of pull up a similar thing. And it hits me first with some sort of AI slop. And it said, here’s a poem I wrote for you about the…

Alison:
Oh my gosh.

Andrea:
Get thee behind me AI. Like this is disgusting. It wrote a poem?

Alison:
Oh my gosh.

Andrea:
No, no. It thought it wrote a poem.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
Okay. It put some words together. It followed some rules, and it thought it created poetry. And let me tell you that it was not poetry. I am no poet, but I can tell you that when I’m looking at garbage poetry, and it was garbage poetry, I was like, this is definitely not what I’m looking for. Um but it was so i just my quick scan i didn’t want to contaminate my eyes with it but just my quick scan i was like what is this and then at the bottom it said i wrote you a poem i was like thanks but i am not receiving this, i don’t accept your gift oh it was horrifying so no we are not using ai to write our podcast i’ve heard a couple people say that there’s youtubers that they followed that they’ve just loved who have had great episodes and they’ve noticed that they’re starting to just use these AI-generated scripts. And the whole feeling of it, they think it’s writing in my voice, and I trained this model with all of my past content, and it sounds like me now. And… It doesn’t people are picking up on it people can.

Alison:
Tell i wonder if in any end we’ll end up with a situation like the food where, most people can’t tell the difference and they’ll just be happy to consume like you know they even make ai people don’t they on the youtube videos now it doesn’t have to be a real person you can just make the whole video you know and there’s the people who are happy to eat whatever and then there’s the people who look at it and go, that’s not that’s not expression that’s not communication what is that um i don’t know.

Andrea:
And then you’ll be categorized again as.

Alison:
Extremist and elitist.

Andrea:
And it’s because you’re so rich that you can afford to like poetry written by true.

Alison:
Humans instead.

Andrea:
Of poetry written by a machine that’s just over there sucking down water in Ireland or something. My sister said she saw… She saw like a video saying like, you know, if your piano teacher was AI.

Andrea:
This is, I’m only laughing because it’s bitter. And she said it was kind of like this, you know, very patronizing and pandering sort of teaching the way an AI model would be teaching. But she said in between every sentence, the teacher was stopping slurping water.

Andrea:
Yeah yeah because you know AI right right the AI is sucking down all the water right, resources you know and they and they build it in these desertified areas that have no water anyways it’s what I’ve heard a couple people complaining about they say you know we’re not allowed to water our gardens but for two hours on a Sunday, based on last name you know and um yeah these these, centers are being installed next to them they’re just gonna suck up whatever water remains so yeah it’s kind of outrageous but yeah yeah no we’re doing this real we’re doing this real guys, our newsletters are written by us allison’s newsletters are written by her yeah the titles of our podcast are written by us, yeah this is terrible you can blame us and if you’re great you can congratulate us but in either way do you need to blame ai, i even avoid i’m avoiding even i don’t even want to read anything that ai so-called composes because i don’t want it um infecting my mind in the same way that i don’t want to be eating doritos chips you know, yes it can be experience that passes through your body but i don’t want to have it sorry, yeah i can understand that, But I know there’s a lot of people that are very into AI.

Alison:
I feel like there’ll be a kind of a deadline, won’t there? There’ll be this time before AI. And any book that was written before that, you’ll know that there’s absolutely no way they could have used AI.

Andrea:
It’s already there. It’s already in place.

Alison:
My childhood was without a smartphone. And then there’s a certain age. Well, that was after smartphones. So we’re rereading Sherlock Holmes again. We’re just addicted to Sherlock Holmes. And all the stuff we’ve read about Hornblower, the C.S. Forrester novels.

Andrea:
Yeah.

Alison:
You know, all of that stuff. And even then you know that it was either written by hand or maybe written on a typewriter if you were lucky. No computers, no voice-to-text software, no nothing like that.

Alison:
Every word was very hard-earned and hard-won in its execution as well as its imagination.

Andrea:
Written by a pen that you had to trim, ink you had to dip, pages you had to blot. I will put in the show notes for this, KTC an 11-minute video that I watched yesterday of this woman being interviewed on some British show, like Thames something.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
I don’t know if that’s ringing a bell. Anyways, I want to say it was filmed maybe in the 70s. And um she’s um i don’t know maybe in her 80s or something and so she’s, she went to to oxford and she’s describing her childhood and things like that and she was a historical author too i looked her up she’s written all her books were really interesting she’s written about queen victoria and the charge of light brigade and all these things, anyways she she also talked about she said well well, you know, when you’re a historical writer, sometimes it takes 10 years to write something. And she goes, I had children and interruptions.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
But I want, And what you’re saying, you know, written by pen, she said, well, people think it must be just so easy to write, you know, really scribble something down, but it’s very physical. It takes a lot of energy. And I thought, well, that’s such a good observation that you just, you know, when you read these, you know, Dante’s Inferno or something, you’re like, wow, this is quite a long book. And then you think, oh, boy, this guy had to scrawl this thing out. That’s a lot of work. And I feel like you also, you are one of those people in the category of, you know, the, the, the ancient writers, because you dictate. And a lot of times that’s how people would write, you know, they would dictate, you know, some monk is sitting there writing it down. Your monk is a machine, but dictation is not as easy as it looks. If you think you could dictate as easily as you could type. It’s like, think twice, try it. It is not that easy. It is a specific, it’s narration, really. And you have to form and shape the sentence and the idea before it comes out of your mouth.

Alison:
Yeah, it’s a whole different skill.

Andrea:
Oh, 100%, 100%. And it used to be one that was more commonly practiced and now is so very little practiced as evidenced by what everybody’s posting on Facebook and Instagram. Okay, y’all probably should have thought about this before you said it.

Alison:
Yeah people don’t know don’t they i i am no no how would you be doing that last night well you were dreaming about me yes, i was thinking oh i just i’m i go through these things with with you know so i don’t i don’t do instagram i don’t do any of the social media now and and i don’t have a screen that’s normal screen but also, i my last kind of message is my podcast app and i just i just go through these waves of i just don’t listen to any podcasts no and then i listen to a few and I just get kind of think, why did I spend an hour of my time doing that? I don’t really get anything from it.

Andrea:
Or I get annoyed.

Alison:
I get annoyed at the person who’s presenting it. Or I just think, I just don’t need this information. I don’t need, I don’t have fear of missing out. I’m losing this fear of missing out. I’m like the opposite, whatever that, it’s not FOMO. I don’t know what the opposite of it would be.

Andrea:
It’s called JOMO. Joy of missing out.

Alison:
Yeah, the joy of missing out. There we go. I think I don’t need this information. I’ve soaked up enough information in my life and i need to make space, in order to create stuff thank you particularly the last six months when i’ve been working so hard on the book i don’t have room for anyone to put any other information in my head no other than fiction at the end of the day you know i don’t want more information it stops me doing things that i don’t even know are happening in the, And so I just, I’ve got to the point where I thought, I’m just going to, I got to the point where I wasn’t listening to any food podcasts, but I was just listening to writing podcasts. But now I just think I’m just going to dump the whole podcast out for a while and just listen to my books.

Andrea:
Honestly, I think I stopped listening to, well, I don’t know. So you remember my phone, you know, had all kinds of fits and issues. And so, because apparently a phone that you have for four years is just so outdated, it can’t even. And so, they replaced my phone. And, you know, so I don’t have any podcasts in a player.

Alison:
Okay, that’s good.

Andrea:
Yeah, and I thought, oh, all right. At first they said…, They said, you know, everything from your phone will transfer over and it’ll look just like the other one. And I was like, really? No, don’t make it come across.

Alison:
Please, I’m happier this way.

Andrea:
But it actually wasn’t totally true because I don’t have like all the signed in sort of programs and stuff that people do. Yeah, all my cookies are gluten free and they’re in my kitchen. So these, I lost all the podcasts and I signed back up for Ancestral Kitchen.

Alison:
Okay.

Andrea:
Because, hey, episodes do come out. Yes, I’ve heard that the hosts are very clever and funny. And there’s the kitchen table chats. So I went back in, you know, I had to go back in and get myself my link again. And then the Literary Life podcast and then their exclusive podcast. Yeah, their project podcast.

Alison:
Yeah.

Andrea:
And then just a flying podcast that I like and that’s it.

Alison:
Yeah, that’s good.

Andrea:
Every time I would go through my podcast player and I thought, oh, I have a lot of podcasts here. i i should listen to do you know what kind of a burden it is to.

Alison:
Think you should i hate listening to something even if it’s good you look at it and you’re like oh that one there might be something in it that like and there might be something and then there’s a whole other layer you do a whole other layer of well i i have you know i’m creating a podcast myself and i’m writing a blog myself so i should know what’s going on in the scene i think no, i don’t want to know what’s going on in the scene. I’m just going to write my book and I’ll put it out there. And if I’m not touching all the electric currents of all the things, then so be it, you know?

Andrea:
You know what? So much the better. Let me tell you, nothing dates a book like a book that touches all the themes and agendas of the day and the hour. You’re like, oh, I can tell what year this book came out. You mentioned every hot button topic right there that there was. Whereas those evergreen and timeless type books, You say, I don’t care if this was written by Homer, you know, who heard it told to him and it was five. Like, it’s still good. It still works.

Alison:
Amen. Definitely.

Andrea:
Timeless. Yeah, that’s the kind of book you’re going for here.

Alison:
We should stop, probably.

Andrea:
Never, never. We have four more hours in us. I just know it. That’s because I ate breakfast.

Alison:
Yeah, of course. We should stop. That should word again.

Andrea:
No, we should. We should.

Alison:
We should.

Andrea:
We should stop.

Alison:
Because sometimes we need to go to the toilet, you know, and do other things.

Andrea:
It does happen. Somebody said that every time you think should, you know, sort of evaluate it, like should can be such a loaded question and think more like, could or can I?

Alison:
Could, yeah.

Andrea:
Could I? We could stop. We could keep going.

Alison:
We could not stop. Yeah, exactly.

Andrea:
We can decide to let people, well, I assume if you’re listening to this, you’re in your kitchen, you probably are. But we can let them have some space to think. Yeah, exactly.

Alison:
There we go. Which is very much needed. Okay. It was lovely to talk to you.

Andrea:
Oh, this is lovely, Alison. Thank you for the chat. Thank you for updating me on everything. and happy anniversary to you and Rob.

Alison:
Thank you. That’s kind. Thank you very much. I shall tell Rob.

Andrea:
All right. Well, have a good afternoon and evening and enjoy your Sherlock Holmes.

Alison:
We will. Thanks very much, Andrea. Bye.

Andrea:
Bye.