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. What are the ingredients? How can you combine them? What's the cooking method? How do you serve it and what can you do with the leftovers? We'll cover recipes from as far...

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. The conversation around fats, dairy products and drinks and so much...

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...

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. In this episode Ben and I talk...

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. If you’ve ever thought or felt that you don’t have enough time. If you’ve ever wondered how we come up with the goods at every meal-time. If...

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? Alison and I had so many questions all about honey and in this episode, Prenten, a beekeeper in Utah in the United States did an excellent job answering all of our questions - with some surprising answers. Join...

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...

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. In this episode, we cover...

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. Megan and her partner are garlic and lamb...

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...

In this podcast we celebrate and share ancestral food…the things that our great grandmothers, and their great grandmothers used to do. The wisdom we can gather listening to and reading the stories of their work has the power to change our modern day food world. 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...

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...

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. We are offering a 16% discount - that is the maximum Patreon would allow us to give - on our annual Patreon supporter memberships. Sign up to be part of the community for a year - you'll make one payment and get all of the benefits for 12...

Liver: do you love it or hate it? Which ever side of the fence you're on, we're betting you know that liver is a true superfood; one of the most nutrient dense foods we can include in our diet. But for many it's also a 'problem' food – we know because both of us regularly get questions on including liver in an ancestral diet. 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...

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 am now using her method and it is revolutionizing everything that I am doing. I am so grateful to Rebecca for joining me today to discuss this because I am not...

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. We’ll explain how you can grind a grain, what mills are available for your kitchen and the benefits of each one, then I’ll share how I mill at home, the organisation around it and what I make. And stay till the end as...

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. By the end of this episode you...

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. Christine and her co-host Corey were on our podcast a long time...

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...

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. We will cover sourcing your bones, what types of bones to use, cooking broth – including equipment, timings, add-ins, how to make your broth thicker, thinner, stronger and weaker, the myriad of ways you can drink and eat your broth, nutrition and storage. There are so many ideas packed into these 75 minutes. So...

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...

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. The ancients knew and prized essential oils for their benefits, and we can enjoy the...

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. Coming up is a fascinating and informative conversation that covers what Sandor grows and ferments, safety and fermentation, wild...

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. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including...