Stay ConnectedThe Ancestral Kitchen is a twice-monthly podcast hosted by Alison, a European town-dweller and Andrea, living on a family farm in northwest Washington state. Pull up a chair at the table and join us as we talk about eating, cooking and living with ancient ancestral food wisdom in a modern-world kitchen.
Find us here: http://ancestralkitchenpodcast.com
Podcast theme and audio production by Robert Michael Kay, find him at www.robertmichaelkay.com
Copyright: © Copyright 2025 Alison Kay & Andrea Huehnerhoff
All of us have tried to change our food habits at some stage, most of us multiple times. Maybe, as you’re listening to this, you want to. It sounds simple - I’ll just stop eating this and start eating that. But it’s never that easy, is it?! Today, we’ll take a deep dive into food habits and offer you 14 Tips for Changing yours.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
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Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
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Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
In this episode we will share what a Slow Christmas is and why we choose to celebrate our holidays this way. We'll talk about some specific traditions for meals, gifts and more - both from our homes and from the homes of our community of patrons.
If you're a patron of the podcast, check your email for a link to our 2023 Christmas gift to you!
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
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Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
Spelt is a wonderful, economical alternative to wheat. I've been baking with it for a decade now and I love its deep, nutty flavour, its flexibility and its digestibility - many people who don't get on with wheat can enjoy spelt, especially if it's in a sourdough loaf.
Whether you've tried spelt or not, this episode will give you everything you need to know to get the most from this grain in your own kitchen. And we'll celebrate the podcast's second ecookbook, Sourdough Spelt Every Day, that distils so much of my baking experience into a guide that'll get you rustling up all manner of spelt goodies to enjoy!
Get your copy of Sourdough Spelt Every Day here!
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
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Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
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Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
Piper’s Farm was founded in 1989 by Peter Grieg and his wife, Henri. It’s just north of Exeter in Devon, Britain, and today it is run by their son Will and his partner, Abby, in a multi-generational partnership and succession achievement.
Peter Grieg worked for his father’s farm and shop business and saw the factory farm model brought from the US to the UK, by his father, post-WWII; and he watched it evolve into the beast it has become today. He never felt right raising animals under the oppressive, unhealthy conditions that the factory farm requires, and his development of Pipers Farm and the multi-farm network it involves today has been a many-decades long de-evolution, back to the older traditional methods of animal husbandry, community network, and local butchery.
Abby is the co-author of Pipers Farm Sustainable Meat Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom for Considered Carnivores. She is the one we talk to here in this episode. Abby’s thoughts are profound and distinct and she shares them here in vibrant clarity with the background and the farm experience to match. How is meat to be ethically handled, how does waste factor into all of this, why are consumers so key to sustainable farms, and even what are some details we can use in the kitchen to improve our meat preparation!
Patrons of the pod will find a selection of recipes from the cookbook in their Treasure Trove ready to download today, and we will talk about a few more in the episode here. Patrons can also check their private podcast feed to enjoy a short bonus aftershow with Abby where we went just a little deeper and more informally into some of what we covered on the show. So much about our food system can be depressing and dismal, Abby will leave us inspired by the beauty that is possible and the strength of choice that each one of us has.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Get your own copy of the book in the podcast bookshop:
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
Oats are one of my ultimate comfort foods. Golden, creamy, filling, tasty - what is there not to love? It's been that way for me for a long time. Long before I realised that huge swathes of my English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish ancestors subsisted on oats, sometimes eating them three times a day for many generations.
Today we'll focus on the oat, and fermenting oats. Finally Andrea let me out of my cage to talk about some of the research I've been doing into this wonderful grain over the last year. Listen in and I'm sure you'll hear things that you did not know about oats.
We'll talk about five reasons why you'd want to ferment your oats. We'll give you a brief history of the grain and some traditional examples of oat fermentation. We'll talk about the sad way that most oats are eaten these days, and then we'll get practical, and give you details of how to ferment your oats and, as you'll hear Andrea say early on, stay to the end for some potentially controversial information which has come from my latest research into oats and phytic acid. It's probably not what you're expecting to hear, it's certainly wasn't what what I was expecting to find out, and it's changed how I eat my oats.
This episode is literally jam-packed with information. You might need to listen to the science-y bits towards the end a couple of times to get them under your belt, but I hope it will inform, inspire and get you super-clear on this wonderful golden grain, and how you can bring it to life with fermentation in your own kitchen.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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What we cover:
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Alison's Zoom-recorded course Fermenting Oats (which is now free!)
Alison's course Sowans, The Scottish Oat Ferment
The blog post explaning Alison's thoughts on why the Scottish didn't ferment their oats
Sign up for Alison's newsletter for the latest on her planned oat book project!
The post Andrea asked Alison to share about the making of Lancashire oatcakes
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
Before we read the books that our guest today, Chris Smaje, wrote, we knew we didn't want a world where fake food, food manufactured in factories was what we ate as a society. We didn’t believe that protein made in stainless steel vats could give our minds, bodies, souls and communities what they need to survive and thrive.
But what we didn't know, is that manufactured protein, fake food or precision fermentation, however you want to term it, literally will not work.
Listen in to this episode to understand exactly why manufactured food is not an option for our world going forward and what our only alternative is. This episode will leave you staggered by the statistics around manufactured food, informed as to why it is not a feasible solution to our world's problems and with so much more confidence in the belief that real food, real farms, and real people are what we need to find our way out of our current crisis.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Purchasing books through our virtual 'local' bookstore supports your local bookstore and the podcast!
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
If you’re bringing raw milk into your home, whether it is through a herd share, shopping from a local raw dairy or co-op, or you have a cow on the back pasture, it is inevitable that we start wanting to value-add that milk; both adding nutritional value to it by culturing it in our homes, and adding monetary value by making raw milk into what would be higher priced items from the store.
In this episode Robyn who is the creator over at Cheese From Scratch on Instagram is here to teach us about creating your own cheese starter on the counter at home, and producing naturally fermented cheese in your own kitchen.
We also recorded an aftershow episode where we covered some more advanced aspects of cheesemaking, as well as information on raising cows, choosing cows, milking cows, and just cow things in general. You can join as a Patron today to hear this and, as of this recording, about 80 other bonus episodes and aftershows for supporters of the podcast.
This was a really fun early morning recording with Robyn. We are both in rural areas and our internet went out multiple times during this recording, so hopefully we’ve patched up all those holes, but if you hear any funny silences or we talk over each other asking “are you there?” you can excuse those audio bloopers, and enjoy all this amazing content that Robyn has to offer.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Robyn's Website and link to Milkmaid Society
The Christmas Cheeseboard eBook
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
"I just can't afford to eat ancestrally" is something that we hear all the time.
And we get that, the mainstream, shop-bought side of ancestral eating can sometimes be eye-wateringly expensive. Notwithstanding that we've both been eating this way on a very tight budget for over a decade each. We’re going to show you that it is possible!
In this second part, we'll complete our list of 50 ways to save money on an ancestral diet. If you haven't listened to part one yet go back and check out that episode before diving in here.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Part 2 of our list of 50 Ways to Save Money in an Ancestral Kitchen
All 50 Ways to Save Money in an Ancestral Kitchen (complete list)
Alison's 10 Tips for Creating & Maintaining a Sourdough Starter course (it's free)
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
"I would love to eat an ancestral diet but I can’t afford it, what can I do?"
"I want to shop from small farms around me, how can I make this happen with a limited budget?"
"Food costs are rising dramatically where I live and the budget that once worked for us isn’t cutting it anymore, help!"
In a post-industrial world where globally imported subsidized factory food is perceived as the cheaper or only option for a budget, these are questions most of us have had at some point. In this episode Alison and I want to make the case that not only are there ways to eat an ancestral diet and save money, but you can actually save money BY eating an ancestral diet. We'll bring you very practical ways we negotiated with our wallets and our conscience, while still remaining inside the confines of a sometimes very limited budget – Alison living in town in Italy, and Andrea in the United States on a small farm in one of the most expensive states of the union, Washington State.
Download part 1 of our list of 50 Ways to Save Money in an Ancestral Kitchen here (when we get to part 2 we'll give you a download for all the 50 Ways).
Here’s to saving money, living better, and eating wisely.
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
Part 1 of our list of 50 Ways to Save Money in an Ancestral Kitchen
Charlotte Smith's Podcast, Profitable Mindset
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
Just like the Ancestral Diet is so different from the standard American diet, so the ways our ancestors birthed bears very little relation to how modern industrialised communities bring the next generation into the world.
In this intimate episode, originally recorded for patrons of the podcast, Andrea and I share our birthing stories. We've got four births between us and we came to them with very different backgrounds. We talk about the actual births, what we learnt from them, what we regret and much more. There's so much to learn from how one approaches birth; we hope this episode encourages/inspires you whether you're planning to birth soon or not!
If you like this episode, there are nearly 70 patron-exclusive podcasts, videos and aftershows that you can get access to by joining our community at the Companionship level. Check the details here: http://patreon.com/ancestralkitchenpodcast
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The organ supplements we use and trust – get a 5% discount (and free shipping) on grass-fed supplements, including liver capsules by visiting: https://www.oneearthhealth.com/AncestralKitchen
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Sign up to the pod's newsletter here.
Get a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains
Read our Guide to Milling Your Own Flour
Get all three of the podcast cookbooks
Wear our beautiful, sustainable merchandise
Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics
Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course
Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop: US here and UK here.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Come join the podcast community! You can select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion group Find out more here!
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
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If you love the show, leave us a 5* reviews on Apple Podcasts:
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Resources:
You can find Andrea's story of birthing Camille here and an account of Alison's son Gabriel's birth here.
Do you have memories, documents, recipes or stories of those who cooked ancestrally? Visit our website here for how to share
The podcast has a website here!
Stay in touch with Alison via her newsletter at Ancestral Kitchen
The podcast is on You Tube here
The podcast is mixed and the music created by Alison's husband, Rob. Find him here: Robert Michael Kay
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