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Chicken stock. Today I am coming to the end of a fast. I love food and am a grumpy faster. But I appreciate what it brings me and very much believe it has an important place in the routine of our days and weeks.
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Eating is not just about fuel. And fasting brings with it much mental and emotional challenge. To not base my life around food. To see how much I do use it as an escape, despite years of self-work. To rest, truly rest – man, how hard is that?
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We fast as a family, together makes so much difference. Up till recently, it’s been ad-hoc, whenever a health challenge presented itself. But more and more we plan to work it into our weekly routine. The grumpy me doesn’t like that. but all the other parts of me think it’s a brilliant step.

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Want to bake bread with me? This month’s @ancestralcookup is bread. Gorgeous, dense, cakey soda bread…but with a twist – made ancestrally so that it’s as nutrient-dense as it possibly can be.
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I’ve written up a template recipe that you can take and adapt to your kitchen, your supplies, your preferences. I’ve even included a method to make soda scones – trust me, they are delicious!
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Here’s how:
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Click the link in my profile.
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Adapt the recipe to suit you.
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Bake it sometime this month (or two or three times this month!).
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Share it here and tag me.
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Enjoy it! Fresh. Toasted. With stew. With butter. With cheese. In you PJs. However you like 🙂

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We’ve an organic farm a few miles uphill from our place. Last time my husband ran there he came back with an absolutely huge piece of beef fat. We used the slow cooker to render this – tallow.
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Tallow is good for a lot of reasons. It’s a saturated fat with naturally-occurring A, D, E and K. The reason I love it so much though is that it’s very stable at high temperatures, which means I can use it in my super-hot cast iron pan for frying without worrying.
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We got this beef fat for literally pennies (they throw it away) and from it have rendered bowls of tallow that, with the other fats I use (lard, olive oil and coconut oil) will last us several months.

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Two wonderful people, @farmandhearth and @forest.grace have taken part in the first #ancestralcookup – my slow-cooked beef and barley stew. Thank you so very much ladies. My heart is warmed and my feet dancing a little as I wander between fridge and oven.
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We ate it again today here in my home. It’s sooo good – if you fancy giving it a go, check out the template recipe in my profile. I’m going to leave it there till we hit May. I have a new cook up coming for next month. I think you’re going to like it 🙂

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The banana skin rabbit hole deepens! This is Banana Skin Curry – a concept I stumbled on after having a go at banana skin vinegar (picture a while back – it’s still fermenting). And man, it works!
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You’ve got to scrape the inside of the skins and then soak them for a while. Once I’d done that, I bloomed a mix of mustard seeds, cumin seeds, coriander seeds, nigella seeds and cardamoms in some coconut oil. Then I added some chopped onion, ginger and garlic, ground tumeric, ground coriander and black pepper. After that came 3 cauliflower florets, chopped small, and the 3 banana skins, diced. Lastly a small can of creamed coconut. 20 minutes and it’s soft.
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We had some left-over rice and I managed to get hold of some fresh coriander. It’s a bit of a coriander-fest in the picture, but you can see the dark brown pieces of banana skin there too!
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Thank you @soilassociation for posting about @abelandcole’s recipe. I didn’t have the ingredients to follow it, but it inspired me greatly to make up my own version.
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Having waxed lyrical about this, I do have misgivings. Something doesn’t feel right in my gut (and I don’t mean physically) when I use banana. Although they are grown in Sicily, these ones are from the other side of the world. My son loves them. 95% of what we eat is Italian, and most of that local…but what about that 5%? Is it OK to have the odd ‘treat’? Bananas for my son, coffee for my husband, chocolate for me, spices for us all? It’s a question I am not at peace with yet.
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I love that my kitchen and my ethics are changeable and that I listen when I feel that ikkiness inside, rather than pushing it away. Opening a dialogue is the most important thing, I think. Speaking of dialogue, I’d love to hear if you feel something similar…

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Oven-baked fermented semi-wholegrain millet cakes. They are easier to eat than to say! 4 days in the making, but it’s mostly hands off. Still, it makes me sound like a pro so here we go 😉 This is what I did with the millet (there’s a pic a few posts back of it straight from the shop): Soaked, rinsed, sprouted, blended, fermented, dolloped (the technical term) and then baked.
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They really do not keep and are best, as here, straight from the oven. .
Looking at the long description above, I can see how absurd this might seem to one who takes a slice of bread from a packet. But I love it. We eat these often.
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You can also use the fermented mix to make porridge. It is very good.
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A few days left of April to have a go at the #ancestralcookup Beef & Barley stew. We are doing it again tomorrow here. I’d love to see your pictures if you do – the recipe template is in my bio.

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My newest batch of #breadkvass going in for its second ferment. I used mint from our little garden as, thanks to @forest.grace I know it’s traditional. It’s a great combination. .
I’m finding the kvass so very sweet. Perhaps it is that I am used to making my #waterkefir on the not-sweet side? Perhaps it is because it is supposed to be this sweet? My hubby, who can handle much more sweet than me, is drinking most of it. He’s happy 🙂

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