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Think fermentation’s just about kraut, kombucha and sourdough? What about extending it to rubbish; to your kitchen waste?!! These two buckets and the bag of inoculated bran next to them have given me an amazing way to transform my food scraps, through fermentation, into compost.
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Once the ferment is done, I dig it into my container-garden pots. The vegetables that I’ve grown since I started with this method, called Bokashi, have been much bigger, happier and delicious!
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Today’s @ancestralkitchenpodcast is all about Bokashi. It will teach you everything you need to know about what it is, how it works, how you can use it in both a tiny town apartment and a large homestead and what the benefits are to you, your plants, the soil and the environment.
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@farmandhearth and I, thanks to @teraganix have a 2-bucket Essential Bokashi set worth $126 to give away (to someone in the US or Canada). To enter please tag someone who you think would love to get started with Bokashi in the comments of this post. The competition will close next Tues 29th at midnight US time.
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Listen to the @ancestralkitchenpodcast episode to find out more by searching for us in your podcast app or by streaming/downloading from the link in my profile.

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Have you ever tried to make a dough from rolled oats? It’s not easy! The protein in oats, avenin, isn’t ‘sticky’ like gluten so you have to coax the grain into a dough with skill and a few ‘tricks’.
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My tricks: I use warm water and add a little fat. It helps! Apparently my ancestors, the many inhabitants of the United Kingdom who did this before me, didn’t need tricks! The British equivalent of Italy’s ‘pasta grannies’, they whipped up crack-free oat dough with incredible sleight of hand, the technique locked in their muscle memory!
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They then baked it into oatcakes. You can buy oatcakes in the UK (but who’d want to when the home version is so much better?!), but as I learnt from my co-host on @ancestralkitchenpodcast, @farmandhearth oatcakes aren’t really a ‘thing’ in the US.
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They *are* very much a ‘thing’ in our house. I’m sharing the recipe (tricks and all) in my newsletter that’ll go out tomorrow. If you aren’t on my list, head to ancestralkitchen.com/newsletter (link in profile) to receive the recipe.

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Elderberry medicine my way means no sweetener (it’s sweet enough) and not throwing the ‘spent’ berries away.
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Here are four containers of elderberry tonic. The berries were simmered for 30 minutes (2 cups fresh/1 cup dried to 2 cups water). Instead of adding honey/sugar to keep them from going bad, I’m going to freeze them.
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Behind the small containers, in the big jar, is an experimental ‘spent’ elderberry soda. I plopped the fruit remains in there, added water, a couple of spoons of dark sugar and a spoonful of whey. It’s now happily fermenting on my counter!
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I’ll put some video of the bubbling in my stories.

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Earlier this year I was interviewed by Jane over at @farmtofuture podcast.

Jane’s now celebrating the first birthday of the podcast and giving away a stash of goodies, including a copy of my course on how to make the ancestral fermented drink, Boza. If you’d like to enter, check out Jane’s words and link in her bio!

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We’ve teamed up with a handful of amazing founders and their sustainable food brands, to gift you a few things to try in your kitchen! Farm to Future’s mission is to help you source food that’s better for the land, and we’re thrilled to partner with these up-and-coming brands who value the same 🤝😍

HOW TO ENTER
Submit your email through the link in our bio by November 22. One winner will be randomly selected on November 23!

PRIZES
🥓 Regenerative pork jerky + pork floss from @bonjerksnacks
🍄 Gourmet dehydrated mushrooms, mushroom powder, spice blends + mushroom hot cocoa from @sporeattic
🍫Fair Trade and certified Organic coffee bar sampler box from @coba.coffee (Check out their Kickstarter on now for 🆕 matcha, chai, and hojicha bars!)
🥣 Sample pack of Michigan-grown ancient grain teff granola from @eatteffola
🍶 @ancestral_kitchen video course on how to make your own probiotic Boza drink

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Melissa K Norris is a 5th-generation, self-sufficient homesteader with animals, vegetables, children, books, a podcast and so much more!
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She’s not just living off the land, she’s thriving off it and this week’s episode will give you an insider view into her lifestyle, kitchen routines and motherhood philosophy.
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Thank you @melissaknorris for sharing so much with us and thank you to my co-host @farmandhearth for quizzing Melissa on what we wanted to know!
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You can listen to the episode by searching for @ancestralkitchenpodcast in your app, or you can stream/download from my website, link in profile.

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What wonderful meal out have you tried to recreate at home? Was it a success?
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Many months back I went to a sourdough pizza restaurant in Florence. I had a pizza spread with onions slow-cooked in chianti wine and then topped with gorgonzola. Oh my, it was good.
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Finally I got round to trying something similar. I cooked sliced red onions for ages in olive oil the added a lot of red wine, cooking it down until the liquid had all gone. I spread that on my sourdough spelt pizza (recipe in profile) and topped with a local raw milk pecorino and the last of the basil from the garden.
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It was very good.
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Next on the list is the other delight I ate there – focaccia stuffed with head cheese 🙂
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So I want to hear from you! What have you tried to recreate? Did you have to guess the ingredients? Did it live up to your memory?!

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If you are on the run in Florence and want some street food, one of your options is ‘Porchetta’. There are stalls selling it all over the city. It’s pork, rolled with spices, roasted, sliced and laid in the middle of a bread roll.
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Here’s my home version with an ancestral twist. I roasted belly pork from @valledelsasso with fennel seeds, garlic, salt and pepper. Beet from the garden (thank you #bokashi compost!) roasted beautifully with some local beans under the pork, catching the juices. I then made a spelt sourdough focaccia with some cold oat porridge in the dough (makes it so soft – I’ll put more pics in my stories). We cut it, stuffed the sliced pork in and served with the veg, some gorgeous crackling and (as just in the distance you can see) some sauerkraut.
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I love good street food, but I love sitting down at the table eating whilst the house still smells of roast pork and baking bread more!

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Can you imagine the crunch? Sourdough doesn’t have to be white to have a crust that’s heavenly. This is 100% wholegrain spelt, high hydration, baked in a ceramic tin made by @emilehenryfrance.
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The recipe for this loaf is in the resources section of my site (along with many more recipes), which is www.ancestralkitchen.com. There’s a wholegrain pizza recipe there too 🙂

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On the left, in slices, we have llymru, a traditional Welsh oat fermentation that produces a delicious sour jelly-like treat.
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Oats, until the middle of last century, were *the* staple of the Welsh. And just like the more famous oat-eating Scots, this population came up with many ways to prepare and eat the grain.
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Here oats are fermented with buttermilk for a few days then strained. The liquid is then cooked and ‘set’ into this jelly.
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Further north, in Scotland, oats were also fermented, but there it was into a dish called sowans. Unlike the llymru you see here, sowans doesn’t use a ‘starter’ to get going – solely wild yeast/bacteria. I have a course on how to make sowans in your own kitchen over at @thefermentationschool (link in my profile) if oats are your thing.
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Meantime the oat discoveries continue here! I’m writing an article for the Wise Traditions journal on oats and am thinking a little cookbook might want to be born from all my recipes!
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Getting some more pics and video up in my story/highlight today.

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What would you eat first?
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The order in which we eat our foods fascinates me. I’ve historically been a “save the best for last” girl and I thought everyone did that till I quizzed my hubby, Rob, who eats he most appealing thing on his plate first.
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I think perhaps there’s more wisdom in his choice. Often the last few years I’ve saved the best till last and then been to full to eat it. In the past, I would have eaten it anyway but I don’t anymore and am often sad that the ‘prize’ ends up going in the fridge for later!!
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What do you go for first? And is it always that way? I think the ‘best’ food is subject to change, based on our moods, tastes, the weather and much more.
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This was my supper one night this weekend. And here’s my order:

First: The sourdough rye spice bread covered in salty butter.
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Second: The fried egg yolk (with lemon and thyme salt sprinkles) with half of the super-sour rye discard pancake.
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Third: The nobble of local ‘fresco’ pecorino cheese.
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Last: The lard-crispy egg white and the last of the pancake.
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Would you follow suit?!
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(Recipes for the rye spice bread and pancakes are part of my course Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics at @thefermentationschool – link in profile)

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