Real Food Stories
The question of "what to eat" can feel endlessly confusing, especially when we contend with our own deeply ingrained beliefs and stories around food. Blame social media, the headline news, and let's not get started on family influences. Passed down from generations of women and men to their daughters, it's no wonder women are so baffled about how to stay healthy the older we get.
As a nutritionist and healthy eating chef, combined with her own personal and professional experience, Heather Carey has been connected to years of stories related to diets, weight loss, food fads, staying healthy, cooking well, and eating well. Beliefs around food start the day we try our first vegetables as babies and get solidified through our families, cultures, and messages we receive throughout our lifetime.
We have the power to call out our food beliefs so we can finally make peace with what we eat and get on with enjoying the real food and lives we deserve. Listen in to find out how to have your own happy ending to your real food story. Connect with Heather at heather@heathercarey.com or visit her website at www.heathercarey.com or www.greenpalettekitchen.com
Real Food Stories
127. The Homesteader's Mindset: Building Joy Through Simple Habits
What if you didn’t have to move to the woods to live a more content, intentional life?
In this action oriented conversation with Elizabeth Bruckner, author of The Homesteader Mindset, we explore how everyday habits—not remote acreage—can transform your relationship with food, home, and health.
From fermenting your first jar of sauerkraut to growing a single basil plant, Elizabeth shares practical, approachable ways to reconnect with what nourishes you. We unpack tools like habit stacking and the five-minute rule, showing how simple shifts can make homesteading practices doable—even in the busiest life.
We also talk about the fears that hold us back—like botched compost or funky ferments—and why making mistakes is an essential part of the process. Elizabeth’s honest stories (including a run-in with a rat-infested garden shed) are both funny, vulnerable and deeply reassuring: you don’t need perfection (or look like an influencer on Instagram) to start building a more resilient, joyful life.
This episode is about more than just fermentation and homemade hand soap. It’s about claiming freedom, presence, and self-trust—one small habit at a time.
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Hey everybody and welcome back to Real Food Stories. We're in the heart of summer right now, which means visits to the farmer's markets and, hopefully, growing some of your own vegetables or herbs in your very own garden, whether that is a container on your deck, a pot of basil in your kitchen or a larger outdoor garden. Now, back in April, I had my guest who's going to be on today Elizabeth Bruckner. She was on our show to talk about homesteading and gardening and it was totally eye-opening to me. We ended that episode which is episode 116, by the way, if you want to go back and take a listen With the realization that homesteading is a mindset. It's not about necessarily living off the grid in Alaska although that is totally fine too if you want to do that but homesteading really is about mindset and habits. So if you did catch my conversation with Elizabeth, you'll remember how a garlic shortage during COVID led Elizabeth down a completely unexpected path From acupuncturist to full-blown front yard gardener, fermentation expert and now author of the Homesteader Mindset. We talked all about her journey, what it means to live closer to your food and, yes, she even convinced me to try making my own vinegar. So today we're picking up right where we left off, but going even deeper. Because here's the thing creating a life that feels more connected and nourishing isn't just about compost or a gaggle of backyard chickens although all of that stuff is great too. It's about small, consistent habits, the kind that make you feel grounded, more alive and, yes, more joyful. And Elizabeth is the perfect person to guide us through that shift. Whether you're a garden, curious, fascinated with fermentation, or just trying to figure out how to get started with something new, this episode is for you. So let's dive into what it really means to build a homesteader mindset and how to make it stick, one tiny habit at a time. Hi Elizabeth, how are you Since we have talked? We got on the podcast back in April of 2025, in case someone listens to this and somewhere in the future but we were talking a couple months ago about homesteading, and as we talked I mean you definitely, if anyone's listened to that last episode Elizabeth reminded me and inspired me that I could actually make my own homemade vinegar.
Speaker 1:This is part of the homesteading philosophy and it never really occurred to me to do that, because I make a lot of other things I bake bread, I have a huge vegetable garden, I have chickens, bees, the whole thing but vinegar was not one that made my list.
Speaker 1:So she challenged me, and here we are now in July, and I made my vinegar and it came out great, and I'm using it as a kitchen counter spray that I diluted with some water, and while also I did that, while I was having things sit on my counter, I also decided to make some sauerkraut and I made some kimchi, which I have done in the past, but I'm not going to lie. There's something about making my own food and we can talk more about. This is, like you know, like going along with this homesteaders mindset that I have a little trepidation about. I feel like if it's not coming out of the store, out of like a factory, then I don't know if it's like truly safe, and so I you know, so I have a little hesitation. What do you feel about that?
Speaker 2:I love that we're talking about it. So the the image that came into my mind is I'm sure you've seen on YouTube people putting cucumbers behind cats and then the cat recognizing the cucumber and jumping like crazy. It's hilarious and not very nice.
Speaker 2:I have not seen that, yeah, so it's just this innate knowing that cats do not like things that look sort of like snakes, I think, is my guess. And so they see it and they jump up in the air every single time. Right, cats like. Every now and then there's one dumb, dumb cat or super brave cat that's like meh, it's just a cucumber. But this reminds me that we also, our brains, are programmed to look for danger, and we're always looking for danger in the unknown.
Speaker 2:And so, because we were raised in a generation where you got all your food from the store, I didn't even know I did not know until a few years ago that my grandma had a dairy cow. When my brother was growing up, he was raised on raw milk. I had no idea because we didn't talk about it, because we got milk at the grocery store like everybody else. And so when we look at those patterns, it's a beautiful thing that your body is telling you be careful, go carefully here, make sure that you're not doing something that's going to harm you.
Speaker 2:With that being said, for me the best way to get past that fear of the unknown, because I was terrified of eating something that was going to make me die I mean, how many news stories have we heard of someone you know, and there are some things that can be kind of tricky. For example, if you take olive oil and you infuse it with garlic, a lot of people are leaving that on their counter, and then the olive oil gets rancid and sometimes botulism can grow in that olive oil. So, yes, it can be dangerous at times, and so the best way to surpass that is to give your brain more knowledge so that it can actually identify what is safe and what's unsafe. The first tool that you have, which is my absolute favorite tool, because, unless you cut it off to spite your face, your nose is quite. I'm so proud of myself for throwing that little play on words.
Speaker 2:Your nose is the best tool that you could possibly have. If it smells funky and not like in a sauerkraut funky, but oh my gosh, that's like you know, that thing needs to get thrown out into the trash, that is a good indication that you should not be trying it. With that being said, when it comes to lacto-fermentation of vegetables, it's very rare that you'll get something harmful or deadly on it. What I usually say to students and patients alike is if you see a mold that is a fancy color, then you do not want to eat it and you can just mix that into the ferment. But if it's brown or a really fancy green or really pretty blue, take a picture of it, post it on Instagram and then throw it away. Now some people would even say, oh well, you can just scrape it off. But I like to be safe rather than sorry. So the more that I recognize what's going on in this fermentation. If there's enough salt in that fermentation, especially for lactobacillus, what happens is the salt inhibits all the other bacteria, while the lactobacillus goes wild and crazy, and that's the good stuff. That's going to make you super happy and that you buy expensive probiotics full of it.
Speaker 2:Now I think maybe we didn't talk about this but I need to say it because I'm so excited about your sauerkraut. One teaspoon of sauerkraut has more probiotics, in variety and amount of probiotic cells, than an entire bottle of that $68 probiotic, you know, refrigerated fancy bottle that you get at the supermarket. So you just made an incredible thing, an incredible vitamin for your family. But does that? Does that make sense? Like this idea that knowledge really is power and the more we know, the less scared scared we can be, just like with your vinegar. You had the little acid strips that will tell you. You know, there are, you know, and that costs like four bucks on Amazon to get those strips. Sometimes I use them when it's with cleaning vinegar, sometimes I don't. I use it more out of curiosity now because I want to see what's the level getting to. And I do want to talk about vinegar a little bit because I here's my vinegar bottle that I have to fill up.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's great yeah. I should have brought mine with me to show you, but I don't have it with me, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no worries, I'll model mine, but mine is empty. It needs to be filled up. But I want to talk about what I do in terms of making it easier, like reducing the friction, in terms of a habit. So I'm going to make another dose of my bathroom cleaner. I have one for my bathroom and one for my kitchen and I use these for the counters. If I need to scrub something, I'll throw a little baking soda on it and that's like my scrubber. That's kind of like what soft scrub used to be, but there's no chemicals involved. And what I do here is I label it bathroom cleaner.
Speaker 2:Sadly, it's in a plastic bottle right now, which I don't recommend. I think get a glass bottle, but then on the label you can write what is in it. So for me, I don't want to have to remember my formula, but I want it to smell the same each time. So I'll write vinegar plus water, h2o, that's half and half, half vinegar, half water, and then I write down the essential oils that I put in it For my bathroom I do five drops of rosemary, five drops of tea tree and then 15 drops of lemongrass to give it that lemonyrass, that lemony smell, and so now I don't have to think about it. It makes it easier, and so I thought I'd bring this over to tell you about it, because a lot of people think like, oh, you got to make the vinegar and it's going to take all day, and no, it takes. What did it take for you in terms of mixing it every day?
Speaker 1:Oh, it took me a few seconds to just to make sure that it was. Things were submerged, and you're really not. I mean, it's just sitting on your counter, yep Right, fermenting, and like I mean, same with the sauerkraut and the kimchi. I mean it's really you just need to, you know, put your eyes on it for a minute or two every single day, but it really is doing the work for you, so it's not, there's nothing really heavy duty that you have to do with it and it's, and it's. I mean, you know my sauerkraut, I mean it all tastes so much better than when you buy it from the store also. But I want to go back. I agree with you with, with just getting educated, that we really do need to have some education, right, and I think just at the basic level.
Speaker 1:If something doesn't smell right, don't even, because now I'm remembering that when I started making my sauerkraut, I made two jars of it. One of them was going down that path. I'm not sure why, though, because both of them were sitting side by side on the counter and I could smell it and like, and I, I, I smelled it after a couple of days. I'm like, this does not smell right at all, and I'm not taking my chances. The other one came out fine, and that one's been great, but the other one, you know but the first one was not didn't smell. Right Now I I could take a guess as to what was happening, but I'm not still quite sure. Yeah, so anyway. Fermenting is is on my list of homesteading things, sort of like at the more, so at the bottom. I want to. I want to, though, make this more of a habit for myself, and the counter spray is great.
Speaker 2:I love it too. You can actually make vinegar with wine as well, and I've done that successfully once. And then I tried putting a mother in it, which a mother is kind of like a. It's a mass of bacteria that forms in another type of fermentation. So sometimes you'll see your like your brine. I have a lemon brine where I ferment lemons and then use them for cooking and stuff, and there was like this kind of blob at the bottom. That's the mother, and so you can take that and you can put it in other things. I put it in my wine and it did not like it, and so I also did the sniff test and I'm like this is not good. This one has to go, and I think you have to.
Speaker 2:For me there's a you know, I I've really I'm a recovering perfectionist and so I have to be really okay with you cannot learn unless you make mistakes, like it's not that that sauerkraut was ruined and you are a failure and you should just never do it again. It was like no, you trusted your instincts. You trusted that your body was telling you what you needed, and now you can very gently be happy that 50% of the sauerkraut is doing well and every. I mean, I had slimy onions once and I don't need to kind of go into what did I do wrong and I just, for some reason, the onions did not agree with my ferment that time. And then I love this idea of making this, bringing this up to a higher up on your priority list, because it's such an easy thing to do.
Speaker 2:And that's why I'm so excited to talk about habits with you, because people don't realize that once you get some habits, it becomes joyful, it becomes a pleasure, it becomes not difficult. And I will say the first secret, if we can start just with this, is something you said from your example. You told me that we're going to have another podcast, and so you had accountability. We were going to be talking about your vinegar, and so it definitely. When we have accountability, I am known for calling a friend up and being like hey, how are you doing on your exercise? Do you want to text me every day? And we'll just, you know, get kind of connected on it or whatever habit that I'm trying to form. Accountability goes a long way.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Oh yeah, there's no way I was going to show up on this podcast without first having made that vinegar. I'm like I have to make the vinegar because Elizabeth gave me the recipe and I was curious to make it too and it came out great, but I definitely wanted to have it made. I didn't want to come on here and say sorry I didn't make it, I got lazy, or anything like that. No-transcript super important, I think. I think it definitely helps with habit formation.
Speaker 1:But I just want to just quickly go back, just in case some of my listeners have not listened to the first episode, because we talked about this concept in the first episode of homesteading. So I just want to remind people, or if they haven't listened, what homesteading is for you, because I think when we started our conversation the last time, I had it in my head that you were living in like some remote area of California and you were living off the land and that's, you know, that's what I thought of homesteading is that you're really kind of off grid off land, you know, and you're kind of off grid off land, you know, and you're surviving this way, and you showed me that that's not necessarily how it has to be and that homesteading is more of a mindset, that there's a mindset around it. So can you just tell my listeners just quickly you know, just to catch them up, where you live and what your homesteading is like. And then I want to talk about the habits and how to make this more of a habit.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. I do have some eyeliner on. I did not go outside, grab some bark, burn it and then put it on my eyelids. I am a Southern California girl and I live where I can see telephone poles outside of my window. I live in the suburbs. There's lots of cement and there are lots of conveniences here. So homesteading doesn't have to be living off grid, which I you know. Kudos to those that do it. And let me tell you, if someone gave me a hundred acres of land, if one of your listeners would like to gift me with a hundred acres, I will take it and I will make them vinegar until their dying day, happily. But for now I live in this beautiful suburb with lots of lovely neighbors and I didn't even know what homesteading was.
Speaker 2:What I've come to see that it is is modern homesteading, which is different than that living off grid with fighting off bears, is a practice of cultivating resilience through a more intentional way of living. If I had to say it in one sentence, that would be it. It is a practice of cultivating resilience through a more intentional way of living, and this includes reducing toxic load in our homes, like making yourself vinegar to clean your house instead of even, instead of buying the thing that says organic but has 500 ingredients that you spray on your on your counters. It involves building our gut microbiome with nutrient dense foods like sauerkraut. It involves growing edible landscaping, which you're already doing, I'm already doing. And for those of you that think, oh, I can't do it because I live in an apartment, my book, the Homesteader Mindset, talks about that as well. Like you're able to do it anywhere. There are many different spokes to homesteading and we're just connecting deeply with our own innate resourcefulness.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that is very different than just the general concept of homesteading, right, that someone can do this anywhere. Yes, it doesn't have to be on 100 acres of land, it can be in an apartment, it can do. It can be what you can do for yourself that feels good for you, right? So, okay, so let's now go into the creating a habit around this, because it definitely takes some commitment and some habit formation and to get to get going and to realize that this is a benefit for you, right? So let's, so, let's talk about how you created your habits. I. I mean, was there a moment when you realized that you were no longer like trying to live differently, that this just became like part of your daily living?
Speaker 2:You know, I think it goes back to my medical training and then my language learning hobby, because that is when I learned that the brain creates habits and loves patterns and loves novelty and repetition, which sounds like opposites, but that's not true. And so, as I was learning languages, I'd always been a neuroscience nerd. I always in the clinic, in my graduate school work, at the clinic in school and then in my own clinic, I always worked on emotional issues and neurological issues because they fascinated me. And so then, when I started learning languages and I had to learn how to create habits in it, you know I was working, I had a, I had a clinic that I was running. I didn't have time to just spend hours upon hours upon hours of learning languages, and so I started reading up on habit creation and habit for any.
Speaker 2:Actually, a friend of mine, a polyglot that speaks, I think, like five or six languages, he sent me a book after I gave a presentation as a gift. It was called the power of habit by Charles Dewey, and this book blew my mind because number one the nerdy science geek in me, could learn all about the different parts of the brain and where routine and habit connect, and it also got me on this idea of oh, I could do this for patients, because patient compliance was something that I was constantly questioning. Why aren't my patients doing this? They come in, they feel better, they want to feel better. I give them some ideas, they go home, they don't do them. They come back in feeling bad and then they feel better after the treatment. But they could feel so much better. And I knew it wasn't a case of lazy or unintelligent. These were smart, creative, successful people that were coming to my clinic. Why weren't they able to do it? They have the same 24 hours as everyone else.
Speaker 2:So do I, and that's when I started realizing that a lot of them are stuck in the paralysis of I want to do it, but I have these three myths it's going to take up too much time, I don't have time, it's too complicated and I don't have enough money. And so I started working, firstly with the I don't have time, Like is that true? Is it true that we don't have time? I could easily convince you that I do not have time, but when we look at language learning, they talked a lot about dead time. I really didn't like that word. It sounded kind of morbid. I don't want to be hanging out with zombie time, so I re-coined it found time.
Speaker 2:And what found time is is anytime you're pulling away from what's happening in the present moment and reaching for a distraction. So how many times a day do you pick up your phone and you just check text for text messages, even though you're not expecting a text message? Or you find yourself scrolling and then 15 minutes later, or, gosh, two hours later, you're like what have I done? That is found time and I don't want to take away the reward that you get for checking your text messages and seeing a cute picture of your grandkid. I absolutely don't want to take that away from you.
Speaker 2:And we can add something to that found time and create habits. So when that light bulb went off for me which was habit chaining, habit stacking, the five minute rule when that light bulb went off, I realized that I could learn languages with five minute increments a day. And so when I bumped into homesteading, which you and I talked about how I accidentally became a homesteader in the April episode, it was um, it was a light bulb moment for me. I already knew I know how to create systems, so I'm just going to translate, pun intended. I'm going to translate my language learning habits into homesteading habits, and I just started one step at a time. So I'll give you an example of habit stacking and habit chaining, because that's what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2:People are like what does that mean? Habit stacking is when you take a habit that you already have and you put another habit on top of it. So one example is during a daily commute to work, you might want to search for podcasts on healing herbs in the kitchen, and then during your daily commute, you just click one before you get in the car Well, before you turn it on, of course, you don't want to get any tickets and you listen to that podcast on healing herbs in the kitchen. For me, I did this with castor oil. I wanted to know everything about castor oil. Everyone talked about its beauty properties and what it does for the skin. I'm like, yeah, but I've heard, there's more. I've heard there's more. And so I just listened to every podcast that existed on castor oil for a couple of weeks and then I got fairly good at understanding what castor oil does scientifically. So that's habit stacking.
Speaker 2:You take something that's kind of a mindless task and then you add another one on top. Habit chaining is when you take a habit that already exists and you do a habit before it, a new habit before it or a new habit after it. So for me, after washing my dishes today, I wanted to think of a very current habit that I chained. I usually do one small homesteading task, one like five minutes or less, and in this case I was like well, my kefir is good, so I don't need to check on my kefir. I really I would. It's super hot here. We need to stay hydrated. I'm going to make an herbal infusion. So the garden herbal infusion is something that I've coined, but it's just herbs. You throw them in a in a big pitcher of water, which I see it's show and tell.
Speaker 2:Today, heather, I brought these specifically for you, so I have a giant mason jar it's about a half gallon mason jar with a plastic lid that has a spout and a handle. I got that at masontopscom. I love that company and so now I have this canister for water. I went out to my garden barefoot and I took my scissors and clipped off lemon verbena, a little bit of rue, which is the herb of grace. I love learning about the folklore around herbs, so if I seem a little more dignified or graceful today, that's why If I don't, then you have no idea how ungraceful I am normally because herb of grace helped me.
Speaker 2:I did a few blooms of marigolds and then just a small snipping of rosemary. I put it in some water. I was standing barefoot in my grass while I was doing this, and this was just the one. It was less than five minutes, just like your stirring of the vinegar, and this did something called function stacking in permaculture. So function stacking in permaculture is you have a product or some behavior or a relationship in your life and you stack functions on it. In the case of this, I had sunlight therapy. When your eyes see natural sunlight, they create enzymes for your body. I had barefoot grounding so I was getting a different electrical charge from the ground, the garden reward, because a lot of times gardeners will work really hard in their garden and then they won't go out and enjoy it, and instead I gave myself a little dopamine of like look what I created while not doing much work. And then of course, the herbal infusion for easy hydration. So I hope that gave you kind of an idea of how I started creating habits.
Speaker 1:Yes, no, that all really makes sense. And I think what I was thinking while you were saying that is that I think, for me at least, all goes back to my why. You know, like, why I even want to do this in the first place, and rather than thinking like, well, someone on social media said it was cool, or you know like, it's kind of like a thing to do, but for me at least, right, making herbal infusions with water is. Or growing my garden, making my own sauerkraut these are so important, like innately important, to me, that it brings me a lot of motivation, because I know that growing my own tomatoes, for example, and picking them and eating them right away is not only just super nutritious, they taste better. Super nutritious, they taste better, and it gives me a lot of really good feelings of joy to do that.
Speaker 1:And so that for me, also starts with, like the why am I even doing this all in the first place? Yeah, how do you feel about that? Just starting with your why, to get people who are maybe just still going to argue that I am too busy, I am burnt out, where am I finding the time to do this? And I get it. I mean, believe me, I could sit on my email on social media, which I, you know, such a love, mostly hate relationship with, and I mean you could kill 30, 60 minutes at a time, which could go, then, towards doing something more useful and joyful.
Speaker 2:Yes, I think that this is such an important point that you bring up because I remember in my forties I read okay. So the way that my brain works is I have a problem, I need to find a solution, I'm going to research that solution and so I typically will get on an idea. I had someone that was in my family that was sick with cancer and we were putting her through hospice care and we were caregiving, and so I read every book on death and dying because I wanted to make sure that I did it right. But I was also super curious. My why was how can I give her the best dignity of life into her new transition as possible? I did the same with time management. I thought if I could only get the right bullet journal and the right highlighters and the right stickers, then my life would be just amazing and I would get everything done that I wanted to get done. And what I realized is that I had an unsolvable riddle because my time management had nothing to do with lack of self-care as a priority, so my priorities were screwed up. It doesn't matter what I'm going to do with time management. If you don't know what you want, you will not get it, I promise you.
Speaker 2:And so I, in my forties, didn't know what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to do all the things that you're supposed to do to be a good healthcare practitioner. I wanted to make sure that I was top-notch in my clinic and that I was knowledgeable about what I was treating. I wanted to make sure that I was healthy, because I got to be a good role model, et cetera, et cetera, and that is what landed me with a chronic illness. I didn't have self-care as a priority, and I also thought that self-care meant exercising well, eating well and sleeping well. I thought it was all the stuff that the fitness magazines tell you, and what I realized is that I had missed out on the delight and pleasure of living. That sounds so insane that I forgot to be happy. But then, when I got sick and all of my everything was taken away my profession, my ability to stand on my own or think on my own or finish full sentences it got really clear that self-care was more than just sleeping okay, eating okay, resting okay.
Speaker 2:And so my why for homesteading? Because it happened during the pandemic and I was panicked. I'm like, well, I can't find food. This is not good. This is really concerning to me.
Speaker 2:My why was resilience? Being able to do something, not everything. I don't have enough food to last five winters, but I do have the resilience to know what broccoli looks like when it's coming out of the ground, know what a seed needs and how. If it's a bigger seed, it needs to go a little farther down in the ground. If it's a lighter seed, it goes on the top.
Speaker 2:It also gives me this feeling of freedom. It also gives me this feeling of freedom and I'm not saying freedom in the like I'm free from all responsibility, I can just be on my own. It's not the island unto myself which I thought in my 20s was what I had discovered Like, oh, I'll just be isolated and do everything myself and there'll never be a problem. It turns out, we're social beings. You need to be with others. So this freedom is more of this ability to.
Speaker 2:I have things that I can share with others and I have needs that can be fulfilled from my fellows, and so it connects me, the freedom to connect with my community in a more meaningful way. And then the last why that I have, which I think is more important than any why, quite honestly and it's going to sound maybe hedonistic, but it's not. That is contentment. There's nothing more fulfilling to me than going out barefoot and snipping some of my garden and noticing the abundance, noticing the health that I'm going to give my family, noticing that there's a good chance that I'm going to stay really healthy and not have another crazy chronic illness that my husband's going to have to take care of me. He's getting a resilient, strong, healthy wife. My family members are happy. When I'm content, the world becomes a more content place because I'm able to give goodness, I'm able to share goodness, because I have it. I'm filling up on it.
Speaker 1:That all really makes sense and it just just makes me think of like I mean, these are all your values, right? So it would almost be important to do a like a values exercise right To, to just see what's really important to you in life. And I love the like, the contentment part. Part because same for me when I walk into my garden and now my garden's well-growing right now and I don't have to do a lot with it. But I love nothing more than walking in there in the afternoon and just kind of strolling around and taking a little, you know, just taking a little mental check at everything, seeing what's growing, seeing what do I need to snip or pull, and that creates so much contentment for me and that's one of my values as well is, if maybe not the most important value, is just that feeling of being content, and I get it from my garden and in this, I guess, homesteading mindset.
Speaker 2:The homesteading mindset I saw this morning when I was watering my mullein. There it's in full bloom right now and there were about nine bees on it and I didn't think about this until you were talking, but I was just. You know, honeybees are kind of mellow and so they don't mind me getting up close and taking a peek at them, but they had so much pollen connected to their little legs, like one had way more pollen than the rest and it was just. You know, this is not something. Yeah, you can go look at that on YouTube. But to be in the sunlight watching nature and seeing how the fact that I planted that mullein two years ago is feeding these bees and they're creating incredible honey, that's just this amazing circle of life that I get to be a part of. What better meditation can you have?
Speaker 1:Yes, and the circle of life? I mean right, it all comes back full circle. You grow things, you can compost, which I do a lot. That compost then turns into dirt that goes into my garden and it all is a big circle of life, which is another thing. I find fascinating that I can have some control over that. I can do my part in that and then also just grow things that are so nutritious and good for me. So it's all. Yeah, it all goes back to, I think, to this why and to what we really value, and I think some people don't even realize that sometimes they're not even clear on how things grow in a garden.
Speaker 2:I wasn't yeah, I absolutely was not. I didn't know I was. You know, I was 40 years old and didn't know what broccoli looked like. And that sounds so sad, but I like to say it, because now when people come to my house and they see that there are 50 things growing and I really haven't done anything for, you know, two weeks on my garden and it's just doing quite well, they think that I've always known how to do that and I learned it very quickly through five minute exercises, five minute habit stacks. So can I ask you a question about that? I want to go back to the vinegar because I really like talking about a habit that's really fresh in your, in your mind.
Speaker 1:Yes, definitely.
Speaker 2:You've decided, you've got your accountability. You know that we're going to be chatting. You know that you've got to do it. Did you habit chain or habit stack to get that, to get that vinegar going?
Speaker 1:Well, let's see. I mean, I thought, while I'm making the vinegar, I'm going to make the sauerkraut too, and I'm also going to make the kimchi, because while things are sitting on my counter, why not do all of it? Yeah, so you have it stacked, yeah, so I have it stacked that way, and so then, every single day, I was checking all of them. How did you remember?
Speaker 2:to check them.
Speaker 1:Well, they were right in my I'm in my kitchen a lot cooking, so I mean they're like kind of they were sort of right in front of me, in front of my face, so I could see them pretty well. And I even I even went up to we have a place in Maine I drove up there. I took them all with me because I didn't want to leave them alone for two.
Speaker 1:You know, we were only up there for about a week, but I didn't want to leave them alone, and so they came with me, and then we came back, and so I think just having them right in front of me in the kitchen was the best way to remind me. If I didn't have them in my kitchen, I probably would have put a reminder on my phone in my calendar just to ding me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So what you did was you made it easy and accessible, which is one of the ways to create habits, and you made it attractive because it looks pretty in a in a. You know it looks. It's ferments are really pretty and they're fun to see them. You know growing and changing colors and all that stuff. And so these are two ways that the book atomic habits talks about this.
Speaker 2:In my book as well, I talk about it because I translate it into homesteading. But making it attractive, making it easy, making it easy for you to remember. So for me, a lot of times my homesteading tasks will connect to like before I brush my teeth, it's bedtime, I'm about to brush my teeth, I'm letting the dog out, I have to walk through the kitchen to let the dog out and in that moment I'm going. Oh, I probably should check on my kefir and see how it's doing and if it needs to go into a hotel or if it needs to have a new ferment. That moment it takes about five minutes, I quickly tend to my kefir and then off I go to bed. But it's connected, it's easy, it's accessible and it's attractive because my kefir is really cute on my counter.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, no, it was nice. I had about four jars going on my counter and that was kind of you know, curious, and people were wondering what was going on in there, and so it was. Yeah, that definitely kept my attention with it. Now it's interesting, though, now that we're talking about this so I made everything and I haven't done it again. I haven't started like a next round, and we're talking. I'm like why haven't I started a next round of the vinegar and I will.
Speaker 1:So now that we're talking about it again. I'll have to have you back on in a couple months. Be accountable. Yeah, so I could see how you could get into a habit and how it might change, get me out of a habit. But I think I but I also, now that we're talking about this out loud I mean, I have my spray, I have my sauerkraut. Still I don't I'm not finished with it and I'm not finished with the kimchi. So it's I'm not feeling maybe that motivated to start it again because I still I'm. I have it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you've got plenty. On supply, I don't do a continuous thing of vinegar. I do a continuous thing of kefir, because it really helps my gut. It's just fantastic for my body and we go through a lot of it. We make ice cream with kefir, we make sour cream and like a creamy yogurt, and then also a tzatziki like a Greek chip dip, although I use cucumbers for the chip. But I'm not constantly doing all of them. There's kind of ebbs and flows.
Speaker 2:I would say that one thing that really helps and it's kind of like accountability, but it's also just a motivation is allowing yourself to talk about these passions. So when people come over to my house, they will inevitably get fed some sort of fermented product from my house. Or we will go out and I'll put my hands in the compost and let them smell it, because it's quite remarkable what rotten food can smell like once it's become compost. Or we'll walk around the garden and I'll just show them. We'll just taste some of the food. And so, because I have such a passion for it, I'm continually renewing that passion by teaching, and I think that's what you do with podcasting too. Every time you're sitting down with someone, you're getting new ideas and right now you're like, oh, it might be a good idea to try some more vinegar. You know, whatever I'm going to make the same here.
Speaker 2:And it's also kind of remarkable when somebody has an issue and then because kefir believe it or not, homemade kefir can be used as a lubricant for women. So I have some some friends that are having difficulty post post menopause and they had no idea that this can actually help balance your hormones. It's, you know, it's a one ingredient and it's also going to help your gut microbiome and also the microbiome on your skin and in your groin. And so it's amazing that when you start learning more right, knowledge is power then you go, oh, this could help this person and this could help that person. And the more you teach, the more you get inspired to continue to learn more yourself and also to continue to grow and to have that fermentation station is what I call it. You had a little fermentation station. Now did you use a bowl to keep it from spilling over? For the kimchi? Nobody. I think kimchi and sauerkraut don't really spill over much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I didn't have a bowl. They didn't. They don't usually spill over, so nothing no, nothing was was spilling over, so I didn't feel the need to do anything like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so for those that are listening, typically when you're doing sauerkraut, kimchi, a lot of the cabbages don't get super fizzy. But with other things, like pickled carrots, you take some carrot sticks, put them in a brine. A brine is just salt water, which is two cups water to one tablespoon of salt. That's the one that I use for everything. It's a bit salty, but then you don't have a problem. You can look online and find out specific ones, but I'm not going to do that. And then if you have that and you put your carrots in it and then you close it tightly with a canning jar, you just fingertip tight Every day you have to burp it. You have to open it up and burp it. Well, a lot of times with things other than sauerkraut, like the carrots or sometimes the onions if you do pickled onions, which tastes great on hoagies back East here they're called, I think, submarine sandwiches subs you know they'll overflow, and sometimes even you do it morning and night. You do this burp, it'll just fizzle out. And so a lot of times we'll have like a very big. It's like not a fruit bowl, but it's like a fruit plate and it's got a lip on it. So it's like a very small bowl and that just keeps it from spilling all over the place.
Speaker 2:For those of you that want to be, want to not have a mess. Now, for those of you that want to trick your husband into some fun prank, you can wait a day and then have him open up the ferment, which I did not do on purpose. But my husband, I was away, I did not take my cat, my sauerkraut with me. I'm like honey. Can you please, can you please burp these? And he wrote oh my gosh, the ferments fermented me and he just had like a. He didn't know what to do. So if you're, if you're opening it and they're starting to fizz, open it quickly, because if you don't it becomes this fountain and it will be very funny.
Speaker 1:It'll make for some funny YouTube videos. That's very funny, yeah. So I think the takeaway is I mean, things happen like that, right, mistakes happen and it's okay. It doesn't mean that you failed or it didn't work or you can't do this, you don't know how to do it. This is reminding me of when I was up in Maine.
Speaker 1:I decided to I have a sourdough starter. I bake bread a decent amount and I thought I'm going to make my own sourdough starter to have up there so I don't keep bringing my one, my very old starter that I have had for a long time, back and forth. And so I made a new sourdough starter up there and it takes a couple of days. Same. You have to leave it on the counter, you have to feed it every single day, dump it out and then one day I think on like the sixth day, it completely exploded. I think on like the sixth day it completely exploded. I was like this is not just like. I mean, it is like. I mean I woke up the next morning it was just all over the counter and which is good thing. I mean that means it's like alive and well and it's and it's not dying, but it was, you know, just one of those. I wasn't expecting, yeah things, that that happened.
Speaker 2:So it's a Hulk. You got the Hulk of sourdough that day.
Speaker 1:Yes, it was pretty funny. So we're talking about a lot of things that might sound complicated to some people, like kefir. Meanwhile, that's one thing I have never made and that's next on my list is that we're talking about kefir. I want to make that made and I'm that's next on my list is that we're talking about kefir. I want to make that, and this can feel overwhelming to some. You know, like I'm talking about sourdough, starter, sauerkraut and and, but let's say, someone who's listening is curious homestead or curious, you know, but they're just feeling a little overwhelmed. What, what's? What is one like ridiculously simple thing that you feel like they could start with, or even a habit, you know, or you know just either one like a, an activity, like a growing something, or or a habit that they can start with.
Speaker 2:I'll give you two, because these can be done in the city, in a rural area, in the suburbs. The first is when you're at the grocery store, buy a basil plant. They almost always have some sort of basil plant there. Just buy a little basil plant, put it on your windowsill, water it every now and then and snip off one or two leaves and throw it in your water every day, or when you walk by, just touch it with your hands gently and get a little smell of basil, so that you have something living in your home. You mentioned the last time that we talked like well, you have plants behind you now. I never did before because I killed all of them, but I slowly learned how to commune with plants. So that is your first. Just go out and get a little basil plant or a little rosemary plant and just put it in your windowsill. It probably will not. Well, basil will not live forever, unless it's blue Thai basil, which is a perennial, but you're going to need another one. But for the few weeks or month that you have it, you'll start getting used to knowing like oh, if I don't water this plant, it gets a little wilty, it needs a little more water If it's starting to get yellow or it's starting to look a little like it's getting mushy, then it has too much water and you're just getting to know what it's like to tend to another living being. So that's the first one. The second one is let's say you were like me and you're 40 years old. This was when I was 40 years old. You're well into your career. You're super, super busy, you buy all the organic good food, but you've never cooked yourself. It's just not what you do.
Speaker 2:I recommend learning how to bake a chicken. It's so simple when I first started learning how to cook, which is pretty much how I cook now. And it's so funny because people always ask me for recipes and I'm like but I'm not a cook. But I am right, cause now I know how to cook. All of my recipes are typically three, three steps or less. So I'm making an online course on kefir because I love kefir so much and I want people to understand the biological, medicinal properties of kefir as well as how to do it. It takes five minutes to do it. So everything, every recipe that I have in there is three steps or less. And it's not. It wasn't on accident. It was when I was first learning how to cook, I would go to online and look up recipes and if it had more than three steps I'm like there's no way I'm going to do this and out it went.
Speaker 2:So for baking a chicken, the three steps are buy a good chicken from a reputable company Like. There's a place called Primal Pastures which is about an hour from my house. I visited the farm. Believe it or not. Good farmers will let you see how they're taking care of their animals, so I buy my chickens from them. When I wash it, I just wash it in water and I pat it dry, I put some chicken fat on it, I throw some salt and maybe another seasoning like pepper or chipotle. If I want to go wild and crazy, I stick it in the oven, I think at 375, for 90 minutes 60 to 90 minutes and now I have five meals that are ready and accessible. So those are the two quickies For me that originally sounded insane Like, oh my gosh, I got to buy a chicken, I got to find out where it is. Just buy a chicken to start, and then you can eventually work on getting a better chicken and then just work on covering it in some sort of fat and putting it in the oven. And if you forget to do salt because, oh my gosh, this is your first time and you only listened to this podcast once that is okay, you can salt it afterwards. But learning to get connected to how to make fast food, I think, is one of the most modern homesteading things you can do. These are fast food.
Speaker 2:Yesterday my husband came home from work. I was busy doing something. Typically, I like to have dinner for us, but instead he took some pasta that I had cooked and put a little olive oil on and kept it in the fridge as a leftover. He chopped up a garlic and a tomato, put it in a frying pan and then use the chicken that I baked yesterday, and that was. It took all of five minutes to make food that was way more nutritious than if he had stood in line at a fast food restaurant, and let me tell you I used to do that in my thirties. I would go to like the healthiest fast food place because I didn't know how to cook. And so those are. I would say two things. I think probably buying the basil plant sounds a little less complicated, huh that?
Speaker 1:might be the first one to try. Yeah, I think that's a great idea, though. I mean just getting a plant learning how to grow something, even if it's one basil plant on your counter. I think it is such a simple, easy idea and you can feel successful at it. Yeah, right, and then maybe you can get more basil and you know you can finally get enough that you're making some pesto or like I just did yesterday.
Speaker 2:And that's the secret. Right, you had said it earlier. The secret is you start with one thing I'm going to make vinegar and then you're like, well, well, I'm here, I might as well make sauerkraut. I've done it, but you know, that's that is. It's this rabbit hole that you go down, this rabbit hole of contentment and joy that you go down and you're like, oh, sourdough, doesn't sound like something that's interesting to me. But she did talk about having ripe, ripened tomatoes. That sounds kind, yeah, and I think, just also having feeling the confidence to do it.
Speaker 1:I think that that I know for me, for a lot of my clients, that fear of cooking that and which I think really translates into a fear of disappointing people or not being good enough, or letting people down or and it's, we got to let that go right. We have to. We make mistakes, we get back up and we try again. So I wanted to ask you a question, just coming going along with that are there any habits or any any things that you started that you feel like toes totally flopped, like that. You're like I'm never doing that again and what did you learn from that? Like what, what would be like a takeaway?
Speaker 2:okay, yeah, there's lots of them that I flopped and I love that. I do want to piggyback on what you said. Your self-worth is not connected to the outcome, like your self-worth is innate. It is. You are given. You're worthy, that's it. And when you start looking at these experiments is what I call them with the eye of a scientist, it becomes less personal.
Speaker 2:So for my husband and I, when I sit down and I try a new meal which is three steps or less, I'll go what do you rate that on a scale of one to 10? And he'll be like oh, I think that's a six and I'm like really, I think it's like a four and it's not. It's not a, it doesn't denote what my self-worth is. It's. Am I going to do this recipe again or am I going to try again and tweak it a little? So, with that being said, I got a big fat zero on one of my composting adventures. My friend came over to stay with me for a few days and I'm like you know, it'd be great, let's go and take. We had this patch of sweet peas that sweet pea is a flower but it's very viney and and we took it and we, we chopped it all down and we made some of it into mulch and I took a big, gigantic heap of it, like a huge tarp of it, and threw it in a compost pile and then I did nothing to it because I saw this YouTube video where in 30 days it was magically better and mine turned into this scary looking like rodent cavern. I don't know if there are rats in it, but I want to find out and I'm so afraid to move it with a pitchfork that I think I'm going to need to have someone come out. I need, like a partner in crime, to come out and probably throw it into my green bin and just start again, because it just looks like it's harboring fugitive rodents. It really does. Oh, I got another one for you. This is a really bad one.
Speaker 2:I ripened tomatoes. So there was somebody eating my tomatoes in my garden and I was like I'm going to take these into my she shed, which is like my garden shed, and I'm going to ripen them in there, and ha, ha, ha, they won't get them anymore. Well then a rat found them and said oh my gosh, this newly planted she shed is beautiful, it's comfy, it's got a cushion seat and they give me free food here, and so I'm not often scared of, but for some reason my brain's, like rats, are terrible. So I let out like a murder scene scream and wouldn't go back in until a friend of mine went in and scared it away. And then I had to do peppermint oil, which actually did get rid of the just essential oil. Peppermint got rid of it, the rat in my, in my shed, and I will never again ripen tomatoes in a she shed.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for your vulnerability. I appreciate your honest failure stories because I think this is what we need to share also, because when you're on social media or on YouTube or I mean it's, you know, it's like all a little magical world out there. But I think the takeaway is that things happen, mistakes happen. It's no big deal. I've burned plenty of things in my kitchen before and I cook for a living. I mean it's not, it happens, I mean it's not, it's not fun but it's not like yeah, but I mean it's.
Speaker 1:I mean I've, I've made things that were, yeah, Like I thought were like a zero on the scale of one to 10, you know or like this just tastes terrible and like what. What did I? You know what did I do, but I think that's just how you learn.
Speaker 2:It absolutely is. But it's funny because I just would assume that you've never burned anything. Isn't that silly? But I would think, like your brain does think that like, oh well, she's a chef, so of course. Of course she's never had. You had to learn somehow, right?
Speaker 1:Yes, I daily to me, but I mean, but every once in a while, like something will happen. I'm like, oh wow, like I can't believe that. I like that burned, Like why did that happen? You know? Or you know something similar? Something just doesn't taste right, or and yeah, it just that's part of how you get better, I think, at things.
Speaker 2:And and that self-talk, like be very conscious of what you are saying to yourself, because I could easily have gone into who puts like delicious fruit out in a shed where rodents can get to it Like they, you know. Obviously it's not steel door or anything. I could have easily beat myself up about it, but instead I chose to go like oh yeah, that's a very dumb mistake, but it doesn't mean I'm dumb, it just means I made a mistake and everything can be fixed. There's no such thing as an irreversible mistake in terms of homesteading, as long as you're really you know yeah, yes, you just made a mistake.
Speaker 1:You're not a mistake right. So yes, it's just and it's all a learning process. I mean, if you saw how I was gardening 25 years ago versus how I'm gardening now, you would think I mean my know.
Speaker 2:You are in San Diego, right that area, so like your seasons probably don't change that much okay, and so summer is tricky for us because it can be so hot that it's really not safe to be out gardening all day.
Speaker 2:And I'm not a um, I have a.
Speaker 2:I have a pretty busy morning routine because that's when I have a lot of my energy, and then in the evening I'm like ugh, I don't want to go out.
Speaker 2:But it's important to go out and, you know, tend to your garden and so so what I've started doing recently is habit stacking, watering my garden with guilty pleasure podcasts. So the podcasts that I don't want anyone to know I'm listening to, they're silly, they're a waste of time, but if I only listen to them while I'm watering, I have a little more motivation to go out, because I used to be a Puritan, and I still am, a lot of the times where I just want to be with my plants and not have something talking at me, you know, because I think we can add too much to us, but for me right now that's a really good way to get outside. When it's too hot and it's a little late and it's hard for me to get my motivation, oh well, I'll just watch that, I'll just listen to that podcast and no one will know, except now. All of your listeners will know.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, you can listen to this podcast.
Speaker 2:That's right, this podcast would be great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but same. I do the same. If I'm feeling low energy or something like that, I'll put a podcast or a book on or something just to break it up. Or I do like going into my garden with no noise whatsoever and just you know it's being at peace. Yeah, yes. Well, elizabeth, any other takeaways about habits that you can give my audience or you know, some imparting wisdom?
Speaker 2:Yes, I, I would say that the five minute rule is one of my favorite things, and then I will give you a little gift for your, for your audience members that would like it. The five minute rule is just try doing a habit for five minutes and then giving yourself permission not to do it after. And so for me, with the guilty pleasure podcast, like let's say, that gets me out there. But what really gets me out there is saying I'm just going to set the kitchen timer for five minutes, I'm going to prune that monster purple I don't even know what the purple bush is in front of my house that's growing over all of my food. Like I went away for a week and I came back and it's this monster.
Speaker 2:But if I just tell myself I'm just going to prune it for five minutes and then I can stop, I really truly do stop after five minutes, and sometimes you want to go longer. But giving yourself that permission really stops you from going. Oh, I just don't have time. Everybody has five minutes. And then allow yourself to do the whatever bad habit that you typically have. Like, let's say, you're going to scroll through social media. Fine, do the five minutes of the easy, of the habit that you want to create and then reward yourself with as long as you want, as you would normally do, of the habit that you consider not the best. And so, for habit creation, I did create a free habit tracker that is available to your audience. You can get it at wwwcreatewellnessprojectcom. Forward slash gift G, I, f, t.
Speaker 1:Okay, great, I will put that also in the show notes so people can grab that link. Elizabeth, thank you so much Once again. Every time we talk now, I just feel inspired. My next project is to make kefir. That is my that's and I'm going to look up. So do you have your course online yet?
Speaker 2:No, I have probably about 10 more hours to do, but I am going to send you the course once I'm done, so that you can enjoy it.
Speaker 1:Okay, that would be wonderful, and then I will let you know how that goes as well. You're my accountability partner now, sure, well, thank you so much for being here again. I really appreciate it, and I hope this inspires everyone to get growing or do something homestead minded.
Speaker 2:Thank you, heather. This was so much fun. Thank you for having me, great Thanks.