I am excited to announce that I am working hard to get my podcast back online. All I can say is, it’s about time!
If you’re new to this blog, you probably don’t even know that I ever had a podcast. Well, I did and it was pretty good. At least people seemed to like it. And I loved doing it.
So we’re bringing it back online and I’m really excited about the first show. I’m going to be doing an interview with our new nanny, Jana.
Jana from Slovakia
It only took me two days to find the perfect new nanny on Craig’s List. She’s bright, funny, optimistic, generous, and she is so loving and caring.
Jana is from Slovakia. Her boyfriend is a lion tamer here in Las Vegas. (For real, ya’ll! They have lions and tigers and leopards living in the backyard.)
She grew up in a small village of less than 800 people where they ate traditional food. (Her husband is also Slovakian, although she met him here in Vegas. They grew up not far from each other. How amazing and sweet is that?)
Jana never had braces; she has perfectly straight white teeth. Just look at her gorgeous bone structure!
When Jana was growing up, they killed a pig once a year and ate every part of it, including the blood for blood sausage and the fat which they rendered into lard.
They also kept geese and chickens and ducks and rabbits which they killed and ate. They ate lots of grass-fed cream and butter and drank raw milk, still warm, from the neighbor’s cow.
Jana says she ate liver regularly. They had a huge garden where they grew cabbage, cucumbers, tomatoes and all kinds of vegetables, plus they had lots of fruit trees. And they fermented sauerkraut the old fashioned way with salt (not vinegar) in a big crock.
Her diet wasn’t perfect growing up, as they did have access to industrial foods like white flour and refined sugar, but it was so much closer to the people Dr. Weston Price studied than most cities and towns here in America. (And of course it’s gotten a lot worse in her village now since they have supermarkets and a lot more junk food.)
If you are not familiar with the work of Dr. Weston A. Price, click here to read how traditional food impacts our health and bone structure. Traditional diets like Jana’s give children wide faces with plenty of room for all of our teeth so they can come in straight.
Ask Your Questions Below
We’ll be recording the podcast sometime in the next week. This gives you a chance to think up some good questions for Jana.
What would you like to know about Jana’s childhood in Slovakia? Please ask your questions in the comments below.
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Congrats on finding someone so caring (and with a ‘real food/ background) to work as a nanny! I’m looking forward to your podcasts
Questions for Jana: What is the most typical traditional meal in Slovakia? How did they eat fresh produce in colder weather?
Hi, Heba
I got your email and I will contact you about joining Real Food Media. I have been meaning to reach out to you for a while. I love your blog and I think you fill a great niche!
I will also ask Jana your questions and we will answer on the podcast.
I’m also wondering about produce. My family came from Yugoslavia and it sounds like my grandmother ate a lot of the same foods as Jana. I remember my Oma talking about how they made sauerkraut and also drying some fruit for the winter but I’d love to know if any fresh fruit was eaten in the winter months or just fermented/dried? Was fresh produce a seasonal thing?
I love your podcasts! I have only been reading your blog for a couple months, but I found your old podcasts on iTunes, and I have gone back and listened to most of them. I can’t wait to hear more again in the future. I think Jana’s situation is unique and opposite of what most of us here have experienced – I was raised on junk food and the typical SAD fare and am now trying to re-learn how to eat a traditional diet and put my squeamishness aside a lot of times. I would want to hear from Jana what it is like to go from an upbringing on a traditional diet to the junk-food culture of America. I wish I were raised up eating liver and lacto-fermented vegetables – now I have to learn to like these things! Not to mention pork blood sausage – I can only deal with one new thing at a time!
Good questions for Jana!
She recently lost a tooth — she had to have it extracted due to pain. I am sure this is because of her modern American diet. Of course, she didn’t know this is why she has been having dental problems — I’m just now explaining that to her.
What did a typical days meals consist of? What kinds of snacks dd you eat growing up, if any?
Wow, I am so impressed by her teeth!!
I wonder what her favorite foods were as a kid and what does she love to still eat now that she grew up with?? Does she continue the food traditions she grew up with?
Wow, Jana is the perfect picture of health indeed! You found quite an amazing woman! I am curious if she REALIZES HOW LUCKY SHE WAS with the diet she grew up with? Seriously! And if she has found it difficult to maintain a healthy diet here in America, and what aspects of her traditional diet she grew up with that she still incorporates on a regular basis. What an exciting life she has! I would also love for her to talk about her animals and her native country. I can’t wait!
Nickole
She has no idea how lucky she was. I’m just telling her now and she is learning about the value of traditional foods. We will talk about this in the podcast.
Since she really didn’t know her diet was healthy growing up, she has not eaten healthy here in America. She just eats normal American food. As a result, she has lost a tooth.
Oh and by the way, her husband grew up traveling with the circus in Slovakia — which is how he learned to tame lions!
This is crazy, the other day you posted your recipe for gulas and now you have a Slovakian nanny! My husband is from Sarosfa which is in a part of Slovakia that used to be Hungary. So he’s Hungarian but from Slovakia. His upbringing, until the age of 10 when he moved to the US, sounds almost identical to Jana. Since his last visit home he keeps telling me about his grandmother frying bacon in lard and also smearing lard on toast and sprinkling chives on top of it. He also LOVES liver!
Jana was telling me how much her Slovakian husband loves beef tongue. He likes to serve it to guests and he does not tell them what they are eating until after they are done!
Questions for Jana: What types of foods did they make sure to feed people who got sick? How common was sickness (cold, flu, etc.)? While she was young, did they have any herbal medicine that was popular?
Look at those teeth! I dream of having teeth like that…
Totally unrelated to this post, but thanks for participating in the SOPA/PIPA blackout yesterday.
Of course! Thanks for doing what you can to protest it.
I am really wondering what she eats now that she is in the US?
She eats normal American food. She has been experiencing dental decay lately — she was in a lot of pain and had to have a tooth extracted.
AM- Please thank Jana for sharing her life with us. I can’t wait to hear the podcast! She is just absolutely gorgeous!!
BTW, Ann Marie- I forgot to ask you the most important question of all: How is Kate liking Jana?
It seems like it has been a while since you’ve mentioned Kate. So I thought I would pop back on again and inquire…..
I’m so excited!!! I have been missing your podcast and look forward to more informative, thought-provoking hours
Thank you!
Hi Jana,
My people immigrated to the mid-west United States from Czechoslovakia in the late 1800s. Growing up I remember eating a dish called halusky, which was really nothing more than bacon and cabbage mixed with potato dumplings or shell noodles. I LOVED that dish! I would beg my mom to make it, but she rarely did as it required quite a bit of standing at the stove cooking the cabbage down in the bacon grease.
I also remember prune pastries called kolache which my great grandma would make for Christmas. Do either of these foods sound familiar to you?
Annie Dru
My mothers family emigrated from Poland. My favorite favorite treat growing up .was the.prune kolaches!!! We would beg my.mom to make them for us. Sometimes age.made them with cheese or nuts & honey, but the prune are the best!
I’m curious whether her tastes changed once she started eating typical SAD style? Like, does she still crave traditional foods? Or is she turned off by them now??
How cool!! My husband is from a small town in Czech Republic (the larger part of former Czechoslovakia) and his parents’ garden looks just like the picture above!! They have the most awesome orange-yolked eggs ever!! The annual pig killing is very traditional in Eastern Europe – and they do eat everything. My FIL loves lard (though my MIL tries to eat more vegetable oils and such – I keep telling her listen to your husband!! LOL). Unfortunately these days many processed foods have crept into the diet and people are getting fatter and less healthy – you can certainly tell who’s eating the traditional diet. Like my brother-in-law who’s 45 and looks awesome!!
FYI: my nanny is from Peru and she, too, remembers many traditional meals from her childhood (again, nowadays she eats low fat plus many processed foods – doesn’t help that her husband grew up on fast food and box/can type meals. Sigh… so sad).
Oops, I forgot: my MIL’s name is Jana.
Yes, Jana tells me that her name is very common in Slovakia — like Jennifer is here.
Wow, I’m so happy, I thought we would never hear from again. I really liked your podcast I found it so inspirational. It made me look at food in a different way. I’m glad that you found someone to interview on. I’m looking forward to hearing it.
What a beautiful smile! Any forthcoming traditional Slovakian recipes?
Yes Jana has been telling me about some of the foods she used to eat in Slovakia — I will get her to teach me and I will share them on the blog.
I am so interested in your Slovak foods, since my grandparents were from Slovakia. I am familiar with many types of dishes from piroghi to paprikash, but am very interested in any type of bread that may be from fermented ingredients? What about fermented beverages? Any suggestions ~
I’m especially interested in what Jana traditionally ate for breakfast and what kind of slow “fast food” options they may have had—you know, the OMG I gotta have dinner on the table in 20 minutes and I forgot to plan ahead ideas. I don’t mean McD’s or other such ideas.
Jana’s teeth are amazing. Beautiful!
Questions:
How long would they breastfeed their babies? At what age was weaning started, and what was a typical food for this?
Also, what drinks/ fermented beverages would be typical? And what would have been used as a cooking sweetner?
Natasha
I am going to write all these questions down. Jana may not know the answers to all of them because remember, she grew up in the 80s. She said her mother was always trying to be “modern” so she did not even make bread.
However, she talks to her mom on the phone all the time so I will make sure she asks her mom. Her grandma is also there living in her childhood room.
Congrats on finding the new nanny, Jana. She sounds wonderful!!! I also enjoyed learning more about what she ate growing up. I’ve always wanted a yard big enough to grow my own produce
I’m looking forward to the podcast. Love and hugs from the ocean shores of California, Heather 
How is her vision?
I’ll ask but I don’t think she wears glasses.
How cool! I hope she and Kate will be fast friends
How did they cook/eat their liver?
Congratulations… I would like to ask how shocked Jana was about American eating habits when she arrived! And, what brought her to the States?
She sounds like a great fit, and working for you must be a dream job!
My question to YOU is how did you find someone on Craig’s list that made you comfortable? Did you do any background checks or anything. I would LOVE to find someone as a live-in housekeeper, but it just makes me so nervous, knowing that probably 95% of the people on there are just fine, but being concerned by the 5% that are wool-pullers.
Hi, Dani,
It’s always hard finding a nanny. It’s hard to be a mom who can’t stay home with your kids but some of us do need to work. It’s hard trusting someone all day to do the best by your child.
I did not do background checks. I always go 100% by my intuition. This is how I hired the other 2 nannies we had, how I chose her former daycare, how I chose our current homeschooling group, how I chose our housekeeper, our gardener, etc.
I never know over email or phone. I have to meet them in person. When I meet them, I just know. Usually my heart says, “Eh” or “Nope”. But then I’ll meet someone and my heart will sing and do flip flops. When Jana came for the interview, Kate actually snuggled up to her on the couch — she has never done that!
Kate told me before Jana came, “Mommy, if she has a happy face, I will like her. But if she has an angry face, I will not like her.”
Jana has a very happy face. She’s always laughing, always upbeat. She’s just the best to have around and I’m so grateful!
Just trust your intuition!
Oh, and if you have trouble getting in touch with it, check out this book, The Heart Math Solution. It was recommended by a reader and I am reading it now. I love it! It really helps to calm down, get in touch with your intuition and inner wisdom, and helps me SO much in making decisions.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006251606X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=cheeseslave-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=006251606X
I’ll check out the book–thanks for the suggestion!
Yeah! Sounds like a win/win for you AND Kate. Looking forward to your podcasts AND more about the traditional foods of Slovakia.
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