#63: Being a Modern Pioneer with Mary of Mary's Nest

Mary Bryant Shrader is a modern pioneer in the kitchen who has spent the last 20 years teaching friends and fans alike how to make nourishing recipes using traditional methods and whole, seasonal ingredients as well as how to stock your pantry with a useful variety of homemade staples.
This interview dives into how Mary started her Youtube channel (she gives advice for anyone wanting to start their own channel!), what it means to be a Modern Pioneer, and how she became a cookbook author. Mary gives great tips for starting a traditional foods kitchen - it's as easy as starting with a roast chicken - and how making traditional foods will help you save money and waste less. Mary is a joy to talk to and I hope you enjoy the interview!

Connect with Mary and buy her book:
The Modern Pioneer Cookbook: https://marysnest.com/my-cookbook 

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/marysnest 

Website: https://marysnest.com 

Facebook: https://facebook.com/marysnest 

Instagram: https://instagram.com/marysnest 

Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/marysnest 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/marysnest

Seasonal Food episodes of The Plan to Eat Podcast:
Spring seasonal eating: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1869657/10052909
Summer seasonal eating: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1869657/10586385
Fall seasonal eating: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1869657/11388808
Winter seasonal eating: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1869657/9860703 

Connect with all the PTE Podcast recipes here
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Transcript

[00:00:00] to the Plan to Eat podcast. Where I interview industry experts about meal planning, food and wellness. To help you answer the question. What's for dinner. 

Roni: Hello and welcome to the Plan to Eat Podcast. Today I have a wonderful interview with Mary Schrader of the YouTube channel, Mary's Nest. Mary is a modern pioneer, as she calls it. She teaches people how to cook traditional foods, have a traditional foods kitchen, basically through her YouTube channel. She is such a wonderful person.

We have worked with her in the past, and she has such a bubbly, fun energy. If you've ever watched her YouTube videos, she starts all of them by saying, hi, sweet friends, which I find so endearing. I had a great conversation with her today. We talk a lot about traditional foods. We talk about how she got started with her YouTube channel, and we also talk about her upcoming [00:01:00] cookbook, which is called the Modern Pioneer Cookbook.

We also talk a little bit about seasonal eating, and I just wanted to remind you that here on the Plan to Eat Podcast, we have talked about seasonal eating on four different episodes, so I'm going to link to those in the episode description. If you're curious about learning more about seasonal eating and what foods are in season during certain times of the year, you can find a little more information from those podcast episodes.

And other than that, I hope you enjoy.

Mary, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Mary: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Roni: So let's just get started by having you give a little introduction of yourself and what you do.

Mary: Uh, well, my name is Mary Schrader. Uh, on my book it says Mary Bryan Schrader because there are a lot of other Mary Schraders out there. But I have a YouTube channel called Mary's Nest, along with a, uh, website that [00:02:00] compliments that, where I teach traditional cooking skills for making nutrient-dense foods like bone broth and ferments and sourdough and so on and so forth, and stocking a traditional foods pantry and, uh, things like that.

And I was so happy when I initially discovered. Plan to eat because you have a wonderful, uh, service that allowed me to plan my meals, but to plan them with the foods I wanted to plan them with as opposed to meal plans that other people, you know, were creating. And so, uh, I was so happy when I initially discovered you many years ago, and my, uh, plan to eat, uh, I know what you would call it, registry, so to speak, is packed now.

But, uh, other than that, I live in the Texas Hill country between Austin and San Antonio. [00:03:00] I've been here quite a few years. Uh, I've been married 25 years now, over 25 years. Hard to believe. And I have, uh, one son who I was very blessed to. I got married a little later in life and I was very blessed to have, uh, our son in my early forties.

And he. Yeah. So that, that was wonderful. I, I credit traditional foods for helping me with that, but, uh, he's a grown man now. And, uh, but other than that, we are just, uh, living our life here in the Texas Hill country, and I really love it. I'm a former New Yorker, so it's, uh, it's quite a change, uh, quite a change for me.

But I, I love living in Texas and love the hill country. It's really beautiful. Rolling hills and lakes. I can't complain.

Roni: Yeah, every time I talk to you, I always notice a little bit of New York in your accent.

Mary: yeah. A lot of, I, it's funny because a [00:04:00] lot of people will say to me, uh, you, you don't sound like a Texan. And I'm like, no, I'm from New York City.

Roni: Well, so why don't you tell me a little bit about how you got started with your YouTube channel?

Mary: Well, that's an interesting journey. I was really, we have to go back quite a few years. Uh, when my son was in kindergarten, he was diagnosed with very severe dyslexia. I. And it's interesting because the school that he was at said, gee, we're not really, you know, prepared to help him. And this is a long time ago.

You know, schools are very different today. And then I talked to the little public school out here where we lived, and uh, they basically said the same thing. Oh, we're not really, you know, we don't have programs like that, uh, to help, uh, you know, children, you know, [00:05:00] with reading problems. Uh, but maybe when they're around fourth grade, uh, you know, we might be able to help him and so on and so forth.

But the teacher was very kind and she kind of said to me, off the record, I would really recommend that you not wait until fourth grade that you get him reading therapy now and try homeschooling. And I'm like, homeschooling. Oh my gosh, what's that all about? And then I went, To a seminar where Dr. Sally Shaywitz from Yale University was speaking about children who had dyslexia.

And she had said the same thing, you have to start the intervention now. So, uh, being where we live, I couldn't even find a reading therapist talking, you know, you're talking to intervention. Oh my gosh. Reading therapist. What? And, but I was very blessed. I found a girl who was a student studying to [00:06:00] become a reading therapist, and in order to be a reading therapist, she had to have so many hours under her belt, so to speak, to.

Teach the, you know, uh, be get her certification. So she said to me, how about if we do this? I'll teach your son. I'll get my hours and I'll give you a reduced rate. Because reading therapy, no matter what way you cut it, it's expensive. And she said, I'll give you a reduced rate. And she said, you, this is not that hard.

This is, we're going into first grade, you can handle the subjects, homeschooling, whatnot. So I'm like, all right. I didn't know what else to do. And well, in any event, I was blessed to, uh, find a lovely social circle of other moms who were homeschooling. Now, keep in mind, I'm an older mom. I'm in my forties, you know, well, at this point I'm in my fifties actually.

Uh, and so my son, uh, you know, had [00:07:00] this nice little social circle of other children, and these other mothers were quite a bit younger than me. And the book, nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon had come out, or Sally Fallon Morrell, I think is her last name now, had come out in maybe 19 98, 19 99, some, somewhere around there.

I had been raised making these types of traditional foods. You know, my mother made them, my grandmother made them, and my mother taught me how to make them. So I would, you know, periodically be talking about this to the ladies in my social circle. And they would sometimes say, oh, my child has, you know, eczema or, my child doesn't seem to be growing or whatever.

And my girlfriend recently reminded me of this, uh, was funny. She, I said, wasn't it something how we all got into nourishing traditions? She said, Mary, you gave us all a copy of the book, you know, and so I would just give copies of this book, you know, to my friends and [00:08:00] I'd say read it. It's really quite fascinating.

You know, my mother's been vindicated, uh, for all the years that she skewed margarine and said, eat butter. But in any event, uh, they said, oh, you, this is a little overwhelming. And you know how to make these foods, so, uh, can you teach us? So that's what I did. I would, at Saturday mornings, I'd have all the moms here.

Uh, the fathers would take care of the older kids. The moms would bring their nursing babies. It was very cute. And we would just come together here in my kitchen and I would basically teach the, sort of the backbones of what I call the traditional foods kitchen. I would focus on bone broth, ferments, and sourdough.

You know, eventually we expanded out to including other things, cultured dairy, you know, how to soak and sprout grains and, and do things like that. But we started with bone broth, ferment, ferments were very popular [00:09:00] amongst my social circle. So this went on, and then other moms would say, oh, you know, because we all sort of lived, you know, in and around the Austin area, and sometimes it could be a long drive for folks.

So people started inviting me to their kitchens, and I was doing all of this for free. I was so happy to keep these skills alive. This is very important that we don't lose how to make these traditional foods. And so I would be at other mom's kitchens and showing how to do these things and whatnot. Well, fast forward, uh, my son eventually goes off to college and now I'm an empty nester.

And he said, along with my husband, they both said, gee, you know, you, you're good at these cooking classes that you teach your ladies. You should put this, these on YouTube. And I think initially I had maybe thought of like a website and doing [00:10:00] blog posts about this, and I do have that, but that was at the time was what I was thinking.

And they both said, oh, no. You've got YouTube and I'm like, oh my gosh, that's right. I can do videos. So that's how it was, it was all born. Now, I, I knew something about YouTube. I watched YouTube videos on different subjects. You know, one time our, the ice maker in our refrigerator broke and I was so proud of myself because I looked up how to fix an ice maker.

And I, I think, uh, I dunno if it's a Maytag or whatever we have. And, uh, of, sure enough, there was a video and I followed along with the man, and I fixed it myself. I was so proud of myself. My husband got home from work. I said, I fix the ice maker. But in any event, so I, I said, all righty. And, and I, I took, it was funny.

I had to look up, I watched [00:11:00] videos, but I didn't know how to make videos. So I searched on YouTube, of course, how to make YouTube videos came across someone. Oh, I think he is just terrific. He's a young man and his name is Sean Cannell , and he has a YouTube channel called Think Media, and he's very good for the beginner.

If there's any of your listeners out there who are interested in learning how to put a YouTube channel together, he really spoke to the beginner. It was basically almost at the level of where. You say, turn the computer on, you know, turn the camera on, you know. Uh, but uh, so I just started and I said, well, okay, I'll do 15 videos.

You know, it's funny how you think initially. I think I have over 600 now,

Roni: Oh my gosh.

Mary: but I said, and I, and I almost have a million subscribers. I can't believe it. I mean, it's, it's [00:12:00] shocking to me. But it just goes to show you anybody. I mean, if I can do this, I'm 65 years old. If I can do this, anybody can do this. But I really, uh, I said, well, okay, I'm gonna do 15 videos.

My basic class structure. I'm gonna start with how to roast a chicken. Then I'm gonna take that carcass and I'm gonna show people how to make bone broth with it, literally for pennies. And how, you know, I'm very much into no waste. And that's why I love your, your, uh, meal planner, a plan to eat because you allow for planning in, because you, it's so flexible.

I would plan in, okay, I'm leftovers, you know, I didn't have this structure where, okay, there's all these meals and I'm thinking, boy, how the heck are we gonna get through all of this without wasting, you know, so that's what, what really attracted me to your meal planner that I could plan in. I could plan to eat [00:13:00] leftovers, you know, so I, and then I moved on to beef bone broth, and I just kind of worked my way through and I was hoping that this would be a journey for the beginner.

You know, I never want people to feel overwhelmed. I'm not a zealot. I'm not going to say, okay, you've never made bread before, but we're gonna make a sourdough starter. No, people would be running and screaming, you know, and so, but I just did it slowly and I said, okay, take, you know, it may take you a little while to master bone broth.

And then, okay, now let's try, you know, fermentation. And let's start with sauerkraut. That's very easy. That's a good place to start. And I always share my little secret ingredient or insurance policy as I call it, by grading an a green apple, because the apple has, uh, ingredients in it that the good bacteria really like to gobble up.

Now the [00:14:00] cabbage has that, and the cabbage core has that, but that apple gives a little special boost. And so I always hope that that will help the good bacteria to proliferate. Proliferate. That's a hard one for me to say before. Any kind of bad bacteria can take over. So it there, that was the journey, the 15 videos.

And then the response was, so there was such an outpouring of response from so many, uh, viewers who would leave me comments. And I also had the website up and running where I would put the printable recipe for folks. And I was getting a lot of emails and a lot of comments and the outpouring of, of, uh, Positivity was so excellent, and,, I, I really saw the need for this on a larger scale than just what I had been doing in my kitchen and in other mother's kitchens, that there were people out there saying, oh my [00:15:00] gosh, this is what I needed.

I needed someone who would teach a, a full length. You know, my videos are kind of known. They, they, I, I laugh when people say, oh yes, long form content. 10 minutes. I'm like, oh my gosh, my video is 60 minutes long. It's a full class. You know? And people were saying, this is just what I needed. The you, you're, you go slow.

You go step by step by step, and you really help me learn how to do this. And you really help me develop sort of this bench of skills that are very basic and then allow me to go on. To, to advance to more complicated, uh, things. You know, I, I remember once, a long time ago, long before I started, I don't even think I had started my YouTube channel yet.

And, and this may, I may really be dating myself. This may actually go back to when Yahoo used to have [00:16:00] the groups, even

Roni: Yeah.

Mary: Facebook. Remember that. And there was some traditional foods group that I was in, and there was a post from a woman, a mother, young mother with a couple of young children. And it was this never ending paragraph, no indents, no periods, no capitals.

You, you almost felt reading it that she was crying when she was typing this. And it was about feeling so overwhelmed in trying to create a traditional foods kitchen. And I read through this and I thought, oh my gosh. This woman is even struggling with learning the basics of how to cook, let alone worry about making a sourdough starter.

That's challenging. You know, if, if you have no experience at all in the kitchen, and people were trying to comfort her and give [00:17:00] advice and, but even the advice was kind of complicated. And just as an older woman, you know, an older home cook myself, I just typed in, oh my gosh, God bless you. Just roast a whole chicken and be done with it and call it a day.

You know? And so I always say that just you roast a chicken, throw in some, you know, and if you're, I know people are nervous sometimes about holding a chicken. Put on some disposable gloves. Just throw that in a roasting pan. Throw in some carrots, some onions, potatoes. These are all inexpensive ingredients.

The chicken's going to cost you less than if you bought. Boneless skinless chicken breasts. Pop it in the oven hour, hour and a half later, depending on how big the chicken is. You have a great meal and everybody li, well, I shouldn't say everybody, but a lot of people like a roast chicken and most kids will eat a roast chicken and it makes a lovely aroma in your home.[00:18:00] 

And it's not like you're, because I would really see this from a lot of mothers saying, oh, my kids don't like sourdough bread. It's sour. They don't, oh, forget about liver. Yeah. If you say, Hey, come on kids, come on to the table. We're having liver for dinner and they've been raised on, you know, some kind of chicken nugget, they're gonna, of course they're gonna,

I remember the first time I served my son liver. I had put it, I had battered, dipped it and fried it in beef tallow and served it with fermented ketchup. And he, now, he had been raised on traditional food, so it wasn't like total a total shock to him. But he knew what chicken nuggets looked like. He knew these were chicken nuggets.

And he looked at it and he said, mom, what is this? And I said, oh, they're nuggets. Just try 'em. You'll like 'em, you know, and being the good egg that he [00:19:00] is, he's dipping them in the fermented ketchup. And he's like, yeah, they're not bad. You know, anything deep fried is not bad. But even, you know, I laugh because in, in the cookbook that I wrote, the Modern Pioneer Cookbook,

i, my dedication is basically, uh, me saying to my son, thank you so much for trusting me and eating the beef liver nuggets. But you have to, you know, a lot of times all you can do is just start with a roast chicken and everybody, for the most part will eat that. And even, even if children are used to eating other foods, they may find that your roast chicken's pretty tasty and it may be as tasty to them.

Uh, As fast food that they may have become accustomed to. And so that's sort of the whole journey. I know, I think I went on very long here, [00:20:00] how everything started. Um, but, and then after those 15 videos, I, the response was very, uh, encouraging. And so I just kept making more videos and exploring in more detail, uh, how to use bone broth, how to, expand your, fermentation, uh, repertoire, so to speak, how to make, uh, sourdough bread in a little more detail.

And I also started adding videos because people were asking me, how do you just make bread? You know what, if all I have is all purpose flour and, and packaged yeast, how do I make bread? And so, even though. That's not something that I make on a regular basis. I mean, I know, I know how to make it very easily.

I realized, wow, I'm going to, I'm not gonna be a zealot. I'm not gonna say you have to only have [00:21:00] sourdough bread. I'm gonna show people how to make bread, and so, That I think really helped a lot of people. And I thought it was so cute because people would say, oh, I finally worked up the courage and I made the sandwich bread recipe that you shared, and it was so easy.

You were right. And then six months later, you know, none of my videos go viral. You know, I, I don't have that type of channel. I have people who will come back to me six months later and they'll say, oh, I've been making your sandwich bread. I feel like I've mastered bread and now I'm gonna try sourdough.

You know, and I think it's, it's very cute because I always say, this is a journey. This can take a year, this can take two years until you feel you have a comfortable. Rhythm, running a traditional foods kitchen. Don't rush. If you rush and you try to do everything, you get overwhelmed. And so, and then, then 2020 [00:22:00] came and people were writing, oh my gosh, I only had a week's worth of food.

What the heck am I supposed to do now? So I started, I started making videos about how to build a traditional foods pantry, how to stock it, and how to store food so that it does last and so on and so forth. And that became very popular. You know, there, there always seems to my, my viewers, really, my channel has grown and expanded over the years, as is my website.

But it's the type of thing that has been very viewer driven because I really, and I really believe this, for anybody out there who's thinking about doing a YouTube channel, it has to be all about the viewer and. You certainly have to have some, uh, for lack of a better word, you know, a passion about what you're doing.

Because if you wanna be in this for the long haul, you don't wanna get to a point where you say, oh, I [00:23:00] don't like making these videos, or whatever the case may be. It has to be something that you're interested in, but there also has to be an audience for what you're, you're teaching or, you know, some people entertain, you know, some people have music, whatever the case may be.

And you, you have to have a passion for it. And then you have to teach, in my case being how to channel. You have to teach these things and at the same time really pay attention to what. The viewers are asking you to teach, and that is how little by little you expand your channel or morph your channel in terms of topics that you now kind of have this umbrella.

And under this umbrella is not only teaching how to make traditional foods, but how to stock the pantry. Then I had a lot of people, especially, you know, during 2020, you know, how do you make home remedies? How, you know you couldn't get elderberry syrup? Well, oh, how do you [00:24:00] make elderberry syrup homemade? So then I kind of had the whole healing pantry discussion and, and whatnot.

But that's, you know, how it all began and, and how it grew.

Roni: I think all of that is so amazing and I, uh, you're, I would say that you're maybe like a non-typical YouTuber. You know, most of the people I see on YouTube are more my age. But I think it's so encouraging and I'm certain that there are lots of people who are in your age group who are so happy to see somebody their age being on YouTube teaching things.

And I think that all of your videos are. Approachable. You were the one who taught me how to make bone broth through your YouTube videos. And I remember at first feeling kind of intimidated. Like I had to watch the video a couple times and be like, write down the steps, you know, like make sure I was putting in enough apple cider vinegar and things like that.

And then after a few times of doing it, I didn't need to look at the recipe anymore. I, I could just do, you know, now I make bone broth and I just, uh, [00:25:00] do it based off of memory because it actually is really simple. It feels complicated and a little intimidating at first, but it's actually really not. And I, I thank you for teaching me that skill.

Mary: Oh, thank you. That's very kind of you to say. Yes. I think that's it. It it is very true and I, I find that once people get exposed to this and they're able to watch, visually, watch something step by step, they're, they're like, okay. This is really not that difficult to do. This is manageable. I can do this, I can start incorporating this.

And this lady is nice. She's telling me, don't rush. Don't worry about it. And I really do try to say that, that, you know, I always liked the, the TV chef and I get, you know, real life chef Emeral Lagasse and how he would say, it's not rocket science, you know, and, and you really can't. Okay. Are there the occasional or culinary disasters where something burns that you're cooking?

Oh, of course that happens to all of us, [00:26:00] but for the most part, you know, it doesn't need to be perfect. You know, I always say, I'm the lady who's gonna tell you you never need a scale. You know, you don't need to be weighing everything. And our ancestors didn't do that. We don't need to do that either. A little bit this way, a little bit that way.

It's not gonna be the end of the world. But it, it is true that I think that, uh, A lot of people on YouTube are, are, you know, young, younger than me. Uh, and I, I have found it encouraging though, and I really say this to any of your listeners who are in, in my age group, younger people often, and I think this is even true of me talk.

My mother's 98 years old, and I look to her, you know, for, for the wisdom that she has. Uh, but I find it very cute when viewers will say to me, oh my gosh, you're like the grandmother I never had. And my son gets such a kick out of this. 'cause he's like, grandmother, he's in, you're my mother. But because I'm an older [00:27:00] mom, you know, I very well could be, uh, you know, people's, you know, these are people in their twenties.

They're my son's age. But, uh, they're cute because they're like, oh, you like the grandmother I ever had. Never, every once in a while I do get, I do get, oh, you're like the mother I never had. But, It's amazing, and I do tell this to people in my age group who talk about, you know, wanting to, uh, create a YouTube channel and who have a lot of knowledge, who have a lot of experience.

And I think that there are, um, you know, like grandfathers and dads who have these wonderful, , fixing up channels, you know, uh, fixer up channels, I guess they're called, and, and how to repair things. And these are often, you know, middle-aged or older men, who have been working in various fields, uh, during the course of their life.

And they have a lot of knowledge to share, and they are plumbing experts or carpentry experts or whatever the case may be. [00:28:00] But I, I often tell people that the good news is, This is not as hard as people may think it is. You know, I learned all this later in life and it, it really, it's amazing how much, and I would imagine this is true, I'm not very knowledgeable about other social media, but I would imagine that this, spans all social media.

So what I say for YouTube probably is true of other social media, but YouTube is very helpful. You know, you a little behind the scenes for your listeners. What, see, as creators, they have something called the Creator Studio where you're uploading your video and doing all of that. I mean, they walk you through step by step by step.

They couldn't make it easier because they want people on the platform, and I think they want people of all ages on the platform because everybody serves some niche. You know that there are. [00:29:00] Regardless of your age, there's most of the time there is something you have to offer and there is a viewer looking for you.

I often tell people that, 'cause they say, oh, there's so many, you know, cooking channels, or, oh, there's so many fixer up channels, or whatever the case may be. But there are sometimes viewers who are looking for you and they have not discovered the person on YouTube that they connect with. And then when you come on board, And they discover you, they connect with you.

So it's more about personality, especially when you're looking at a video. It's more about personality and the comfort level that people feel with you. So I, I always encourage people, I say it's always, if it's something you wanna do, it's always worth a try because the I'm one, and I, I can probably say this with [00:30:00] a hundred percent certainty.

There are viewers out there who wanna connect with you.

Roni: That's great inspiration, great creative inspiration as well. So one thing that you describe yourself as pretty frequently is a modern pioneer. I know it's also part of the title of your cookbook, but can you tell me a little about, about what a modern pioneer is?

Mary: Oh, that's a great question. Yes, that is. That's funny. It's the name of, uh, the My cookbook, my, my editor. It was cute. When the Random House contacted me, uh, to write a cookbook, the editor said, oh, we'd like to call it the Modern Pioneer Cookbook because you have, in the tagline of your YouTube channel, traditional cooking for the modern Pioneer.

And he said, how do you like that? You know? And I said, oh, that sounds, that sounds good. And just as a little aside, and this, I definitely share with people who are thinking about doing a YouTube channel [00:31:00] and who are thinking that they might like to write a cookbook, I was discovered on YouTube, The, my editor at Random House was actually looking for how to make sauerkraut just on a personal level.

And he saw my video and he made sauerkraut at home. And he said, you know, I, I would like to have this lady write a cookbook for us. And he contacted me. I thought it was spam because who's a random house is not contacting me? Are you kidding? You know, and my husband said, no, that's a legitimate email. So I, I looked the man up on LinkedIn and sure enough he was legitimate.

And I called him and we had a good laugh over the fact that I thought he was, you know, some, some spam or scam or whatever the terminology is. We had a good laugh over that. And he said, oh yeah, we'd like you to write a cookbook for us. And. So you never know. You never know where these [00:32:00] things are gonna lead to.

I, I still can't believe it. And it's for their DK imprint. And if anybody's familiar with DK books, they're gorgeous. They, and I, I've seen a, uh, they have the cover, you know, up and all of that. They send you a dummy copy, a little behind the scenes. Initially, that's just the cover, so you can see what the cover's going to look like.

But it's all blank pages inside and it's being printed right now. And they sent me, one of the first runs of, of the printed copy. Wow. They did such a nice job. They, The editor, the photographer and the food stylist came to my kitchen and I hear, I'm like making the food.

And the food stylist is, Putting it on the plate, making everything look nice, and the photographers taking the picture, the editor's approving it. It was quite an adventure. They were here for over a week and it was quite an adventure. I will say I was completely exhausted. It was, it was lots of fun, but I was like up till two o'clock in the morning making sure the sourdough starter [00:33:00] looked fine, you know, when the photographer got here.

There's a lot of timing that goes into preparing traditional food. So we had quite the laugh, but, uh, it was a lot of, a lot of fun. So I think people who. Are familiar with my channel or my website, they'll enjoy the cookbook because it's, the pictures are taken right here in my kitchen, you know, and, and I'm actually the one making the food, you know?

So it really looks, the way it looks, you know, it may not always, uh, look perfect because it's homemade, you know, it's not been prepared by a chef. And it was funny too, because I said to the editor, don't you want a chef to prepare this? You know, he's like, oh no, we want it to look real world. And the food stylist will make it look nice on the plate.

But in any of event, the, the whole concept of the modern pioneer as you asked that, uh, is something that I think of in terms of. There are people who we think of as pioneers, you know, going [00:34:00] back and at least here in the United States to like the 18 hundreds and trekking across, you know, I'm not one of them and I don't live off grid.

You know, none of that. And then we have like, I think often you hear the term modern pioneer used, you know, for people like your Elon Musk, you know, and people who are really creating amazing technology and, and uh, you know, what did I think he talks about going to Mars, you know, like he's really pioneering Yeah.

And things like that. But how I think of modern pioneer is modern pi. We're modern pioneers in the kitchen. It doesn't matter where we live. And we're, and I really, I often say to people, I stress the term modern 'cause we're happy, we've got running water and we're happy we've got indoor plumbing. And it doesn't matter.

I mean, I used to live in an apartment in New York City. It doesn't matter [00:35:00] whether we live in the suburbs, it doesn't matter whether we live in the city. And it doesn't matter if we're like way out in the country either. We can all be modern pioneers. Specifically modern pioneers in the kitchen. We can learn how to make food in a traditional way so that we are more self-sufficient.

And then by being self-sufficient, ultimately we can reach goals of creating low waste or no waste kitchens, which is so important because I'm hard. I, I can't stand waste. You know, my parents lived through the depression, the great depression of the 1930s here in the United States. My mother never wasted anything, and I will share a story with you that my father was sitting at.

He's since passed away. My mom, as I mentioned, is still alive. She's 98. She's amazing. Still going [00:36:00] strong. It's all the butter she always says. Yeah. She says, oh yeah, the doctor told me 30 years ago, stop eating butter. He's passed away and I'm still going strong, you know? But my father was sitting at the kitchen table and the newspaper came and had like a rubber band around it, and the rubber band was really dirty, and I put it in the garbage and my father looked at me and he said, oh my gosh, you throw away the best stuff.

Gimme that rubber band. I'll take it home. I can use that rubber. You know, these are people, they never wasted anything. My father was one of those fellas who had all the little jars or coffee cans in the garage with every single screw he had ever found. Every single bolt, you know, he could fix anything, you know, and he always, you would say, oh, I need X and such.

Oh, I've got that for you. And my mother was the same way the woman could make a meal from scraps. What many people would [00:37:00] throw out. And as I had mentioned earlier, I was, I'm horrified when I read these articles. When you pick up a magazine or a newspaper or online, that Americans throw away something like 40% of the food.

I don't know if I'm exactly accurate on that, but it's horrible that away like that. So when I use the term modern pioneer and specifically modern pioneer in the kitchen, I want us to be like our ancestors. Our ancestors never wasted anything They ate, what's the expression? Nose to tail. They ate everything.

Nothing went to waste. Whether it was an animal product or a vegetable product, everything was used in some shape. Look, I mean, I grew up with like pickled, what do they call it? Pickled watermelon, rind. I mean, even the rinds of things didn't go to waste, and so. [00:38:00] That is very, very important to me that we're modern pioneers in the sense that we can live anywhere.

You know, we're not on the covered wagon train. We can live anywhere and we can live a very modern life. But we really need to look at how our ancestors lived when it came to food, because we gotta stop this waste. This is unacceptable. Uh, we should never be wasting food, and that's why I always talk. I'm kind of known now for, you know, saying, I say to everybody, my friends, my family, and my, what I call my sweet friends.

You know the people I know online. Do you have a scrap bag? I wanna see the scrap bag. Where is the scrap bag? You know, and I, you peel a carrot, you save the shavings, you cut the tip and the, and the she or the root off it goes into the scrap bag. You peel an onion, don't you dare throw, [00:39:00] throw away those onion skins.

They, those have nutrition and they go into the scrap bag. And I will also share that I'm not a zealot when it comes to organic or non-organic. Is organic, great? Is pasture raised grass. That's all wonderful. And if you can afford that, By all means, knock yourself out and definitely have all of those things.

But if you can't, don't worry. I recently read an article and I think that, um, oh, I can't remember who was put out by one of the, uh, watchdog groups that, you know, track pesticides on foods and whatnot. And even they were saying that we have to be careful to not become so overcome by making sure every single thing we buy is organic.

Because first of all, organic doesn't mean pesticide free. People need [00:40:00] to understand that and understand that there are approved pesticides that yes, may, might they be less strong than other pesticides. Yes. May they be more tested. Yes, all of that, but you couldn't have. Hmm. Uh, agricultural production on large scales without some use of pesticides, and those are approved as organic. But this organization's article was outstanding because they said, we have so scared people that, that if they can't afford organic fruits and vegetables, don't buy them. And then what happens is, especially in lower income, uh, families, and I'm, this is another reason too why I, I really try to teach to use everything you have and make the most of all of your scraps because you can, uh, control your grocery budget.

And this really can help lower income families that [00:41:00] have reduced income to spend on food to begin with. And this article said that we so scared people, especially low income families, from buying fruits and vegetables because they couldn't afford organic. That then they wound up just buying some sort of cheap packaged food, and that's not good for anybody's health.

And then you see a terrible increase in diabetes and other, uh, health related illnesses that are often food related because people aren't eating real food. They're not eating traditional foods, they're not properly preparing their foods. You know, it's a whole lengthy of things. And so I will say to people, don't worry.

Buy what you can afford. Stay in your budget. Stress is never good for anybody. Don't try to, uh, spend beyond your food budget. But as you learn to cook traditional foods, as you learn from your ancestors, as you become a modern pioneer in the kitchen, you suddenly find, uh, and you decrease buying a lot of processed and [00:42:00] prepared foods.

You suddenly find you have a few extra dollars. In your grocery budget, you can start to buy a little better food. But don't worry if you can't buy organic, buy what you can afford. And there's so many things on the internet today on how to wash, whether you are using baking soda or vinegar or citric acid.

Uh, you can scrub and soak and this and that, your fruits and vegetables and. Help maybe remove some, not all, but some of the pesticides and whatnot. But even I, I love some of the lectures that I've seen Sally Fallon give, uh, of Nourishing Traditions, Sally Fallon Morrell, uh, because even she talks about how don't get so obsessed about this.

It's, it's much more important to have, even when it comes to liver, even if you can't get beef liver from a pasture or grass fed raised animals. It, the, [00:43:00] the animal's body has ways of processing out toxins so that the product that you're eating is actually better than eating some fast food. And the same goes with chickens and, you know, eggs, all of these foods.

And so that's really what I mean when I say modern pioneer. Modern pioneer in the kitchen. Do the best you can with what you have. Stay in your budget little by little. Try to to buy less processed foods. Start making more things homemade. Move a little more money into your grocery budget to buy better foods.

Search out. Things in your area, whether at the farmer's market or at from a rancher or a dairy where you may be able to start buying raw milk. You may find a rancher who has bones that he wants to unload, that people don't want, you know, the place. Now the law here in Texas is different. We can [00:44:00] buy raw milk at the farmer's market, but we couldn't for a while.

And so we had to go to the farm, to the dairy farm. And it was funny because I remember years back when I was there, the dairy farmer, uh, I was saying, oh, do you know any ranchers, you know that might have bones or whatnot? And he was laughing and he was saying, oh, I love you. You're so old fashioned. You ask for all the stuff nobody wants. Now it's changed a little, you know, with the advent of popularity of bone broth and, and a lot of these traditional foods. Uh, but he called up his buddy who was a rancher, and he would come with these big bags of all these missed. You know, I know what you call like mishmosh of, of different things. And then I'd be like, oh, do you have any organ meats?

He's like, I love you. Nobody wants these things. You know, you've got heart, you've got tongue, you've got [00:45:00] liver, you know, and he's like, oh, this is what nobody wants, you know? But, uh, so it all over time, you know, you get better and better at this, and you get better at shopping and you get better at making these foods and your budget, uh, becomes a little more expanded, you know, as to what you can afford.

But it's all about ultimately working to make more foods homemade. Being a modern pioneer, look to what our ancestors did. Make more things homemade, waste less and properly prepare your food. This is something that we often forget. Our ancestors knew how to properly prepare food. They understood about. Uh, slow roasting meats.

Slow cooking meats on the bone because the bone puts nutrients into the meat. That makes it more digestible and allows you to better absorb the [00:46:00] nutrients that the the meat has to offer. Save the bones and make bone broth again. Bone broth soothes our, soothes our digestive system and also makes it primed, so to speak.

We prime the pump to better absorb nutrients. And then secondly, Our ancestors knew how to preserve fruits and vegetables and they knew how to preserve them through fermentation. And why was fermentation important? Because fermentation not only preserves food, it increases the nutrients In food sauerkraut, for example, cabbage does contain vitamin C, but when you ferment it and turn it into sauerkraut, which living here in the Texas Hill country where there were a lot of German immigrants, uh, and I've actually seen they have these working farms where people pretend that it's like the 18 hundreds and our ancestors would ferment the [00:47:00] cabbage.

That would increase the vitamin C and also make it easier for our systems to absorb our digestive systems to absorb the vitamin C from the cabbage that now had been turned into sauerkraut. And this helped our ancestors have a nice supply of vitamin C throughout the winter when we're more susceptible to colds and flues.

When, because the weather is turning chilly and our body's having to work harder, it's staying warm. And that can help, that can contribute. Not help but contribute to lowering our immunity. But here our ancestors were eating a fermented food that gave them vitamin C. Vitamin C helps, uh, boost the immune system and fend off colds and flus.

And back then a cold and flu, this was, could be life-threatening, you know? So we learned that, and then we learned that. They also soured their grains and they made sourdough bread. Why? [00:48:00] Because it was more digestible and it was easier for our body to assimilate the nutrients that came from the wheat. So there was all this rhyme and reason as to why our ancestors properly prepared their food, because they had to make sure that they extracted every last bit of nutrition out of those foods.

Because often foods were scarce, often foods were limited into what, what they might have, especially as they were going through the winter months. So that's really what it all boils down to. Just looking at what our ancestors did, but being able to do this and how lucky are we being able to do this through our modern lifestyles.

So we're modern pioneers where. We're not wasting, we're properly preparing food. We're making more and more foods like ketchup and mustard and [00:49:00] mayonnaise, learning to make these things homemade with the ingredients that we know and can pronounce. If you've looked at the ingredients of some of these things, uh, making them in the old fashioned way, but having all the modern conveniences, how lucky are we?

You know, we have a lot more free time than our ancestors did, and I think that's something that we need to keep in mind as modern pioneers in the kitchen. That it doesn't need to be overwhelming because if our ancestors were doing this without electricity, without running water, without indoor plumbing, uh, they were starting at sunrise and going all the ways until sunset.

How lucky are we that we can do this in a modern, a modern way, um, uh, with a modern lifestyle? And so it shouldn't be overwhelming. It should be something that we take step by step and learn little by little and how beautiful it is when [00:50:00] you start looking at all of the ingredients you use to cook with and you see everything in a new light.

You see those onion skins? Oh, I'm not throwing those out. They're going into the stock pot. Oh, those carrot shavings. They're going into the stock pot. Oh, I made bone broth with bones. But you know, there's still some cartilage on here and it's not, it's not been melted down yet. I'm saving those bones. I'm gonna do a second run.

I'm gonna do another, you know, we talk about in the bone broth community, perpetual bone broth. Now is it perpetual forever? No, but you can often get multiple, uh, Batches of bone broth out of one set of bones. And today that's very important because it's getting harder and harder, uh, to afford beef bones as bone broth has become so popular.

But even then, you can look to what did [00:51:00] our ancestors do? They may not have always had the bone. Sometimes they had to sell some of their meats, and so they didn't to pay their bill, that they were running up at their little country store where they may be buying grain because they didn't grow their own grain.

You know, every. Farms did different things. So you looked, what did our ancestors do? They often saved the tendons and the ligaments, and they would use these to make bone broth, and how wonderful is that because tendons and ligaments are still really inexpensive to buy. Even if you have to water them online, they're, they're pretty inexpensive, that's the other thing is being part of a modern pioneer in the kitchen, you always have to be thinking, you always have to be creative and you know, you say, now you know, asparagus are in season and you break the asparagus and you have the tip, the, the bottom part.

That's tough. What can you do with that? [00:52:00] I show you in a YouTube video how to whirl those with some ingredients and make a dip that's so tasty. You conserve it to company and they're gonna say, oh wow, how'd you make this? And you can tell 'em the bottom of the asparagus 'cause they didn't go in the garbage, you know?

And of course, a lot of this can go if you do, um, composting and whatnot. A lot of this can go into your compost. But how better that it goes into serving some nutritional purpose, uh, for your, for your family and friends, and tasty. And, you know, I, I often talk about, This is, this is just the worst. Oh gosh.

When I think about, because I, I, my friends would say, oh yeah, I cleaned out the fridge today. Boy, I had that, what's the thing in the gar in the sink? You know, the,

Roni: Garbage disposal.

Mary: the garbage disposal. Oh, I had that thing running and the water was running and I was throwing stuff down there, and Oh, [00:53:00] I'm so proud.

I cleaned out my, my refrigerator. I said, I'm not proud, I'm horrified. She goes, you probably could have made meals with all of those things that you threw out. You know, I always talk about you, you gotta have your clean out the crisper soup, which basically you, you put everything in a soup pot that's a little past, its prime.

Nobody's gonna notice, uh, when it's turned into a soup. You also have to learn to have your clean out the fridge meals, uh, where you kind of just sort of pull things out. Okay. I got a little meat here. Okay. I got a little this there. I got a little that there. And this is where I love how your meal planner, the plan to eat meal planner comes in handy because you can actually put in there, okay, clean out the fridge meal.

You don't know what it's gonna be, but you know, come, you know, whatever is, and I often like to do these sort of early in the week. Our garbage day is Wednesday, or no, it's Thursday actually, but Wednesday is the day, you know, we bring [00:54:00] everything out to the curb and so it's like I have the clean out the fridge meal scheduled for Wednesday because I you, you're gonna have to go into your fridge and before you even think twice I.

About throwing anything out. You figure out, okay, how can I make a meal out of this? And when you bring something and you've got it in your hand and you holding it over, your garbage can look at that a couple of times and say, okay, do I really wanna put this in the garbage can or can I really make a meal out of this?

And then it becomes like a game and you get really excited about it and, and you know, now I love it when my friends say, oh, ma, I cleaned out the fridge. I made a dinner. Everybody was raving about it. And it was stuff that would've otherwise gone in the garbage. You know, and food is expensive today. I mean, gosh, the inflation that we've been hit [00:55:00] with is, is not, not unprecedented for my lifetime.

I lived through the 1970s, but which we had terrible, terrible inflation, but this is new to a lot of young home cooks, and they've seen their grocery budget really have to either expand or you, you had to learn how to really make the most of what you could afford. And so it, it just becomes so, so fulfilling, fulfill when you realize how much food you actually do have available to you to make meals with.

Roni: Hmm. I really like the life, kinda like the lifestyle aspect of, uh, a lifecycle, I mean lifecycle aspect that you talked about there with. Um, I feel like it's a lost knowledge of, okay, if we prepare food this way, it increases these kinds of [00:56:00] nutrients and it feeds our body in this sort of a way, and we need these nutrients in certain times of the year.

That is knowledge that I don't think most people in our day and age really have anymore, but I. It's such a beautiful idea to think that, oh, well it's actually, you know, it's an easy way to keep this cabbage all winter or long, but then also the cabbage serves our bodies better. Uh, I, I love hearing about those kinds of things.

Um, and then I wanted to circle back to you talking about kind of the budget aspect of the way that you do your YouTube videos. 'cause that's something I've always appreciated about your videos is when you're teaching people how to make homemade yogurt, you're, you, you give like four different options for milk that somebody could use.

You have the, you know, the pasteurized, organic, the most expensive bottle of milk that you could buy, and then you also have the 2% store brand so that people know you can get the same product no matter what you're using, and you can make it fit to your lifestyle and your budgetary needs. And I think that's, that is so [00:57:00] important because I do think that there's a lot of barriers to entry for people thinking, well, I can't buy all organic food, or I can't buy.

Grass fed meat or you know, I can't buy the grass fed milk. Or maybe they don't like the way the grass fed milk tastes, you know? And so I think that's such a special thing that you do, is that you help people see that no matter where they're at in their position in life, that it's accessible to them to do these things.

Mary: Oh, I'm so glad to hear that you like that. You know it's funny, I will sometimes get comments and people say, oh, Mary, for heaven's sakes, why do you even bother giving a recipe? Your whole video is saying, well, if you don't have this, use that. If you don't have this, use that if you don't have this. But that really was very much a goal of mine to make this accessible, to make the entry.

Basically starting at zero. Whatever you have, don't worry about it. You know? And, and I laugh, you know, because I say, oh, all you can find is ultra pasteurized milk. Don't worry. I can [00:58:00] show you how to work with it. We're gonna make it more nutritious. We're gonna put back into it some of the things that have been destroyed through the ultra pasteurization process.

And that's why, you know, I do the same thing on my how to roast a chicken video. I line up the chickens. I felt a little like Julia Child, you know, she has that famous video where she's like, and meet Miss Capon. And meet Miss Roaster. You know, and you know, I, I sometimes I take a lot of flack for this, you know, but I tell people, I don't care how the chicken was raised, you know, just start with a roast chicken.

And I always joke that if I, if one day I were ever to write a memoir, I. Like when I'm in my nineties, the title of the book would be Just Start With a Roast Chicken. You know, I, I, I'm not gonna berate you because all you can afford is a 99 cents a pound chicken at the grocery store. You gotta start somewhere, and sometimes your children need clothes, the car [00:59:00] needs gas.

You know, you have, you might have a very small budget, and I never want people to feel that they can't enter into creating a traditional, traditional foods kitchen because they couldn't afford X or they couldn't be perfect.

Roni: Mm-hmm.

Mary: None of that. Start where you're at. I love that. There's an expression that I've seen a lot of people say, grow where you're planted.

I think that's a grow where you're planted. Just start. Do the best you can. Don't berate yourself that you don't have the perfect this or the perfect that. Just start. And as you start on this journey, things change little by little over time. Also, your stress level is a lot lower when you just start, so to speak, where you're planted.

Just do the best that you can and use whatever milk you can find. Use whatever cream you can find. Use whatever chicken you can mine. Just learn these skills and don't become [01:00:00] so concerned initially about. The sourcing of your products, you will, as you go on your journey, you'll start to discover things just by going to the farmer's market and talking with the different vendors where you may be able to source a slightly better product than what you're buying at the grocery store.

But if not, that's okay because I'm gonna teach you how to take products from the grocery store and basically reinstill some of the nutrition that had been destroyed by some sort of process. Uh, even with the flour. Even if all you get is all purpose flour or bread flour where all of the brand and germ has been sifted out of it, don't worry about it.

I'm gonna show you how to increase the nutrition of these things, and that is very important and. Going [01:01:00] back to what you said about eating foods, you know, seasonally and having the nutrition, something that's not often talked about. And I find this absolutely fascinating, and this is a subject that more and more scientists are delving into and looking into is that, did you know our gut bacteria, the good bacteria in our guts change slightly with the seasons.

And so you may find eating fresh fruit in the middle of January doesn't agree with you.

Roni: Hmm.

Mary: But you may find that eating fresh fruit in June when it's in season and your microbiome is primed for it, it agrees with you. You may find this with bread, you may find this with meat, that our systems are primed for different foods at different times of year [01:02:00] when they're actually in season, wherever we live, whatever climate we're in.

And if, if you've say, recently relocated from somewhere across the world, it does take a little time for your microbiome to A, to adjust to that. But if you've basically lived in the same place and not even like necessarily the same, like speaking of the United States, if you are just basically in the Northern hemisphere, you know your microbiome is adjusted.

To the seasons, and that's why seasonal eating is very important. Don't eat strawberries in January. You know, first of all, they're gonna be expensive, you know,

Roni: They won't taste very good either.

Mary: Yeah. They, they're very good. Yeah. And a lot of people will say to me, Mary, how do I know what's in season? You know, and, oh, I, in my area, oh, the lists on the internet.

Oh, I don't wanna deal with that. I always say, just go to the grocery store, whatever you see, and [01:03:00] whatever you see that is reasonably priced, for example, in the produce section, chances are that's what's in season. You know, it's, oh, it's not really that hard, you know, to, to know. But I, I, I think that this is, is really going to be a, a, a future discussion as we go forward in the years to come about.

I. The, the real importance of eating seasonally and our microbiome and the importance of properly preparing food for the season you're in like sauerkraut. You know, sauerkraut is probably best eaten during those winter months. And how interesting is this? Our ancestors had a grow season, then they had a harvest season, and at the end of harvest season is when they were preserving their food.

They were either home canning it, they were smoking it, they were [01:04:00] drying it, they were fermenting it, whatever the case may be. And then these were the foods that they were eating during the winter months and then come spring when often their food supplies in many cases were very low. What were they eating in the early spring?

Greens, bitter greens were starting to grow up. And what do bitter greens do? They often clear out a lot of, um, uh, for lack of a better word, I don't know if really toxins is appropriate, but just the buildup of different, uh, an over buildup, and I'll explain that in a minute. An over buildup of sometimes too many vitamins and minerals from eating all these really super nutrient dense foods that you need throughout the winter.

But then these greens were cleansing the palate. They were cleansing the digestive system. They were waking up the digest digestive system, preparing it for all the fresh foods that [01:05:00] we were going to start eating. And this is, when I say we, I'm talking about our ancestors. The, the, the milk. You drink more milk during the warmer months, and then you culture it as you get towards going into the winter. And so all of these things were, they, they, our ancestors were really following this cycle of eating. And so then they were eating these fresh greens, and then they were going into having the raw milk, and then they were skimming the cream, which was now really yellow because the cattle were eating these fresh greens.

And in the cat, in the cow's body that turns into omega threes, the fatty acid, omega three, that we hear so much about in salmon. And so now this butter was really yellow, and so it was very rich in omega threes. And so they were. Men starting to have more mature greens. [01:06:00] And what were they doing? They were cooking them and putting this butter on them.

And what does butter do? Butter helps you as all fats, helps you absorb the nutrients from vegetables. Yeah, so it's wonderful to see and something that I think you can even go way back past the pioneers. You can go back to ancient times. Why did certain cultures. In the spring, eat unleavened bread. 'cause you always hear, oh, we gotta soak the bread.

We gotta deactivate the antinutrients, like phytic acid. That'll strip our bodies of vitamins and minerals. So we have to sour. We have to make sourdough bread. But why then did ancient cultures just in the spring? If you look at especially, uh, Judeo and Judeo-Christian calendars. Why were they, why were, for example, the Israelites and the Jewish people?

Why were they eating in ancient times, unleavened bread in the [01:07:00] spring? Well, you know why, because that's when you do want some phytic acid in your system. Phytic acid has a good and a bad side. And in the spring, the phytic acid pull did pull out some of the nutrients from the people's bodies. But it needed to be pulled out because after the winter months, they were often eating foods that were high in iron and many cultures.

And I find this especially interesting, uh, but I'm Italian descent on my mother's side, but I'm Irish descent on my mo on my father's side. And I'll explain that in a minute, but, These, the phytic acid needed to strip out a little bit of that iron because in some cultures, we hold onto iron and too much iron is not good for us.

And so eating these unleavened breads where the phytic acid was in [01:08:00] full swing, it was pulling a little bit of that iron out of our systems and also phyto acid as antioxidant properties. So it was flushing the system with antioxidants and pulling out a little bit of that extra iron that. Might have been a little too hard on our hearts and a culture in my own, uh, history.

Irish is that Irish people tend to hold onto iron. And I will tell you to this day, even at 65 years old, I always have plenty of iron. I am never iron deficient. I have never been iron deficient. And it wa and it wasn't until I started studying phytic acid that I learned why given my cultural heritage.

And so I never worry about eating, and I even make the habit of it because sometimes my iron can actually be a little high. And we know too much iron is not good for our hearts. [01:09:00] And when you're a post-menopausal woman, those of, uh, in your audience who may be post-menopausal women, uh, you know, once we go through menopause, we're not losing any iron.

And that's why you often hear of older women might have heart attacks if they've held onto too much iron. And so I never worry about eating unleavened bread in the spring, and I feel that it pulls out some of that extra iron in my body. So it's just, this is, I can get very excited about this.

Roni: I find it fascinating too. I, I love hearing about those kinds of things. It's something that I would like to research a little bit more myself, because I do just think it's a, such a, like I said, a beautiful lifecycle of a, of plants and the food that we eat. Um, but I wanna get a little bit into your book.

So why don't you, I want, I wanna hear a little bit about, about your cookbook, obviously, but I'm curious if the cookbook is a, a standalone item, or do you feel that it compliments your YouTube [01:10:00] channel and vice versa? Uh, what was the intention in creating it, from, you know, a lot of the things that you talk about on YouTube.

Mary: I really wanted to, uh, create the Modern Pioneer Cookbook to be a complete standalone item. It is a lot more, even though cookbook is in the title, it's a lot more than a cookbook. It was very important to me when I was approached to write this. And it's funny 'cause my editors, he jokes, he says, I've never done a book like this before.

It's a manual. And that's what I wanted. I wanted people to be able to buy something that was completely inclusive, completely self-sustaining, and could be put on their bookshelf and pulled off every time they needed a manual on how to make traditional foods. Yes, it has all the recipes. Yes, it has all the step by step.

And of course, certainly I. Yes, there [01:11:00] is the YouTube channel, there is the website, you know, to back all of this up. But even if you didn't have that, even if tomorrow the internet went away, you would have this manual that walks you through all the traditional foods. I walk people through, first of all how to stock a pantry, a traditional foods pantry.

Then I go through each category, how to make bone broth, how to render animal fats, how to re, you know, how to take sue it and render it beef, sue it and render it into beef tallow. How to render, you know, pork fat, how to make lard, how to render chicken fat, make sch, malts and all, you know, I walk them through that.

I walk people through. Uh, how to culture, dairy, and, I really tried to always focus on things that didn't require people buying anything special. You know, even, you know, as [01:12:00] you said, my yogurt video, you don't even need a yogurt maker. And I tell people in the beginning, just start with a bowl. You just need a bowl, you know?

Uh, our, our ancestors didn't have yogurt makers, you know, I mean, we're lucky we have it, and if you do, great, but know that that's not a required entry point. Yeah. And I talk about how to ferment a variety of things, not just vegetables. I talk about how to ferment fruits. I talk how to make, I talk about how to make homemade condiments and then how to ferment them.

I show very easy ways to make a sourdough starter, and I give a lot of options. You know, I've talked to a certain extent about this on my, uh, YouTube channel. But there's even so much more in the book. And I, I really walk people through how, even if it's not, even if I have people who have come to me and they're like, oh my gosh, no matter what I do, I can't get a [01:13:00] sourdough starter going.

And then I say, okay, that's not the end of the world. Take a pinch of packaged yeast, throw it in there, get it bubbling, get it going, and then keep feeding it and start baking with it. And over time, it's just gonna be as good as any other, you know, sourdough starter is my, but you know, I, and I give all these different steps with the last step being just throw in a pinch of yeast, I also have a chapter all about home canning.

That's been become very interesting to people and it's a lot easier than people realize. You know, once you just, like with the bone broth, once you go through a few steps and you kind of get into the rhythm of it, and I start with water bath, canning, it's much easier than pressure canning and you don't need any special equipment again.

You know, that speaks to my heart. You don't need anything special. And I talk about herbs and drying herbs and, and I talk about preserving in different ways other than home canning, you know, through [01:14:00] drying. And I show people how to make fermented beverages 

I talk about making sprouted, how to sprout grain, how to make sprouted flour, if that's something people wanna do, how to bake with sprouted flour. And then I kinda kick it up a notch and I say, okay, now we're gonna have some dessert. And I show how to bake with alternative sweeteners as opposed to white sugar.

And then really towards the end of the book, I help you pull it all together and I show you how to make meals using all of these things throughout this manual that you've learned how to make, whether it's your homemade, you know, I have a whole section on homemade dairy, not just yogurt, but how to make cottage cheese and how to make, uh, a whole host of dairy-based products.

And so that was really my whole intention of writing this. You know, the modern Pioneer Cookbook was let, let me give people a [01:15:00] manual that they can walk through, you know, to go beyond, uh, like nourishing Traditions, you know, is just fabulous. I mean, it's, it's a tone and it, it's, Just got a whole host of recipes, but I wanted to really kind of take that book, but take it a step further where I'm really walking people through.

If those are people who are familiar with Nourishing Traditions, it doesn't, the recipes are short and there's a lot of knowledge that is assumed. And I really wanted to take people, I wanted a beginner to be able to pick up this manual, start with chapter one, not feel overwhelmed, feel that I'm right there holding their hand and talking to them.

And you know, every chapter more or less, has what I like to think of as a pep talk. You know that you can do this. We're home [01:16:00] cooks, we're home bakers. None of this needs to be perfect. Even if you think in your own mind your bread is a flop, I will tell you dollars to donuts. People are gonna walk in the kitchen and say, you made bread.

And I often remember my girlfriend, who was not, she wasn't really much of a, a home cooking wasn't her thing, but she was so cute because I had made, I think it was like a rye bread and I wasn't so happy with it. And she's like, oh, you made bread. And she ate like half a loaf of it. And I wasn't even really, and she's like, oh, I love these hardy rye breads.

It was a little dense, you know? But to her it was hardy, you know? And she enjoyed it. She inhaled it, you know? So I think that we always had to remind ourselves, okay, we've got our manual, we've got this on our bookshelf, we're gonna do our best. But we're home cooks. We're home bakers doesn't need to be [01:17:00] perfect, never needs to be perfect.

It's amazing how when you become a home cook, even as a beginner, and people are used to you not being a home cook. They walk into your house with, I was a single girl for a very long time and I would like call up my neighbor and I would say, come on over. I'm roasting a chicken. And it would just be her and me.

And I'll never forget the first time we were probably in our late twenties, she walked into my kitchen and she saw me taking the roast chicken out of the oven. And she's like, oh my gosh, Mary, you live like an adult. And I said, we are adults, you know, but was my chicken perfect? Probably not. Who knows, you know?

But I just remember we sat down at my kitchen table and we ate and we had a good time. And I, I really think that when you start to cook and you just walk through the steps, little by little, not stressing yourself, not stressing your friends, not stressing your family, [01:18:00] you know, not running out of the kitchen, crying.

Oh, it's a disaster. Just saying, Hey, I got something homemade. It's all about attitude sometimes, you know, and, and your friends are like, wow, this is, this is good. This is home cooked. Oh, you know? Wow. And you just make a soup sometimes with your bone broth. You just take white rice and instead of water, you use bone broth.

And if you've gotten to the point in life where you say, okay, I think I'm gonna buy a little butter, you know, and you throw the butter in and a little sea salt people are saying, wow, this rice is delicious. You know? So it's, uh, it's just a wonderful, and, and like you said, the whole cycle, you start cooking seasonally, you start properly preparing food and next thing you know, everybody is coming over to your house.

I used to laugh that. I would, uh, my, my girlfriends would say, your house is always filled with people [01:19:00] eating. And then I would say, oh yeah, I, and often it was like a lot of young men, which as a young woman, you're happy because you wanna meet a fella, you know? And I would say, yeah, I run a home for wayward young men. But, uh, you know, it's, it's, it, it's a manual that I hope younger, old will be able to embrace and will, will feel that they're really becoming modern pioneers in the kitchen. And my ultimate goal, which is really the theme through the whole book, is, Ultimately let's all of us try to create low waste, uh, uh, at the very least low waste kitchens.

And then ultimately, if you ever get to a no waste kitchen, I mean that, I, I, I know that's almost impossible, but it's amazing what you can do and it's amazing how you can repurpose food like you've never [01:20:00] repurposed before when you create a traditional foods kitchen. And that is the most rewarding thing to me.

When people say, people will come to me and they'll say, and I, I can't believe this. It's so humbling. They'll say, you changed my life. And that is really what my, my goal for my book is that, that the modern pioneer cookbook will, will, will really help change people's lives to change their kitchen life. To create that traditional foods kitchen, to be a modern pioneer in the kitchen, and ultimately when you learn, then pass it on.

Teach others. You know, I always love the way Sally Fallon says, teach, teach and teach. Teach others. Let's all learn how to preserve and prepare foods properly. By limiting waste, by increasing nutrition, by increasing nutritional [01:21:00] absorption, and teach others, teach other people how to do this and let them go on and teach other people because we're losing these skills and we don't want to lose them.

And there's, we have a little window. There was a resurgence during 2020 of people wanting to learn how to be home cooks, how to become more self-sufficient, how to become more self-sustaining. And now let's grab that. Let's not lose that. Let's teach, teach, and teach. Let's keep these skills growing. Let's keep these skills alive.

Let's get everybody becoming modern pioneers in the kitchen and let's lower our grocery budgets. Let's lower our waste. How good this is gonna be. For the whole country and for the world. If we can learn to waste less food so that one day when you're reading an article online, no matter where it's from, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, [01:22:00] whoever, you know, publishes these things that they say, wow, food waste is down 30%.

You know, H how fabulous would that be? I mean, 10% is not even, that's not great, but how wonderful it'll be if over the coming years we read that food waste is down. That to me, that's the best thing ever. Never.

Roni: I love all of the messages that you just shared there, and what I really love is that you actually live that message. And I, uh, I think that's so great, but I don't wanna take up your whole day. So, um, before we end, why don't you just remind everybody, uh, where they can find you online, your YouTube channel, and when your book comes out, we'll definitely make sure we have a link to purchase it in the episode description so that everybody who has felt impassioned by you today can make sure they get a copy for themselves.

Mary: Oh, thank you so much. Yes, you can find me across social media at [01:23:00] Mary's Nest. The name of my YouTube channel is Mary's Nest. The name of my website is Mary's Nest, as well as on Facebook and, and Instagram. Uh, but I think probably my biggest presence, you know, with my videos is, is on YouTube. And, uh, my book is available for pre-order.

Uh, if you go to my website, uh, in the toolbar, there's an area that says my cookbook and people can learn more about it there. But it'll actually be available August 15th of this year, 2023. And I just wanna thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It's just a delight talking to you. And, uh, I, I really wanna thank you for having plan to eat.

It's a wonderful, wonderful service and it's, it's been a delight to be able to use it.

Roni: Well, I thank you for being here. This has been so wonderful to talk with you.

Mary: Thank you very much.

Roni: We hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you did, please share it with someone and subscribe to our podcast. Wherever [01:24:00] you listen to your podcasts.