#88: Food is Community with Andrea of the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast

Andrea, her husband Gary, and their four children live on their family farm in the Chuckanut Mountains of Western Washington. They enjoy running a small campground and summer event space, raising animals, and a small garden for food production.
Andrea is co-host of the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast which supports families in their pursuit of cooking more traditional meals at home.
In this episode, we discuss food as a tool for human connection and community building. We also talk about Plan to Eat and how Andrea uses the program to simplify her traditional foods kitchen. She has great tips for using the Prep Notes feature and using Plan to Eat to eat seasonally. Enjoy!

Listen to Andrea's interview with Rebecca Zipp here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/83-meal-planning-and-ancestral-food-rhythms-with/id1560950100?i=1000654736572
Follow the Ancestral Kitchen Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ancestralkitchenpodcast/

Get 50% off your Plan to Eat subscription from November 29th - December 2nd! More info here: https://app.plantoeat.com/annual-sale

Sign up for a free trial + get 20% off your first annual subscription: plantoeat.com/PTEPOD

Contact us: podcast@plantoeat.com

Connect with Plan to Eat online:
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest

Transcript

Roni: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Plan to Eat podcast, where I have conversations about meal planning, food, and wellness. To help you save time in the kitchen, reduce your grocery bill stress less about food. And delight in dinner time. 

Hello, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Plan to eat podcast. Today, I have an interview with Andrea of the Ancestral Kitchen podcast.

That is a podcast where her and her co hosts talk about ancestral foods, uh, ancestral eating, and kind of getting back to the basics of more traditional styles of cooking and preparing food. Andrea lives on a small family farm with her and her family in the Pacific Northwest, where they have a small garden.

They raise some livestock to provide for their family. And we talk a lot today about the benefits of sourcing food more locally, whether you're [00:01:00] able to grow it or raise it yourself, or just get it from someone in your local community. We talk about the human connection that that brings, we have such a beautiful conversation about creating relationships with the people in your community around food and how important those relationships can become in your life.

We also talk quite a bit about Plan to Eat, Andrea recently started using PlantoEat. A few months ago and has really found it so beneficial for her style of cooking and the kind of the longer process of preparing food that can sometimes happen when you're doing this More ancestral cooking. If you're following nourishing tradition style recipes where you need to ferment foods or soak your grains, it's super helpful.

Just planning ahead is super helpful for that. And Andrea talks about that and how she has started incorporating plan to eat in her process. So I think [00:02:00] you're going to get a lot out of this episode. I loved this conversation and I hope you enjoy.

Hi, Andrea. Thanks for joining me on the podcast today.

Andrea: Hey, it's so good to be here. Thank you for having me.

Roni: Why don't we get started by you just saying who you are and what you do?

Andrea: Who am I? Oh man, it's such a good question.

Roni: Loaded, loaded question.

Andrea: I love it. Oh, but right now, who I am? I am a mom and wife. I live on a little farm. In Northwest Cascade mountains, and we just raised for ourselves and our families as in like parents, parents in law. And we have three kids, one on the way, and I co host a podcast with my friend Alison, and it's called Ancestral Kitchen Podcast.

And we just, well, you know, we kind of like you, we talk [00:03:00] about food.

Roni: Yeah.

Andrea: And we, um, we talk about eating ancestrally and locally, those sorts of things. So, yeah, I guess that's me.

Roni: I love it. Have you always been kind of a small time farmer homesteader or is that something you got into later as maybe you had kids or whatever?

Andrea: Well, in my fantasy world as a child, I was a farmer. This entire world and a family of 12 children and wrote books. Little books about where I had all these animals and I would, my mom would buy eggs and I would take them out of the boxes and pile them in baskets and she would buy milk and pour it out of the container into a pitcher and, you know, like I lived on the farm in my head and my parents had a farm.

piece of property, you know, with some land out back and we spent most of our time playing [00:04:00] outside. So in my head, I've always been a farmer, but I've never owned an animal until the day we moved out to property. Never had a dog, never had a cat. Um, and then we moved out here and within a matter of months, we had a lot of things.

So yeah, it's, it's only been four years that we've been husbanding animals and Really enjoying it. And I did, um, I like to call it working backwards, where for the years leading up to having our own property, I would volunteer on farms or work on farms, work in CSAs, work for CSAs. I was in milk shares. I would go out and watch cows being milked.

You know, I participate as much as I could in the process without owning it myself. And I was, I've always [00:05:00] Canning, I taught myself to can when I was like 13 years old and so canning and learning how to preserve things and make things so that my hope was, and this totally panned out. So if anybody's planning to have property, start your master's degree now, but I had the intent that when we got to property.

I wouldn't be learning how to do the things so much as I'd be putting them into my own property. And I knew that there would be enough of a learning curve coming with, you know, ownership. And there definitely is a huge learning curve being the person who's responsible for the, you know, the purchasing of things and all the calling the shots and stuff like that is a big learning curve that comes with that.

So not having to learn it. You know, how to make ricotta now that I have a cow type thing was helpful.

Roni: I [00:06:00] really like that as a philosophy. Number one, because that makes the process feel a lot less intimidating to then, you know, be the person who's doing all the things. But I also like it as an idea of maybe you're somebody who doesn't ever plan to have land, or you're not in an area where land is affordable.

You know, but this is where your job is or whatever, and realizing that there are ways that you can still be connected to the food that you're consuming or learning about more like homesteading styles of living, you know, right in your area, I think that's really cool.

Andrea: yeah. And some of you listening have jobs that we need you to have that aren't farming jobs. We need, you know, doctors and people who make cool apps. Like we need these things and. We need to farmers need customers, you know, it's symbiotic all around. So, yeah, not everybody is going [00:07:00] to have a farm and that's okay. Everybody's a part of eating, you know, so we're all part of farming and yeah, there's a lot. It always irritates me when I hear people say, oh, we live in the cities, so we can't really get out of grocery stores. I'm like, I use areas. It's so much easier when you live in the city because you don't have to worry about all the, you know, management aspects of the farm.

You just have to show up and get your food from the farm. I felt like it was easier when we lived in town. So, no excuses.

Roni: right. I don't know what it's like in other parts of the United States or other parts of the world, but here in Colorado, we have food. So much access to local beef, local milk.

Andrea: you do. You're in a good spot.

Roni: Colorado is really amazing for that. So I

Andrea: Sometimes it's, sometimes it's hidden. It's like the speakeasies or the, you know, the stills in the mountain type thing. It's there. [00:08:00] You just have to know where to look and who to talk to. And then, Start the conversation and sort of work your way into the family, you know, it, I have always felt that whenever we move, even though we immediately embed ourself in the food network, like two things when I, well, my husband was in the Navy, so, so whenever we move, you know, the first things we would do is find a church, find meat, find milk and find eggs and veg, because if you have those things, you know, you can kind of, you know, springboard to a lot of other things.

And so we would find those things very quickly, but I always felt like it really, when I would hit the two year mark, which usually with the military is when they're like, and it's time to go. When I hit the two year mark, I would feel like I was embedded. I've networked through, I know someone who knows someone who knows someone [00:09:00] I'm in this inner circle, you know, You have more access.

You've been buying from someone long enough that they're like, Hey, we're going to throw this away. But do you want it type things, you know, so that trust takes a while to establish. So, so, yeah, being patient definitely helps.

Roni: Yeah. Well, and there are so many resources on the internet nowadays for finding

Andrea: Oh, yeah,

Roni: your area related to that. And I mean, I've talked to people on the podcast as well, who raise, humanely raised animals, and they also, a lot of them will still ship to all over places all over the country as well.

So there are definitely options, even if it feels like it's not right in your backyard.

Andrea: We have a lot of advantages now, and we might as well take advantage of them.

Roni: Yeah. So on your podcast, Ancestral Kitchen, you and your co host talk a lot about ancestral eating. Can you talk about what some of the tenants are, the main [00:10:00] ideas of ancestral eating?

Andrea: Yeah, so ancestral food. is, well, the way that we talk about it is it's the food that goes way back. So food that has sustained humans for thousands of years. There's lots of things that Ish that come and go, I'll pop onto the scene for a short time and then they'll disappear. I think we've all fell for the acai berries, like there's who hasn't been paleo for at least a little bit.

Like we've, we've, we've seen things come and go. And sometimes it's really challenging to find what you feel like you. Would thrive the best on in terms of food because it seems like the data and the science changes every time there's a new to release. And so you can, my dad always says, , [00:11:00] figures don't lie, but liars can figure right?

So you can make data say anything and anybody can prove that any docket. You know, you can live on water and wafers or whatever. Any diet can be proven to be the thing. And so what we do is we go back and we see, well, how did people in all different regions of the world survive commonly for thousands of years and there's things you find that are in every place where you find people.

Some of those include. Like you see fermented fish, for instance, you know, the Romans had garum, there's just different types of, you know, Scandinavian fermented fish. That's a weird one, but like that's everywhere. You see often soaked grains. You see, um, there's different varieties of flatbreads that were popular everywhere.

You know, we've got tortillas, [00:12:00] chapatis. Naan breads, you know, you name it. There's one in every every continent. You see saturated fat from animals. You see, vegetables being fermented, fruit seasonally eaten, non copious quantities, typically, um, honey, uh, not everywhere, but some places. So, so there's just some things that you can find. And the Weston a price foundation. I know that you're very familiar with them and they've done a lot of good work documenting a lot of this. So people want to read more. They actually have a list of principles and so you could read that if you wanted to get some more ideas. But there's just things that people have been doing for a really long time.

And What we find is throughout most of history, everybody was starving to death all the time. And so they would find ways to make food as maximally [00:13:00] nutritious as possible. So, very nutrient dense, very digestible, very accessible, and what's even more interesting, especially with everybody talking about inflation and the cost of food, This is peasant food for the large part.

Very cheap type stuff. So things that farmers could grow on their own, things that people could collaborate with in a town and then dole out over a year or whatever. You know, this isn't, like this exotic French cuisine. It's very simple, um, soaked grains, very simple loaves, very delicious, nutritious foods.

Roni: Hmm.

Andrea: Right.

Roni: about this, you know, you mentioned that, you know, throughout time, people have needed to have like a surplus of food. There were times when people were starving, uh, for different reasons, famines and different things that happened.

[00:14:00] How does that work with modern society where we have a surplus of food basically all the time, right? Like we're always, almost always in abundance. People, people very rarely have scarcity, at least in the same ways that they did. Hundreds of years ago. It's like, how does that work with the same with the same ideas are?

I'm just imagining that there are some people who hear like, Oh, saturated fat from animals. And they think like, that's, you know, maybe not good for you, or that's going to be too many calories. And 

Andrea: yeah. No, I, this is, this is the big question, isn't it? I mean, what's weird is that we are chronically malnourished as a Western society. So people are eating a lot of calories, but they're not getting what their body needs and their body is pleading with them. And so. They eat more and then We have consequences [00:15:00] which cause massive suffering.

And so our diseases have gone from, you know, being diseases of sanitation and starvation to diseases of, opulence, really, and malnourishment. So people have insufficient nutrients stores in our bodies. They're struggling with things like pregnancy and like we have a reduced fertility. Now, which is bizarre, that's a sign of health in a nation.

But, fertility is now a very intense subject and it absolutely devastates my heart because I come from a big family. I have seven siblings and, I know the joy that a family can bring and I have my own family. And it just breaks my heart when I see people struggling with that. a shorter population than generations before, which is unheard of for your population to start shrinking.

That's a sign [00:16:00] of poor health and malnourishment. And we have reduced lifespans and quality of life at the end of those lifespans as well.

Roni: Hmm.

Andrea: And what we see coming in to try and repair these fixes is insanely expensive therapeutics and pharmaceuticals. And on the one hand, when people are desperate and need help, then you want an answer to turn to.

But on the other hand, what if the answer creates more problems?

Roni: Hmm.

Andrea: And then you cascade into another category of issues that then you need a new set of therapeutics and tools to deal with. And then you end up with what we have now, which is. expensive, insanely expensive health care, a lot of money spent on health care and, you know, a pharmaceutical industry that is the biggest industry in the globe, [00:17:00] trillions of dollars per year. and people are not healthier. So you think, well, we have modern medicine, you know, but then when you look at the massive biomarkers of health, like the fertility, the height of the lifespan, you're like, so weird, we're getting worse and worse, even though we have more and more of the medicine. So it doesn't make one wonder.

So I don't, subscribe to the belief that, you know, we should all live in a hut in the woods. I love indoor plumbing. People are like, what's your favorite luxury in life? And I'm like, listen, indoor plumbing But, I think that what we what I believe We can do is take the best of both worlds.

So what we moderns are really big fans of doing. And you know, the Victorians did this too. And everybody's kind of into this as we look at what happened before. And we're like, [00:18:00] everything new is good. Everything old is bad. And what that can end up with is some, you know, some big problems. So what I think we can do is take the best of both worlds.

Like, Hey, we can have indoor plumbing. And what if we also had, some small farms and we bought animals from these small farms or, you know, you're moving your cattle from field to field, maybe you're not a nomadic shepherd wandering across the hills. You own your own property and you just manage the way your cattle roam across the hills by moving them with your convenient, modern.

Electric fencing that nobody had before now. You know what I mean? Like, you're, you're getting the, the moving pasture health and the ancestral health of the animals, but you [00:19:00] can live in the same house with the precious indoor plumbing. I don't know if this is answering your question, but I guess I, I like to combine the, the things that we can learn from the ancestral foodways.

The advantages that technology gives us today, and that would include, you know, PVC pipes, electric fences, being able to generate no hydropower and run it through systems that can power, um, convenient tools and things like that, that, are good to use.

Roni: Right. Yeah, no, I like that perspective that there's a, there's a give and take with both of the things, but there are modern conveniences that are really nice, but then there are things that are kind of back to basics that we have kind of that maybe we've forgotten and we need to actually do the thing and go back to the basics.

Yeah, because it's like, even with modern medicine, not everything is bad, right? Like, it's great to be able [00:20:00] to put your arm in, uh, in a cast when you break your arm and things like that. But potentially when we're thinking about, like, Uh, your health and you, you mentioned this, it's not just really about your lifespan, but about your health span and how long, you know, not just how long you're living, but how well you're living during those years.

There are some, some basic elements that are maybe being left out in a lot of modern eating patterns, a lot of modern diets that, uh, previously were very well known and just accepted in, you know, more ancient societies.

Andrea: Well, there was no way around them

and that's one of the things that. We have to be cautious of now, for instance, with all the labels on things. So your eggs are free range, vegetarian fed, humane level, number four, outdoor, happy, five square feet [00:21:00] per bird, whatever, you know, like the list goes on, all the biodynamic, biodynamic, organic, soy free, corn free, like all the labels you could put on food.

What labels do is they replace a trusting relationship. with somebody whose property you could see when you walk past it. So you can't see my farm anymore, so I have to tell you how good it is, right? And then because you can't trust me, because words mean nothing in this society, I need to have a governing body that comes in and licenses me to say those words.

And it just gets worse from there.

Roni: Mm.

Andrea: So I think when, when if you were my neighbor and you were buying eggs from me. And you'd say, yeah, I've literally seen your chickens. I know you don't need to tell me, like just put them in a basket. I don't need it to stay on the box. I can trust you. But when you're going into fluorescent lit [00:22:00] building, and you're going to get out of a fluorescent lit refrigerator, and then you're going to go to self checkout, and you're going to swipe it over a machine, and then you're going to put your card, and you're going to walk out.

Like no human interaction happened. You have no idea. And you don't know if I paid to use the label. That's not accurate. You don't know if outdoor access means there's a 5000 chickens in a shed and they have one square foot door at the end of it that no chicken ever goes through that technically legally qualifies as outdoor access.

Like, you don't know. bringing relationship. Back into the equation of food is it's not usually listed on things where people talk about ancestral food, like saturated fat, fermented, you know, cabbage, but I think it's absolutely integral and cannot be divorced from the ancestral food diet.

Roni: I love that. I have never really heard it put that way, but that is such [00:23:00] a wonderful way of thinking about, buying things locally is having that trusting relationship with somebody. And we talk a lot about how food in general is a source of connection. We mostly talk about it as like, You know, you sit down for a meal with your family and it's a source of connection.

It's a place where you can talk and bond and all of those things. But I've also really loved this idea of before it all, any of that ever happens, you're also creating connection with other people in your community. And you're having trusting relationships with people who are then providing that food and nourishment for your family.

When you go to sit around the table, that is totally, that's so beautiful.

Andrea: yeah, and the food is connection runs really deep and I think even deeper than people. No, because we've, we've participated in a supermarket system for so long [00:24:00] that eliminates connection other than what they can, you know, put on a really cute flyer to make you feel like you're connected or if they can hang a sign that says farmer's market over the veggie section. I am thinking right now, a list of names are running through my head and the people who are the closest to me in my life, people who's, who's the closest births of their children I've been to when they're coming to the birth of this children, people whose funeral for their child I've been to, people who have picked me up when I was having, you know, a hard time, people who's, who invited me into their home for Thanksgiving when my husband was deployed and I was living far away from home.

Like, All those people I just mentioned came to me through food. Somebody I met because I was trying to find raw milk. Somebody I met because I was looking for a bulk veggie buy, like those relationships. Like if I say food is connection, I don't just mean I met [00:25:00] a farmer and we had a good chat, you know, I mean, these people, like we're there for each other, you know, like we have become, and they're not all farmers.

Some of them are just people who are shopping at the same place as me or trying to find the same thing as me or in the same legal club as I was, you know, and we figured we just became. Friends, and I would not trade those for getting something a little bit cheaper at the supermarket or having a buy one, get one coupon on Fridays.

You know what I mean? That's, that's life sustaining relationships and it feels healthy and it feels good. 

Roni: even though you just said that not all of those people are farmers, it really makes me just think about, uh, what I would say a typical farming community does feel like, um, my extended family is from a farming area in Kansas. And [00:26:00] that's what it feels like when you go there is like, everybody is supporting everybody else.

If you are having an issue, somebody's going to come over and help you with it.

Andrea: Yeah. Your combine's broken. Theirs isn't, you know, you don't have this set of metric tools. They do. Like, you actually need each other

Roni: Yeah. And they want to see you succeed.

Andrea: Yeah, they're invested in you,

Roni: Yeah.

Andrea: which is huge. And I feel like one of the harshest things of our environment is that we work so hard to eliminate needing each other.

Roni: Mm. Right.

Andrea: Like, oh, she just had a baby. Can I bring her a meal? No, she's going to get it delivered from Amazon. Like, just it's fine. You know, like, what? No, where's the humanity? We just, We, we work ourselves out of needing each other. And then, and then I, I think that that trickles hard up to our elders, because. [00:27:00] You know, we have all the services, like what is an elder's place in society anymore?

They'll just shove them into a home and then forget about them. Once upon a time, they were an integral part because mom had to be, you know, Making dinner, shall we say, or threshing or grinding flour. And so grandma was going to sit and hold the baby so that mom could do that. Right. Well, it's just like kind of a random example, but all that to say, grandma played a role.

She wasn't just sitting there hoping that you would come and visit her in your free time and check your watch every 10 minutes. Cause it was so boring and it smelled so bad there. And you just wanted to go do something else and not think about death all the time, like. Let's, let's bring our families back together even.

And that's something that making real food actually does. Like my mom has been coming out, helping me prepare for this upcoming baby. And I'm so, [00:28:00] I'm so loving being in the same state as my mom is now while I'm pregnant, you know, cause I get to have this experience. And so she comes out and she cooks and she freezes things while I do projects, clean stuff for the baby or whatever.

And. She could just be like, okay, well, when the baby's born from my phone, I'm going to ship you, like a meal from some restaurant or something,

Roni: Right.

Andrea: because we want real food and we really are intentional about the ingredients and want to use the meat that we raised on our farm, et cetera, et cetera.

She's out here physically preparing it herself with my kids, you know, and there's all this relationship happening,

Roni: Yeah.

Andrea: which she could avoid. And, and bless for the times when you don't have a good mom or somebody in your life that can help you and you don't need to start stuff because you can order something like, I'm not saying that, like you said, with the medicines, I'm not saying that's never going to have its place, [00:29:00] but, but gosh, there's a lot of connection that can come with trying to pursue real food.

That you can avoid.

Roni: Yeah. And I'm even thinking of just that scenario that you laid out that your mom is then cooking and preparing food with her grandchildren and the knowledge that she's able to pass down to them. Uh, I was just talking with somebody recently about how much I value the, the multi generational relationships that I have, because you learn so much from people who are both older than you and younger than you.

You know, like as a, as a, Middle thirties adult. There's so much that I can learn from people who are in their eighties who have lived a lot more life than I have. And also a lot that I can learn from kids who are still so curious and creative and have not, you know, been blocked by all of the things that I've been blocked by as an adult.

So. So I love that aspect of that connection to that, you know, being able to pass that information along [00:30:00] and them having that reciprocal relationship of her getting a lot of life from your young children, as well as her passing along knowledge them. So wonderful.

Andrea: yeah. And the, opposite end of the spectrum, you know, talking about elders and their role in society is the children that you just brought up and children are often, I don't know how to say this about something just like, awful, but they're, they're created into, um, a position in the family that is that where they don't feel needed, you know, so they don't have meaningful work or they don't, they're not given meaningful chores cause we don't want to impinge on them or, or they have too much homework or whatever.

and children actually do need to feel needed just like the elders do, just like you and I do, everybody does, but we often forget about children in this equation and of course they're going to complain about doing chores. That's their job. They're a kid, but, but [00:31:00] that's how they're going to learn the incredible habits and skills that will carry them through a lifetime of being a productive member of society.

And when people say things like, oh, maybe the kids, you know, when the baby's born, the kids could go here or there for a couple of days. I'm like, I don't know, because I don't know how the house would run without them. Like, they're so integral. There's such a part of our everyday workings. It's not like they're just appendages that hang around here that, expect me to wait on them, which I'm not saying anybody else's kids are, but, like, that's not what they are.

They're very participating, members of the household and, there just seems to be this idea that if we, , I do, I do not think that the kids need to be babysitters or, you know, um, slaves or something like that, but they do need to feel like they're participating in the house. And it's, it's incredible [00:32:00] how much that internal locus of self confidence, you know, we have all these programs out there to boost kids self confidence and it's like, well, let them do something.

Yeah.

Roni: Mm-Hmm.

Andrea: meaningful. That's how adults boost their confidence, not by somebody slapping them on the back, but by doing something and then seeing the reward of that and then thinking, well, geez, I can do that. I can do this other thing over here. So. I feel like that's another part of the ancestral lifestyle.

You know, you said something about, cooking for a long time or something, and kids love to help in the kitchen. Do we always love to have their help? Hmm. But, but the payoff. Of training them is pretty incredible because, my kids have been preparing meals for us and all kinds of things, you know, while I've been very sick [00:33:00] pregnancy and that's actually part of what got me so excited about the app was because so much of what I do lives in my head, or I stand there and watch them and say it.

And, or, or it comes out of a cookbook, like nurishing traditions or something, but we have the little tweak that our family does, but I've never written it down because I know what it is. And so I needed to write it down, you know, with your app, I felt like taking it out of my brain and it's going into the app.

My mom can open it on the computer. My kids can open it on the computer. My husband can open it on the computer. They could see my brain right there. And. Make it exactly how I want it made. Well, that has been one of the most exciting things for me in terms of, your app and then the kids, you know, is basically making it so that they can, they can have that, specificity of our recipes, not just [00:34:00] looking at a cookbook with me making mental adjustments.

I just always do.

Roni: I love that. I, I, I feel. Honored, I guess is the right way to say it to just know that Plan to Eat has helped you and your family in that sort of a way. And we hear from lots of people that, you know, does that same thing for them too. Just the easy access to the recipes that you know and love or the recipes that you created from scratch.

Means a lot to people, uh, listening in listening to your podcast a little bit. I learned that you maybe are not naturally a planner, particularly when it comes to meals. So I'm interested to hear a little bit about how you have worked to implement meal planning more in your life. I know a lot of people are what we would consider kind of like inconsistent planners.

You do it for a little while, you get off the wagon and then take some effort to get back on. Do you have any ideas around that of ways [00:35:00] that you've tried to implement it in your life?

Andrea: Desperation helps. So, how's that? So, well, you know Rebecca, who I, I think you're going to be interviewing soon, I hope. And she has been my muse because I was watching how she sorted and organized her meals. And I I actually asked her to do the episode with me because I, and I know I heard you talk about this with someone else on your podcast. Uh, I can't remember her name. She works for you guys, but then she had a baby. So she was off work and you interviewed her and you both alluded to the fact that a lot of people say, Oh yeah, a baby was coming.

And I realized like, Oh, I need some organization. So that was me. And I asked Rebecca, could you sit down with me and just explain to me. How you do it. I didn't know she used an app. I did never heard of you guys. I didn't. I was just like, Tom, I don't what do [00:36:00] you do an Excel spreadsheet? Like, how does this work?

And so she explained it in the episode on our podcast that you were talking about, and I was just shooketh. And I was like, yeah, I need to definitely do something. So then I started. Actually, I got onto your app right away. You have such a great referral program. So. And I really like the way you guys do business, I have to say, very impressed with the not, you know, automatically billing us and stuff like that.

It just feels like you want us to choose to use your product and enjoy it and not just be, I don't know, forced into it or something like everything from Amazon is.

Roni: right?

Andrea: So I'm, I'm a slow, person and I need to integrate changes and adapt to them carefully because I have actually my natural tendency is to go too fast.

Roni: Hmm.

Andrea: and blow up [00:37:00] and die. So I had to slowly start using the app. And so I started by cautiously putting in a few recipes, seeing how well, you know, 

so, like all my recipes, it says something like, The day before, get this out of the freezer, or, put beans on to soak, because if anybody's listening who uses, utilizes ancestral food methods, or, or Weston A. Price methods, or whatever you want to call it, you know that you open nourishing traditions, and it's like, delicious recipe for cake.

You're like, okay, this is great. Like first mixing great. It's like, okay, like four days later. No, hold on. I need it today, you know, so you can plug that in on the app. It says, you know, you're going to have to mix this up. And so then, [00:38:00] you know, three days before the day I want to eat the thing. Oh, look, I have this little task where I need to do something.

I just love that. That has been enormously helpful for the way we eat and also because a lot of our stuff comes out of our own freezers and so I'm not going to the store and buying meat. That's like already been thawed out and put into a cooler. I'm getting like sometimes going on spelunking missions and digging it out of the bottom of the freezer.

And so knowing ahead is really helpful. I also actually really like how you can drag and move things from day to day very quickly, because sometimes I'm for sure that we're going to make this thing this day. And then we. Excuse me, we live off grid, and so we have solar power when we want electricity and I might put something like [00:39:00] muffins on one day, then there's no sun and I don't want to run the oven and drain the batteries.

So I can even check the weather and I'll be like, let's bump it to tomorrow, it says it'll be sun. And. That's really helpful because I can swap things around. And then you guys have this grocery list, right? So, so when you plug things into the app, everybody listening is nodding, then it gives you a list of all the ingredients in your grocery shopping and that's more of a pantry hunt thing for me. So I don't keep all our stores in the kitchen. They mostly live on big wooden shelves in our garage, so we can't things and whatnot. So with the app, Then I just very conveniently can see, okay, I need to bring in three jars of tomatoes and, you know, so I can bring in the things I need to have in advance and then just tap, tap, [00:40:00] tap them and go away off the list, which I love.

Roni: Mm-Hmm

Andrea: Or sometimes a recipe has an ingredient like it says lemon curd. So I know I need to make a batch of lemon curd for this. recipe. What I'm really looking forward to using this for is being able to delegate from bed or a chair. I'm very determined to actually rest this time postpartum and to be able to look at the list.

And if somebody says to me, what can I do for you? Then I can say, as it happens, I need you to chop an onion because tomorrow, you know what I mean? Like, it's all on the list. It's just, and I don't have to hold it in my brain. And anybody, I Who knows anything about dopamine and cortisol and, ADHD or any of these sorts of things, you know, that the less that you're holding on your brain and like, uh, it's like having, you know, the tabs open or like using a brain or whatever you want to say, if I [00:41:00] want to use a machine sort of reference, but the less that you have holding open in your brain, the less your experience of stress and, um, The easier it is for you to function and still make decisions.

Because if we aren't all dying of decision fatigue, I don't know what we're dying of because it's, there's about a billion decisions you have to make a day. And if you add to that, remembering every 10 minutes, you have to get this thing out for dinner. And you have to make dinner, and dinner's gonna happen again. And it just doesn't help.

Roni: Yeah.

Well, I'm glad you brought all of that up. We love to talk about brain drain and decision fatigue, because I think that that's a really, it's a really under appreciated benefit of meal planning overall,

Andrea: A hundred percent. A hundred percent.

Roni: And we, we like the philosophy.

I can't remember what the author's name is, but there's a [00:42:00] book called getting things done and his, the, the idea behind it is essentially like get things out of your head and into a system that you trust so that you don't have to keep them all in your head because. I think, you know, meal planning with pen and paper is perfectly fine, except for the fact that you leave your grocery list on the kitchen counter every single time you go to the grocery store, um, or in order to remember what you're, what you've planned for.

Dinner, you have to be at home, you know, where it's listed on the refrigerator and your calendar or something. So there's an aspect of having it in the digital format. That's so helpful for that because you always have your shopping list with you because nowadays who goes anywhere without their cell phone.

And that means you also have your meal plan with you so that when, you know, your kids are like, mom, what's for dinner tonight, you can open your app and be like, Oh, actually we're having this. Chicken Parmesan or whatever the thing is. 

Andrea: I feel so powerful when I do that, [00:43:00] when they ask me and I'm like, let me check the app. I'm just like flex.

Roni: Yes. Yeah.

Andrea: I can actually tell you,

Roni: Yeah, it really does help you feel like a winner, you know, like you, like you won the week when you're like, I, I don't, I know these things. I don't have to think about it anymore. And one of my favorite things that I've realized about meal planning and with, and with having the app is. That I forget what I meal planned, which is kind of amazing because it is that idea of like, I have a system that I trust.

And so I just, I don't even have to remember what's on my meal plan for the week. I just need to open my app in the morning and remember, Oh yeah, for dinner, we're having these, fajitas, and cool. I'll make sure that I take the things out of the freezer for it. It's it's really, that's a powerful was a great word because that is, it feels like a really powerful thing to be like, I I'm so, so not stressed about dinner that I completely [00:44:00] forgot what I planned.

Andrea: and did you hear Rebecca did that on the interview I did with her? I

Roni: Yes, yes.

Andrea: tonight? And she's like, I don't even remember. And then we recorded an after show for our patron podcast feed after that. And I told her, I kind of love that you forgot. Like

Roni: Yeah.

Andrea: prominent product placement, you know, because you didn't have to remember, she didn't have to hold it in her head, which is just, yeah, the brain drain that you said, oh, it's, it's, it's a thing, it's a thing.

Roni: So I'm really curious about, I guess you're kind of like you're planning process and your recipes because you have, uh, you know, meat and produce and everything that you have raised. And so I'm guessing you have, a lot of bulk items at your house. , And, you know, this would be really applicable for somebody who, like myself, like I typically buy a half a cow or, you know, after hunting [00:45:00] season, we often have, you know, fresh game meat.

And so I have a lot of stores of food and the plant, the planning process in that regard is a little backwards of what I think a lot of people do, which is they plan their meals and then they Go to the grocery store, buy the things, but do you have any, tell me a little bit about your process of having the items and then creating your meal plan.

Andrea: Okay, so just to make sure I point everybody to when Rebecca interviews with you and or go listen to the episode on the Ancestral Kitchen podcast. She's been doing this long enough year over year that she actually can plan out her cuts based on her known meal plans. So I, I want to say I've only been using it since, well a couple months. So I haven't had the year over year experience that she's got. So I'm still doing it like you said a little bit in the reverse where I have the freezer full of meat cuts and now I'm planning based on those. I already [00:46:00] knew, oh, here's how much I want in the form of steaks, and here's how, you know, I already kind of had an idea. So. I'm still in the baby steps where I'm planning a week at a time, and Rebecca is doing a month at a time, which, hashtag goals, I'll get there.

And one of the things she told me that tipped me off to what a good tool this would be for me is that she said, yeah, I can go back and see what we ate last March. And I was like, hold up. For people who eat seasonally, this is monumental because When you can just buy fresh strawberries any time of the year, it doesn't really matter so much, but when you're like, when did strawberries come in anyways?

And you can look back and be like, okay, you know, that's really helpful. And for me, we tend to do a lot of [00:47:00] low power meals in the winter, like things I can put on the stove, literally on top of our wood stove or on top of our propane stove in the kitchen. Like our house looks normal, you know, we have a house outlet, some things like that.

There's not a lot of power behind it. We're in the Pacific Northwest, but it's cloudy 13 months out of the year. So we have to take the Solar power when we can get it. But then in the summer, I'm kind of the reverse of a lot of people because then in the summer, I'm like, if I can make, you know, because I have more power.

So, being able to look back and see that is going to be really, really helpful from both the bulk buying and then the off grid perspective, but, um, because I'll be able to see what was, what was working, you know, what was power being allocated to and, I have, yeah, our grains, yeah, five gallon buckets and chest freezers, I guess, is what our garage looks like.

So you're correct in your [00:48:00] assessment. And so it is less of going to the grocery store and it's more of coordinating the meals around what we have. Now what's weird, one of the weird things people run into when they start bulk buying stuff is that they end up with a lot of stuff that. They don't like, or that they don't want to eat. There's a rule in canning, you know, only can foods that your family likes. And everyone's like, duh, it's not as simple as you think. And so being able to then plan your next bulk is based on, oh my gosh, I just can't wait to look back and see, oh, this is what we were eating. Looks like we're getting 50 pounds of millet.

You know, that's really, really helpful. So, so right now I've been plugging in. Each like I didn't sit down and batch load a ton of recipes. I'm just putting in recipes as I'm using them. So it's kind of like slowly trickling in and for one, I'm [00:49:00] finding that it's helping me use some new recipes, which is fine because.

I kept, I will think of the new recipe, but then I'll forget that it exists, you know, when the actual eating time comes around. So I'm able to put new recipes on the menu and I plan out the week. I'm only planning a breakfast and a dinner. And then lunch is basically taking care of itself between leftovers and stuff like that. And I don't know why I do not know why when I wake up and I look and I see what I'm making for breakfast, it's like, Oh, great. That's it. There's no standing in the kitchen like, Oh, wait, we could do scrambled eggs. We could do a casserole. We could do like, I don't know why that little thing is so significant.

But it really is. It's that one more decision to not have to make. [00:50:00] And I do also realize how, um, repetitive our food is based on looking at what we eat. I'm like, oh wow, it's actually pretty simple. Which makes it easier to stock your pantry when you know, well, we could get those little jars of those little things, but realistically they're not really, like, we're probably not going to eat them.

Roni: mm-Hmm.

I like, I like that idea. And I, I really do appreciate, you mentioning, you know, Rebecca's idea of being able to look back at past years for meal planning, because I find I do that too. Just simply for when you need some recipe inspiration, even, you know, 

Andrea: Really? 

Roni: you are, thinking like, Oh, we're just eating the same meals over and over again.

Like, what did I eat last year in June? So that. I can just remember, you know, like what were the things that we were enjoying so that I could make those again, if I haven't made them, you know, since last year, I think that's a really great [00:51:00] idea. I'll make sure that I link in the show notes to your interview with Rebecca so that everybody can 

Andrea: It's a great interview.

Roni: it is. And she does give a lot of really great tips specifically related to plan to eat because she's used the app for so long.

Andrea: Yeah. I mean, it's part of her life now, you know,

Roni: Yeah. Well, I don't want to take up your entire day. So before we go, do you just have any advice for someone who is new to ancestral food and ancestral eating and maybe wants to start incorporating it into their life? And just what kind of advice would you have for somebody like that?

Andrea: pick one thing that is interesting and fun and exciting and delicious to you and just work on that and make it part of your lifestyle and your habits. Don't, don't try to do everything all at once.

Roni: Hmm. I

Andrea: You don't, you don't have to, you don't have to do it all at once. So if, if, if bread lights you up, it's a great place to start.

And if bread, [00:52:00] it sounds like a nightmare, start with that. So that's about, about my best advice, I think.

Roni: Oh, I think that's great. I think that's really great. Absolutely. Because. Yeah. Like when I first started making bone broth or sauerkraut, those things felt really intimidating to me. And it wasn't until I kind of like got some reps in with it before I realized like, okay, this is totally doable and it's actually really easy.

But from the, you know, from the outside looking in, it feels like I don't, I have no idea what I'm doing, or this is going to take an incredible amount of time, so that's really great advice.

Andrea: You've driven there a hundred times now. You can do it with your eyes closed. You know which stoplights take forever. You know where everybody's fast. You know where it gets clogged. Like, you know, you just know.

Roni: Okay. Well, why don't you. Yeah. No, thank you for being here. This has been wonderful. Um, why don't you just tell everybody again, what your podcast is and how they can connect with you online or [00:53:00] learn more about what you're doing.

Andrea: Hey, podcast is Ancestral Kitchen Podcast. Should be anywhere podcasts can be found. And I have an Instagram, and horse that I have not posted on it in many moons. So, so, you know, just Don't worry about social media. Just go into your kitchen and do something fun.

Roni: Oh, that's great advice. I like that. Well, thanks again for

Andrea: Thanks for letting me talk. Yeah, this

is fun. This is fun. I really, really, but really loving the app, loving the business behind it, loving the way it works and loving your podcast too. You have so many, so many good interviews on there. So I'm super stoked that I found it. Or I think Rebecca told me about it, actually. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Thanks so much.

Roni: Yeah. Thank you.

As always, thank you so much for tuning [00:54:00] into this episode. There are links in the description so that you can find the ancestral. Kitchen podcast, as well as that specific episode with Rebecca Zipp.

I'm actually going to be taking a little break for the month of August and we'll be back with some more episodes in September,

so I hope you enjoy the end of your summer. And instead of seeing you in two weeks, I will see you in a month. Thanks for listening.