April 23, 2025 • 47 mins
What does homesteading look like when you live in suburban Los Angeles? Elizabeth Bruckner never imagined she'd become a passionate advocate for self-sufficient living – especially after years of killing every houseplant that crossed her threshold. However, a long-term chronic illness that left her bedridden forced her to reimagine her relationship with food and healing.
Desperate to regain her health, she abandoned processed foods and gradually shifted from her 27-year vegetarian diet to incorporate nutrient-dense, ethically sourced animal products. The improvements were dramatic, but it was the COVID pandemic that truly catalyzed her homesteading journey when even basic ingredients like garlic became temporarily unavailable.
"I didn't even know what broccoli looked like coming out of the ground – that's how divorced I was from my food," Elizabeth confesses. Today, she champions an accessible vision of homesteading that breaks free from the stereotypical image of rural living with livestock and acres of land. Instead, she focuses on finding joy in whatever aspects of self-sufficiency speak to you – whether that's fermenting foods, growing herbs as a "gateway drug" to gardening, or making cleaning products from fruit scraps.
Elizabeth's book, "The Homesteader Mindset," offers practical guidance for building sustainable habits without the overwhelm. Her approach acknowledges our modern lives while reclaiming traditional wisdom – proving that even "lazy gardeners" can create abundant food spaces through permaculture techniques that mimic nature's systems.
Ready to explore your homesteading potential? Visit Elizabeth's website for a free Homesteader Habit Tracker and discover how small daily practices can transform your relationship with food, health, and self-sufficiency – no matter where you live.
Links Talked About on the Podcast
Get the Fruit Scrap Vinegar Recipe HERE
Mason Tops (lids used for fermenting and preserving)
Acid Test Strips (tests for acidity of vinegar)
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey everybody and welcome back to the Real Food
Stories podcast.
We are in spring right now,especially in the Northeast,
which is my all-time favoriteseason, because it means that we
finally get to start growingand, as you know, I have been
gardening for decades and I havea very large vegetable garden,
which is kind of my pride andjoy.
(00:20):
So when I talked to my guesttoday, Elizabeth Bruckner, I
wanted to have her on to shareher story with growing and
homesteading.
So let me tell you a little bitabout Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Bruckner is the authorof the Homesteader Mindset, a
book that she claims willtransform the way you view
self-sufficiency.
(00:41):
Her book gives you the toolsand practical tips needed for a
more meaningful life.
It's a must-read for everyperson who dreams of creating
sustainable living throughtraditional skills and common
sense.
Through her research andexperimentation, Elizabeth
taught herself to compostkitchen scraps, ferment like an
(01:02):
alchemist, cook traditionalfoods and live a life that is
more connected than she everthought possible.
Regarded as the fermentationmaven, she speaks to
enthusiastic crowds on topicssuch as healing herbs in the
kitchen, the life-changing powerof habit creation for
homesteaders and the art oflacto-fermentation.
(01:24):
Now, Elizabeth, you were notalways a homesteader and in fact
, you live in the suburbs of LosAngeles, right, so that's not
really an area that I wouldfirst think of when I think
about living off the land andhomesteading.
But when we spoke a few weeksago, you told me that you spent
most of your 40s healing from achronic illness that left you
(01:48):
bedridden for weeks andhomebound for months, and you
were too sick to work for years.
So I know that food, as wetalked about, played a pivotal
role in your healing, and thencame the focus on homesteading
and really paying attention towhat you put into your body.
So I would love to hear yourstory and how you got then to
(02:12):
writing a whole book abouthomesteading.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, thank you for having me today, heather.
I'm really grateful that we'rechatting about this, and I love
chatting about all thingshomesteading.
I think the most importantthing that I want to highlight
for those that are listening isthat you may be a homesteader
already and not even know it.
There are many spokes to thehomesteading wheel.
So let's start firstly with howI got here.
(02:37):
You mentioned my chronicillness and it was really
debilitating and it was awake-up call because I had to
make a decision if I was goingto slow down and appreciate my
body and take care of it in away that allowed it space and
energy to heal.
So I feel like before my 40s.
I was running on empty a greatdeal of the time and in grad
(03:01):
school one of my teachers intraditional Chinese medicine she
had said you know,vegetarianism is good for people
that want to Buddha Buddha allday, but we're not Buddha Buddha
all day, we're treatingpatients.
Low-cost clinic where I wasburning a lot of energy and
(03:23):
continuing to do it.
On processed foods.
They were good processed foods.
They were expensive, healthy,organic, pretty pictures on the
box, processed foods and so Ithought I was doing the right
thing.
I hadn't had refined sugar forprobably 15 years by the time I
got sick.
But I was sneaking in sugarwith high carbs, like a lot of
(03:46):
rice and brown rice what's wrongwith brown rice?
But I would do that.
And then eventually it caught upwith me, and so what happened
was I developed a chronic coughand I also had my period, for I
think it was nine to 11 weeksit's all foggy because I started
having a lot of cognitiveissues during this time, so much
(04:08):
so that I couldn't drive.
I couldn't remember what wasbeing said at the doctor's
offices.
My husband had to be myhealthcare advocate after a time
, and I was just spiraling and Ididn't understand why.
And I was still working.
I was working two days a weekand then resting for five days,
and what would happen is I'dwork two days, my chronic cough
would get worse or I'd get aninfection, and then I would be
(04:29):
down for five days until it wastime to work again.
And I did this for about sevenmonths, and then one day I was
no longer able to use my legs.
I couldn't stand up on my own,and it had been getting bad
because I wasn't able to standfor more than five minutes
without being fatigued.
But when my body stoppedworking in that way, I knew that
(04:51):
I finally was able to go.
I think I'm in trouble.
I was experiencing a great dealof aphasia, which, for those of
you that don't know whataphasia is, it's when you can't
get grasp words.
A lot of stroke victims getthis.
I had not had a stroke, but Icouldn't finish simple sentences
like I'm finishing now, and itwas really scary.
But I was too tired to bescared.
And so I went to sevendifferent doctors a neurologist,
(05:16):
a gynecologist to make sure Ididn't have ovarian cancer from
all the bleeding, and, you know,someone to see my liver.
And every single time I went tosomeone, they said that well,
this is your problem, and it was.
I wanted, I wanted a Westerndiagnosis so that I could treat
it with acupuncture and herbalmedicine, but I wasn't able to
get the diagnosis.
(05:36):
I just kept getting we'll comeback and we'll do more tests and
more tests and more tests.
Meanwhile, I was getting moreand more ill and so I finally
went to one of my colleagues,who is.
He focuses on herbology,chinese herbology, and he was
feeling my pulse and he goes ohwell, what you're experiencing
right now is yin separating fromyang In Chinese medicine.
That is bad news.
(05:57):
That is when people are justabout to go into a coma or just
about to die.
It's the yin of your bodyseparating from the yang of your
body, and it's for very, verysick patients.
And I thought, oh my gosh, Igot to do something because I
don't want my husband to have tobury a young wife.
That was really my thought.
I don't want to leave my familywith the burden of mourning me
(06:19):
unnecessarily if my body canheal.
And so I quit my job and slept,and slept, and slept, and slept
.
And at this point I was still avegetarian and one of my
holistic doctors functionalmedicine doctors said I just I'm
going to tell you I don't seevegetarians get better.
And then I started doing someresearch on vegetarianism and I
(06:41):
had become a vegetarian at 16.
So I'd been a vegetarian for 27years and I decided well, you
know, in a last ditch effort,maybe I can do this.
And so I started findingregenerative farms and like
getting away from the thing thatI was protesting most, which
was factory farms, big ag, youknow, just packing all these
(07:02):
animals into terribly cruelplaces.
There were other options, Ijust hadn't known about them,
and so I started investigatingthat and slowly started
incorporating meat into my dietas well as nutrient dense food,
a few.
I think about a year ago I foundthe GAPS gut and physiology
protocol, which involves a lotof juicing and lots of animal
(07:26):
fats and lots of very easy todigest foods, on top of regular
detoxes through baths and basicenemas and coffee enemas, and I
noticed an immediate changebecause I was healing my gut and
so once I started healing mygut, my brain started to heal,
the migraraine started leaving,I had more energy, my ability to
(07:46):
speak was coming back.
It was all coming back quitequickly.
So all of this to say that atthe same time that I was healing
from this chronic illness, thenthe pandemic hit right and I
remember thinking like well,I've isolated from all people
for a couple of years now Ithink it had been a few years,
(08:06):
so I'll be fine with this fortwo weeks.
But then, you know, two weekslater, suddenly people are panic
buying food at the grocerystore and my biggest wake up
call in terms of the fragilityof our food industrial system it
was when I went to the store,or maybe it was DoorDash, I
(08:27):
don't know if we were allowed togo to the store at that time
and I tried to get organicgarlic and organic ginger, which
are very important herbs in theChinese medicine cabinet for
traditional Chinese medicine,and they did not have it.
They were sold out.
And I thought this is.
I've never experienced nothaving food on our shelves
(08:47):
before and I had seen it.
I went when I was 18, to theSoviet Union.
The fall of the Iron Curtainhad just fallen and they were
allowing Americans to come inand I was 18, and I saw all of
these stores, these giant storeswith like one piece of bread on
an entire shelf.
So I remembered in my mind.
And then I come from a familyof war refugees, so I've been
(09:09):
told stories of communism andyou know what happens.
So I understand food shortages,but I'd never seen it in
America.
And I came home that day and Iwas very upset and I told my
husband I'm really nervous aboutthis and he goes well, why
don't we just grow some of ourown food?
And I paused, I blinked slowlyand then I said do you know who
(09:29):
I am?
We've been married for like 20years.
I was notorious for going to thegarden store buying a plant and
asking the gardener please canyou give me something that won't
die?
And then I would promptly killit within a week, and then I'd
(09:51):
go back in a month and buyanother.
You know, sad victim that wouldthen be tortured by me and I
either watered too much, wateredtoo little.
I didn't know anything aboutgardening, but I know that the
prescription to anxiety isaction, and so I was like, well,
I mean, I don't have anythingelse to do.
So I went to the garden storeand I started learning how to
grow food.
And I have grown garlic it'sactually quite easy and I've
grown ginger, and there's asense of empowerment that comes
(10:14):
with that, and it definitelycuts the ties that hopelessness
can bind us to.
So that's when I started going.
There's something about this.
So I started gardening, Istarted fermenting I don't
remember which came first, but Ifell in love with fermentation,
mostly because even when I waschronically ill, I could still
go and make some pickles andthen let it sit on my shelf for
(10:35):
a little bit, and so the twocame hand in hand.
And when I started reading aboutthis stuff, I wanted to learn
how to do gardening if you haveback pain and I noticed that
people kept saying homesteading,homesteading, homesteading.
I'm like, what is that?
And it turns out thathomesteading is just a
sustainable, intentional way ofliving.
(10:55):
It's an intentional way of lifeand it harkens back to some of
our traditions which we're notthat far from at least I'm not
that far from and you get to doit in ways that delight you.
You know, I don't makesourdough bread because that's
not my homesteading passion.
So that's a little bit of mystory of how I got to
(11:17):
homesteading and being on thispodcast with you having being on
this podcast with you, okay,great.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So, yeah, let's recap for a second.
Yeah, so you were sufferingfrom this sounds like pretty
mysterious chronic illness, andit also sounds like there was a
link to your food, and I knowthat you said that you were a
vegetarian and just be.
I think there's a bigmisconception about being
(11:47):
vegetarian or vegan that thatnecessarily equals healthier,
and sometimes you can eat reallypoorly as a vegan.
Yes, and it's not necessarilyhealthier, and so you have to be
really mindful of protein andcertain nutrients to be really
mindful of protein and certainnutrients.
And so I don't know if you evergot a definitive answer to your
(12:09):
what was ailing you, but itsounds like just changing your
diet really had an enormousimpact on your healing.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yes, food, community, rest and movement.
So when I was so sick, I couldwalk only five minutes and I'd
get nauseous and we'd have tocome back to the house and my
husband had to come with mebecause my cognition was so
clouded that I couldn't crossstreets.
There was too many decisionsthat had to be made in order to
cross the street safely, and Iwas.
(12:43):
I had such brain fog that Icouldn't do those things.
And I say community because youhave to.
You know, we are social beings,so it's not just.
I started juicing and suddenlymy life was better.
It was a number of things, and Iknew, as a practitioner, I kept
going what would I tell mypatient?
What would I tell my patient?
And so, just before I got sick,I did something markedly
(13:07):
different in my life.
I did something purely forpleasure, and what that was is I
decided to learn French.
My husband and I visit Francefrom time to time, but it's not
like there's 1% of thepopulation in the area that I
live in speak French.
It wasn't like it was useful atall.
It was just something I wantedto do because I liked the way it
sounded.
I've always wanted to learn alanguage, and so I had about six
(13:29):
months of learning thislanguage before I got sick and I
decided to keep it and thepeople that I spoke with like my
teachers online and I had a fewlanguage learning friends
online none of them knew I wasill.
So I had to cancel a lotbecause I was ill, but I never
told them why I was canceling.
And so there was this onepocket of my world where people
(13:50):
didn't know I was sick.
That wasn't my story, and theynow a lot of them now know.
But there was something aboutthat, because the people that I
loved and cared for me the youknow, they always had puppy dog
eyes when they were like, howare you doing no-transcript?
(14:32):
How big it was.
I just knew that somethingwasn't working and so I'm going
to try homeopathy andacupuncture and herbs and I was
like throwing spaghetti on thewall and seeing what stuck.
But what stuck, really what wasthe most magical, was getting
nutrient dense foods in my bodyand the body knows how to heal.
Like I was taught that in gradschool.
(14:53):
We were often talked trust theneedles, which really means
trust that patient's body.
Like I don't have to be supercreative or clever, I just need
to do the pattern, the patterndiagnosis, and then find and
then treat them according tothat pattern and the body does
the rest.
And it's remarkable.
So if I could do that inpractice in the clinic, when I
took off my work clothes and Iwas at home, could I do that at
(15:17):
home and I recognized thatfinally I could.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, I want to pause for a second, because I don't
know if I mentioned this before,but you are a trained
acupuncturist, correct?
So that's why, when you'retalking about needles and so you
, yeah, that's your wholebusiness, right, and your whole
career is acupuncture.
So I want to just make surethat we were clear on that,
(15:44):
because I know that we hadn'tmentioned it before.
So community was reallyimportant food and then COVID
happened, yes, and that createsa lot of isolation and you
couldn't get access to thingsthat were very important to you.
I totally get that.
I remember that very clearly,because food is very, very
(16:05):
important to me as well.
As a nutritionist and a cookinginstructor and chef, I'm cooking
all the time, so to not be ableto walk into a grocery store
freely and go to a farmer'smarket was extremely stressful,
(16:27):
extremely stressful, and so itsounds like that's what really
prompted you, though, to thenstart growing your own food,
which is such a wonderfulpractice, because you are then
totally in control of your food.
You want organic garlic?
You're going to grow it.
You want organic ginger?
You know you can do that.
It sounds like in los angeles,too.
I don't know if I, if I couldeven grow ginger in connecticut,
(16:51):
but where you live you couldprobably do that very easily.
Well, and then that led intothis, this homesteading
lifestyle that's correct.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Well, I will say you might want to.
You might want to experimentwith garlic.
You said ginger.
You don't know if you can growginger.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yeah, I can grow garlic, but I I have never tried
ginger, I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
That might be tough.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, if you walk into a garden store here, you
would not find.
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I don't think so.
I mean there's.
I mean, if you did a greenhouse, of course, yeah, but garlic
for sure, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
So then you went from just realizing that you could
start maybe growing food, eventhough you had never done it
before.
Yeah, and you kill allhouseplants and everything.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Although I see a couple of plants Now yes, behind
you.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
On Zoom but that this philosophy of homesteading then
came to be and you describe itas an intentional way of living
or of life correct.
So let's talk a little bit moreabout homesteading.
And also because, like I saidbefore, you live in Los Angeles.
(18:01):
I think when people think ormany people think of
homesteading, they think ofliving someplace very rural.
That's right, you know where.
You have no choice.
Your closest grocery store is50 miles away, and so you're
going to be raising chickens andgoats and cows and growing all
your own food so you can survive.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yes, and growing all your own food so you can survive
on your property.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
So you don't technically need to survive in
this way, because I imagine thatyou have access to lots of food
sources there, but it is a wayof life.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It's a way of life and I will say that the first
thing that I thought of when Ithought of homesteaders was
someone like Little House on thePrairie.
They live in the middle ofnowhere.
They've got some kids.
They've got to fight off bearswith a rifle.
They've got homemade clothesit's probably made out of
curtains, I don't know and whatreally the original homesteaders
were.
That there was a series ofhomesteader acts, starting in
(19:02):
1862 where the federalgovernment gave federal land to
private owners, about 270million acres.
A lot of that did not go toLittle House on the Prairie, it
went to big business, sadly, butthere was quite a few
homesteaders that had longbeards and bonnets and all that
stuff.
Homesteading now is more of anintentional way of living, as
(19:24):
I'd mentioned before, and it's amindfulness practice.
I think a lot of minimalism andhomesteading can go hand in
hand.
I think there's a lot ofcrossover into what's trendy now
, doing things that you love,like the woman that cleans
closets Marie Kondo, I think, isher name.
She know she was really bigabout tidying up.
(19:45):
Well, homesteading can go intothat, because you can decide on
things that you absolutely love.
What homesteading looks likenow and again it's got many
spokes to the wheel, so I'mgoing to name a few, but there's
a lot more.
It's reducing toxic load inyour home, building your gut
microbiomes with nutrient-densefoods so that your terrain is
really strong, so that you'renot getting sick and you can
(20:07):
close that loop.
You're not constantly going tothe pharmacy or the hospital or
urgent care.
Growing edible landscaping isanother spoke.
And connecting more deeply withour innate resourcefulness
that's the real key is I don'thave to do it all alone, but I
also can do a lot of it.
And so when we connect, we'regoing to.
(20:28):
You know you're going to meetother people in the community
that have similar interests andyou kind of you share tasks.
For instance, at the farmer'smarket, there's this incredible
baker that makes 48 hourfermented sourdough.
My husband loves bread and Iwas like, well, I think I should
start making this bread.
And he's like, why you don'teat it?
And we have a baker that makesit incredibly for 12 bucks.
(20:48):
And I'm like, well, I think Ishould continue to buy it from
the baker.
That's a really good idea.
And so, because I have theability to have convenience Now
I will say that there's an urbanfarm.
It's a little postage stamp.
There's probably more than one,but one that I know of a
postage stamp house with alittle, not even an acre of land
(21:08):
, like tiny, tiny, like innercity land, and he grows enough
food.
I think it's a quarter.
No, it's not a quarter, it'slike one fifth of an acre of
land.
He grows enough food for fourpeople for the entire year, like
enough produce in downtown LosAngeles.
Know Los Angeles.
That's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And so it's so possible.
It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
And so what I learned with homesteading because I did
a lot of permaculture whichpermaculture is such an
incredible education kind of aneducation group, and what
they're teaching you is to mimickind of an education group, and
what they're teaching you is tomimic nature in your backyard.
So, for example, I have thingscalled guilds, which are really
(21:52):
families.
I'll have a tree, a fruit tree,and then when the fruit tree's
a baby, I will have some covercrop around it that I can eat.
So maybe or not eat, maybe it'spretty like snapdragons or I
think there's I forget what theother.
I'm not big on flowers, butthere's other flowers that will
cover the ground and keep thatground, because our ground gets
really, really hot and reallyreally dry so I need to keep it
(22:14):
moist so I don't actually needto mulch.
I can mulch with living beans.
And then I'll have anotherthing, like one of my favorite.
What is the name of it?
It starts with a C Comfrey,that's it.
I love comfrey because it's anitrogen fixer, so it goes
really deep down.
It doesn't affect any of theother roots but it's going to
feed the tree and then I canalso use it medicinally for
(22:35):
bruises and scrapes and all thatstuff it's called knit bone in
familial herbal remediesremedies, and so I've created
this family and then I can walkaway and I do walk, I'm I am not
like you, I'm not a proudgardener, I am a really lazy
gardener, and so I will walkaway for a few months if stuff
gets really busy and I'll comeback and everything's still
(22:57):
alive and thriving in southernCalifornia in very, very hot
area, because it's off of mycemented backyard I have some
planters that are mean, it's hotand these things are doing just
fine.
I gave a tour yesterday and Iwas showing some taro, some
yarrow, which is great forstopping bleeding for
emergencies, and it was thrivingand I haven't watered this
thing in like a few months,honestly, because I'm a lazy
(23:20):
gardener and so homesteadingdoesn't have to be perfect or
beautiful.
It can be very messy if that'sthe type of person you are,
which for me, that's what mygardening looks like.
But we can come back to findingwhat homesteading means to us,
and I think that's what I wasmost surprised about.
I'm like, I'm not a homesteader, I don't even cook and as a
nutritionist, I think we shouldtalk about this a little bit,
because there's lots ofprofessional women, career women
(23:42):
and career men that think I'mtoo busy to cook.
I'm just going to, I'm going tooutsource it.
And you can get into a lot oftrouble outsourcing.
So initially when I wasoutsourcing, I was getting
rotisserie chicken at theorganic grocery store that's,
you know, very close to my house, and that was all fine and good
, except I didn't know what oilsthey were using on that chicken
(24:03):
.
They were using stuff that Iprobably wouldn't use in my
kitchen.
So when I bake a chicken, Ibake it with a little bit of
chicken fat on top to give it anice crispy feel, but I don't
know what they were using.
And seed oils I'm highlyallergic to them.
They really make me ill.
But I didn't know that theymade me ill because I'd had them
all the time, because I wasoutsourcing all of my food.
(24:24):
So what I would say to theprofessional that's like I'm
just too busy.
There are ways that you cancreate found time and there's
ways that you can prioritize thethings that are important to
you in a way that's not painful.
For me.
Cooking felt painful, so Iinitially started with I'm going
(24:45):
to find a recipe that has nomore than three steps.
So chicken, you clean it, youput some grease on it, you stick
it in the oven.
That's three, you know lessthan three steps, and it's and
it's not three steps and it'sit's fast food.
Right Now I have a chicken thatI can pull out and make chicken
salad or soup or sandwiches, orjust that with a little side,
(25:07):
and so I'd love for us to talk alittle bit about that.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
This idea that cooking is just not that
important, because it is oh yeah, I could talk I mean, I could
do millions of podcasts on thatbecause I mean, this is the
theme that I see with so manypeople is that they are just too
busy to cook.
And number one, I feel likewhen you are outsourcing, like
(25:31):
you said which I like thatanalogy you are losing your
connection to your food.
I mean you don't know what thechicken that you buy for the
rotisserie chicken, you don'tknow what they're making it with
when you go to a restaurant.
It's all fine to go out to arestaurant every once in a while
, but you just lose theconnection.
You don't know what they'remaking it with when you go to a
restaurant.
It's all fine to go out to arestaurant every once in a while
, but you just lose theconnection.
You don't know how they'repreparing things and so you
don't know the ingredients, thesources, all of that.
(25:55):
So I think the more that we cancook at home, the better, and be
more in just in charge of ourfood, even just for the amount
of calories and the fat and thesalt, and that you know, just
like that basic level, whenpeople say that they're too busy
to cook, I have lots of tipsfor that, I mean number one, you
(26:16):
don't need to be a five-stargourmet chef.
I mean it does not have to looklike something that came out of
a food channel show.
It can just be as simple asroasting a chicken once a week,
and I mean that's such a greatexample, as one roast chicken
can make a couple of meals.
You can put it into soup, youcan make tacos, you can whatever
(26:40):
you know, you can make chickensalad, whatever, whatever, and
so that's a really good example.
So I think we want to learn howto maximize food in that way
making double of something,freezing half of it, having you
know things on hand.
So meal prepping and mealplanning, I think, are very,
(27:01):
very crucial steps in that, andthat's you can't just wander
aimlessly through a grocerystore five days a week just
wondering, like, what am Ihaving for dinner tonight?
It really does take some kindof forethought and plan and it
lessens the stress of what am Igoing to eat every week?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yes, that's exactly right.
And I think even gardening andI'm not suggesting that people
garden if they feel that theycan't even, you know, roast a
chicken but gardening makes forthis really there's less plan
and less prep.
So sometimes I'll go out intomy garden and go, oh, the
cucumbers are up, I guess it'stime to make cucumber salad.
Or oh, the basil's here, let'smake a pasta salad with basil.
(27:41):
But I think if we circle backto because sometimes for me, if
I heard just bake a chicken, I'dbe like that's insane.
You've like what?
What are you talking about?
Like I've still have.
I remember in grad school I hadbedsheets for curtains because I
just didn't have time to go getbedsheets, so we just had
bedsheets for curtains.
So you're going to tell thelistener that has bedsheets for
(28:03):
curtains to roast a chicken.
And I will say that minute byminute it's easier and more
effective to roast a chickenthan it is to go out to a fast
food joint, stand in line, getin your car, get in line, wait
for the order, come back, feellike crap after you eat it.
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So there's just there's a few pieces.
So once a week we make a roastchicken.
Do we get tired of chicken?
No, we, we, we.
You know, now that I'm gettingbetter at cooking we switch it
up a little bit, but initiallyit was like we have cold chicken
in the fridge.
That's a win.
Like I can eat a leg of coldchicken with a piece of steamed
broccoli, and I'm good.
Before I thought that it waseasier to get in that fast food
(28:47):
line because I was.
That you know.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, no, I understand that that there is a
lot of mental blocks to cookinga lot.
I mean, that was something thatI think when I first got into
my business I was not totallyprepared for that.
There was going to be a lot offear around cooking and just
this mental block of like Ican't cook, right, you want to.
(29:09):
You want to tell me to cook?
How do I even do that?
I mean, what does that mean?
Roasted chicken, if you didn'tlearn how to cook from your mom?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
or your, you know right so then it goes.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
It's it's difficult, but I think so just taking these
like small, step-by-step right,it's possible.
Yeah, so when I say you have tostart meal planning and meal
prepping, I totally get that youhave to start where you're at,
where you're comfortable.
And same with gardening.
I mean same with gardening.
I tell people like I have avery large vegetable garden.
(29:42):
That was years, though, of meplanning it, failing.
I mean I could tell you storiesall day about, like my first
couple of gardens.
It was just like such a fail.
And now it's a large vegetablegarden that sometimes doesn't do
great, and that's just how itgoes.
And I love how you talk justmore about outsourcing some of
(30:05):
the other things that come inwith your homesteading mindset,
like buying the bread from agreat baker who makes.
I'm sure you know exactly whereher ingredients come from and
you feel good about buying herbread rather than you taking
your time to make bread.
You know that that's just notin your wheelhouse, that you
(30:26):
want to even be baking bread,and that's fine.
And I've been there.
I mean I have bees at my house,we're beekeepers, I've had
chickens, I bake bread, thecompost, you know it's like some
things have worked.
We don't have chickens anymorejust because of our lifestyle
and traveling and everything.
It's hard to keep chickens whenyou're not.
(30:48):
You know you have to be thereall the time you can travel with
bees like bees are pretty youcan leave alone for, yeah, a
couple of weeks.
You don't have to be likeattending, you know, tending to
them every single day on theirown.
But chickens are different.
Chickens need your attention.
They're like pets.
They need love, but we don'twant to outsource too much,
(31:08):
right?
We want to have some controlover our food and our, you know,
and our ability to, to createour own health around.
(31:34):
That, you know, and, and just,and it gives you, I think, a
good sense of control.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
It gives you a sense of hopefulness, if you can see.
First of all, I didn't evenknow, pardon me, what broccoli
looked like coming out of theground, like that's how divorced
I was from my food.
I was a latchkey kid to incomehome.
Everybody was out of the house,so of course they weren't going
to teach me how to cook.
They weren't there to cook.
We lived on Pop-Tarts andmicrowave stuff growing up, and
so I do agree with you thatpatient compliance is really
(32:02):
tricky, and it's always been anissue, this patient compliance.
And so even when I'm treatingpatients in the clinic and they
come for acupuncture, I'm oftengiving them homework and saying
try this one little thing.
And a lot of times I hear thosethree big myths, which is I
don't have time, I don't haveenough money and it's too
complicated.
And I hope that the readers,the listener, reader because I'm
an author, I hope that thelistener is taking this in, and
(32:27):
especially that's what I waslooking for for the reader as
well that it's possible.
It's not that complicated,especially if you focus on what
you love.
For example, if gardening isnot right now something that
interests you, what doesinterest you?
If cooking feels like too much,what does feel like something
that you can.
For me it was fermentation.
I loved the idea of increasingmy vitamin count simply by
(32:50):
putting a jar of some vegetableswith salt and water on my
counter one of the fun factsthat I learned, which made me so
happy, and I told everyone atevery cocktail party I went to,
because I go to so many cocktailparties.
Who goes to cocktail parties1950s?
With my little martini?
That's where I am usually on aSaturday.
(33:11):
But I was constantly saying doyou know that in a table, a
teaspoon of sauerkraut there'smore probiotics than an entire
bottle of probiotics?
Like that, to me, blew my mind.
So if someone is starting to getinto homesteading or starting
to create a more mindful,intentional way of life, and
there's one thing that theycould talk ad infinitum about,
(33:34):
right, like you could talk abouthow to make cooking easy.
Like your eyes lit up when youwere talking about it.
You're a nutritionist, you'redoing the right thing, you're
doing what you're supposed to bedoing, and so when we find
something as a hobby that feels,you know, very full of passion
and desire and motivation,that's the corner that we can
start on and we can grow outfrom there.
You know you may have been agood cook initially and then you
(33:56):
got into gardening because itwas the next step in your
passion journey and now you havethis incredible and yes, there
are.
I think it's really important toshow our bumps and bruises.
Like I feel like I don't haveany social media, but if I ever
do go back to social media, I'mgoing to take pictures of all
the ugly patches of my gardenand I'm going to show people
(34:19):
like this is what a real gardenlooks like, if you're not doing
it.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I know and I don't mean tosound like.
Well, I have a large vegetablegarden and I mean, believe me, I
have had years where thingsdon't grow.
I actually just this year gotmy soil tested for the first
time in a good couple of yearsand they told me that I had too
much of everything in there allthe nutrients, it was like
(34:44):
because I compost so much and soregularly that I was
overfeeding my garden.
I had no idea in all of theseyears of gardening that you
could actually overdo addingcompost into your bed.
So they said leave your bedsalone for a couple of years.
And I know, like last year, alot of my vegetables, they
(35:07):
weren't like vibrant.
So I'm just experimenting thisyear and seeing how that all
comes out.
So it's all like a give and takeand I think the luxury that we
have living in suburbs and stuffand we don't live out in the
middle of Montana is that if allelse fails and you're gone, you
(35:28):
can go outsource it Right Tolike.
You can go get to the grocerystore and find food.
It's not like you're going tostarve, but it's still, I think,
extremely important to grow.
And then there's nothing betterthan growing tomatoes or herbs
and picking them right out ofyour garden.
Or, like you said before, allof a sudden you have a bumper
(35:49):
crop of cucumbers, and so thenthat's what becomes part of your
plan for the week.
Is that you have 20 cucumbers?
What am I going to do with them?
That's fun for me.
I know for some people this canbe intimidating, and I tell
people that if you're juststarting, get a container on
your deck and grow some herbs.
That's a great start.
(36:11):
Have some fresh herbs that youcan put into your food and see
how that feels.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
In my book I mentioned that herbs are the
gateway drug for gardeners,because it's hard to kill them
and it gets you started, and Idid a lot of them.
I do something called simpling,which is just taking an herb
from your garden or going outinto your garden and kind of
figuring out what does my gardenwant to give me today for my
water.
And then I'll take like somemint and maybe a little bit of
(36:38):
rosemary, and I'll just throwthose sprigs in some water, let
it sit on my counter for a fewhours and then I have this
spa-like deliciousness.
Well, guess what?
That easy step of walking out,clipping two little herbs or
even, for those that aren'tgrowing food, going into the
grocery store and sniffing, orgoing to the farmer's market and
sniffing some herbs and justpicking a satchel of them and
(36:59):
deciding that you're going toput some in your water and some
in your food.
It does give you that.
That is homesteading, that isgetting more connected to your
true essence, right?
The fact that the natural worldand humans are one, they're not
separate.
Just because we have, you know,polyester clothing and drive-in
metal boxes Like that doesn'tmake us any separate from that.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, no, I love your definition of homesteading and
this concept of it doesn't haveto be this all or nothing, right
?
I mean, I know you've mentionedfermenting before.
I have absolutely dabbled in alot of I've made kombucha.
I don't think kombucha isreally for me to make.
I mean I've done it.
I could say I checked it off mylist.
(37:42):
I'm like I you know, I knowreally good places to get
kombucha, so I don't really feelthe need to do that again.
But yeah, so things like that,I think I think the think maybe
the important takeaway is justto try, try some things and see
what works.
And I know earlier we weretalking about using some kitchen
(38:06):
scraps.
I mean, the art of composting,I think, is really part of
gardening and it's such animportant part because you pick
things out of your garden.
You have all the scraps thefruit scraps and vegetable
scraps you then compost.
I know this is maybe very nextlevel for some people, but the
you know the compost which thenturns into dirt then can go back
(38:30):
and feed your garden.
But you were talking about away to also use kitchen scraps.
That I wanted to mentionbecause I think this is a very
easy way to maybe take one stepinto homesteading.
So do you want to talk aboutyour vinegar that?
Speaker 2 (38:49):
we were talking about .
I've never done this and I'mvery excited to go home today
and do this.
Well, once you do it, I want tohear all about it.
I really do.
So.
There's something called fruitscrap vinegar.
It's so easy to make.
You just take your fruit scraps, so your apple cores, and I did
it with recently.
I did it with grapefruit peels,because grapefruits are in
(39:10):
season and so I was getting alot at the farmer's market.
They were so good and I wouldjust throw them into a jar.
So I have a half gallon jar,mason jar, and I fill it with
water and then I put in a halfcup of sugar.
So a half cup of sugar for ahalf gallon of water and fruit
scraps, and then I just shake itup and I put it on my counter
(39:31):
with a canning lid.
So I have plastic lids as well,just because they don't rust
and stuff.
But for the actual fermentationI like to have a lid that will
pop.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And so every day.
So just to get, let's just getclear, because if people are
like just starting out, so acanning lid just has like a hole
in the top, like a littlestopper kind of thing.
You can let a little air, likepressure out the top like a
little stopper kind of thing youcan let a little air like
pressure out.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, that's a fancier version.
You can get them at masontopscom, by the way, if people are
questioning where to get themthis is just the metal lid that
you have, like when you buypickles at the store, and you
pop it open, it goes and it's alid and it's a ring.
It's a metal lid and a metalring.
You can also get plastic ringswhich don't.
They don't rust as much, soit's not the one with the hole.
(40:19):
That's really good forfermenting vegetables, like with
this one.
You don't need to pop it asmuch.
So you don't really you can.
You can do the hole for sure,and masontopscom has has those.
The ones that you're talkingabout are silicone and they let
the air out and they're muchmore.
they're great because you canforget about it and not get
fermented.
In this case, it's just themetal one that usually comes
(40:40):
with the mason jar that you buy.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Okay, so you let this sit on your counter.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
You let it sit on your counter Every day.
You take a long fork orchopsticks or a butter knife and
you mix it and what you'redoing is you're just trying to
get the top layer to go downunder the water so that mold
doesn't form.
You're just gently mixing it,gently mixing it, and after
about 30 days it will start tochange.
Now what I do, because I'm nota vinegar expert and I still am
(41:08):
a little Western minded, so I'mlike, oh, I don't know if I, you
know, modern minded, I'm notused to just using vinegar.
I go and get acid strips thatyou can tell what the acid is.
They're like $3.
You get them online and you dipit in and it'll tell you.
And when it gets to the acid,that's for cleaning vinegar.
And I'm sorry, I don't rememberwhat it is.
(41:28):
Remember, I told you, if Idon't write it down, I don't
remember.
It's just the one that's.
It could be edible, but it'sdefinitely going to clean your,
your, um, your counters.
Then I strain it throughcheesecloth so I get a second.
This is at the end of 30 days.
I get a second um Mason jar.
I put cheesecloth over it,which could be a t-shirt, if you
(41:50):
have a white t-shirt.
That's, you know, clean like atea towel.
It's very thin cotton.
You strain it by.
What that means is just pouringthe vinegar through that
cheesecloth into the mason jar.
Sometimes I'll let it sit alittle longer if it hasn't
gotten acidic enough.
And then I take that strainedliquid and I put half of it in a
spray bottle.
I fill the other half up withwater so it's half and half and
(42:14):
I put in my favorite essentialoils and I write on the bottle
what the essential oils are sothat when I refill it I can do
the same.
So I like rosemary.
It smells great for cleaning.
Lemon balm, definitely tea tree, because it's so antimicrobial.
And so let's just say I'll dothose three.
You don't need as much tea treebecause it's a bully scenting.
It's very strong.
(42:34):
So you use a little bit of that, a lot of the rosemary, a lot
of the lemon balm.
And now you have this.
You know $8 or $9 bottle oforganic cleaning that you know
where it's come from.
It's saved you now $8 to $9 andit costs you relatively nothing
, because if you're not usingthe sugar for anything else in
your house, then that sugar,that bag of sugar, is going to
(42:55):
go a long, long way.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Well, great, I'm excited.
I can't believe that I have.
I mean, I've heard of versionsof this and I cannot believe,
like in my homesteading journey,that I have not done this yet.
But I have definitely got to dothis and I will keep you posted
and let you know how it?
Turns out and I will put thatrecipe in my show notes so
people can get that.
And I will put that recipe inmy show notes so people can get
that Great that would be.
(43:16):
yeah, I think, an easy way toease into some homesteading
habits.
So tell me a little bit aboutyour book and then how people
can find you and what you'redoing now, great.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Well, I'm so happy to be chatting with you and I love
that, would you have?
Speaker 1 (43:35):
called yourself a homesteader before this
conversation.
No, I definitely would not havecalled myself a homesteader
because, honestly, when I saythat, I think of homesteading, I
would never have identifiedmyself as a homesteader.
But while we're talking and I'mlike, oh, I do do a lot of
those homesteading habits, yeah,you are a hardcore homesteader.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, I know I'm more of a homesteader than I had
imagined.
Yes, you've had chickens I mean, that's fantastic.
And bees oh my gosh.
I could talk to you for hoursabout that.
So my book, the HomesteaderMindset, helps busy people
tackle the overwhelm of creatinga sustainable, healthy
lifestyle through theimplementation of small daily
habits.
So we didn't talk a lot abouthabit formation, but that really
is the premise.
What we did talk about, whichis very important and key to the
(44:21):
homesteader mindset, is we'rehelping people get to the joy
and the pleasure and findingways to create these habits
without pain, with joy.
I really think that that's likeeverything that you've talked
about.
I do have a free gift for yourlisteners.
Really think that that's likeeverything that you've talked
about.
I do have a free gift for yourlisteners.
It's a Homesteader HabitTracker and you can get that at
my website, which iswwwcreatewellnessprojectcom.
(44:45):
Forward slash gift that'sG-I-F-T and that will give you
an idea of how to create thesetiny little habits and also give
you a tracker to start doingthem.
So if you want to do yourvinegar like, that could be one
of your first habits.
You know, did I shake it up?
Did I stir it up every day?
And then you can let us know,because Heather and I are really
excited to have you join us inthe homesteading revolution.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yes, yes, so that's great and I will put that in the
show notes too, that link, andthen they can get your book
right Probably easily on yourwebsite.
I'll link that.
I could talk all day with youabout homesteading and gardening
and growing food and fooditself, and maybe I'll have you
back on.
I would love to have you comeback on and do a part two,
(45:29):
because I feel like we areunfortunately out of time, but I
have a million more questions,so let's do that.
You know what I want to have youcome back, I think in the 30
days after I've made my vinegar,my spray, and let you know how
it goes.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I would love that.
And baking soda.
If you have a hard stain, youcan add baking soda, sprinkle it
on the area and then do thevinegar on top.
It's crazy, but yes, let's dothat.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Okay, all right, good , we will do that, elizabeth.
Thank you so much for coming intoday and talking.
This has been super helpful andjust meaningful, and you're
going to come back, so we'll seeyou soon.
Okay, we'll see you soon.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Thank you so much for having me.
Hey everybody and welcome back to the Real Food
Stories podcast.
We are in spring right now,especially in the Northeast,
which is my all-time favoriteseason, because it means that we
finally get to start growingand, as you know, I have been
gardening for decades and I havea very large vegetable garden,
which is kind of my pride andjoy.
(00:20):
So when I talked to my guesttoday, Elizabeth Bruckner, I
wanted to have her on to shareher story with growing and
homesteading.
So let me tell you a little bitabout Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Bruckner is the authorof the Homesteader Mindset, a
book that she claims willtransform the way you view
self-sufficiency.
(00:41):
Her book gives you the toolsand practical tips needed for a
more meaningful life.
It's a must-read for everyperson who dreams of creating
sustainable living throughtraditional skills and common
sense.
Through her research andexperimentation, Elizabeth
taught herself to compostkitchen scraps, ferment like an
(01:02):
alchemist, cook traditionalfoods and live a life that is
more connected than she everthought possible.
Regarded as the fermentationmaven, she speaks to
enthusiastic crowds on topicssuch as healing herbs in the
kitchen, the life-changing powerof habit creation for
homesteaders and the art oflacto-fermentation.
(01:24):
Now, Elizabeth, you were notalways a homesteader and in fact
, you live in the suburbs of LosAngeles, right, so that's not
really an area that I wouldfirst think of when I think
about living off the land andhomesteading.
But when we spoke a few weeksago, you told me that you spent
most of your 40s healing from achronic illness that left you
(01:48):
bedridden for weeks andhomebound for months, and you
were too sick to work for years.
So I know that food, as wetalked about, played a pivotal
role in your healing, and thencame the focus on homesteading
and really paying attention towhat you put into your body.
So I would love to hear yourstory and how you got then to
(02:12):
writing a whole book abouthomesteading.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Well, thank you for having me today, heather.
I'm really grateful that we'rechatting about this, and I love
chatting about all thingshomesteading.
I think the most importantthing that I want to highlight
for those that are listening isthat you may be a homesteader
already and not even know it.
There are many spokes to thehomesteading wheel.
So let's start firstly with howI got here.
(02:37):
You mentioned my chronicillness and it was really
debilitating and it was awake-up call because I had to
make a decision if I was goingto slow down and appreciate my
body and take care of it in away that allowed it space and
energy to heal.
So I feel like before my 40s.
I was running on empty a greatdeal of the time and in grad
(03:01):
school one of my teachers intraditional Chinese medicine she
had said you know,vegetarianism is good for people
that want to Buddha Buddha allday, but we're not Buddha Buddha
all day, we're treatingpatients.
Low-cost clinic where I wasburning a lot of energy and
(03:23):
continuing to do it.
On processed foods.
They were good processed foods.
They were expensive, healthy,organic, pretty pictures on the
box, processed foods and so Ithought I was doing the right
thing.
I hadn't had refined sugar forprobably 15 years by the time I
got sick.
But I was sneaking in sugarwith high carbs, like a lot of
(03:46):
rice and brown rice what's wrongwith brown rice?
But I would do that.
And then eventually it caught upwith me, and so what happened
was I developed a chronic coughand I also had my period, for I
think it was nine to 11 weeksit's all foggy because I started
having a lot of cognitiveissues during this time, so much
(04:08):
so that I couldn't drive.
I couldn't remember what wasbeing said at the doctor's
offices.
My husband had to be myhealthcare advocate after a time
, and I was just spiraling and Ididn't understand why.
And I was still working.
I was working two days a weekand then resting for five days,
and what would happen is I'dwork two days, my chronic cough
would get worse or I'd get aninfection, and then I would be
(04:29):
down for five days until it wastime to work again.
And I did this for about sevenmonths, and then one day I was
no longer able to use my legs.
I couldn't stand up on my own,and it had been getting bad
because I wasn't able to standfor more than five minutes
without being fatigued.
But when my body stoppedworking in that way, I knew that
(04:51):
I finally was able to go.
I think I'm in trouble.
I was experiencing a great dealof aphasia, which, for those of
you that don't know whataphasia is, it's when you can't
get grasp words.
A lot of stroke victims getthis.
I had not had a stroke, but Icouldn't finish simple sentences
like I'm finishing now, and itwas really scary.
But I was too tired to bescared.
And so I went to sevendifferent doctors a neurologist,
(05:16):
a gynecologist to make sure Ididn't have ovarian cancer from
all the bleeding, and, you know,someone to see my liver.
And every single time I went tosomeone, they said that well,
this is your problem, and it was.
I wanted, I wanted a Westerndiagnosis so that I could treat
it with acupuncture and herbalmedicine, but I wasn't able to
get the diagnosis.
(05:36):
I just kept getting we'll comeback and we'll do more tests and
more tests and more tests.
Meanwhile, I was getting moreand more ill and so I finally
went to one of my colleagues,who is.
He focuses on herbology,chinese herbology, and he was
feeling my pulse and he goes ohwell, what you're experiencing
right now is yin separating fromyang In Chinese medicine.
That is bad news.
(05:57):
That is when people are justabout to go into a coma or just
about to die.
It's the yin of your bodyseparating from the yang of your
body, and it's for very, verysick patients.
And I thought, oh my gosh, Igot to do something because I
don't want my husband to have tobury a young wife.
That was really my thought.
I don't want to leave my familywith the burden of mourning me
(06:19):
unnecessarily if my body canheal.
And so I quit my job and slept,and slept, and slept, and slept
.
And at this point I was still avegetarian and one of my
holistic doctors functionalmedicine doctors said I just I'm
going to tell you I don't seevegetarians get better.
And then I started doing someresearch on vegetarianism and I
(06:41):
had become a vegetarian at 16.
So I'd been a vegetarian for 27years and I decided well, you
know, in a last ditch effort,maybe I can do this.
And so I started findingregenerative farms and like
getting away from the thing thatI was protesting most, which
was factory farms, big ag, youknow, just packing all these
(07:02):
animals into terribly cruelplaces.
There were other options, Ijust hadn't known about them,
and so I started investigatingthat and slowly started
incorporating meat into my dietas well as nutrient dense food,
a few.
I think about a year ago I foundthe GAPS gut and physiology
protocol, which involves a lotof juicing and lots of animal
(07:26):
fats and lots of very easy todigest foods, on top of regular
detoxes through baths and basicenemas and coffee enemas, and I
noticed an immediate changebecause I was healing my gut and
so once I started healing mygut, my brain started to heal,
the migraraine started leaving,I had more energy, my ability to
(07:46):
speak was coming back.
It was all coming back quitequickly.
So all of this to say that atthe same time that I was healing
from this chronic illness, thenthe pandemic hit right and I
remember thinking like well,I've isolated from all people
for a couple of years now Ithink it had been a few years,
(08:06):
so I'll be fine with this fortwo weeks.
But then, you know, two weekslater, suddenly people are panic
buying food at the grocerystore and my biggest wake up
call in terms of the fragilityof our food industrial system it
was when I went to the store,or maybe it was DoorDash, I
(08:27):
don't know if we were allowed togo to the store at that time
and I tried to get organicgarlic and organic ginger, which
are very important herbs in theChinese medicine cabinet for
traditional Chinese medicine,and they did not have it.
They were sold out.
And I thought this is.
I've never experienced nothaving food on our shelves
(08:47):
before and I had seen it.
I went when I was 18, to theSoviet Union.
The fall of the Iron Curtainhad just fallen and they were
allowing Americans to come inand I was 18, and I saw all of
these stores, these giant storeswith like one piece of bread on
an entire shelf.
So I remembered in my mind.
And then I come from a familyof war refugees, so I've been
(09:09):
told stories of communism andyou know what happens.
So I understand food shortages,but I'd never seen it in
America.
And I came home that day and Iwas very upset and I told my
husband I'm really nervous aboutthis and he goes well, why
don't we just grow some of ourown food?
And I paused, I blinked slowlyand then I said do you know who
(09:29):
I am?
We've been married for like 20years.
I was notorious for going to thegarden store buying a plant and
asking the gardener please canyou give me something that won't
die?
And then I would promptly killit within a week, and then I'd
(09:51):
go back in a month and buyanother.
You know, sad victim that wouldthen be tortured by me and I
either watered too much, wateredtoo little.
I didn't know anything aboutgardening, but I know that the
prescription to anxiety isaction, and so I was like, well,
I mean, I don't have anythingelse to do.
So I went to the garden storeand I started learning how to
grow food.
And I have grown garlic it'sactually quite easy and I've
grown ginger, and there's asense of empowerment that comes
(10:14):
with that, and it definitelycuts the ties that hopelessness
can bind us to.
So that's when I started going.
There's something about this.
So I started gardening, Istarted fermenting I don't
remember which came first, but Ifell in love with fermentation,
mostly because even when I waschronically ill, I could still
go and make some pickles andthen let it sit on my shelf for
(10:35):
a little bit, and so the twocame hand in hand.
And when I started reading aboutthis stuff, I wanted to learn
how to do gardening if you haveback pain and I noticed that
people kept saying homesteading,homesteading, homesteading.
I'm like, what is that?
And it turns out thathomesteading is just a
sustainable, intentional way ofliving.
(10:55):
It's an intentional way of lifeand it harkens back to some of
our traditions which we're notthat far from at least I'm not
that far from and you get to doit in ways that delight you.
You know, I don't makesourdough bread because that's
not my homesteading passion.
So that's a little bit of mystory of how I got to
(11:17):
homesteading and being on thispodcast with you having being on
this podcast with you, okay,great.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
So, yeah, let's recap for a second.
Yeah, so you were sufferingfrom this sounds like pretty
mysterious chronic illness, andit also sounds like there was a
link to your food, and I knowthat you said that you were a
vegetarian and just be.
I think there's a bigmisconception about being
(11:47):
vegetarian or vegan that thatnecessarily equals healthier,
and sometimes you can eat reallypoorly as a vegan.
Yes, and it's not necessarilyhealthier, and so you have to be
really mindful of protein andcertain nutrients to be really
mindful of protein and certainnutrients.
And so I don't know if you evergot a definitive answer to your
(12:09):
what was ailing you, but itsounds like just changing your
diet really had an enormousimpact on your healing.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yes, food, community, rest and movement.
So when I was so sick, I couldwalk only five minutes and I'd
get nauseous and we'd have tocome back to the house and my
husband had to come with mebecause my cognition was so
clouded that I couldn't crossstreets.
There was too many decisionsthat had to be made in order to
cross the street safely, and Iwas.
(12:43):
I had such brain fog that Icouldn't do those things.
And I say community because youhave to.
You know, we are social beings,so it's not just.
I started juicing and suddenlymy life was better.
It was a number of things, and Iknew, as a practitioner, I kept
going what would I tell mypatient?
What would I tell my patient?
And so, just before I got sick,I did something markedly
(13:07):
different in my life.
I did something purely forpleasure, and what that was is I
decided to learn French.
My husband and I visit Francefrom time to time, but it's not
like there's 1% of thepopulation in the area that I
live in speak French.
It wasn't like it was useful atall.
It was just something I wantedto do because I liked the way it
sounded.
I've always wanted to learn alanguage, and so I had about six
(13:29):
months of learning thislanguage before I got sick and I
decided to keep it and thepeople that I spoke with like my
teachers online and I had a fewlanguage learning friends
online none of them knew I wasill.
So I had to cancel a lotbecause I was ill, but I never
told them why I was canceling.
And so there was this onepocket of my world where people
(13:50):
didn't know I was sick.
That wasn't my story, and theynow a lot of them now know.
But there was something aboutthat, because the people that I
loved and cared for me the youknow, they always had puppy dog
eyes when they were like, howare you doing no-transcript?
(14:32):
How big it was.
I just knew that somethingwasn't working and so I'm going
to try homeopathy andacupuncture and herbs and I was
like throwing spaghetti on thewall and seeing what stuck.
But what stuck, really what wasthe most magical, was getting
nutrient dense foods in my bodyand the body knows how to heal.
Like I was taught that in gradschool.
(14:53):
We were often talked trust theneedles, which really means
trust that patient's body.
Like I don't have to be supercreative or clever, I just need
to do the pattern, the patterndiagnosis, and then find and
then treat them according tothat pattern and the body does
the rest.
And it's remarkable.
So if I could do that inpractice in the clinic, when I
took off my work clothes and Iwas at home, could I do that at
(15:17):
home and I recognized thatfinally I could.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
Yeah, I want to pause for a second, because I don't
know if I mentioned this before,but you are a trained
acupuncturist, correct?
So that's why, when you'retalking about needles and so you
, yeah, that's your wholebusiness, right, and your whole
career is acupuncture.
So I want to just make surethat we were clear on that,
(15:44):
because I know that we hadn'tmentioned it before.
So community was reallyimportant food and then COVID
happened, yes, and that createsa lot of isolation and you
couldn't get access to thingsthat were very important to you.
I totally get that.
I remember that very clearly,because food is very, very
(16:05):
important to me as well.
As a nutritionist and a cookinginstructor and chef, I'm cooking
all the time, so to not be ableto walk into a grocery store
freely and go to a farmer'smarket was extremely stressful,
(16:27):
extremely stressful, and so itsounds like that's what really
prompted you, though, to thenstart growing your own food,
which is such a wonderfulpractice, because you are then
totally in control of your food.
You want organic garlic?
You're going to grow it.
You want organic ginger?
You know you can do that.
It sounds like in los angeles,too.
I don't know if I, if I couldeven grow ginger in connecticut,
(16:51):
but where you live you couldprobably do that very easily.
Well, and then that led intothis, this homesteading
lifestyle that's correct.
Speaker 2 (17:05):
Well, I will say you might want to.
You might want to experimentwith garlic.
You said ginger.
You don't know if you can growginger.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Yeah, I can grow garlic, but I I have never tried
ginger, I don't even know.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
That might be tough.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Yeah, if you walk into a garden store here, you
would not find.
Yeah, I don't.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
I don't think so.
I mean there's.
I mean, if you did a greenhouse, of course, yeah, but garlic
for sure, Okay, yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
So then you went from just realizing that you could
start maybe growing food, eventhough you had never done it
before.
Yeah, and you kill allhouseplants and everything.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Although I see a couple of plants Now yes, behind
you.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
On Zoom but that this philosophy of homesteading then
came to be and you describe itas an intentional way of living
or of life correct.
So let's talk a little bit moreabout homesteading.
And also because, like I saidbefore, you live in Los Angeles.
(18:01):
I think when people think ormany people think of
homesteading, they think ofliving someplace very rural.
That's right, you know where.
You have no choice.
Your closest grocery store is50 miles away, and so you're
going to be raising chickens andgoats and cows and growing all
your own food so you can survive.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yes, and growing all your own food so you can survive
on your property.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
So you don't technically need to survive in
this way, because I imagine thatyou have access to lots of food
sources there, but it is a wayof life.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It's a way of life and I will say that the first
thing that I thought of when Ithought of homesteaders was
someone like Little House on thePrairie.
They live in the middle ofnowhere.
They've got some kids.
They've got to fight off bearswith a rifle.
They've got homemade clothesit's probably made out of
curtains, I don't know and whatreally the original homesteaders
were.
That there was a series ofhomesteader acts, starting in
(19:02):
1862 where the federalgovernment gave federal land to
private owners, about 270million acres.
A lot of that did not go toLittle House on the Prairie, it
went to big business, sadly, butthere was quite a few
homesteaders that had longbeards and bonnets and all that
stuff.
Homesteading now is more of anintentional way of living, as
(19:24):
I'd mentioned before, and it's amindfulness practice.
I think a lot of minimalism andhomesteading can go hand in
hand.
I think there's a lot ofcrossover into what's trendy now
, doing things that you love,like the woman that cleans
closets Marie Kondo, I think, isher name.
She know she was really bigabout tidying up.
(19:45):
Well, homesteading can go intothat, because you can decide on
things that you absolutely love.
What homesteading looks likenow and again it's got many
spokes to the wheel, so I'mgoing to name a few, but there's
a lot more.
It's reducing toxic load inyour home, building your gut
microbiomes with nutrient-densefoods so that your terrain is
really strong, so that you'renot getting sick and you can
(20:07):
close that loop.
You're not constantly going tothe pharmacy or the hospital or
urgent care.
Growing edible landscaping isanother spoke.
And connecting more deeply withour innate resourcefulness
that's the real key is I don'thave to do it all alone, but I
also can do a lot of it.
And so when we connect, we'regoing to.
(20:28):
You know you're going to meetother people in the community
that have similar interests andyou kind of you share tasks.
For instance, at the farmer'smarket, there's this incredible
baker that makes 48 hourfermented sourdough.
My husband loves bread and Iwas like, well, I think I should
start making this bread.
And he's like, why you don'teat it?
And we have a baker that makesit incredibly for 12 bucks.
(20:48):
And I'm like, well, I think Ishould continue to buy it from
the baker.
That's a really good idea.
And so, because I have theability to have convenience Now
I will say that there's an urbanfarm.
It's a little postage stamp.
There's probably more than one,but one that I know of a
postage stamp house with alittle, not even an acre of land
(21:08):
, like tiny, tiny, like innercity land, and he grows enough
food.
I think it's a quarter.
No, it's not a quarter, it'slike one fifth of an acre of
land.
He grows enough food for fourpeople for the entire year, like
enough produce in downtown LosAngeles.
Know Los Angeles.
That's remarkable.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
And so it's so possible.
It's incredible.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
And so what I learned with homesteading because I did
a lot of permaculture whichpermaculture is such an
incredible education kind of aneducation group, and what
they're teaching you is to mimickind of an education group, and
what they're teaching you is tomimic nature in your backyard.
So, for example, I have thingscalled guilds, which are really
(21:52):
families.
I'll have a tree, a fruit tree,and then when the fruit tree's
a baby, I will have some covercrop around it that I can eat.
So maybe or not eat, maybe it'spretty like snapdragons or I
think there's I forget what theother.
I'm not big on flowers, butthere's other flowers that will
cover the ground and keep thatground, because our ground gets
really, really hot and reallyreally dry so I need to keep it
(22:14):
moist so I don't actually needto mulch.
I can mulch with living beans.
And then I'll have anotherthing, like one of my favorite.
What is the name of it?
It starts with a C Comfrey,that's it.
I love comfrey because it's anitrogen fixer, so it goes
really deep down.
It doesn't affect any of theother roots but it's going to
feed the tree and then I canalso use it medicinally for
(22:35):
bruises and scrapes and all thatstuff it's called knit bone in
familial herbal remediesremedies, and so I've created
this family and then I can walkaway and I do walk, I'm I am not
like you, I'm not a proudgardener, I am a really lazy
gardener, and so I will walkaway for a few months if stuff
gets really busy and I'll comeback and everything's still
(22:57):
alive and thriving in southernCalifornia in very, very hot
area, because it's off of mycemented backyard I have some
planters that are mean, it's hotand these things are doing just
fine.
I gave a tour yesterday and Iwas showing some taro, some
yarrow, which is great forstopping bleeding for
emergencies, and it was thrivingand I haven't watered this
thing in like a few months,honestly, because I'm a lazy
(23:20):
gardener and so homesteadingdoesn't have to be perfect or
beautiful.
It can be very messy if that'sthe type of person you are,
which for me, that's what mygardening looks like.
But we can come back to findingwhat homesteading means to us,
and I think that's what I wasmost surprised about.
I'm like, I'm not a homesteader, I don't even cook and as a
nutritionist, I think we shouldtalk about this a little bit,
because there's lots ofprofessional women, career women
(23:42):
and career men that think I'mtoo busy to cook.
I'm just going to, I'm going tooutsource it.
And you can get into a lot oftrouble outsourcing.
So initially when I wasoutsourcing, I was getting
rotisserie chicken at theorganic grocery store that's,
you know, very close to my house, and that was all fine and good
, except I didn't know what oilsthey were using on that chicken
(24:03):
.
They were using stuff that Iprobably wouldn't use in my
kitchen.
So when I bake a chicken, Ibake it with a little bit of
chicken fat on top to give it anice crispy feel, but I don't
know what they were using.
And seed oils I'm highlyallergic to them.
They really make me ill.
But I didn't know that theymade me ill because I'd had them
all the time, because I wasoutsourcing all of my food.
(24:24):
So what I would say to theprofessional that's like I'm
just too busy.
There are ways that you cancreate found time and there's
ways that you can prioritize thethings that are important to
you in a way that's not painful.
For me.
Cooking felt painful, so Iinitially started with I'm going
(24:45):
to find a recipe that has nomore than three steps.
So chicken, you clean it, youput some grease on it, you stick
it in the oven.
That's three, you know lessthan three steps, and it's and
it's not three steps and it'sit's fast food.
Right Now I have a chicken thatI can pull out and make chicken
salad or soup or sandwiches, orjust that with a little side,
(25:07):
and so I'd love for us to talk alittle bit about that.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
This idea that cooking is just not that
important, because it is oh yeah, I could talk I mean, I could
do millions of podcasts on thatbecause I mean, this is the
theme that I see with so manypeople is that they are just too
busy to cook.
And number one, I feel likewhen you are outsourcing, like
(25:31):
you said which I like thatanalogy you are losing your
connection to your food.
I mean you don't know what thechicken that you buy for the
rotisserie chicken, you don'tknow what they're making it with
when you go to a restaurant.
It's all fine to go out to arestaurant every once in a while
, but you just lose theconnection.
You don't know what they'remaking it with when you go to a
restaurant.
It's all fine to go out to arestaurant every once in a while
, but you just lose theconnection.
You don't know how they'repreparing things and so you
don't know the ingredients, thesources, all of that.
(25:55):
So I think the more that we cancook at home, the better, and be
more in just in charge of ourfood, even just for the amount
of calories and the fat and thesalt, and that you know, just
like that basic level, whenpeople say that they're too busy
to cook, I have lots of tipsfor that, I mean number one, you
(26:16):
don't need to be a five-stargourmet chef.
I mean it does not have to looklike something that came out of
a food channel show.
It can just be as simple asroasting a chicken once a week,
and I mean that's such a greatexample, as one roast chicken
can make a couple of meals.
You can put it into soup, youcan make tacos, you can whatever
(26:40):
you know, you can make chickensalad, whatever, whatever, and
so that's a really good example.
So I think we want to learn howto maximize food in that way
making double of something,freezing half of it, having you
know things on hand.
So meal prepping and mealplanning, I think, are very,
(27:01):
very crucial steps in that, andthat's you can't just wander
aimlessly through a grocerystore five days a week just
wondering, like, what am Ihaving for dinner tonight?
It really does take some kindof forethought and plan and it
lessens the stress of what am Igoing to eat every week?
Speaker 2 (27:19):
Yes, that's exactly right.
And I think even gardening andI'm not suggesting that people
garden if they feel that theycan't even, you know, roast a
chicken but gardening makes forthis really there's less plan
and less prep.
So sometimes I'll go out intomy garden and go, oh, the
cucumbers are up, I guess it'stime to make cucumber salad.
Or oh, the basil's here, let'smake a pasta salad with basil.
(27:41):
But I think if we circle backto because sometimes for me, if
I heard just bake a chicken, I'dbe like that's insane.
You've like what?
What are you talking about?
Like I've still have.
I remember in grad school I hadbedsheets for curtains because I
just didn't have time to go getbedsheets, so we just had
bedsheets for curtains.
So you're going to tell thelistener that has bedsheets for
(28:03):
curtains to roast a chicken.
And I will say that minute byminute it's easier and more
effective to roast a chickenthan it is to go out to a fast
food joint, stand in line, getin your car, get in line, wait
for the order, come back, feellike crap after you eat it.
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
So there's just there's a few pieces.
So once a week we make a roastchicken.
Do we get tired of chicken?
No, we, we, we.
You know, now that I'm gettingbetter at cooking we switch it
up a little bit, but initiallyit was like we have cold chicken
in the fridge.
That's a win.
Like I can eat a leg of coldchicken with a piece of steamed
broccoli, and I'm good.
Before I thought that it waseasier to get in that fast food
(28:47):
line because I was.
That you know.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, no, I understand that that there is a
lot of mental blocks to cookinga lot.
I mean, that was something thatI think when I first got into
my business I was not totallyprepared for that.
There was going to be a lot offear around cooking and just
this mental block of like Ican't cook, right, you want to.
(29:09):
You want to tell me to cook?
How do I even do that?
I mean, what does that mean?
Roasted chicken, if you didn'tlearn how to cook from your mom?
Speaker 2 (29:18):
or your, you know right so then it goes.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
It's it's difficult, but I think so just taking these
like small, step-by-step right,it's possible.
Yeah, so when I say you have tostart meal planning and meal
prepping, I totally get that youhave to start where you're at,
where you're comfortable.
And same with gardening.
I mean same with gardening.
I tell people like I have avery large vegetable garden.
(29:42):
That was years, though, of meplanning it, failing.
I mean I could tell you storiesall day about, like my first
couple of gardens.
It was just like such a fail.
And now it's a large vegetablegarden that sometimes doesn't do
great, and that's just how itgoes.
And I love how you talk justmore about outsourcing some of
(30:05):
the other things that come inwith your homesteading mindset,
like buying the bread from agreat baker who makes.
I'm sure you know exactly whereher ingredients come from and
you feel good about buying herbread rather than you taking
your time to make bread.
You know that that's just notin your wheelhouse, that you
(30:26):
want to even be baking bread,and that's fine.
And I've been there.
I mean I have bees at my house,we're beekeepers, I've had
chickens, I bake bread, thecompost, you know it's like some
things have worked.
We don't have chickens anymorejust because of our lifestyle
and traveling and everything.
It's hard to keep chickens whenyou're not.
(30:48):
You know you have to be thereall the time you can travel with
bees like bees are pretty youcan leave alone for, yeah, a
couple of weeks.
You don't have to be likeattending, you know, tending to
them every single day on theirown.
But chickens are different.
Chickens need your attention.
They're like pets.
They need love, but we don'twant to outsource too much,
(31:08):
right?
We want to have some controlover our food and our, you know,
and our ability to, to createour own health around.
(31:34):
That, you know, and, and just,and it gives you, I think, a
good sense of control.
Yes, yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:39):
It gives you a sense of hopefulness, if you can see.
First of all, I didn't evenknow, pardon me, what broccoli
looked like coming out of theground, like that's how divorced
I was from my food.
I was a latchkey kid to incomehome.
Everybody was out of the house,so of course they weren't going
to teach me how to cook.
They weren't there to cook.
We lived on Pop-Tarts andmicrowave stuff growing up, and
so I do agree with you thatpatient compliance is really
(32:02):
tricky, and it's always been anissue, this patient compliance.
And so even when I'm treatingpatients in the clinic and they
come for acupuncture, I'm oftengiving them homework and saying
try this one little thing.
And a lot of times I hear thosethree big myths, which is I
don't have time, I don't haveenough money and it's too
complicated.
And I hope that the readers,the listener, reader because I'm
an author, I hope that thelistener is taking this in, and
(32:27):
especially that's what I waslooking for for the reader as
well that it's possible.
It's not that complicated,especially if you focus on what
you love.
For example, if gardening isnot right now something that
interests you, what doesinterest you?
If cooking feels like too much,what does feel like something
that you can.
For me it was fermentation.
I loved the idea of increasingmy vitamin count simply by
(32:50):
putting a jar of some vegetableswith salt and water on my
counter one of the fun factsthat I learned, which made me so
happy, and I told everyone atevery cocktail party I went to,
because I go to so many cocktailparties.
Who goes to cocktail parties1950s?
With my little martini?
That's where I am usually on aSaturday.
(33:11):
But I was constantly saying doyou know that in a table, a
teaspoon of sauerkraut there'smore probiotics than an entire
bottle of probiotics?
Like that, to me, blew my mind.
So if someone is starting to getinto homesteading or starting
to create a more mindful,intentional way of life, and
there's one thing that theycould talk ad infinitum about,
(33:34):
right, like you could talk abouthow to make cooking easy.
Like your eyes lit up when youwere talking about it.
You're a nutritionist, you'redoing the right thing, you're
doing what you're supposed to bedoing, and so when we find
something as a hobby that feels,you know, very full of passion
and desire and motivation,that's the corner that we can
start on and we can grow outfrom there.
You know you may have been agood cook initially and then you
(33:56):
got into gardening because itwas the next step in your
passion journey and now you havethis incredible and yes, there
are.
I think it's really important toshow our bumps and bruises.
Like I feel like I don't haveany social media, but if I ever
do go back to social media, I'mgoing to take pictures of all
the ugly patches of my gardenand I'm going to show people
(34:19):
like this is what a real gardenlooks like, if you're not doing
it.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Yeah, no, I totally agree.
I know and I don't mean tosound like.
Well, I have a large vegetablegarden and I mean, believe me, I
have had years where thingsdon't grow.
I actually just this year gotmy soil tested for the first
time in a good couple of yearsand they told me that I had too
much of everything in there allthe nutrients, it was like
(34:44):
because I compost so much and soregularly that I was
overfeeding my garden.
I had no idea in all of theseyears of gardening that you
could actually overdo addingcompost into your bed.
So they said leave your bedsalone for a couple of years.
And I know, like last year, alot of my vegetables, they
(35:07):
weren't like vibrant.
So I'm just experimenting thisyear and seeing how that all
comes out.
So it's all like a give and takeand I think the luxury that we
have living in suburbs and stuffand we don't live out in the
middle of Montana is that if allelse fails and you're gone, you
(35:28):
can go outsource it Right Tolike.
You can go get to the grocerystore and find food.
It's not like you're going tostarve, but it's still, I think,
extremely important to grow.
And then there's nothing betterthan growing tomatoes or herbs
and picking them right out ofyour garden.
Or, like you said before, allof a sudden you have a bumper
(35:49):
crop of cucumbers, and so thenthat's what becomes part of your
plan for the week.
Is that you have 20 cucumbers?
What am I going to do with them?
That's fun for me.
I know for some people this canbe intimidating, and I tell
people that if you're juststarting, get a container on
your deck and grow some herbs.
That's a great start.
(36:11):
Have some fresh herbs that youcan put into your food and see
how that feels.
Speaker 2 (36:18):
In my book I mentioned that herbs are the
gateway drug for gardeners,because it's hard to kill them
and it gets you started, and Idid a lot of them.
I do something called simpling,which is just taking an herb
from your garden or going outinto your garden and kind of
figuring out what does my gardenwant to give me today for my
water.
And then I'll take like somemint and maybe a little bit of
(36:38):
rosemary, and I'll just throwthose sprigs in some water, let
it sit on my counter for a fewhours and then I have this
spa-like deliciousness.
Well, guess what?
That easy step of walking out,clipping two little herbs or
even, for those that aren'tgrowing food, going into the
grocery store and sniffing, orgoing to the farmer's market and
sniffing some herbs and justpicking a satchel of them and
(36:59):
deciding that you're going toput some in your water and some
in your food.
It does give you that.
That is homesteading, that isgetting more connected to your
true essence, right?
The fact that the natural worldand humans are one, they're not
separate.
Just because we have, you know,polyester clothing and drive-in
metal boxes Like that doesn'tmake us any separate from that.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, no, I love your definition of homesteading and
this concept of it doesn't haveto be this all or nothing, right
?
I mean, I know you've mentionedfermenting before.
I have absolutely dabbled in alot of I've made kombucha.
I don't think kombucha isreally for me to make.
I mean I've done it.
I could say I checked it off mylist.
(37:42):
I'm like I you know, I knowreally good places to get
kombucha, so I don't really feelthe need to do that again.
But yeah, so things like that,I think I think the think maybe
the important takeaway is justto try, try some things and see
what works.
And I know earlier we weretalking about using some kitchen
(38:06):
scraps.
I mean, the art of composting,I think, is really part of
gardening and it's such animportant part because you pick
things out of your garden.
You have all the scraps thefruit scraps and vegetable
scraps you then compost.
I know this is maybe very nextlevel for some people, but the
you know the compost which thenturns into dirt then can go back
(38:30):
and feed your garden.
But you were talking about away to also use kitchen scraps.
That I wanted to mentionbecause I think this is a very
easy way to maybe take one stepinto homesteading.
So do you want to talk aboutyour vinegar that?
Speaker 2 (38:49):
we were talking about .
I've never done this and I'mvery excited to go home today
and do this.
Well, once you do it, I want tohear all about it.
I really do.
So.
There's something called fruitscrap vinegar.
It's so easy to make.
You just take your fruit scraps, so your apple cores, and I did
it with recently.
I did it with grapefruit peels,because grapefruits are in
(39:10):
season and so I was getting alot at the farmer's market.
They were so good and I wouldjust throw them into a jar.
So I have a half gallon jar,mason jar, and I fill it with
water and then I put in a halfcup of sugar.
So a half cup of sugar for ahalf gallon of water and fruit
scraps, and then I just shake itup and I put it on my counter
(39:31):
with a canning lid.
So I have plastic lids as well,just because they don't rust
and stuff.
But for the actual fermentationI like to have a lid that will
pop.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
And so every day.
So just to get, let's just getclear, because if people are
like just starting out, so acanning lid just has like a hole
in the top, like a littlestopper kind of thing.
You can let a little air, likepressure out the top like a
little stopper kind of thing youcan let a little air like
pressure out.
Speaker 2 (39:57):
Yeah, that's a fancier version.
You can get them at masontopscom, by the way, if people are
questioning where to get themthis is just the metal lid that
you have, like when you buypickles at the store, and you
pop it open, it goes and it's alid and it's a ring.
It's a metal lid and a metalring.
You can also get plastic ringswhich don't.
They don't rust as much, soit's not the one with the hole.
(40:19):
That's really good forfermenting vegetables, like with
this one.
You don't need to pop it asmuch.
So you don't really you can.
You can do the hole for sure,and masontopscom has has those.
The ones that you're talkingabout are silicone and they let
the air out and they're muchmore.
they're great because you canforget about it and not get
fermented.
In this case, it's just themetal one that usually comes
(40:40):
with the mason jar that you buy.
Speaker 1 (40:43):
Okay, so you let this sit on your counter.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
You let it sit on your counter Every day.
You take a long fork orchopsticks or a butter knife and
you mix it and what you'redoing is you're just trying to
get the top layer to go downunder the water so that mold
doesn't form.
You're just gently mixing it,gently mixing it, and after
about 30 days it will start tochange.
Now what I do, because I'm nota vinegar expert and I still am
(41:08):
a little Western minded, so I'mlike, oh, I don't know if I, you
know, modern minded, I'm notused to just using vinegar.
I go and get acid strips thatyou can tell what the acid is.
They're like $3.
You get them online and you dipit in and it'll tell you.
And when it gets to the acid,that's for cleaning vinegar.
And I'm sorry, I don't rememberwhat it is.
(41:28):
Remember, I told you, if Idon't write it down, I don't
remember.
It's just the one that's.
It could be edible, but it'sdefinitely going to clean your,
your, um, your counters.
Then I strain it throughcheesecloth so I get a second.
This is at the end of 30 days.
I get a second um Mason jar.
I put cheesecloth over it,which could be a t-shirt, if you
(41:50):
have a white t-shirt.
That's, you know, clean like atea towel.
It's very thin cotton.
You strain it by.
What that means is just pouringthe vinegar through that
cheesecloth into the mason jar.
Sometimes I'll let it sit alittle longer if it hasn't
gotten acidic enough.
And then I take that strainedliquid and I put half of it in a
spray bottle.
I fill the other half up withwater so it's half and half and
(42:14):
I put in my favorite essentialoils and I write on the bottle
what the essential oils are sothat when I refill it I can do
the same.
So I like rosemary.
It smells great for cleaning.
Lemon balm, definitely tea tree, because it's so antimicrobial.
And so let's just say I'll dothose three.
You don't need as much tea treebecause it's a bully scenting.
It's very strong.
(42:34):
So you use a little bit of that, a lot of the rosemary, a lot
of the lemon balm.
And now you have this.
You know $8 or $9 bottle oforganic cleaning that you know
where it's come from.
It's saved you now $8 to $9 andit costs you relatively nothing
, because if you're not usingthe sugar for anything else in
your house, then that sugar,that bag of sugar, is going to
(42:55):
go a long, long way.
Speaker 1 (42:56):
Well, great, I'm excited.
I can't believe that I have.
I mean, I've heard of versionsof this and I cannot believe,
like in my homesteading journey,that I have not done this yet.
But I have definitely got to dothis and I will keep you posted
and let you know how it?
Turns out and I will put thatrecipe in my show notes so
people can get that.
And I will put that recipe inmy show notes so people can get
that Great that would be.
(43:16):
yeah, I think, an easy way toease into some homesteading
habits.
So tell me a little bit aboutyour book and then how people
can find you and what you'redoing now, great.
Speaker 2 (43:29):
Well, I'm so happy to be chatting with you and I love
that, would you have?
Speaker 1 (43:35):
called yourself a homesteader before this
conversation.
No, I definitely would not havecalled myself a homesteader
because, honestly, when I saythat, I think of homesteading, I
would never have identifiedmyself as a homesteader.
But while we're talking and I'mlike, oh, I do do a lot of
those homesteading habits, yeah,you are a hardcore homesteader.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
Yeah, I know I'm more of a homesteader than I had
imagined.
Yes, you've had chickens I mean, that's fantastic.
And bees oh my gosh.
I could talk to you for hoursabout that.
So my book, the HomesteaderMindset, helps busy people
tackle the overwhelm of creatinga sustainable, healthy
lifestyle through theimplementation of small daily
habits.
So we didn't talk a lot abouthabit formation, but that really
is the premise.
What we did talk about, whichis very important and key to the
(44:21):
homesteader mindset, is we'rehelping people get to the joy
and the pleasure and findingways to create these habits
without pain, with joy.
I really think that that's likeeverything that you've talked
about.
I do have a free gift for yourlisteners.
Really think that that's likeeverything that you've talked
about.
I do have a free gift for yourlisteners.
It's a Homesteader HabitTracker and you can get that at
my website, which iswwwcreatewellnessprojectcom.
(44:45):
Forward slash gift that'sG-I-F-T and that will give you
an idea of how to create thesetiny little habits and also give
you a tracker to start doingthem.
So if you want to do yourvinegar like, that could be one
of your first habits.
You know, did I shake it up?
Did I stir it up every day?
And then you can let us know,because Heather and I are really
excited to have you join us inthe homesteading revolution.
Speaker 1 (45:08):
Yes, yes, so that's great and I will put that in the
show notes too, that link, andthen they can get your book
right Probably easily on yourwebsite.
I'll link that.
I could talk all day with youabout homesteading and gardening
and growing food and fooditself, and maybe I'll have you
back on.
I would love to have you comeback on and do a part two,
(45:29):
because I feel like we areunfortunately out of time, but I
have a million more questions,so let's do that.
You know what I want to have youcome back, I think in the 30
days after I've made my vinegar,my spray, and let you know how
it goes.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
I would love that.
And baking soda.
If you have a hard stain, youcan add baking soda, sprinkle it
on the area and then do thevinegar on top.
It's crazy, but yes, let's dothat.
That sounds like a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (45:56):
Okay, all right, good , we will do that, elizabeth.
Thank you so much for coming intoday and talking.
This has been super helpful andjust meaningful, and you're
going to come back, so we'll seeyou soon.
Okay, we'll see you soon.
Speaker 2 (46:11):
Thank you so much for having me.
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