The Pantry We Forgot | Stocks, Broths & Traditional Nourishment

Maggie (00:01.695)
Have we been throwing away the most nourishing parts of our food, then buying them back in supplement form? Welcome to Women Folk Revival, where we are deeply rooted and wildly intentional. I'm Maggie.

Meara (00:17.388)
I'm Mira. And hearing that question really makes me stop and think because if I'm being honest, I used to think that way too. If I roasted a chicken years ago, I would have thrown the bones bones away, like without even thinking about it. You know, I wasn't thinking about broth or nourishment or using every part of what we had there in front of us. I was just cleaning up dinner and throwing away.

you know, scraps and I feel like a lot of people can relate to that because we become so used to convenience. I know we say time and time again, but that's really all it comes down to is just this convenience of forgetting the simple things that used to be second nature to those who used to do this daily, every single day, you know? And now when I look at those same exact things, the bones and stuff, I see things completely different. It's like it's like a whole nother meal.

Okay.

Maggie (01:17.805)
I Mira, I have never made a stock or broth. I I want to. I deeply want to. But I never have. And I think the biggest thing is just because I'm not I don't know animals that well as far as

Meara (01:20.174)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (01:39.807)
you know, using that sort of thing or, you know, the organs, anything like that. I only recently even started making chicken. I would never cook chicken in the past because it just I don't know, I guess I was worried that I wouldn't cook it enough and everyone would get sick. Like I know with beef you don't have to fully cook it and that's okay. although I think that you you should, right? It's

Meara (01:59.8)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (02:03.681)
Yeah.

Meara (02:09.675)
I would.

Maggie (02:09.778)
it's best health wise just to fully cook things. but I I do have a a deep desire to start to start making them. You've made them before.

Meara (02:25.025)
We make all the time now when my husband first came over and and moved here. you know, I was doing chicken noodle soup for years though, not realizing that I was making bone broth out of the chicken because I would put it in either if I needed to be quick, like fast, like you know, the convenience part, I would just stick the chicken in the water frozen and boil the heck out of it, you know, and put the lid on.

And just let it simmer for like two hours and then the meat would fall off. And I was like, this is this is cool. I just made my own, you know, flavor. So I just thought it was flavor. I didn't think it was like added nutrients.

Maggie (03:01.792)
So you took you took a frozen a whole frozen chicken and put it in a pot and you boiled it for just two hours and it was done?

Meara (03:10.999)
Full of water. It's two hours. Two th well, maybe that was probably three or four hours. Now I just take a regular chicken and throw it in there and I leave it. Sometimes I forget it's on there. That's why it's on like low simmer, you know, because I have a million other things going on. But now I do more to it. I put I put ginger, raw ginger, I'll crush it, throw that in there while the water's boiling, and I'll put

Tameric there, fresh turmeric, fresh ginger. And it's fine if you don't have these fresh things because sometimes if I don't have it or if I'm out, like we don't always have ginger root on hand, right? So I'll just throw in like ginger powder or something and just let it boil with the chicken and then a couple hours later I just throw in like at the end I throw in like frozen peas or corn or something like that to add to it. But if my kids are sick, that's the first thing I do. I just take out a chicken and throw it in there because I want them to

those nutrients. you know, what's interesting now is that we spend so much money trying to buy back these things that used to be a part of everyday life. The collagen powders, the bone broth powders, the electrolyte mixes and and mineral supplements, you know. And I'm not saying that there's anything wrong with those things because I still buy some of these. But it just makes you wonder

Maggie (04:14.432)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (04:29.719)
Have we forgotten the simplest foundations that nourished our generations for years before us? Because food was never just about calories, it was about nourishment, the healthy fats, minerals, and and so much of that started with using what we already had.

Maggie (04:35.285)
Yeah.

Maggie (04:49.426)
Yeah. And I wanna say too, a big a big thing that I have is that we for a long time didn't have the money to buy quality meats. And I'm thinking to myself, why would I take something like this that had hormones injected or was given vaccines or had an unhealthy diet, whatever.

Meara (04:59.916)
Okay.

Meara (05:15.571)
You

Maggie (05:16.402)
And why why would I try and pull anything from that because it's full of toxins? But at the same time, I'm compensating by buying other things that aren't necessarily good for me. So I just I wonder why it is I'm so stuck on not wanting to do that, but I'll buy this other poison instead, you know? Like what sense does that make?

Meara (05:22.231)
Has the stuff in it.

Meara (05:31.447)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (05:40.62)
Yeah, I th yeah, I think it comes down to figuring out for yourself what makes you feel the most comfortable. If, you know, you don't have the money to f you know, find a butcher who butchers their own cow that's been grass fed, that's been this, that hasn't been fed antibiotics because you know, they're making us they you know, you have to have like you have to give your animals vaccines and you have to do this, that and the third. So you never really know who's doing what.

You just have to like, you know, trust your gut and just do the best research you can. And we don't have millions of dollars to go buy like a whole brand new cow, you know. we we buy our we buy our food from from the halal market, which is similar to like, you know, kosher market. We just they just kill their animals differently and we just pray over it. I mean, there's we're surround and that's another topic of we're surrounded by so much stuff. You just have to pick something and and pray that it's gonna nourish you.

Maggie (06:34.718)
And even and even no matter how independently you feel thought-wise from the system, like I've always referred to myself as very unconventional, and I am, and I've always questioned the system ever since I was little. I've always I've questioned everything. But even somebody like that, like myself, has still been

I have still been brainwashed. I have still been you know, they still've they still have gotten fear in me. And it's you know

They have these creepy little ways of getting in there and that's what I struggle with the most.

Meara (07:17.589)
Yeah, just get him there.

Yeah, and you're right, you have to look at it that way too, if if you buy the supplements instead to compensate for what you're taking out or removing or not doing with not maybe I'm not gonna buy meat 'cause I'm scared now. They they're still gonna have stuff in their products too, you know. And so i we just we just just have to trust our creator and pray. Make sure, you know, I we can't stop eating. So

Maggie (07:45.022)
Well, thankfully, he designed our bodies so

It's it is mind blowing to think what we do to our bodies and how we are still able to even be alive at this point. and I know it's hard not to feel like hopeless and devastated that you just don't know where to go, you don't know where to turn to and you know, you want to stop doing certain things because you just feel like you're being contaminated. But the body can

Meara (07:52.983)
So well.

Meara (07:59.715)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (08:21.822)
The body wants to heal itself. And if you're giving it what it needs to heal itself, it's going to heal itself. So even if you are giving poisons and certain things, if you're giving it the nutrients and the minerals that it that it needs, you know, the herbs. Yes.

Meara (08:23.181)
And

Meara (08:28.661)
It is

Meara (08:37.441)
You have to worry about all the other stuff.

And plus there's detox these days, natural ways to detox as well, but that's a whole nother topic for discussion. I did just want to say real quick in our house, we do we do this a couple of different ways. So my husband, he loves to slow cook red meat. That's how he gets his nourishment and bone broth and and stuff like that. So he slow cooks it overnight, and by morning the meat's really tender and you know the broth is really rich and you have this beautiful meal that you know didn't take much effort. Kind of like during the day, you know, like we growing up, my mom used

To put meat in chuck roast. You know, slow cook it in the morning and you'd leave and then you come back, and like the whole house was just filled with this amazing aroma. and but then for chicken, like I said, I do that. That's my way. you know, and and it's not fancy, it's just a meal and a pie. And so I think that's a really that's a really easy and fast way, convenient way for people to start slow.

with that convenience is just stick it in the water and and you know and let it boil or do it overnight or even in the morning start with the s with the crock pot and save that broth and put it over your meat or save it and just sip it later. Yes.

Maggie (09:51.743)
And use it to make different sauces and all kinds of things. I it's so daunting to me. It just feels like there's gotta be something to this that I'm missing because it seems so simple and it seems so easy to make a mistake like if I'm not gonna cook it long enough and I'm gonna make everybody sick. I just

Meara (10:15.467)
You'll know if it's not cooked long enough, the chicken. I mean there's not gonna be any blood in there and it's it it looks just like cooked chicken. Just boil the heck just boil the heck out of it. You just have to do it. You do. You do. And what I love about what I what I love about this is nothing goes to waste. You know, the chicken becomes your meal and the bugo like

Maggie (10:24.168)
You just gotta do it. You just gotta rip off the damn band-aid and you just gotta do it. I'm talking to myself.

Meara (10:39.393)
We just said the broth becomes the soup. And what we do with our leftover broth sometimes is if Omar makes rice, instead of using water to cook the rice in, we use the broth to cook the rice in. So it flavors the rice and it adds nutrients to it. sometimes we just put it in a mug. And I think that's just what we've lost along the way is that, you know, we used to separate our food.

we've gotten used to separating our food from where the n the nourishment actually comes from. So

Maggie (11:11.136)
Yeah.

Meara (11:12.629)
Sometimes sometimes we hear the words, you know, when we hear those words minerals or collagens, we immediately think of supplements. That's not something that we think of just being in the bones. But for generations, these people were getting nourishment from from everyday's everyday foods, eggs, butters, creams, you the slow cooked meats, and and they were a part of their everyday life. And I I think that's why this conversation that you and I are having matters the most. And I feel like this conversation isn't for everyone.

Maggie (11:24.608)
I'm telling you, yeah.

Meara (11:42.081)
I think it's for you today because like you said you and I know you don't like use a lot of meats you eat meat but you don't but you aren't like big on meat like we eat meat every day.

Maggie (11:49.117)
Do. I don't Yeah, I have nothing wrong with eating meat. I just don't like I don't like a meat heavy day. I could I could drink bone broth all day long and be fine with that because it's not like it's not heavy in my body.

Meara (12:02.541)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (12:11.009)
Yeah, but we eat it for dinner, not not breakfast or lunch. We eat our meat in at dinner. We just eat eggs for Yeah, but how's that hap like you said a meal meat heavy day? What you mean?

Maggie (12:20.458)
So like once a day.

Maggie (12:28.072)
Yeah, meat heavy day is like eat just eating, you know, meat at breakfast and then eating meat at lunch and then eating meat at

Meara (12:31.559)
once a day. no, we don't do that. No no no. We don't do that. That would be kind of that'll be a bit more. Do they?

Maggie (12:37.992)
But I think most Americans do. You know, they have their sausage and their chicken in the morning and then they, you know, have their burgers or chicken, whatever, at lunch, and then they have more meat at dinner. That's a lot of meat.

Meara (12:46.862)
sausage and bacon. I forgot about all those things.

Meara (12:53.951)
I didn't think about that because I wasn't thinking about everybody else. I was only thinking about what we do. That's crazy. That makes sense.

Maggie (12:57.434)
So I don't like I said, I I'm not I'm not against eating meat. I just don't like a meat heavy day. I don't want all of that in my body in one day.

Meara (13:08.801)
I that makes sense when you yeah.

Meara (13:14.165)
Yeah, we typically skip breakfast or eat brunch or what have you. We eat like a lunch and a breakfast. So my kids can eat they either eat breakfast or they eat lunch. It's their choice what they want. And then like if they're s they eat breakfast, they'll eat eggs. but if they're like still hungry at lunch, then they get like a couple of pieces of cheese because we're the cheese family here and nobody nobody knows cheese like us. you know, to hold them over and and then it's just water and

Baja salt throughout the day or water with lemon or, you know, those little nugget ice chips. I we're we're trying to stay away from the f the constantly having to put something in our mouth and eat it because it's not always it's not good for you. You know, your body needs time to rest and recover.

Maggie (13:44.852)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (13:55.977)
I am I want you to send me your your your ice chip maker. 'Cause we need to do that too. 'Cause the kids are constantly asking for snacks. I'm starving, I'm starving. I'm like, you're not starving. You just you just want a snacker, you know.

Meara (14:01.509)
it's a amazing

Meara (14:06.667)
My kids do that too. They're just bored.

Meara (14:11.339)
My kids are just bored. They're never hungry. They're just bored. Because then when I now I want people to know that I do feed my kids. Trust me, we feed our kids. We feed our kids so much, but then so much of it goes to waste, they don't even eat it. And it's like, well, you just said you're hungry. So we've realized that our children are bored. Now, ice is not good for your teeth to chew it.

Maggie (14:21.524)
Because they're not really hungry.

Meara (14:28.939)
It causes issues, it breaks down the enamel and all that good stuff. So we have had to change and get our ice maker, which is what you're requesting. It's a nugget maker, it makes very, very soft ice chips, so it's very easy on the teeth. so when you mix that with water, it becomes even more softer. So it's not like you're crunching into something, you're just softly chewing into the ice, so it makes it like that. So don't go eating ice chips just constantly because it's not good for your teeth, but this nugget machine.

We love it to death and we constantly have to keep putting water in and adding to it because my kids are so obsessed with it. but yeah, we don't we don't eat a lot of a lot of food throughout the day and and but when we do we try we're trying to and we eat a lot of they eat a lot of weird snacks still we're still trying to cross over and they're not eating the weird snacks with high sugar, but I'm getting off topic here. So

Maggie (15:20.958)
We are.

Maggie (15:25.534)
And I wanna bring up I wanna bring up an important point because this is something 'cause I I had to do more research today because like I said, I've never made stocks of broth before. And so I have you've heard of Sally Fallon. so she is

Meara (15:25.729)
What was I going to say? Yeah.

Maggie (15:48.385)
I'm not exactly sure of her title. I know she's, you know, done different cooking schools and learning in both America and Europe, but she was a big follower of Weston A. Price and started the foundation of his. Weston A. Price, you're familiar with? No? so he was he was originally a dentist from Canada and he

Meara (16:05.813)
Okay. No. I'm learning today.

Maggie (16:17.212)
So he was one of the you know, ones where, you know, what is the root cause of all these dental issues that people were having. So he traveled the world and he compared all these different people to, you know, us over here in the West and found out that because we were switching to more modern foods and we weren't doing the the broths and the stocks and the animal products and the whole food

system that it was affecting not only our our tooth health but the shapes of our jaws and faces and and everything and now and we know now that it's literally affecting every aspect of our health. so but she has a book. I have one of her books. It's Nourishing Traditions. She also has one that's called Nourishing Broths. And I'm

Meara (16:57.674)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (17:13.522)
I've ordered that and it's it's coming. but it says in there that a lot of Americans and I myself and most women, most modern women are you know, we're exhausted and depleted and inflamed. And bringing stocks and broths into your diet will will fix that, will help fix that.

Meara (17:19.827)
Dicket.

Meara (17:30.273)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (17:41.706)
And that's just such a simple it's such a simple thing, you know, just this one one food that you can make from scraps that you can add into so many different elements of your diet. Like you said, cooking your rice in it or adding it to sauces or making soups, you know, so many different things.

Meara (17:47.82)
It is.

Maggie (18:04.949)
You know, and that's gonna give us energy and better our health and and I think a lot of that has to do with the thyroid those issues and weight gain and so just learning that I am even more compelled to start and I wanna start right away on these stalks and broths and

Meara (18:07.661)
Yeah.

Meara (18:26.387)
Yeah, when we started talking about broth I became a bit curious, well, before this I was curious as to what what was actually in it and my husband told me a lot of what was in it, but you know me, I had to

Look for myself. So when what I found was that these tr and I'm gonna call it traditional foods because it is. They contain a lot of the same things of what us women are looking for and what we need for today. Like obviously the protein is there, the minerals are there, the collagen, what we just talked about, collagen building compounds is there. We also need to discuss or talk about the iron from the red meat. You know, we we're well on iron, B vitamins, and the nutrients that help support

Maggie (18:50.837)
Mm-hmm.

Maggie (18:54.144)
Yes.

Meara (19:09.815)
our bodies through just, you know, just the demands of living every day.

Maggie (19:14.827)
Mm.

Meara (19:15.893)
And our our grandparents and great grandparents might not have used these words that we're using, but they did understand that a pot of broth was nourishing, that it was medicine almost like, you know, because it helps heal your body. and I'm gonna say time and time again, over and over continuously, that as we get older, you know, our kids like so for example, my kids, like they love butter. That I will give them pieces of butter to eat. They need that. They're growing.

Maggie (19:33.515)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (19:45.78)
Their bodies are growing. I'm not gonna go give them a whole stick of butter, but like when I'm cooking dinner, I'll give them a piece of butter to eat. But for me, as I age in my 40s, you know, and I'm gonna use that word again there, that perimenopause, menopause, and all that good stuff as our and instead of using just that word, as our bodies start to change as we continue to age.

Maggie (19:52.513)
Mm-hmm.

Meara (20:09.867)
The demands for fat become less, but we still need small amounts. We need meat, more meat than we have before to help with managing our hormones, managing the weight loss, managing the cortisol and all of that good stuff. So I feel like this is an important topic for discussion because you know it's important to me. It to me it's medicine.

I look at my kitchen like like a medicine cabinet. Not the medicine cabinet you go in like, let me get an ibuprofen or you know, I need a Xanax and you know, stuff like that. Well, camomile. But you know, you know, you just start looking at it completely different. And then when you start going to the store, you're like, my gosh, look at all these shelves full of all this medicine that they're trying to sell us that

Maggie (20:41.503)
It is.

Meara (21:02.967)
really come from food sources and plants and medicine like gabapentin and all that stuff comes from plants. So, it's interesting how we've changed things around for

Maggie (21:14.165)
Yeah. They're just added chemicals in there that do other things and and

Meara (21:25.377)
Sorry, my children have entered the room. They unlocked the door. I don't know how. So yes. Okay. So Hi Miss Making. excuse me.

Maggie (21:27.489)
It's okay.

Maggie (21:35.369)
Hello.

Meara (21:37.23)
As we wrap up today's conversation, maybe the takeaway isn't that we all need to go home and make a pot of broth tonight. Maybe it's simply to pause and ask ourselves what wisdom we've forgotten. What traditions have quietly slipped away? What simple practices nourish generations before us that we might be overlooking today? Because sometimes returning to simple things isn't about doing more, it's about remembering.

Remembering that nourishment doesn't always come from a bottle, that some of the most valuable things in our homes are often the simplest, and that the old ways still have something to teach us for sure. Thank you for spending this time with us today. And if you've enjoyed this episode, we'd love for you to follow the podcast and leave a review and share it with a friend who might enjoy these conversations as well. And if the episode sparked a memory or a tradition or a practice from your own family, we'd love to hear about it. Until next time.

Maggie (22:27.137)
Stay rooted, stay wild.

Meara (22:31.246)
Stay wild.