My recent blog post, The Ancestral Food Fridge: Staples of a Traditional Diet breaks down what you’re likely to find in an ancestral foodie’s fridge. As I was writing it I thought it would be really timely to give you, dear reader, a nose into a moment in time in my own fridge.
Here goes:
As you’ll see it’s jam-packed (apart from the second drawer up, which is where my mother-in-law, who we live with, puts her food). I took these shots after returning from our weekly shop at Stroud’s Farmers Market. We get all of our perishable goods there and also buy a lot of our cupboard staples at the town’s plastic-free store.
On the top shelf you’ll find:
Both our sourdough starters (one made of rye, one made of millet); leftover cooked porridge; a bag of salad; mushrooms; butter (both cow and goat); sowans (the Scottish oat ferment); pre-ground linseed (flax seed); goat yogurt; boza starter; carrots.
We often have leftover porridge from breakfast and include it in meals later in the day. The sowans is waiting for me to make into pancakes and the boza starter is about to be used in a new batch of the ancient fermented drink. The tops are still on the carrots because I’m going to use them to make carrot top pesto.
On the middle shelf you’ll find:
Soaked nuts; leftover homemade chicken liver pâté; broccoli; home-rolled oats; homemade lard; homemade tallow; peas; cooked potatoes; sauerkraut; leftover millet/rice.
Read about how and why I flake my own oats here.
Homemade lard and tallow are staples of our kitchen. I make them in big batches, freeze them in smaller containers, and then move portions of them weekly into the fridge.
On the bottom shelf you’ll find:
Pre-made carrot salad; sauerkraut; milk kefir grains; bacon; beef mince; venison sausages; a lined, greased tin ready to receive a parkin dough later in the day.
Check my easy method for sauerkraut here.
The carrot salad will be used on our plates every day – it’s carrots, sunflower seeds, white pepper, salt and nigella seeds. Parkin is a traditional Yorkshire recipe originally made with oats and black treacle. It will be included in my forthcoming book.
In the bottom drawer you’ll find:
Cucumber; kale; carrots; onions; courgette; cabbage; potatoes.
All of these come from the local market and taste amazing compared to what I used to buy in supermarkets.
Let’s move to the door:
Here’s what you can see:
Sunflower seed butter (made by a lovely company in Cornwall); homemade facial moisturiser; wholegrain mustard; miso; homemade salad dressing; capers in salt; goat’s cheese; horseradish sauce; soy sauce; Double Gloucester cow’s cheese; a hard-boiled egg; butter; low-histamine probiotics; ghee; iced redbush tea; brown rice milk; two bottles of swats (the probiotic liquid that’s left when you make sowans).
Learn how to make sowans, the Scottish oat ferment, and its probiotic liquid here.
I often have the sunflower seed butter on homemade oatcakes. My son has miso every morning in his porridge. I love capers and put them in a lot of things. Ghee is my secret treat. Brown rice milk I use in my redbush tea twice a day.
Seeing the pictures has made me realise that I am still using a lot of plastic. We’ve been trying to transition to glass containers and have a few, but I won’t get rid of my plastic containers until they completely die.
I could write another ten newsletters about the hows and whys of all of the ingredients I’ve listed—or about how my fridge looks on a different day; it’s always changing! If you’ve got specific questions or you’d like me to go into more detail on how or why something is here, let me know in the comments below.
You might also like:
Routines in my Ancestral Kitchen
What does Eating Ancestrally Mean?
Bring ancient grain baking into your kitchen!
Download my free 30-page guide with five healthy and tasty 100% ancient grains recipes.