Begin Here: 5 Ancestral Foods To Bring Into Your Kitchen

You want to eat a more nutrient-dense diet. You get it. You’re ready to get some basics down. Well, roll up your sleeves because Alison Kay from the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast and The Fermentation School is going to empower you to do just that.

Alison today shows you which 5 traditional foods to introduce into your diet. She explains how to make them (we’re talking bone broth, fermented oats and more) and why. She also shares her own personal story. Alison was once obese, had issues with fertility and PCOS. She tells how she overcame these hurdles thanks, in part, to the very ancestral foods she discusses today.

Visit Alison’s website: Ancestral Kitchen

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Episode Transcript

Within the below transcript the bolded text is Hilda Labrada Gore and the regular text is Alison Kay.

Are you overwhelmed by the various ancestral foods and wondering how to get them into your diet? This is Episode 512, and our guest is Alison Kay. Alison is best known as the Creator and Co-host of the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast. She’s also a Teacher at The Fermentation School. Alison shares five simple ways to start integrating the more traditional foods into your diet and into your kitchen. She offers specifics for bone broth, fermenting oats, and more. She also shares her own personal health story. She was obese at one time and struggling with infertility and PCOS, and you can only imagine the role that traditional foods played in helping her overcome these hurdles.

Before we get into the conversation, I want to let you know about a fabulous podcast you should be listening to. Gubba Homestead. If you want to grow your own food, preserve your harvest, or say goodbye to the grocery store, this show is for you. The Gubba Homestead Podcast is your ultimate guide. Gubba dives into everything, from making homemade butter to prepping for emergencies with a focus on sustainability and self-reliance. It’s a modern twist on old-world wisdom, packed with down-to-earth advice and a touch of humor. You’ll learn, you’ll laugh, and you’ll feel empowered to roll up your sleeves and take charge. Listen to the Gubba Homestead Podcast. You can find it on your favorite platform for inspiration to start your own homesteading journey.

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Welcome to Wise Traditions, Alison.

Thank you very much for having me on. It’s really nice to see you and hear you.

Yes, same here. I know you’re across the pond, so thank you for taking the time with the time zone change and everything. I am so excited that you’re going to be on the show because you help equip people to incorporate ancestral cooking techniques and ancestral foods into their kitchens. I’m really thrilled. I want to start this conversation, Alison, with you telling us a little bit about your story, because I understand you were able to lose weight by incorporating traditional foods in the diet. Tell us a little bit about your journey.

Alison’s Weight Loss Journey With Traditional Foods

Ancestral food did come into it. It was later. I was overweight from about the age of 5, and by the time I was 20, I was 20 stone, which is 280 pounds. I was so obese. I might actually have been more than that, but the scales only went up to 280 pounds. I was too scared to go and find scales that went higher. I don’t actually know. I was just something above 280 pounds. I lost half my body weight between the ages of 20 and 21. Sadly, looking back, I did that by cutting fat out of my diet because that was a vogue thing in the ‘90s. Fat was the fiend. I wish I hadn’t done it that way, but I did and I lost half my body weight.

I spent the next ten years of my life absolutely terrified of fat, avoiding it and having to control my weight through sheer determination. It wasn’t nice. I’d go up like 14, 20 pounds and come down again. It wasn’t until I found ancestral foods and Weston Price and embraced fat and traditional foods again, that my weight just stabilized. I haven’t had to worry about it since then. For the subsequent years, I’ve not worried about my weight at all. Considering I was the fat girl and it haunted my childhood, it’s an incredible gift now that I have that I just don’t worry about my weight at all. It was finding traditional foods that did that for me.

Alison, what else cleared up for you? You lot the lost the weight, not necessarily because you went on the traditional foods diet, but now you find it does keep you at a stable weight and you’re doing great. What other things changed in terms of your health?

I remember I used to be very ill often, all the time. That just disappeared. I have something called polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is quite common. That’s what led me to traditional foods because I was about 36, 37 and I realized that I wanted a child, but I hadn’t had a period for five years, literally nothing. A doctor I went to said to me, “You will never conceive unless you take drugs.” I remember looking at the doctor and thinking in my head, “Yes, I will.” That’s what started off my search what are traditional fertility foods? I found out about eggs, fat and meat. I found Weston Price. It was that that started me on a traditional food diet.

Through literally just changing what I ate, the main thing was incorporating saturated fats back into my life, I got my period back and within one cycle, I was pregnant. I had a beautiful baby boy. That’s been huge thing for me. It literally has changed the course of my life. If I’d gone to the doctor and listened to them or believed them, then I would’ve just taken the drugs. For me, I wouldn’t have taken the drugs because I wasn’t going to do it. I would’ve been childless. Through saying, “No, I’m going to find a way,” and embracing this into my kitchen, into my life, into my food, into my family, we now have a wonderful son. You know what children are like. Just the joy of our lives.

I’m so happy to hear this story. Was it hard, Alison, to go from the no fat or almost fatphobia, I would say, into embracing fat? Was that a difficult transition to make?

Overcoming The Fear Of Fat In Traditional Foods

It was absolutely terrifying, Hilda. It was like one of the most traumatic things that I have guided myself through because being the fat girl at school, I just had this thing in my head that fat is going to make me fat. I remember sitting across the table with my boyfriend and now my husband, and we had some cheese on the table and I hadn’t eaten cheese for about a decade. I just was almost having a panic attack. “I can’t eat this cheese. It’s going to make me fat. I’m going to be fat.” I didn’t want to go back to how my entire childhood had been.

You can imagine being at school, being bullied, and wearing outsized clothes. It was just horrible. Getting over the idea that’s just pushed into us that saturated fat is bad and fat makes you fat, it was such a hard leap of faith to make but one that it is obvious to me now that fat doesn’t make you fat. Now I eat tons of saturated fat and I’m not fat. I know I’m not the only one. I know that so many people have been bamboozled by this idea that fat makes us fat and they’re too scared to try it, to eat it. Their bodies and their psyches are missing out so much not having that nutrition.

Wise Tradition | Alison Kay | Ancestral — Ancestral: So many people have been bamboozled by this idea that fat makes us fat and they’re too scared to try it, to eat it. Their bodies and their psyches are missing out so much not having that nutrition.

I almost feel like they can’t think logically Yeah because they don’t have that saturated fat and all the beautiful nutritional benefits that help you think. I do remember hearing a phrase back in the day. It was like a minute on the lips, forever on the hips, talking about fats and so forth, or cheese in particular is what I remember. We were sold a bill of goods.

People still believe it now. I spent 10 years in living in Italy and rendering my own lard from pig fat there, from a local farmer and having loads of Italians say to me, “Are you not going to have a heart attack? Is this not going to make you fat?” They believe it. It’s a fat of their cultural heritage. Even though everyone thinks olive oil, lard is very much a fat of Italian cultural heritage. That the Italians now, so many of them, they’ve got the same thing. They’re just terrified of fat. It’s so endemic.

Once you made the switch, you were at a happy, stable weight. You were able to have a child. I know that that wasn’t an easy transition, either. After the child was born, apparently, you were struggling with having enough breast milk to supply him. Is that right?

Yeah. After Gabriel was born, I was determined that I was going to breastfeed and I’d been to classes beforehand and done everything, read all the books, and it just didn’t work. We went to many places to get them to try and help us. Gabriel had a tongue tie. We had that cut. Lots of things. It just didn’t work. After about eleven weeks, I knew that I just had to find another way because I could not continue. I was pumping through the night, not sleeping. I was falling apart as a mother. That’s not the mother I wanted to be for my son.

When I was pregnant, there had been a Weston A. Price Conference in London, which I’d been to. I’d learned about the Weston Price formula there. I had the baby and childcare book. We had already been getting raw goats’ milk from a local supplier. With my husband, I sat down and I said, “We have to switch to this.” We used the Weston Price baby formula to feed Gabriel from eleven weeks until weaning, making it up literally every other day in the kitchen. The fridge was full of it. We had raw goats milk everywhere. It was just amazing to be able to feed him real food, raw milk. It went some of the way to assuaging how terrible I felt for not being able to feed my child. At least I had something that was real, that I knew what was in it and I could give it to him. It wasn’t some powder and that was, again, incredible for his upbringing. I am so glad that that recipe is out there.

Good on you for not going with the formula that’s on the supermarket shelves, because I think one of the first ingredients is corn syrup. Of course it has all kinds of things that are detrimental really to the child’s health. As a matter of fact, it’s low in cholesterol where mother’s breast milk is high in cholesterol, knowing that it’s needed for the brain formation and all those things.

By switching to this recipe that the foundation has put out, it includes all of the basic natural nutrients that the child needs and none of the bad stuff. Check out the episode where we talked about how to make your own homemade baby formula and then also the recipe itself. I’m so glad you told that story. Alison, now that we know your backstory, let’s kick into five practical ways to bring ancestral food into the kitchen. Let’s begin with step number one or the first thing you might recommend for someone who’s like, “I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know where to start. I want to eat this way more traditionally. Help me out.” What would you say?

Fermenting Oats For Better Digestion And Nutrition

Simple one, most people like oatmeal and a lot of people eat oatmeal, ferment your oats. This is a really good example of the Weston Price principle number six. The reason why you would potentially want to ferment your oats is because it’s really easy and it predigests them and it softens them as well for you. If you can use a grain that is high in phytase, like rye in the mix and it’s freshly ground, it will help reduce the problems that phytic acid can make. Meaning that you absorb more minerals when you’re having that meal.

All you need to do is put the oats in a bowl, cover them with plenty of water, and then put a live starter in there. That’s making an acidic mix for the oats. You can use something like milk kefir or yogurt, a blob of your sourdough starter or apple cider vinegar. Something that’s got live probiotics in it as well. If you are able to, add freshly ground rye flour as well. Leave those out. I leave mine on the counter overnight. The longer you leave them, the more sour they get.

If you don’t like them too sour, you can put them in the fridge and let them ferment there. If you really like them sour like I do, you can leave them on the side for three days. You literally just pour what’s in the bowl into the saucepan. You don’t need to drain them or rinse them. You pour the whole lot into the saucepan, cook them up. It’s always good, I think, to put salt in porridge. We’re so used to, as a society, having sweet porridge. We’ve been brainwashed into that. Traditionally, the Scottish always ate their porridge savory and they added salt. Ancestral wisdom would say, Put salt in your dishes, real salt.” Sprinkle some salt on the top of them and you’ll be eating oats that are easier to digest, much more nutritious as well. It’s a simple thing to do.

Ancestral wisdom would say, “Put salt in your dishes, real salt.”

Yes. It’s simple and it’s affordable. Pennies for a bowl. I’m embarrassed to admit, but it’s true. I used to buy the Quaker instant oatmeal packs with all kinds of added sugar. I don’t even know what that stuff was. Not to mention that it was certainly difficult for my children to digest. What’s interesting is that you’re actually suggesting that we ferment our oats, not just soak them because normally I’ve just soaked them, but fermenting them is like the next level, helping them really become easier to digest and neutralizing the antinutrients.

They taste so great too. Most people that I’ve talked to who started doing this, once they’ve tasted the fermented oats, they don’t want to go back to normal oats because they prefer the flavor. Actually, it brings a more complex, interesting flavor to them in the morning as well. It’s a win-win on all fronts, I think.

Give us another practical tip for eating more ancestrally. What can we change in our routine?

I mentioned this a bit earlier on that I was rendering lard from pork in Italy. The second idea that I have is to render fat. I suggest this because fat is so important for us. I learned myself when I brought that back into my diet and healed my polycystic ovaries and was able to have a child literally. I think a lot of us think that having saturated fat like that is expensive. If you go and look on the internet and you look for tallow, lard or ghee, it can be really expensive. I eat fat at three meals a day. I’m using a lard every day. It doesn’t need to be expensive, and it doesn’t need to be a luxury. What you need to do is get hold of some either pork back fat or beef fat, which is unprocessed.

Literally, it’s been just chopped off the animal. Make sure you’re buying it from a farmer that you trust so you know what they’re feeding their animals because obviously everything that’s getting eaten. Toxins is getting stored in that fat. You want it to be good quality, and then you just render it at home. It’s just a matter of having a pot, some bowls and some sieves. You chop up the fat and then put it on a gentle heat. I use a slow cooker to do mine, but you could do it in an oven, you could do it on a stovetop. It takes a while. You’d be doing it for eight hours, but you don’t actually have to pay attention to it. Only probably for an hour of that time in a day.

If you do 2 or 3 kilos, like 6 or 7 pounds in a go, you’ll have enough lard. You can either pop it in the fridge or freeze it to last you weeks and weeks. When you’ve actually got that good lard or that good tallow, there are so many things you can do with it. Obviously, you can fry with it. You can baste with it. If you’re cooking meats in the oven, you can put it on. You can put it onto roasted veg. Every time I do a roasted tray bake with perhaps sweet potatoes, squash and beetroots, I’m putting fat on the top of it, or you can use it to spread.

Lard, in Europe, has been used traditionally as a spread for bread for hundreds of years. Basically, most days when I eat bread, although I do use butter, I will spread a lard on my bread and put some salt on the top. It’s something that my ancestors have done, but for me in my kitchen, it’s cheaper than using butter all the time. It’s lovely fat that I know where it’s come from. I made it.

My question is, what I really get bothered by about this is I think the term rendering fat sounds so fancy, but it’s really not that hard. It’s almost like just melting the fat. When they call it rendering, I’m like, “That sounds intimidating.”

Let’s rename it to melting fat. Once you’ve done it once, you realize that it isn’t really that difficult. It’s just a matter of putting it in a pan or putting in your slow cooker. Putting the lid on, setting it to low and leaving it to do its thing. Every couple of hours, you come back. You pour off the fat you’ve got. It goes into a bowl and cools down, stir it around a bit, leave it for another couple of hours, and at the end of the day, you’ve put hardly any time into it at all. You’ve got all this melted fat and you can use it for weeks to come.

I’m curious about your son. Does he like his bread with this fat as well?

Yeah, he does. He absolutely loves lard. He’s been eating lard since he was weaned, really. He’s used to it. He does like to put salt on it, very much so. He puts lard on everything and he loves to spread lard on his bread. Yeah, definitely.

I think the third traditional practice that you invite us to take on is making our own ferment, starting with sauerkraut. Tell us about that.

Making Sauerkraut: A Simple Ferment For Gut Health

I think sauerkraut is a really good ferment to start with because it’s so simple. Anyone who’s been following traditional foods for a while will know that having live fermented veg is really good for us because it’s a way to get probiotics in. It’s so much cheaper than buying bottles of pills. To make sauerkraut, all you need is cabbage, salt and a jar, literally.

Now most people who explain how to make sauerkraut say chop it up with a knife, put the salt in and get your hands in it, and you can do it that way. However, very often, I will use my food processor. I’ll chop my cabbage into chunks, big chunks, and then I’ll just put it all in the food processor with a big blade, whiz it around a few times, and within about 30 seconds, I’ve got a bowl of cabbage that’s all chopped. That’s a simpler way than actually sitting there with a knife and doing it all.

The other thing I do to make it easier is that when I’ve got all my cabbage in a bowl, I will then put the salt on it and mix it with a fork on my hands, and they’ll just put the bowl in the fridge for the night. When I come back to it the next day, the salt has done its work to break down the cells of the cabbage, and a lot of the liquid of the cabbage has already come out.

If you were doing it manually, that’s what all the squeezing or the thumping with a mallet would do. If you just put the salt on it and leave it in the fridge, it does it itself overnight, and then you come back to it the next day, you’ve got your jars ready and you can literally just spoon it into your jars. It’s much less work and much less squashing.

Yeah, you don’t have to pound it.

Exactly. You’re not there for minutes and minutes pounding it. What is important if you do decide you want to make sauerkraut is that you keep the cabbage under the brine. If you don’t have enough brine from the squishing, then you need to put some more salt water in and then use something to try and keep that cabbage underneath the brine.

The other thing that I often get asked about sauerkraut is do I need to leave it for ages and ages? I think it’s important to note, you don’t have to. Studies do show that even after a week, there are tons of probiotics in sauerkraut. Don’t worry about only eating it in three months’ time. You can do it and you can be eating it in a week. It’s just really wonderful.

I did something wrong when I did my sauerkraut. I think I didn’t sterilize or clean the jar enough so it developed mold. I think that’s an important piece, too.

I don’t sterilize. I used to when I first started, and then I think maybe I just got too busy and didn’t do it a couple of times and everything was fine, but it is really important that the jar is clean. That’s like the jar, the seal, and if you’re using anything to keep the cabbage under the brine, that needs to be clean, too. I think if everything’s thoroughly clean and you haven’t left it in a cupboard for a couple of weeks collecting whatever, then it’s fine. I always just wash my jars out with hot water and some soap beforehand. Usually, as long as the cabbage is under the brine, it’s fine.

Tell us the fourth practical thing that we can do to incorporate ancestral ways into our kitchen.

Number four that I thought of was to find a way to love liver. This is in alignment with the second principle of Weston Price. I know you’ve had lots of episodes on your show about offal, liver. If anyone’s read those or knows anything about liver, it’s just an amazing superfood. It is the most nutrient-dense part of the animal, and it’s also really easy to cook and it’s tasty. I know there are a certain number of people who just think, “I don’t like liver,” or They’ve had bad liver as a kid and they’ve got this thing against it.

When people say that to me, I try to give suggestions for how you can incorporate liver. My first one is to start with chicken liver because it is the mildest and the sweetest. If you taste a bit of chicken liver and compare it to a bit of beef liver, for example, the flavor is completely different. Starting with chicken liver is good. Remember that, as Sally talks about in Nourishing Traditions, you can soak that liver prior to cooking, which will take away some of that metallic flavor that a lot of people don’t like.

The other good idea is to mix it in with other ground meats. I think this one’s particularly good for kids who perhaps don’t like the taste of liver. You can mix liver in 25% or 30% into a ground beef and then use that in a meatloaf or use that in a Bolognese sauce. Those flavors are combined and it’s not this separate weird thing on the plate for kids particularly.

I also think that freezing it raw is a good idea. As Weston Price principles say, a lot of traditional communities eat some form of raw food in their diet. This is a way that we can bring that in at the same time, including liver. You can freeze liver. You can either freeze it whole, and then when you pull it out, you can grate it because it’s much easy to grate when it’s frozen. You can blend it in your blender with a little bit of water before and then pour it into an ice cube tray. You’ll have lots of tiny bits of liver.

From the freezer, you can literally pick that liver out and drop it into smoothies, whether it’s an ice cube in each smoothie or whether you are just getting a bit out and grating it into a smoothie. If you combine it in a smoothie with other flavors, you’re just not tasting that liver at all. Yet you’re getting that meat raw.

I actually find that the taste is more palatable for me when it’s frozen and raw as opposed to cooked because it can get that metallic taste. That reminds me, I don’t soak my liver usually, but if I did, would you suggest soaking it in milk?

In kefir usually is a good example, or perhaps some lemon juice, something that’s got that acidy section to it, which will help reduce the flavor of the liver. I understand that the flavor of the liver is completely different frozen to cooked, and that’s why some people do prefer that frozen flavor, particularly when you’re mixing in with something. You don’t taste it at all. I do think there’s a place for cooking it well. If there’s a difference between just getting some liver and frying it for a couple of minutes and putting it on a plate to combining it with other things like bacon, chili and spices.

As I said earlier, I’ve lived in Italy for a large portion of my life and they make these little things with liver called figatelli and they are liver parceled up inside coal fat with fennel seeds and bay. They are so delicious. Literally you just fry them up and it just doesn’t taste like liver. It tastes like this delicious mix of herbs and spices. I think if you can do that with liver if you can combine it in a way with spices, with bacon, with other flavorings. You can make it into something that tastes delicious and also at the same time is incredibly nutritious.

I want to say here in the States, you can find a farm that might actually grind in organ meats into your ground beef. This is what I do. I have an Amish source and they do this ahead of time. All my meat has the nutrients of the organ meats just already mixed in. There’s also a company called Force of Nature that will sell this. This will be sold in grocery stores in the US where the liver and the other organs are mixed in with the ground beef. It makes it easy because any dish you make is going to have that extra oomph in it.

If you can go out and buy it like that, then that’s just wonderful because you don’t even need to think about. It’s just they’re ready for you to cook with. Wonderful.

It might not be as tasty as the figatelli, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Don’t forget with the liver, just one more thing I wanted to say is that you can take tablets. If you are wanting to put liver in your diet, but you’re not quite there yet and you’re experimenting, or if you are busy and traveling, there are companies that source really good liver and put it into capsules so you can take those instead. That’s another option.

I love your final tip for incorporating ancestral practices in the kitchen because this particular principle and this particular food is just so important to me. Go for it. Tell us what it is.

The Benefits Of Bone Broth & How To Make It

The last one is another hands-off, easy and nutrient-dense option, which is don’t waste those bones. Bone broth. Broth is so easy to make. You just put it in a pan and then you leave it and it’s so economical. Bones, if you have to buy them are usually just a couple of dollars, a couple of pounds, so many farmers will give you bones, give them away because they don’t know what to do with them. Just like the liver, it’s an ancestral super food. Particularly if you’re using joints that have ligaments on them, like the knee bones or the chicken feet, it’ll be absolutely full of collagen, which gives us 8 of the 9 essential amino acids that we need in our diet, which is just amazing for pennies.

Don’t waste those bones.

To actually do this in your kitchen, all you need to do is source some bones and put them in a pot. I also use the slow cooker to melt my lard and make my broth. I’ve just got one thing that I use. You don’t need a lot of kitchen equipment to do these things, so I just put my bones in, put some root veg in, perhaps a carrot, some onions, bring it to the boil, and then turn it down as low as I possibly can. It’s only just simmering. I usually leave mine for 24 hours and then strain it out. Some people like to strain it through muslin to get it really clear and nice. I just strain it through a sieve and then you can drink that as it is, put some salt in it. I like to often mix some miso into mine and tastes delicious. You can put it into smoothies. They’re both sweet and savory ways.

You can use it to make soups. I often cook my grains in broth. Anytime I’m cooking rice or I’m cooking millet, I’m cooking perhaps barley, instead of using water, I’ll use broth. There are just so many ways that you can use it in your kitchen. You don’t have to be drinking it if you don’t want to. Every time you engage with the broth and bring it into your life, you are getting added protein and all those amino acids as well. It’s an absolute no brainer. As you said, it’s your favorite and I can understand why.

It’s so funny to think how far removed we are from this. You said even farmers don’t know what to do with the bones, but our ancestors certainly did. They didn’t waste a thing. For people who are former vegetarians or vegans, what they should see that we align on is we believe the animal should be honored. When you don’t waste anything from the animal, you’re doing just that.

Honoring The Whole Animal: Nose-To-Tail Eating

It’s respect for the life that has given itself and all of the resources of the sunlight and the soil and the grass that have gone into that. It just makes sense from an economic view, but also from a respect for life point of view to use every single thing we possibly can from those animals the awful and the bones and the skin and everything. Not just that muscle meat that we prize and that everyone just thinks is what animals give these days. No, they give so much more.

What’s coming to my mind right now, Alison, is that I was in Mongolia a couple of years ago and we sat around a table. As you may know, Mongolia is a very harsh climate. It’s not an easy place to live. It’s between Russia and China and it’s just difficult for the people there, but they are hearty. One thing they do is they use the whole animal, whether they’re eating yak or goats or sheep or what have you.

I’ll never forget this one eagle hunter literally scraping the brains out as we were sitting around and eating the dish. I’m not used to seeing it like that. In my heart, I was cheering because they are not removed from their tradition. You’re inviting us back into the kitchen, not to go with the brains exactly just yet, but to try some of these techniques and these foods. Maybe we’re already having them, but try to make them for ourselves. We can actually make broth. It’s not complicated. We can make ferments, we can start with sauerkraut. All the things you’ve suggested, I think, are pretty simple and they’re going to enrich our lives and our health, I believe.

They build on each other. If you can just do one thing for a couple of weeks and then you’ll learn how it works and you get it under your belt, like learning to ride a bike. Once you know how to do it, you don’t even have to think about it. It goes on autopilot and then you can turn to something else and build slowly until you’ve got all this amazing array of all these beautiful nutritional ancestral foods that you’re doing on autopilot slowly.

I love that idea of building slowly. This is one reason we conclude the episode with a question, what’s one thing the reader can do to improve their health? If they just take one thing and run with it, yeah. Later they might be able to take another thing and run with it. Little by little, they’ll be building the excellent health that really is their birthright. That leads me to the question actually, Alison. What is one thing the reader could do to improve their health?

Finding Joy In Ancestral Cooking Practices

I knew you were going to ask me this one. As we’ve just said, cooking ancestrally is a matter of lots and lots of little things. There are so many ways at any moment that we could move forward or start. What I always default to is what brings you joy. If you love veg and you love the idea of fermenting, go and play with that. If you really like soups, make some broth and turn that into a soup. If oats, like we talked about fermenting oats, if oats are your thing, ferment them and then find your favorite way to eat them. I think the point is that we want to continue to do these things. The best way to help with that is to focus on what we love.

We know we want to do that. If we are trying to do something that we don’t like, it’s going to fade away and we’re not going to be enthusiastic about it. If we do the thing that we are passionate about, it’s going to stick. I think the reason why I’ve been able to eat and cook this way for many years is because I do what I love in the kitchen. That feeds my passion and my enthusiasm as well as feeding me my son and my husband as well. Those two things together make it really strong and keep me enjoying living and eating this way.

The truth is, if you hated it, you would resent it and you wouldn’t really want to do it and you would lose steam. I like this idea of doing what we love.

Pick one thing that you love and do that. Definitely.

On behalf of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Alison, thank you for joining us.

Thank you.

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Our guest was Alison Kay. You can visit her website AncestralKitchen.com to learn more. Now for a recent review from Apple Podcasts, KCTiessen has this to say. “One of my favorite podcasts. I love this podcast. I am subscribed to quite a number, and this one is among my top faves. It’s so informative, encouraging, and entertaining. I never want to miss a moment, and it’s absolutely helped me transform my life and my family’s pantry.” KC, thank you for this review. You, too, can leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. Just go there, give us a bunch of stars, and tell the world why the show has made a difference for you. Thank you so much for reading, my friend. Remember to stay well and to keep your feet on the ground and your face to the sun.

About Alison Kay

Alison Kay creates foods for biome, community, environment and joy, working from her kitchen near Florence, Italy.

She is the creator and co-host of the crowd-funded Ancestral Kitchen Podcast which promotes using traditional food and farming wisdom to build health, community and sustainability.

She’s also a teacher at The Fermentation School where she shares video courses on sourdough bread and more, in a practical and easily-accessible way.

Connect with her by searching for Ancestral Kitchen in your podcast app or by visiting her website ancestralkitchen.com.