Self Preservation

Lots of crops are producing abundantly now so we are busy eating a lot, selling some and preserving the rest for later. We love canned green beans so we can lots of them for the winter. We like preserves on our biscuits and cornbread so we are making blackberry preserves. We like fermented vegetables too so we are making kraut from purple cabbage and fermenting big jars of mixed vegetables. The ingredients will change with the seasons. Right now they are filled with carrots, white turnips, zucchini, yellow squash and broccoli. We have 2- 1 gallon jars and 2- 1/2 gallon jars going now. Robin gets them for the kitchen at the Monastery where she works. They came with pickles in them, ironically enough. Each jar is flavored with different herbs and seasonings. Rosemary in one, garlic and basil in another, thyme in a third and jalapeno peppers and spicy oregano in the last one.
The great thing about fermenting is that they are live cultures that have many health benefits. They aid digestion increasing nutrient absorption. Studies have shown that the fermentation of vegetables in the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, brussels sprouts,, collards, bok choy...) converts glucosinolates in them into a powerful group of cancer fighting compounds called isothiocyanates. The same lacto-bacillus that ferment the vegetables live inside our digestive systems.
Self-preservation ;-)

Ramblings about Food

I think about food a lot. How much i like it, why do i eat so much, where does it come from, is it good for my body, can i grow it, how do i grow it, how can i cook it, what am i going to cook for dinner.... You get the picture. Tonight i'm making lentil stew for dinner. I like making flavorful mixtures of different ingredients. The stew has animal (diced pancetta ham fried into bacon bits for a garnish at the end- wonder where the pig was grown?), leafy vegetables from my garden, seeds (lentils ... don't know where they came from either), flowers (star anise, very popular among the chefs on the cooking shows i watch and learn from... mainly that fancy food is not good for you... fat, fat, and more fat), fungi (mushrooms), minerals (salt), bacteria (in the collard kraut i fermented which is tasting good now after about 5 weeks), probably lots of other microorganisms too.

I used a variety of cooking methods to prepare the individual ingredients for the stew; frying, sauteing, simmering, fermenting. The end result is very tasty, nutritious, a little fattier than it could have been. All in all it will be a very satisfying experience as soon as i'm done eating too much of it.

By the way, i did some research on star anise. It is the dried flower of Illicium verum. It is hardy to zone 8 and sounds fairly easy to grow so i'm going to plant some seeds and see if they germinate. The flowers are used in homeopathic remedies, chewed after a meal to aid digestion and freshen the breath, and are a main component in the preparation of Tamiflu, the drug that is supposed to protect us from the bird flu epidemic. Ya'll remember the bird flu epidemic don't you. Be careful with those chickens you are growing they might kill you.
Eat More Star Anise!

Carrot Fermentation

Believe it or not under all that chickweed and henbit you see in the photo above there lies a good crop of nice sweet baby carrots. What to do with all those carrots before they start to go into their flowering phase. Ferment them of course. The first fermentation process i'm doing is to turn them into sour pickles. I cleaned them up and covered them with a brine made up of 3/8 cup sea salt dissolved in 1/2 gallon of water that i boiled first to get rid of the chlorine. You know they put the chlorine in the water to kill the very microorganisms we want to grow on the carrots to make them turn sour. Lactobacillus is their name and fermentation is their game. We'll taste a carrot in a few days to see that the process is working. They should be ready in about a month.

Our collard and carrot kraut has been working for 3 weeks now. It is starting to taste pretty good.

We made some coconut milk kefir the other day. Wow is that delicious.

For more information visit Sandor Katz' wild fermentation web site listed over there on the right hand side of the page.

Wild Fermentation at the Funny Farm

Robin and I attended the Georgia Organics Conference last weekend. It was a great event. Attendance was up 50% from last year with over 600 people attending this year. We are making progress people.

The highlight for me was the presentation by Sandor Katz, author of Wild Fermentation and The Revolution will not be microwaved. He is a very dynamic speaker with a simple but powerful message. He has made sauerkraut making an agent for positive change and revolt against the tyranny of the corporate-industrial food monster. His book Wild Fermentation (haven't read the other one yet) is  a well-researched treatise on the history and politics of the culture of food growing, preparing, preserving and sharing. It is also an instruction manual on how to preserve through fermentation almost anything we can eat.

As winter retreats and spring advances it is time to harvest the last of the winter vegetables before they go to seed. Thanks to Sandor, I now have the skills to preserve the carrots, collards and garlic by chopping them up, putting some sea salt on them and letting those ubiquitous microorganisms go to work on them turning them into a delicious and nutritious fermented delicacy in a week or two.

For me it completed the microbial circle of the soil food web by explaining how the same microbial community that makes turns organic matter into compost, and helps feed plants, also helps us preserve the harvest and make it more nutritious, as well as breaks food down in our bodies into the component nutrients that we require to sustain us.

Its all connected. Long live the microbes.

Never use Anti-bacterial soap. Ever!

Oh Yeah, there is a link to Sandor's website to your right. Wild Fermentation.