Year: 2022

This week was my seventh wedding anniversary. When we married, Gabriel, our son, had just returned home from life-saving surgery. In fact, we cancelled and rescheduled the wedding because of what happened. Instead, we spent the day in the hospital with him.
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After recovering together (I have such love and compassion for any parent trying to live alongside an ill child) we married and moved to Cornwall in the UK. I tried to live there, but things bigger than me had other ideas and I got quite ill.
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Hastened by Brexit (both my husband, Rob, and I feel more European than we do British), we decided to move back to where we lived before Gabriel was born, Italy.
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We’ve lived in many places since landing back here three years ago. But I’m hoping the latest one, a tiny flat with a little garden, on the outskirts of Florence, will stick. I want to be here a while. I want to enjoy my family and build our future.
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Seven years of marriage feels kinda like a lifetime. In a good way!! I can’t remember my ex-husband, I feel far away from the ‘old’ me. I feel more and more comfortable with the woman I am now, whom both these amazing men have helped shape.
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We celebrated at home. With spelt sourdough pizza topped with red wine braised onions, tomatoes and two types of local cheese. I’ll post a pic soon 🙂
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Thank you for reading this far! I wish you love today, in all its beautiful forms.

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Why are there people trying to work out how to control the weather to combat climate change when as a society we are willfully ignoring things we could change that would make a huge difference?
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Is it because personal change is hard? Is it because we think science will save us? Is it because those people have power and would rather keep it than look at non-profit-creating solutions?
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Because the non-profit-creating solutions are there. We can have a huge impact by living by one simple tenet in our kitchens:
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Find out what the land around you can provide and use that.
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In the past, our ancestors had no choice on this one. They looked to the land, figured out what it could give, grew/raised that and made sure they cared for the soil so it would continue to keep them alive. Their agriculture worked with their environment.
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Look to the past in your geography to see what to eat. Find someone growing/rearing it locally, someone who uses natural animal manure to give back to the soil (not petrochemical fertiliser) and give them you support.
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The latest @ancestralkitchenpodcast is about creating a sustainable kitchen. You can listen by finding us on your podcast app, or by clicking the link in my bio and streaming/downloading from my website.

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Beef liver pate (@almostbananas has an amazing recipe using all spice) served on spelt sourdough with garden chives and a salad with local vegetables plus the last of the borage flowers from the garden.
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If you find beef liver too strong, this is the recipe for you. Search for ”almost bananas best beef liver pate” online to find it. I’ll link the spelt sourdough recipe in my story today – it’s on my blog.

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I have foraged a lot of blackberries this summer. And as I’ve walked, collecting, I’ve thought of how much bounty the lanes, riversides and fields would have routinely given us, for free, in the past. How women before me would’ve walked the same paths, their heads full of knowledge of all the plants they could find and eat.
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For me, growing up in the UK, wild blackberries seemed to be the last crumbs of this knowledge. I didn’t realise back then that there would have been and could be so much more wild, foraged food.
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I talk everyday to people on here that are re-learning what amazing nutrition and medicine the ‘weeds’ around us can provide and that gives me hope. Hope that what all the wise women – whose DNA resides in our own – knew will *not* be lost.
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If you’re foraging and/or learning today, thank you!
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The details of this improvised leftover/foraged deliciousness are in my story today.

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Do you know how to get a crispy bottom?
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I’m talking about on a fried egg, of course.
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Or what ‘rumbling’ an egg involves?
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And are you a soft-boiled lover, or, like my co-host @farmandhearth, completely at a loss as to what the English ‘obsession’ with soft-yolked eggs is all about?
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The latest @ancestralkitchenpodcast is an intimate one. Andrea and chat about what’s been happening in our respective across-the-Atlantic food worlds. There’s fat rendering, some delightful book talk and an in-depth egg discussion. We laughed while recording and I laughed while editing. I hope you laugh whilst listening.
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You can download by searching for Ancestral Kitchen Podcast in your app or stream from the link in my profile.
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I’d love to hear your egg feedback 🙂

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Bubble & Squeak… or put in a slightly more mundane way, cabbage and potato!
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Bubble & Squeak is a dish that’s been around a long time in England. It was originally fried leftover beef, cabbage and potato, but we seem to have forgotten about the beef these days and it’s made now with just cabbage and potato.
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The name comes from the noise it makes during cooking. The bubble from the frying and, I guess, the squeak from the shiny cabbage.
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Here I’ve used home-rendered tallow to fry, adding onions to start and next chopping cold boiled potatoes (the small, new kind) and frying with the onion till they started to brown. I then put in the left-over cabbage, some salt and pepper and cooked well.
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Do you have a dish like this in your food ancestry? Potatoes and cabbage are such kitchen stalwarts I know there must be other similar combos out there!

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