Podcast

What is ancestral eating? After three years of recording podcast episodes, we thought it was about time we tackled this topic head-on. Because, although the word ancestral has become much more mainstream since we started, there is still much confusion about eating and living this way.

Ask us anything, we said! Grill us like a cheese sandwich! And you did! Our podcast supporters sent in questions for Alison and I to answer for this final episode of 2024 and we had a lot of fun answering them. Some of them were crazy!

Do you dislike all the fuss, packaging and stress that a mainstream Christmas involves? So do we! Both of us have spent many years cultivating Christmases that are low-key, close to zero-waste and calm. And they are beautiful. Listen in as we share our tips for experiencing a green and peaceful Christmas.

In this wonderful episode, I got to sit down with Christine Muldoon, who is a friend, the creator of NourishtheLittles.com, a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner, a mother and wife, and also a follower of the Weston A Price principles of food. She is also the co-host of the podcast Modern Ancestral Mamas with her amazing co-host, Corey Dunn. I wanted to tap into Christine’s incredible knowledge base and wisdom for post-partum care, and really nourishing mom in the post-partum window of time.

How do you eat ancestrally and seasonally even during winter, when the produce stands maybe are shut down and your garden may be covered over with snow for the season and your body needs a different kind of support than it does during the busy, active days of summer? In this episode Alison and Kathie, who is a longtime listener, supporter and friend of the podcast, got to talk about all of these topics and much more.

What is a Christmas pudding and how did it develop into the U.K.’s favourite festive dessert? What’s inside one and, importantly, how can you make one in your kitchen? In this episode we’ll talk about the fascinating history of Christmas pudding and then dive into the practicalities of making your very own festive pudding.

This is such a great episode covering Seven Ancestral Swap That Will Save You Money. We are assuming you are already well on the way to eating ancestral diet, so these are not swapping ancestral foods for conventional foods; these are swaps within the ancestral food paradigm that Alison and I have utilized to save money – within saving money. Everyone is tightening up their budgets right now and we are no exception to that.

Today we got to sit down again with Meredith Leigh, a butcher and author of The Ethical Meat Handbook, and ask her a lot of questions about Confit, Rilette and Terrines. Meredith has a course on these three items – including headcheese, by the way – a course which Alison and I both took, and made use of in our own kitchens, and we loved the tasty results so much we wanted to ask Meredith more and get her on the air so you could hear her talk about these incredible versatile and thrifty preparation and preservation methods of storing meat, fat and scraps that honestly would often otherwise end up in the trash.

There are so many supplements out there that, if we believe the advertising, we should be taking. It’s confusing and even when we have the funds to dip our toes in, it’s challenging to know where to start. Today’s guest, Ben Greenfield, knows a lot about supplements and ancestral living in general. My family has been learning from his work for over a decade. We first heard about the light toxicity of modern devices and the benefits of cold exposure from him.

The question we receive the most is how do you do it? How do you cook 3 meals a day, 365 days a year for your families? We thought it was about time we tackled this head on, and do it in a practical way. So in this episode you will hear two real-life examples of how we took one cooking session and let it guide the food we served and ate for a whole week.

What does “raw honey” really mean? How do you know if your honey is truly raw – is just the label enough? Are there different benefits to truly raw honey vs heated honey – even low heat temperature honey? And – how do you use truly raw honey? Does it ever go bad? How is it produced?

Every month, we record not only the episodes you listen to here on Ancestral Kitchen but also a special show for supporters of the podcast – that is, our patrons. The episode you’re about to hear is one of these patron-exclusive shows from earlier in the year. In it you’ll get a taste of the sort of things we cover – we regularly talk about what’s happening in our own lives, often sharing things we wouldn’t in the main episodes and we also, as you will hear, answer really juicy questions from our patrons.

Many of the questions Alison and I receive on a constant basis relate to topics that we covered in early foundational episodes of the podcast, so we decided to bring a few of those archive episodes to the front and highlight them for new listeners to enjoy. This episode is one of our very earliest – it’s only our fourth episode on the podcast; and we were covering five of the most expensive foods to buy that are ironically some of the cheapest foods you can make.

Megan is a podcast listener, turned podcast patron, turned podcast admin! She is now working for the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast and it has been so wonderful having her helping Alison and I out. This is a very special episode that we recorded just for patrons of the podcast, and it went up on a private podcast feed where we have over 80+ episodes that are just special bonuses for patrons of the podcast who are helping support it and keep us on the air.

So many of us come to ancestral foods because of our own or our family’s health. We’ve tried what the mainstream medical model has to offer and we’re done with it. We want to look for and work with alternatives. And that journey can be a lonely and fraught one. The world doesn’t provide much support for taking this road less travelled and yet, when doing hard things and making tough decisions we sooo need support. That’s why we wanted to bring this episode, taking your health in your own hands, to the podcast. To offer perspective, support and encouragement to you, wherever you are on your health journey.

In this episode Andrea and I will put out a call for you to send us your own ancestral stories and we’ll also celebrate people who have collected and treasured this knowledge by sharing four beautiful, evocative pieces of food wisdom hand-picked by some of our favourite authors. Be prepared to be amazed, enlightened, inspired and enthused, as we are, to go out and do all you can to rebuild our individual food stories using the wisdom of our ancestors as the guiding star.