Podcast

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.

What about cooking and eating ancestrally when you’re in times of turmoil, or busy chaotic times – like having a new baby, or when people are sick, or when you’re moving across countries! In this episode Alison and I are going to talk about all of these things because we are going through all of them. We will share some of our strategies and plans for using up food stores before a move, or preparing food in advance when there’s a baby coming, and how we’re going to keep our systems running despite all of the disruptions going on in normal life.

Welcome to June! It’s a wild month for both Alison and Andrea – Andrea is having a baby, and Alison is moving back from Italy to the UK! To celebrate all the big changes and upheaval in our lives we wanted to have something special for all our listeners.

This episode is for liver lovers and liver haters! We talk about why liver is so important, how often to eat liver, where to start with sourcing, preparing and cooking liver, what types of liver we eat and how we eat it, how to eat liver without realising you’re eating liver, how to get children to eat liver, what to do if you just can’t eat liver and we share our favourite and our patrons favourite liver recipes.

Rebecca is a good friend and a good influence. She is the creator behind A Humble Place, with a website and an Instagram both by that name, where I first found her when I was looking for Charlotte Mason art studies, and I got many of her beautiful sets. In this episode, though, she is teaching me about her meal planning strategies.

I know milling my own flour is better and I want to do it, but where do I start? Home milling can be such a joy and we’re here in this episode to guide you through all the hows. We’ll talk the multiple benefits of milling at home and fill any gaps in knowledge you might have.

Do you cook with millet? I do and I love this ancient grain for the fact that it is super sustainable, very economical and, being gluten and lectin free, really easy to digest. In this episode we dive in to the ancestral grain millet. We will talk about what it is, why you’d want to include it in your diet, how to cook it and I then I will go on to share in detail my seven favourite ways to use millet – we regularly consume millet all of these ways in our home.

Feeding babies and children a nutrient-dense ancestral diet is something that many moms have questions about. Whether the questions are “how do I start my child off on the right foot” or “I have older kids and we are just coming to this ancestral diet now – help, how do I transition them to this good food!” – these are things that we think about. Here to help us today is Christine Muldoon, from The Modern Ancestral Mamas Podcast.

We get a lot of questions about butchering chickens over here on the podcast, and those questions range from “I have a backyard flock and I would like to be able to cull a few hens and some roosters every year,” all the way up to, “We are planning to raise enough meat birds for ourselves and our neighbors and we need to know what tools we need to get started on that.” In this episode, I am going to do my best to get you comfortable with the idea of butchering a few hens on your kitchen counter, and reassure you that you have every tool you need, and it really is a simple and straightforward process – but there is a learning curve, and it is worth learning.

We asked for your questions on bone broth. And man, did you send them in! Today’s episode is dedicated to answering all the questions we received about the wonder that is bone broth.

Meredith Leigh is an ex-vegan now butcher, a butchery teacher, an author, a kitchen experimenter extraordinaire and meat fermenter, co-founder of The Fermentation School and a mum. She has so much to share and this is an intimate and engaging conversation. We cover some really important questions including conscious animal slaughter, Meredith’s transition from veganism to ethical meat, the safety worries around fermenting meat and the one we get so many questions about: nitrates in meat.

The world of essential oils is an ancient and ancestral one. From the Mesopotamian valley where the Sumerians, Akkadians and ancient Hebrew tribes were distilling, trading and using oils to the apothecaries and wisdom of the ancient Chinese; from the dusty tombs of Egyptian Pharaohs like Tutankhamun to the Silk Road and spice merchants guiding camels burdened with precious ointments, oils, resins and salves.

If you asked both Andrea and I who’s inspired us the most we’d both put our guest today, Sandor Katz, right up there in our top couple of names. We’ve read his books, underlining phrase after phrase, we’ve taken his advice; we’ve made his ferments, so many of his ferments. He’s inspired, educated, and hand-held us both through our food fermentation journeys.

All of us have tried to change our food habits at some stage, most of us multiple times. Maybe, as you’re listening to this, you want to. It sounds simple – I’ll just stop eating this and start eating that. But it’s never that easy, is it?! Today, we’ll take a deep dive into food habits and offer you 14 Tips for Changing yours.

In this episode we will share what a Slow Christmas is and why we choose to celebrate our holidays this way. We’ll talk about some specific traditions for meals, gifts and more – both from our homes and from the homes of our community of patrons.

Spelt is a wonderful, economical alternative to wheat. I’ve been baking with it for a decade now and I love its deep, nutty flavour, its flexibility and its digestibility – many people who don’t get on with wheat can enjoy spelt, especially if it’s in a sourdough loaf. Whether you’ve tried spelt or not, this episode will give you everything you need to know to get the most from this grain in your own kitchen.