This week the episode is a vlog, and it's up on Youtube, all about my trip to Finland!!

Check it out here

This was my first real vacation in two years—no work, no laptop, just pure adventure—and I couldn’t have picked a better place than Finland 🇫🇮❄️In this episode of Tasty Trails Travel, I’m sharing my winter journey through Helsinki, Lapland, and beyond, including:

• An overnight train to Rovaniemi (aka Santa Claus’ hometown 🎅)

• Visiting Santa Claus Village and crossing the Arctic Circle
• An icebreaker cruise where we walked and swam in frozen seas 🧊
• Seeing the Northern Lights (just a little!)
• Ethically run reindeer sleigh rides
• Staying in a glass igloo hotel for my birthday ✨

• Finnish saunas, great food, and lots of hot drinks
• A winter day trip to Tallinn, Estonia
• Ending the trip back in Helsinki with amazing meals and city wandering

-Dog sledding with the fastest, happiest pups ever 🐕❄️I also talk about traveling in low season, researching ethical animal tourism, and why this trip meant so much to me after a long stretch without a real break.If you love winter travel, slow travel, cozy vibes, or just living vicariously through cold-weather adventures—this one’s for you.

In this episode, we travel to Australia to explore Native Australian bush foods and the deep cultural knowledge behind them with Auntie Dale Chapman — Aboriginal chef, educator, and founder of My Dilly Bag.

With more than 25 years at the heart of Australia’s bush food movement, Auntie Dale shares how Indigenous food knowledge has been passed down for over 65,000 years through storytelling, seasonality, and deep connection to Country. We talk about powerful native ingredients like lemon myrtle, wattleseed, bush tomatoes, and bunya nuts, how food acts as medicine, and why sustainability and respect for land are central to Aboriginal foodways.

This conversation goes far beyond recipes — it’s about culture, wellness, education, and honoring the world’s oldest continuous living food traditions.

Connect with Auntie Dale: - mydillybag.com.au- Instagram: @my.dillybag- Facebook: My Dilly Bag

What does food science actually mean — and how does it shape what we eat, how food tastes, and even how humans evolved?

In this episode, I’m joined by Dr. Bryan Quoc Le, a food scientist with a PhD, author of 150 Food Science Questions Answered, and the creator of an upcoming documentary on flavor chemistry called The Flavor Matrix. Together, we explore the science behind flavor, fermentation, and umami — and how culture, psychology, and sustainability are deeply intertwined with what ends up on our plates.

We talk about:

• What food science really is (and what it isn’t)

• How flavor is created at scale

• Plant-based meats and the future of food

• Fermentation, umami, and why taste is culturally learned

• Indigenous food knowledge and lost food traditions

• Why cooking may be one of the most important reasons humans evolved

This episode is a deep, curious conversation about food as culture, science, and survival — and why paying attention to what we eat matters more than ever.

- Watch the trailer for The Flavor Matrix: https://vimeo.com/1114030763- Visit the website - Check out 150 Food Science Questions Answered