 Pivoted, because she is striving to lead a zero waste lifestyle now and has a great presence on a TikTok and other socials as well, but in particular on a TikTok. And a lot of it was down to a video that she made about Talo. So we'll find out now more about Talo and Miranda because she's joining us in the studio and we're streaming as well. Miranda, thanks for coming in. No problem, thanks for having me. So let's talk, but the singing aside for a moment and let's talk about, I suppose it's about lifestyle really and it's about, you know, it's all making conscious decisions about trying to keep waste down because today is a special day, isn't it? Also there's a week, this is a zero waste week I think actually, it's a national campaign. Yeah I'd only heard about that yesterday, I don't know how I missed it. Well, I should or should be better informed, but anyhow, because I was looking through some info on this, oh yeah, it's National Food Waste Recycling Week. There you go, yep. And it's to encourage us all to recycle our food waste, but you're ahead of the game. I'm trying to be, I'm making every effort I can. I think a number of years ago, I kind of fell into sustainability in zero waste, I didn't intentionally decide that this was the lifestyle I wanted to live. My son had terrible eczema, like it was really, really bad childhood eczema and I couldn't afford any of his products. It was just too much, you could spend literally up to 10, 20 bucks a day on eczema products. So I learned how to make them and then after I learned how to make them, I thought, oh well what else can I make and what else can I do? Like I was buying in compost for the garden, I could make compost, I figured out how to make compost and it was just a slippery slope. So it was a cost saving exercise to start with and I suppose when you have success with something, when you realize, oh I can do this or look what I've achieved or look at the results and it gives you a platform to go on and try other things. Absolutely, because what happens is when you start in self-sufficiency is what I call it. When you start with that, you start noticing waste. So when I started learning how to make things for myself, when I had to buy any of those things, I thought this costs a lot of money or I'm throwing away a lot of packaging or what have you and I don't know, it became a value then for us to not waste so much. For you, it started out with trying to get products for eczema, but we all have to eat and we all waste food and food is more costly now than it has been for some time. So we could all do the same with just ordinary everyday food products that we're cooking and eating and maybe storing wrongly or cooking too much off and we end up wasting. Absolutely. So something that I talked about the other day or I posted about it on social media is freezer-burnt food. People tend to throw it away because they don't like the texture and they don't like the flavor of meat that's been freezer-burnt, but it's easily rectified. You brain it, you soak it overnight in a solution of salt water with a little bit of sugar and some herbs and next thing you know that meat is rehydrated, the texture is better and the flavor is amazing. Okay and usually it's only a part of it maybe around a certain part of the outside but it can be reconstituted for want of a better word. Absolutely but the number of people I know that the minute they see any kind of freezer burn, they throw that food out. And unless you do keep a close eye on your freezer it's inevitable because unless you're really well-organized and rotating stuff when you're freezer there's going to be stuff in there that's been in a long time you're just not 100% sure you forgot a bit of date on it or whatever. So don't be don't be alarmed at freezer-burnt. There's a way back. And it's not bad for you. Some people think it makes you sick and absolutely does not make you sick to eat freezer-burnt food. Now let's talk about Tatalo because you put you put up a video about Tatalo what it is and how you make it make it and it went viral. It just took off. The like the third or fourth one I ever made went viral. I think one of the first series I do series of Tatalo now but one of the first series has 10 million views on one video which is crazy to me because I would I started posting about Tatalo on social media because I'm passionate about it and none of my friends want to talk about it. So I thought you know I'll find some people online maybe find a little group of people that like it and I was then shocked by the amount of people that were like this is amazing. But taking off like that and and a video going viral and social media is it's about I think it's about finding a niche and then making a video that appeals and I think that's what you've succeeded in doing with Tatalo. It's it's you know let's face it it is a niche and it's not something that most of us would be familiar with and yet when somebody sees it and they realize the sense that it makes they're quite happy to share it and then others see it and do likewise and here because it resonates with so many people because the thing with Tatalo for so if anybody doesn't know what Tatalo is well let's explain to us what Tatalo is. If you take beef fat like literally the fat trimmings from a cow we are rendering out the oil so we're separating the skin the connective tissue all the other bits of the fat we're isolating that from the actual oil and that oil is called Tatalo but most commonly you see it called beef drippings when you're in the grocery store yes in the shop so it's beef drippings. Okay so it's like you get a maybe a roast most likely a big steak and there's a nice big bit of fat on to the end of it you cut off that fat and melt it down. Yeah you apply a gentle heat and it will just yield its oil for you and there's a number of different techniques to do this and then that oil hardens into sort of like lard yes and that's what you keep and that's what you use for your frying. Yeah but it has so many other applications so I think the reason why my Tatalo videos resonate with so many people is because I use it for soap making so soap makers are like what we can make our own Tatalo because it's 14 us dollars for less than 500 grams that's incredibly expensive or I get my fat for free so I'm not paying for that. Is it widely used in soap making? Yes it is widely used in soap making. Okay and so you're able to make your own so you have a component that you essentially make for free otherwise it would be dumped. Absolutely I also use it to replace WD-40 because you can use it to grease things around the house I use it to weatherproof my hiking boots I use it as a lubricant on the other things in my house ship builders use it to launch ships it literally has dozens of applications and people have just forgotten. So it's very versatile. Extremely versatile and if we're using it for cooking it's rich in vitamins. It is incredibly nutrient dense but a little bit goes a long way so I couldn't be eating Tatalo every day it would be bad for my heart but a little bit in your diet is actually good for you. Okay and it's a high smoke point because I'm right in saying that Tatalo used to be popular going way back and then oils came in vegetable oil and so on and then it started wasn't wasn't as cool to be using Tatalo. Yeah it became a status symbol to not have to use Tatalo which is crazy sauce so what happens is historically everybody had access to Tatalo everybody had access to it you had it you made your candles out of it you cooked with it everything and then when you had a little bit of money you're like oh I don't have to have a Tatalo candle because it smells worse than a wax candle I'm going to be buy wax or I'm not going to use Tatalo to fry my food because Crisco is out all in the states it's Crisco I don't know here it's um frytex you can get frytex so why would I be using beef fat if I can use frytex it's a status symbol to do it. Okay so um I suppose if you if you go to the butchers would they be would they hand you over some of the fat some of the off copies it depends on your butcher I've been very lucky so my butcher is my neighbor so I said hey what are you doing with your fat trimmings and he's like we throw them away I was like can I have them and so they started giving them to me talk nicely to your butcher talk very nicely to all of your vendors oh yes indeed now that's just one of the ways that you you highlight on your socials about zero waste and you you're great at composting as well you put a lot of stuff into composting and composting makes most sense if you've got a lot of you know plants and flowers and you want to that you want to feed them or you just you use a lot of compost in general but it's a great way of doing it because it's a whole circular. Yeah well compost is expensive like if you're a gardener even if it's just like I grow all my own food but even for an ornamental garden compost is expensive or you can just make it for free so I got to the point when I was living in a housing estate my neighbors would bring me their grass clippings it would go into my compost bin my neighbors gave me their food waste that went into my compost bin along with my own grass clippings and my own food waste and then I didn't have to pay for a compost anymore it's great and there's issues as well with where compost comes from and by producing it in the first place but that's that's a separate argument but in your case it's so you know it's not just grass cuttings what else you put in a lot of just regular food stuff I do but there's there's a drama in the composting world everybody has these rules about what you can and cannot put in the compost which is it's all ridiculous it depends on what you can do so let's say I was a farmer and I had a big farm yeah I can make a compost pile that's called a windrow that's like 20 feet long and maybe 10 feet wide I could compost a whole cow if I wanted but that's on an industrial scale that's not even industrial like that's just one person with a farm right but just I don't have a farm I started urban composting yet I'm working on it but I started urban composting and conventional composting wisdom says you can't compost meat or dairy or citrus things because it'll attract vermin you see most of us wouldn't compost anything dairy right enough I compost everything I can tell my kids I'm gonna compost them if they continue getting on my nerves be careful so you you fire it all in and it works for you it does because including citrus fruit including citrus fruit because it depends on your there's several different composting techniques and if you don't want to compost meat and dairy you don't have to you can do a cold compost bin and then that's fine I do hot compost so the center of my compost pile gets over 70 or 80 degrees it gets steamy it gets super steamy and it cooks down whatever is in the middle so if I fire meat in the middle that breaks down in two weeks and it's too hot for vermin to comfortably be in my pile okay so it would depend on sort of what works for you because a lot of people just wouldn't think about putting meat into the compost but it does work it does work and there's no hard and fast rules if you're a person that just wants to live a little bit more sustainably you can get a one of those little dollop compost bins yeah fire your stuff in and just leave it alone for a couple of years it doesn't have to be labor intensive just thinks down and what comes out the bottom is compost yes simple as all right which is brilliant and you you even take a step further and you you go out and get sort of leftovers from you know your local cafe and stuff and add them into your compost I gather what I called urban resources so like even here in town I go to brulab the coffee shop and gather all of their coffee grounds they save them for me each week what coffee crowns good for used coffee grounds are amazing for the garden they will help suppress weeds they'll do all kinds of things and they're fantastic in your compost pile my composting worms my gardening worms love them so if you have a lot of worms in your compost to stop and that's good yes it's brilliant that's what you want because warm poop is some of the most expensive fertilizer you can buy it's like 25 euro for a small bag or I can just get it for free by putting used coffee grounds in my compost pile but yeah and I gather used coffee grounds I would go out to a lumber mill out in Kilmer and Turmin and as I gather all the bark that they trim off their trees and I use that to mulch my garden and I go to browns printers I pick up all of their pallets like whatever I can gather and use I gather and use because you're now you you're living out in the countryside now and you really have embraced country living with with all of what we've been chatting about and more because you've got you know as I said there there's no point in having all this compost unless you've got the things to put it on and you you've got plenty of plants and shrubs and flowers and food I'm growing foods I started out urban composting I mean sorry urban gardening yeah and so I was in a housing estate with a large back garden and I was still feeding my family out of there and then two years ago we found this property out in Turmin with all this land and then I just went nuts I think we have 150 potato plants in the ground because the guys out at Ballack Durr Garden Center taught me how to grow potatoes like 10 years ago so we're growing potatoes for three or four different households sweet corn cabbage you name it we have it growing and now you have the space to do it yes and mind you I did it sustainably so I made all it was a what do you call it an uncultivated field when we moved there so the goal was to not spend more than 250 euro to cultivate that part of the field and to start growing and that's including seed and everything so I brought in my own compost I grew everything from seed I built up all my raised beds out of used pallets so that I didn't have to pay for this gardening you're incredibly resourceful and you you must also put a lot of time into it because that you know it is time consuming what about the kids what about the kids are they on board well they kind of have to be on board because they're living in my house for a phrase they're college students but I've raised them doing this I wanted them I called it zombie apocalypse training all right so when they were kids I was like you never know when the zombie apocalypse is gonna happen we need to know how to build things we need to know how to grow food it's a great way to bring them on board yeah make it contemporary make it speak to them in their language yes it's all great you do but a foraging as well wherever whenever you can so it's just learning I'm I literally just started learning in the last few months so I started going out the Balear and gathering things I have a few people that guide me show me what I can on what sort of stuff what sort of for mushrooms I learned how to identify a puffball mushroom which I can now collect and cook I gather generic things like nettles and I don't know things that we all know that you can eat yeah I gather brilliant well listen I continue success with it all and and keep up the great presence because it's it's it's enlightening and it's entertaining on your socials and people can catch up with you on tiktok and youtube and whatever Miranda Rosenberg what about the singing and performing I'm just back so just COVID is slightly just giving me space to start performing so I was back at the dairy jazz at the end of April I just finished the warm point festival and we have our album our new album mostly finished I'm just waiting for horns and backing vocals brand look forward to it Miranda thank you thank you for having me bye wetsuit on I'm underwater by a