Fermented gingerbread ladies covered in melted 90% chocolate and zesty orange.
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May you have a peaceful, warm and joyful few days: Happy Christmas!
Are your holidays stress-free?
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We asked our listeners for what they wanted to hear on the podcast Christmas episode:
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How can I not overindulge?
How can I eat well when I’m going to someone else’s home?
What good food can I take to with me when I’m travelling?
What can I prepare in advance so I’m not in the kitchen all Christmas morning?
How can I help my children avoid the onslaught of bad food?
How can I have the Christmas I always intend to have but never quite achieve?
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We answer all these questions and more in today’s episode, which we decided to call The Christmas Survival Guide!
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If you want some tips to help you stay sane and well over the holidays do listen in. And if there’s someone else you think this’d help, send it to them!
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You can download @ancestralkitchenpodcast from all the podcast apps or stream/download from the link in Alison’s or the podcast’s profile.
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A very Happy Christmas from both of us to you and all you love.
Are you stressed about over-eating or over-indulging during the holidays? Do you travel to visit relatives, and you are anxious about eating a nourishing ancestral diet while away from home? What about the children?… Read More
When you make your own English ale and you see a recipe from an old English cookbook for ‘Cheese & Ale’, you have to try it!
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I used pecorino (trying to find an English cheese in Tuscany is hard, and with all our great cheese here, I can see why!) and wholegrain mustard, baking them in a bath of my home-made English ale (unhopped, made from rye I malted myself).
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Those three ingredients warm and mushed together make the most delightful topping for toasted sourdough.
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More pictures in my story today (I’ll save to the ale highlight).
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I’m reading Hilary Mantel’s amazing Thomas Cromwell trilogy and wondering whether he, or Henry VIII ate this?!
This post contains affiliate links. You will receive a discount if you use them and I will receive a small payout. Think living in an apartment means you can’t compost? Meet Bokashi: the apartment-friendly, super-quick, odour-free way of fermenting your … Read More
Llymru is a Welsh oat ferment. It is similar to sowans, the oat fermentation method native to Scotland, but uses whey or buttermilk to start the ferment (there’s a lot of good milk in Wales so a dairy starter would have been natural).
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When finished, it sets into a beautiful jelly which you can slice. Here I’ve served it with local honey and some borage flowers from the garden (I still have flowers in my garden!!).
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Check my story today to watch it wobbling! I can’t keep my eyes off it!
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If you’re interested in traditional oat fermentation, you can learn via my course Sowans: The Scottish Oat Ferment over at @thefermentationschool (there’s a link in my profile)
How many times have you heard this: “Yes, regenerative agriculture’s all well and good, but you couldn’t feed the world that way”.
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Today, in the podcast, we speak to the man who is building a roadmap to show us that *it could*.
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Sir Patrick Holden runs the Sustainable Food Trust who have just published a report that shows how Britain could feed itself using pesticide and fertiliser-free, animal-involved agriculture whilst feeding grain to humans, not animals.
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We talk about all the details, how this can be taken global, lab meat, how we can create change as individuals and much more.
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We’re so grateful to Sir Patrick for sharing his 50-year experience as both a dairy farmer and an activist. Subscribe to @ancestralkitchenpodcast from your podcast app or stream/download from the link in my profile.
In this episode I talk to Sir Patrick Holden, head of The Sustainable Food Trust and 50-year farmer and sustainable food activist. You’ll hear us talk about his latest research into how the UK could feed itself using fertiliser/pesticide-free sustainable agriculture (with no grain-fed animals!), the tools to take this global, and how this lifetime campaigner for sustainable animal-involved agriculture feels about lab meat, supermarkets, ground-up change and much more.… Read More
Brewing ale (like baking bread) used to be a household task, performed by women using kitchen equipment and shared yeast.
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Then, in England at least, along came hops, industrialisation, marginalisation and what followed were large-scale operations, run by men. That’s now been honed into the brewing world we see as normal.
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I don’t want to partake in industrial bread, with it’s whipping, chemical additives and packaging so why should I do so for alcohol?
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Bringing ale back into my household, making it accessible and successful is proving quite a ride! Reading, guessing, experimenting, tasting, revising…over and over again.
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Here’s the latest batch, brewing with…shock, horror… commercial yeast. I’m doing it to try and understand whether my attempts at home yeast (which have been many and varied) are making my beer taste the way it does or whether home-malting or my equipment makes the difference.
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Check out the layer on the top of this ferment. The yeasts, not wanting any competition from opportunistic bacteria, have created a physical barrier to keep the sugary grain liquid all to themselves!
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If you want to see more of what I’ve been up to, check out my ancestral ale highlight or support me by becoming a patron of @ancestralkitchenpodcast where I’ve recently shared what I’ve been up to.
Keeping warm in winter has always been a challenge for me. But here, as in many areas of life, ancestral wisdom has taught me so much.
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I’m writing a newsletter to go out tomorrow which will share what I do – with food, drink and routines – to help keep warm. And it’ll include details of this fabulous beef and barley stew.
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You can get on my mailing list via the link in my profile or by typing ancestralkitchen.com/newsletter into your browser.
