Fermentation Workshop – Local Culture improves!

Let’s Ferment a New Local Culture! Raw Goat Milk Yogurt and cheese, Sourdough Bread

…creating probiotics from the orchard, field and garden…

Saturday, January 21^st, 2012 -10am to 3pm

Little Lake Grange Kitchen

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An introduction to several delicious and easy ferments:

Raw Yogurt – Easy to make from Raw  Milk & a simple starter

Goat Cheese – from “Curds & Whey” (simple) to Chevre’ – Sara Grusky will show you how

Sourdough breads – Ursula Partch shows us how to bake traditional bread that is highly digestible (& take home a local wild sourdough starter)

Sauerkraut– A tasty & health giving condiment from cabbage & veggies

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It’s hard to imagine life without refrigeration, but humans have been preserving and preparing foods without refrigeration for eons.  Fermenting vegetables, dairy, and fruit preserves them through the winter until the next harvest. But even more importantly, fermentation allows critical organisms to colonize in our food and our gut, protecting us and balancing our ecology and health. We can’t maintain health without our symbiotic organisms and bacteria. So even if you can’t manage to grow food where you live, you can still ferment foods and populate your gut with their bounty.  Let us learn yet another way to restore our health and ourselves by preserving & using local seasonal foods.  We will focus on Vinegar since it is the season to use those juicy apples, grapes & pears, but cabbage is ready to harvest too!  Let’s get started creating a new culture right at home with our healthy local foods.

Natural fermentation precedes human history; it happens by accident when the conditions are right for ripe fruit to slowly age in the heat of summer, or when honey and water mix in warm weather. Since ancient times, humans have been controlling the fermentation process. Thus humans have been preserving foods without refrigeration for eons. Fermenting vegetables, dairy, and fruit preserves them through the winter until the next harvest. But even more importantly, fermentation allows critical organisms to colonize in our food and our gut, protecting us and balancing our ecology and health.

Every successful & healthy indigenous culture appears to use some form of fermented food in their daily diet.  Dr. Weston A. Price studied these surviving cultures & found that the Austrians have their yogurt & sauerkraut; the Russians make their yogurt, the Swiss their Sourdough Rye, the Japanese – Miso, Natto.  The Chinese eat Taosi fermented beans; Africans eat soured grain breads in many places.   There are also many cultural fermented drinks, beyond the wines & beer we are familiar with.

Lactic acid preserves food by inhibiting putrefying bacteria. This organic acid is produced by a beneficial bacterium present on the surface of all plants and animals – even our own skin! Traditional cuisines from around the world prized lactofermented foods and beverages for their medicinal properties as well as delicious taste. Most traditional cuisines included at least one fermented food or beverage with every meal, which worked to improve digestion and nutrient absorption

Think of lactofermented foods as “super-raw” foods; the enzymes in lacto-fermented foods more than compensate for the enzymes lost in the foods that are cooked. Regular consumption of traditionally fermented foods and drinks promotes the growth of healthy flora and overall balance in the intestines.  Healthy intestines equals long life & reduced incidence of Arthritis, Heart Disease., and more. Lactofermented foods are rich in enzymes as well as beneficial bacteria.  Eat some with every cooked meal.  Teach your children to love them from an early age.  Yogurt is surely the easiest to learn to love at a young age.  Let’s make some home made yogurt & other tasty ferments!

If you miss this class, I can let you know when it will be repeated.  Email me at awaters@pacific.net or call 77-459-6362.