Alison Ritchie

Perhaps I’m romanticizing things a bit, BUT there is a lot of truth here, too.

At one time, recipes used to be handed down through songs and rhymes that had a rhythm to them so that they could be easily recalled and always “on” the person when they needed them.

Our lives greatly revolved around being on the land growing and raising food, harvesting, preserving, and sitting around a table together and taking in that food. It was a big part of the culture of the home and location we lived in.

It seems to me that the further we have gotten away from our food the further away we have gotten from health. We import bananas from the tropics to Canada in the middle of winter - a complete circadian light mismatch… but think nothing of how that might be affecting us. We think little of how that food would be designed to support people living in the tropics , and how it could disrupt our bodies in the subarctic.

I believe a real flex these days is having someone holding down the kitchen, using ingredients local to them, dialling us into our environment to match up with the seasons, and creating art, beauty, and nourishment through food.

This Wednesday, July 29th I am hosting The Art of Fermentation online via zoom. Not only am I going to demonstrate 3 different ways to preserve your garden harvest, your haul from the farmers market, and the odds and ends in your crisper, I’m going to explain to you the big WHY we all should be learning this food skill and participating in the ancient art!

You’ll receive access to the replay and a recipe/instruction book as well. I know you’ve always wanted to be a kitchen alchemist! 😉 Bring your questions and curiosity!

You can register through my b i o.

See you there. 💚🌿🥒

How Glyphosate Herbicide is Used to Poison Forests – And What You Can Do - Greenpeace Canada First comes the clearcut. Then, as the forest begins to regrow, helicopters fly over. They spray glyphosate herbicide - key ingredient in Monsanto's Roundup - across the landscape.

Before we had language, we knew warmth. We knew the rhythm of the heart. We knew the feeling of touch and being held.

Before there are beliefs, there is the body.

Life doesn’t move in straight lines. It unfolds in cycles that deepen with each generation. We inherit so much more than the physical traits of our parents. We inherit the ways they loved, the ways they protected, the ways they were held - and the ways they weren’t.

Every generation is given the opportunity to meet life differently… maybe this is why I find this image so moving. A mother wrapping her baby up in a spiral. 🥹

The spiral reminds us that life doesn’t just repeat itself, it returns with the possibility of something new. Every time we offer the safety we may have longed for ourselves, the pattern changes.

Maybe this is how healing moves through a family line. 🌀

Thank you for this absolutely incredible image Fotogräfin Isabel 🩷 🐘 ❤️

If you’re a pregnant mama looking for a mentor to walk with you through this profound year, I have openings available for 1:1 close proximity mentorship. This is for women who want to move through pregnancy, birth, and postpartum feeling nourished, confident, resourced, and deeply connected to their body and baby.

DM me MOTHER and I’ll get some more info to you.

Ten years ago I made my first jar of sauerkraut with absolutely no idea what I was doing.

I was so intimidated by this alchemic process and was certain I’d poison my family. I checked the jar every single day like it might do something dramatic if I looked away for too long.

It didn’t poison anyone, but it did change something in me permanently.

Fermentation was the first time I understood - not from a book, from my own hands - what it actually means to work with something alive instead of forcing it into submission. You don’t control a ferment. You create the right conditions and then you trust it. You wait. You pay attention. You let time do its work.

It was also a huge piece of recalibrating my palate to more primal/bitter/sour/tangy flavours. This has actually become a whole piece of what I teach on in my container *The Living Year*

Cutting the processed, the refined, the shelf-stable fake stuff engineered to override your body’s own signals, and coming back to food that is actually alive is what I’m talking about!

There are so many health reasons to learn this skill, and don’t even get me started on the sovereign skills side of things. I’m going to share it all.

Over ten years and roughly a thousand jars later, I’m bringing a refined version of my fermentation class online.

It’s not a recipe dump. It’s the actual WHY and HOW behind it - what’s happening in that jar, how to trust your senses over a timer, how to make this a real rhythm in your kitchen instead of a hobby that dies quietly in your fridge after one attempt.

July 29. 6:30pm cst. Replay and recipe book included.

Bring your questions, your fear of botulism, we’ll talk about it honestly. 😉

🔗 is up in my b I o

The last picture in this series was from 2015… learning to ferment. 😝 Terrible pic but I had to include it. 😆