Ancestral Kitchen

Traveling and vacation is so much fun until you get the bill for all the meals you ate out, and you get a tummy ache for all those weird ingredients your body just didn’t like. If you have allergies and food sensitivities it’s even more difficult, finding somewhere safe to eat is just about impossible. We have both found that when we travel we just do better if we bring a lot of our own food with...

What pan should I use to bake my bread? Metal, ceramic, glass, dutch oven…there are so many out there. What are the differences? What about non-stick? What temperatures can I use for each one? How can I stop my dough from sticking? How can I work out how much dough my pan will take? And what about pizza? How can I make the best one at home? These questions, and many more, are answered in today’s e...

We have some exciting news! We are pleased to announce that we’ve left the Patreon platform behind and are now hosting our membership system on our website. None of the benefits or support that the community, that we’re now calling The Kitchen Table, provides are changing. All this move means is that, instead of us paying Patreon (and you potentially lining Apple’s pocket) all the money that you p...

George Orwell writes, “If you look up ‘tea’ in the first cookery book that comes to hand you will probably find that it is unmentioned; or at most you will find a few lines of sketchy instructions which give no ruling on several of the most important points. This is curious, not only because tea is one of the mainstays of civilization … but because the best manner of making it is the subject of vi...

Bone broth, sauerkraut, milk kefir – fundamentals of an ancestral diet and foods that we know do us good. So what do you do if actually they're making you ill? Histamine is a word that most of us have heard of and, thanks to the proliferation of health news, were also probably aware of histamine intolerance. In this episode we will deal head-on with histamine and how it interacts with an ancestral...

It’s almost May, the month which the early medieval Anglo-Saxons called thrymilce , because according to the Venerable St Bede, “in that month cattle were milked three times a day.” We don’t know if you’re milking your cow three times a day, but ‘tis the season for lots of fresh and available milk. What to do with all that milk? - and if you don’t have a cow, what to do if you have access to raw m...

Combining gluten-free eating with ancestral eating need not be daunting. Today I talk with Rebecca Zipp, a beloved podcast guest and supporter. She's been gluten-free for the last 16 years – bringing her husband and her children along with her. In addition, for most of last year I ate gluten-free. Between the two of us we've a lot to talk about! In this episode, we cover: Why Rebecca went gluten-f...

What are some traditional foods we can eat for breakfast, and do we have examples of ancestral breakfasts in history? In this episode Alison and I got together to talk about what we eat to start the day. We included a variety of “types” of breakfasts. First, we start out with fast breakfasts, things you can make very quickly. Whether you’re going to school, you have kids going to school, or you ho...

Download the free, 30-page guide Baking with Ancient Grains here Alison has just released a free 30-page guide to baking with ancient grains and this companion podcast episode will give you everything you need to know to bring the world of ancient grain baking into your own kitchen. We'll define an ancient grain, we'll talk about why they're different to modern wheat and how that change happened,...

The cost of eating an ancestral, nourishing diet, vs the cost of eating a conventional, supermarket diet: people are already stretched to the limit on their grocery budgets, so how can we ask them to spend even more on buying more nutritious or local food? Even if it’s important to them, what if the dollars literally do not exist? How are we to eat? These were the questions burning in my mind when...

How, when you’ve got limited money, no spare time and family who are used to eating what they eat… How when you can’t find alternatives, don’t have the room to grow it yourself and don’t have the headspace… How do you get out of supermarkets? In this, our Guide to Getting Out of Supermarkets episode, we’ll give you a stack of practical ideas (from us and from our supporters) that'll change things...

How does one prepare for times of illness? Having supplies on hand, such as home remedies, some handy rubrics and rules of thumb in your back pocket, and healing foods prepared and set aside for such a time, are steps the wise person takes to avoid being caught off guard and unprepared. In this episode, Alison and Andrea will talk about some favorite tools and remedies they keep on hand, as well a...

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. In this episode you will first hear us talk about what ancestral eating isn’t (including how it is different from...

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! Some would take an entire podcast episode to answer thoroughly, and they were all really fun - like, "What are some non-ancestral things you do, or ancestral things...

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. Our 2024 Christmas Hamper is now available for all companionship or above supporters of the p...

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...

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 t...

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 cookin...

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 w...

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...

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...

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...

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 S...

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 w...

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...