Ancestral Kitchen

Alison Kay & Andrea Huehnerhoff

The 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

  1. 17 HR AGO

    #126 - Living Like a Human with Tara Couture of Slowdown Farmstead

    When Alison and I were starting this podcast, she asked who was on my dream list of people to talk to. I said Tara Couture of Slowdown Farmstead and today that is what happened. In an incredibly long and appropriately slow morning we sat down together to talk for the first time and it was like visiting with an old friend I had waited a very long time to see again. Tara once shared her life on Instagram and I followed her avidly there, listening to her wisdom both practical and philosophical on butchery and growing and shifting, and how in the midst of life we are in death. Taking words from the screen to the printed page, Tara recently wrote a book, Radiance of the Ordinary. Since I had dropped off social media and Tara soon would herself, I was no longer reading her words, so when my copy arrived in the mail it felt like unwrapping a long-awaited, much anticipated letter from a beloved mentor. In this episode we discussed many things including what does it look like to be living life at a human pace, as a human, in an ever-increasingly inhumane world? Is it even possible or practical to be a human in a world that expects you to be, and treats you as, a machine? Tara and I went through a lot of tea and boza over this long conversation so I invite you to settle in and join in with us, and let's be human together. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and UK link here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Our podcast is supported by a community of ancestral cooks around...

    1h 56m
  2. 2 FEB

    #125 - Just Right: The Story of Porridge (& The Best Ways To Cook It)

    Humans have been eating porridge (of which the American oatmeal is just one example) for, as you’ll hear, at least 32,000 years (that places it comfortably in the ‘paleo diet’ era!) Listen in to hear us cover just some of the history of this word and the comforting dish associated with it, as well as taking a tour of the many, many ways it is made throughout the world. Then we’ll focus in on oats - sharing surprising ways in which oat porridge has been served and eaten in the United Kingdom. We'll also explain the different types of oats used, the best ways to cook porridge and the myriad ways you can serve it. If you love a bowl of steaming, creamy oatmeal, get ready to wrap your hands around this enlightening, inspiring episode. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and UK link here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Our podcast is supported by a community of ancestral cooks around the world! Come join our community! You can choose to simply sponsor the podcast, or select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live Zoom calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion grou Find out more here! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * p...

    1h 28m
  3. 19 JAN

    #124 - Five Family Meals Around Five Dollars Each: budget-friendly, ancestral peasant food

    Everybody always wants to know - is a nourishing diet an elitist, privileged ideal, inaccessible to people without a huge budget, and only for the super wealthy? In this episode we are going to share five complete meals. Each meal serves a family of five, and each complete meal can be made for about $5USD (£3.71GBP). Balancing these inexpensive meals against the more expensive meals that can turn up in an ancestral menu is one way you can bring the overall annual food budget down. You can make all five of these menus, combined, for less than it would cost to take your family of five out one time for the cheapest option at McDonald’s - and that’s not even accounting for the life-giving, health-sustaining benefits of your nourishing meals. Each of these menus has an option for gluten-free and dairy-free, if they aren’t already, and they can also be made ahead, prepped ahead, or even frozen or canned for absolutely speedy preparation. We’ve shared a few books rich in ideas at the end of the episode, and supporters can find our notes for this rather note-heavy episode in a download available at ancestralkitchenpodcast.com. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and UK link here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Our podcast is supported by a community of ancestral cooks around the world! Come join our community! You can choose to simply...

    1h 44m
  4. 5 JAN

    #123 - Celebrating Real Pork - History, Sourcing & A Mouth-Watering Recipe Book

    Sausages, bacon, crackling – good pork can be heavenly food. But both of us know that, sometimes, in the ancestral food world, pork is viewed as the poorer cousin to grass-fed beef or pastured chicken. That needn't be the case and this episode will put real pork where it deserves to be - at the centre of our plates. We'll give you some fascinating history bites, we'll talk about how the Industrial Revolution changed mainstream pigs, and we will lay out how buying real, pastured, pork is a positive, health-giving and delicious choice for you and those you love. Expect to be inspired by hearing us talk about the many ways we cook the products of the pig, from the nose to the tail. This episode is accompanied by a fabulous pork cookbook which we've gifted, as a thank you, to all our current supporters. So if you're a supporter do go check your email. The book, with over 25 pork recipes is also available to buy from the podcast's shop, you purchasing a copy will be directly supporting Andrea and I to continue this work. Find it here: Pastured Pork Cookbook * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and UK link here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Our podcast is supported by a community of ancestral cooks around the world! Come join our community! You can choose to simply sponsor the podcast, or select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly

    1h 42m
  5. 15/12/2025

    #122 - Why We Eat Local & Farm-Friendly Food

    Why eat local? What if it isn’t easy? What if the things I want aren't available? What's the point? Alison and I have both considered these questions for ourselves and factored them into decisions that we’ve made about how we live our everyday lives. We didn’t make the changes overnight, and we don’t even suggest people do so. After the many books we have read, the real-life experiences we have had, and guests we have interviewed on the subject of factory farming vs humane peasant farming, we have come to some conclusions about eating local that might surprise you. They might not be the conclusions or the “arguments” you were expecting. This episode features an aftershow which could possibly be described as a little bit salty, where some spicier opinions came to the fore. It was impossible to include everything we had to say and keep the main episode at a reasonable length of time. If you want to hear this aftershow as well as over 140 other episodes on our more informal, private podcast Kitchen Table Chats, hop over to ancestralkitchenpodcast.com/join and join at companionship or above level. Thank you for your continued support and to all the supporters, reviewers and listeners who made this episode possible. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and UK link here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Our podcast is supported by a community of ancestral cooks around the...

    1h 21m
  6. 01/12/2025

    #121 - 24 More Nuggets of Ancestral Wisdom!

    Back in episode 117, we gave you 26 nuggets of ancestral wisdom. We’ve got more. Another 24 to be precise. And just because these are in this second episode doesn’t mean they are any less important! Over the next hour, on opposite sides of the Atlantic, with cups of tea in our hands we'll be channelling our great-grandma wisdom and bringing you some ancestral truths relating to food, creativity, family, health, work and life. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. For US listeners, we recommend Grand Teton Ancient Grains. They sell regenerative, organic flours and berries that can satisfy all your baking needs. Stock up and get free shipping at AncientGrains.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and UK link here. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Our podcast is supported by a community of ancestral cooks around the world! Come join our community! You can choose to simply sponsor the podcast, or select from a variety of levels with benefits including monthly live Zoom calls, a private podcast feed stuffed with bonus content, and a Discord discussion grou Find out more here! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * 5* reviews...

    1h 27m
  7. 17/11/2025

    #120 - Using Ancient Grains & Ethical Growing with Jade from Grand Teton Ancient Grains

    Khorasan rye, spelt, emmer, millet, quinoa - what do all of these delicious foods have in common? They are considered ancient grains, grasses harking back to a time before industrial development and heavy hybridisation. You are what you eat eats, and that goes for grains as well as anything else. The nutrients your grains are pulling up out of the soil are the ones you will find in your finished product. Grains are an incredible source of minerals and micronutrients when grown in a regenerative manner. This is why today I am so excited to introduce you to Grand Teton Ancient Grains! You can find this incredible family business online at www.ancientgrains.com and in this episode I got to sit down with Jade Koyl, the owner of this incredible family farm, and learn more about the way they feed the soil, their crop rotations, grain storage, and how their family uses grains in their everyday diet; as well as why they started growing them in the first place. Supporters can stick around for a couple minutes in the Aftershow on the private podcast, Kitchen Table Chats, where Jade shared some of the titles he's reading right now and a little more about his family life. Everybody can check the show notes for both the link to his company's store as well as a link with an amazing wealth of recipes for utilizing ancient grains at https://www.ancientgrains.com/grain-recipes. Now, let's get to the show! * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. For US listeners, we recommend Grand Teton Ancient Grains. They sell regenerative, organic flours and berries that can satisfy all your baking needs. Stock up and get free shipping at AncientGrains.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. a href="http://wigglywigglers.co.uk/discount/AKP" rel="noopener noreferrer"

    1h 27m
  8. 03/11/2025

    #119 - Why (& How) You Should Be Eating Chocolate with Marcos Patchett

    In so many of our episodes over the last four years, we have explored how no food we eat is intrinsically ‘bad’. Instead, it’s what we as humans living in a rapidly globalising and industrialising world, have done to that food that causes problems. The topic of today’s episode, cacao, epitomises this. Originally, in its home, central america, cacao beans were revered and used unsweetened as a drink. Our world has taken and transformed them into an unrecognisable sugary commodity that fills the shelves of shops globally. A commodity that can, as Alison personally knows, through at 20, being addicted to the stuff and obese, ruin health. But as ancestral cooks, we need not be scared. And our guest today knows that better than anyone we’ve ever come across. Marcos Patchett is a self-confessed cacao geek and has written two books on this bean’s wonders, the first of which, The Secret Life of Chocolate is 700 pages of incredible research, of which Alison has devoured every page! Cacao is an incredibly nutrient-dense food and one that can give us both pleasure and health. Let’s talk about why, and, how, you should be eating chocolate. Supporters of the podcast, check your private feed for a fascinating discussion on addiction that we just couldn’t squeeze into the main episode. * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * One Earth Health make the grass-fed organ supplements we use and trust. Get 15% off your first order here and 5% off all subsequent orders here. For US listeners, we recommend Grand Teton Ancient Grains. They sell regenerative, organic flours and berries that can satisfy all your baking needs. Stock up and get free shipping at AncientGrains.com * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Get more news from Alison & Andrea by signing up to their newsletter here. For a free 30-page guide to Baking with Ancient Grains sign up for Alison's newsletter here! Get our three podcast cookbooks: Meals at the Ancestral Hearth Spelt Sourdough Every Day The Pastured Pork Cookbook Get all three of our cookbooks! Alison's course, Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics Alison's Sowans oat fermentation course Get 10% off US/Canada Bokashi supplies: click here and use code AKP. Get 10% off UK Bokashi supplies. Visit our (non-Amazon!) bookshop for our favourite cookbooks: US link here and...

    1h 24m

About

The 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

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