What’s cooking?

Ancestral chocolate for breakfast!
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This is a mix of Nicaraguan cacao beans that I roasted, shelled and ground and left-over millet grain that has been through the wild beer-making process.
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I cooked the millet up on the stove like porridge. It was full of probiotic yeasts and bacteria when it went in the pot…and the benefits weren’t all cooked out when I heated it (check my profile-linked article on postbiotics and paraprobiotics if you want to know more).
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Once it was done I stirred in some cinnamon and plopped in the home-processed 100% cacao tablets. Watching them melt was gorgeous! After a taste I could tell that coconut would work well, so I found the packet at the back of our cupboard and liberally sprinkled.
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Most ancestral cacao drinks (i.e. drinks made in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica) use corn. My son cannot eat corn, so I’ve been dreaming up alternatives like this. Using the ‘spent’ millet grain feels so satisfying, as it’s taking something that has been ‘pre-loved’ (in our beer) and using it again!
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Chocolate podcast is coming a week today 🙂

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First beetroot harvest. And they are better than my first try last year. Container grown on our tiny patio, from seed. The greens are just as impressive as the roots – delicate and tasty.
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I’ll boil the green for 5 minutes, but there’s a bit of a recipe jam for the beets; Beet Kvass? Roasted Beet? Grated with parsley and sesame seeds in a salad?
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What’s your favourite?

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This is sourdough barley made into a polenta bread. I’m slicing it up for our lunch. It’s good cold, but even better fried and I’ll be popping this in our cast iron pan with some home-rendered lard to get crispy!
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The process for making this is detailed in a series of three videos I’ll be putting up on my site soon. I worked on some downloadable instructions today (that you can print out and pin up in your kitchen).
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I’ll send everything out as part of a newsletter so soon as it’s ready. If you’d like to be in closer contact with my kitchen, use the link in my profile to sign up to my mailings. I am not *quite * there with the technology yet, but I’m planning to be in the next month or so 🙂

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These beans are the latest in my quest to find cacao I’m happy with.
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I want to know where the cacao I’m going to transform into ancestral drinks comes from; how the farm works. For chocolate-makers who buy in bulk, this information is relatively easy to find. But for the likes of me (I want to buy 1-3kg at a time), that information is not so easily available.
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I took a step forward when I found these beans from a Nicaraguan co-operative that I can buy in small quantities. They smelt amazing during the roasting and are ready for the mortar and pestle and my husband Rob’s strong arm!
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And more on chocolate – I’ve been doing the show notes for the next #ancestralkitchenpodcast today – it’s all about cacao. I can’t wait to get it out there! Follow us over at @ancestralkitchenpodcast if you’re liking the episodes.

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Our kitchen is full of sourdough oat porridge – I made up 3 batches in order to film the videos I’m hoping to get up on my website later in the summer – so I thought I’d try putting some leftover porridge into my spelt sourdough.
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And it worked beautifully. Here’s the resulting loaf. It’s got the crunchy crust that I love, but the crumb is springy and soft.
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If you have leftover porridge and you want to give this a go, follow the recipe in my profile for the Sourdough Wholegrain Spelt Loaf and when you get to part where you make a ‘scald’ simply substitute the same weight of cooked porridge.
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Hidden in the resources tab of my site there are plenty of other recipes. And I’m in the process of setting up a mailing list – if you’d like to be on it, there’s a link to it in my profile too.

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Finally, I got to making ginger beer. I’ve had a sneaky taste and I think I’m going to *love* it.
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Do you make it?

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Do you remember these phones?! When I was 20, this Nokia was a fixture in my bag. And 25 years later, it is again. Because, a few years back, I gave away my iPhone.
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Today’s podcast episode is about technology. When my co-host, @farmandhearth found out that I am smartphone-free, that I use an eink book reader as my main computer, that we don’t have wifi in our house, and that I’m regulating my social media use (taking days off every week), she really wanted to talk to me about it.
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And this is our conversation.
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We talk about both the physical health effects of the devices and systems we use (the screens, the light, the emf) and the psychological health effects (on our state of mind, our relationships and our time). We also cover the alternatives – in terms of hardware and in terms of habits.
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If you have any doubts about your interaction with tech, or if you think that devices are affecting your health, have a listen. I started looking for alternatives nearly a decade ago and I’ve been able to take it further than most. I’m hoping they’ll be some sparks in the conversation that’ll work for you.

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Yesterday was a special day for us. August 1st is Lughnasadh, the Gaelic harvest celebration (which later became the Christian Lammas, or Loaf Mass Day). We started celebrating it when we lived on the south-west coast of Cornwall in the UK and have marked the day every year since.
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As part of the day, we think back over the past year and bring three things we are grateful for to the table. We share these and then say what we intend to do to honour these gifts in the year to come.
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It is beautiful process to go through personally and I love to hear both my husband Rob and our son Gabriel’s thoughts. In addition, for Rob (who loves being here in Italy but also misses Cornwall a lot) it is a way of keeping the Cornish energy alive in our home.
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And obviously, every year, there’s my food. This time it was sourdough spelt pizza with home-made walnut/basil pesto and lots of local onions and olive oil.
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Lots of good wishes from our home to yours.

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Slow-cooked cow’s heart is so easy and so tasty. It goes like this – wash the heart, plonk it in the crock pot, forget about it for 24 hours.
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For lunch I served it with:
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Rye sourdough made from home-ground grains which I slathered with the fat that previously dripped through a pork roast and some beets.
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Beet greens covered with a big handful of chives.
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A left-over roasted onion.
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Some sauerkraut and fermented garlic.
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The heart is from Flavio @valledelsasso, the onion was from @radiciumane and the beets and chives were from the garden.

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