Culturing Community

Batch Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:56:00 +0000

Our second full attempt at a Peanutbutter Mix came off adequately. In early October, the batch we made at Brooke's house is now down to just two quart jars. Two or three were tossed along the way but most of the batch has pickled, and preserved, well. We didn't get the flavor profile we so serendipitously wound up with in the first Peanutbutter Mix, hence the ho-hum report. I suspect my palate will appreciate balancing cabbage with root veggies, nixing the onion, and making sure there's some ginger in there. Sea veggies seem to need to be there but we're not sure in what quantities.

My birthday batch didn't last, good thing it was my birthday!

Here are notes from late May, that didn't make it into chronological order:
"Our latest social event centered around some of the pickles we've made (the ones that have survived our hunger). Beets, asparagus, and carrot spears were the hands-down winner in terms of a single batch. The beet stain was so thorough that most folks didn't know they were eating asparagus! The middle attempt at PB mix has mellowed nicely, a nice detail considering how much we put into it. Taqueria-style escabiche carrots (that weren't boiled before pickling, as is done in restaurants) kept their crunch through the months and garlic lost some edge.
Our latest batch was another attempt at recreating the now storied Peanutbutter Mix. We've got plenty of time for it to mellow and age but initial reactions are less than hoped for. We're thinking that the sea veggies won't get mixed in anymore. And we're not pickling cabbage in jars anymore! We have crocks! We also made a batch of peppers with some garlic and onion. Most of these will go to add heat and sweet to my orange relish (carrots, onion, garlic, peppers). And as per Stelly's prediction, the green bell pepper is raising its funky lil' head. Not too bad, though.
Our next pickle will likely be a cabbage workshop. Contrary to what we've learned the hard way, we'll pickle cabbage one more time in jars. We'll make a number of different mixes, varying the ratios of ingredients, towards finding a more favored cabbage and root mix recipe. We'll also make a batch of simple mixed cabbage for later mixing at the table or in custom mixes.

Life is short, go eat, nay, make some good food!"

The Big Fall Pickle, a new technique, & hard cider

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:56:00 +0000

The big Fall pickle was a delicious success! We tried a couple new tricks, solidified some hunches and showed off some hard cider, as well. We now have pickled raw materials on hand for a mess of custom mixes, plenty of backbone and bonifidus for all manner of yummy comestibles.
The pickle: We processed garlic, onions (yellow and red), carrots, and a mix of sweet red, yellow, and orange bell peppers with deseeded jalapenos. Local peppers are in season and we tried to use as much locally grown produce as possible. The original idea was to have each ingredient separate for custom mixing post-pickle but the pepper mix (vs. sweet peppers and hot peppers-a mistake in communication) has turned out to balance flavor with heat remarkably well. We used whey as the inoculant, so everything has a mellow (not vinegary) nose. 6lbs. of garlic turns into half a gallon shredded and half a gallon of whole cloves. 15lbs. of onions is about two gallons shredded. And 15lbs. of mixed peppers came out to 3/4 gallons shredded. There's a gallon of shredded carrots, too; they were left to ferment for three days, while everything else got a full week. Since we use the carrots to balance heat from the peppers, they don't need but a light ferment. We had one casualty- a mixed jar Christy made by herself looked good a couple days in but had turned brown by the end of the week. Not sure what went wrong with it (didn't clean the glass above the waterline is just a guess) but it smelled obviously bad, as well as was noticeably off-color. In contrast, everything else we pickled kept their bright colors, with the onion mixing intoa marblized pink. The process itself took two weekends but we could have done with just a pair of Sundays with more help.
The new technique is an interim step between pickling in quart jars under an oil seal (a la Sally Fallon) and pickling in a crock with a weighted plate to hold things down (history's technique). With a plate or flat, clean stone weighted by a jar of water, all the fermenting veggies are held below the waterline despite the buoyant effect of the offgassed CO2 bubbles. Larger batches do well in a crock and we considered just making one big mix but if your ratios are off a bit, you lose control of the flavor profile. Hence the individual batches of separate ingredients. In a smaller jar, it's easy to wipe the jar clean above the waterline and float in some olive oil. This seals out the air and lets the lactobacillii set up shop in an anaerobic environment. Lacto-fermentation generates CO2, though, and distributes it well throughout the mix. So stuff floats up into the oil, a potential for mess we didn't want to deal with in the half-gallon jars we planned to use. So, when it was time to seal each jar, we wiped them clean to the waterline as before and then capped them off with a plastic bag full of water. The weight of the water held everything in place, while the baggie made a seal. In a gallon baggie, we put a little over a cup of water, tied off the baggie, and used what was left to seal the top of the jar. This worked out very well for a first shot experiment. What was un-anticipated was the mold that set up shop in the humid space between the water-filled bag and the top of the jar, sealed in by the rest of the bag. Since all the hairy gunk was above the bag and waterline, the pickles were untouched and cleanup was relatively simple. Since most other pickle people we're reading have experience this, we were unfazed.
What we'll change next time: We left about two inches room at the top of each batch but we could leave more room next time. I'm not sure it's necessary to do this, however, as we're also going to use more water, enough to fully fill the rest of the jar. In a tied-off baggie, this will plug the top of the jar while still allowing fluid from inside to bubble out as necessary. While we didn't see as much expansion and bubbling over as we've seen with cabbage, there was still some overflow. So perhaps three inches room would solve the problem. As we did it this time, the waterline in each jar was just above the bottom of each bag. Expecting overflow, we could make that waterline at the top of the jar and use positive pressure to keep the moldies out. We won't fold the bag over the rim and seal it with a lid ring next time, keeping a closed, safe space for mold to grow! Since we anticipated bubbling over, we had the jars on a towel in a big pan to catch the overflow. With curious kitties in the house, I pulled the towel up and over the jars and capped the stack with a box of baking aids. This created conditions for mold to grow in the damp towel-enclosed space inside. Not a big deal but worth dealing with, say by finding a different kitty-proofing method perhaps. And newspaper will evaporate off the water quicker than cotton, thereby further inhibiting moldigrowth.
What we're doing with it all: I've called this stuff "backbone and bonifidus" because that's what it is to our meals. The basic Lewis "power mix" is two parts garlic, two parts peppers, one part onion, and one part carrot. I threw all of this in the blender with some soy sauce and dulse (for mineral content) and cracked pepper. Once it had blended well, I added a bit of olive oil, while the machine is still running, a drop at a time. Good food processors have a little reverse nipple on top just for this- I made an emulsion by mixing in the oil slowly, so everything stays together instead of separating. I put this in a squeeze bottle and took it to work. I put it in soup and pho, hummous, our beans, on sandwiches, tacos, whatever. At home, I took the same mix, added some carrots, and ground in olives to make a tapenade. If you add tomatoes, you get salsa. Avocado becomes guacamole. With the separate ingredients waiting, we can make custom batches for specific needs or, for barter, let folks make their own according to their tastes, whims or needs.
The cider: Cider is almost ridiculously easy. It makes itself, afterall, if allowed to, just ask the birds. In a gallon jug of pasteurized (first time I've looked for pasteurized in a long time, let me tell you) apple juice, I added a fifth of a bag of champagne yeast. Any yeast will work (bread yeast is most common in prison hooch) but the champagne yeast yields the best flavor. Wild yeast is in the air you're breathing right now, most likely, so I could just leave the stuff open for a while but I wouldn't have near as much control over what it tastes like. I stuck a sterilized cork and airlock on top and let it run for ten days, which is when the airlock stopped bubbling, indicating a cessation of the yeast's activities. This is a picture of the the kind of airlock I prefer: http://firstpitch.files.wordpress.com/2007/01/bubbly-airlock.jpg; I like this kind because it's easier to see the bubbles moving and thereby know when fermentation has stopped (when the bubbles do). This person filled their jug too much but the bubbles make it easier to see what's going on in the picture. You fill the airlock halfway with water. This provides the barrier that keeps wild yeasts n bugs out. Once the yeast gets going, the chamber connected to the jug will receive the CO2 coming off the juice and empty out under the pressure. Bubbles will then be observed rolling up into the (now full) other chamber, to exit via the top. Letting the batch go until the bubbles and fermentation stopped yielded a completely "dry" batch, meaning all the sugar had been eaten by our little friends and turned into alcohol. The test and "first" batch came out to about seven percent alcohol and was very dry- not at all sweet. The "second" batch received eight ounces of unrefined cane sugar to further feed the lil' buggies. This necessitated reserving a cup or so of juice and then pouring a couple cups into a saucepan. I heated the juice to dissolve the sugar. Once this was added back to the jug, I poured back whatever of what I'd reserved that still fit in the jug. Adding this half pound of sugar meant two percent more alcohol after ten days. Interestingly, Christy liked the dry character of the hard cider but Der Schtellinator deemed it too dry to drink. These were the batches we showed off over the course of the pickle. The latest batch received a pound of sugar and a half pound of honey, as well as yeast nutrient. The nutrient is basically a multivitamin for the lil' buggies and was purchased where the yeast was. This was a controlled fermentation process, so all the cleanliness rules from pickling apply.
The hard part of cider: Like I said, cider is easy. Measuring the alcohol content adds the challenge. Our local homebrewer's resource is DeFalco's (www.defalcos.com) and they had what we needed for all of this. To measure alcohol content, one uses a hydrometer to get a specific gravity reading before and after fermenting. Since alcohol is lighter than water and sugars are heavier, the difference between the two readings gives a clue to alcohol content. DeFalco's sells a hydrometer with a handy reference page and their hydrometer is graduated in a number of scales; since I don't care what else is in the juice besides water and sugar, the specific gravity readings, starting at 1.000 for straight water and 1.51 for juice (and potentially getting to .9somethingsomething) was too detailed. I found working with the potential alcohol scale easier than the specific gravity. According to this scale, the pound and a half of sweets added should give us an alcohol content of 13.5% if we allow full fermentation. I think I'll pull this one a day or two early, to leave a little sugar for the palate, though. When I bought the hydrometer, I also bought a wine thief and a standing tube for making hydrometer readings in. I also bought an iodine-based sterilant called Iodophor, to clean the 'meter, stopper, bubbler, and testtube. In hindsight, I didn't need to buy the wine thief (a large blown-glass pipette)- I could have used a turkey baster, if I was too drunk or lazy to pour from the jug into the test tube. And I can drop the 'meter into the jug and fish it out again (w/ sterile tongs), were I that frugally motivated.
We'll post pictures as we sort them out, come back for more! Happy, bubbly jars to you!

Sept Pickle

noreply@blogger.com (EconGrrl) — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 14:00:00 +0000

We are doing a basic spice pickle this Sunday afternoon at EconGrrl's house. Come one, come all, and bring your garlic peeling expertise. We'll try to take good pictures.

This chart of Asian spices comes via Flickr. Thanks avlxyz!

Cat-sup! a teaser

noreply@blogger.com (EconGrrl) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:02:00 +0000

This weekend All We Need +2 are making living ketchup, from the recipe in Sally Fallon's book. I am really looking forward to this. With Stacey's delicious tomatoes as the base, how can we go wrong?

You'll find out! When we upload the photos and highlights next week. mmm sweet potato fries are going to taste even better with old fashioned, living ketchup!

I can't wait.

Nance Klehm has solved the floater problem

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 19:43:00 +0000

Nance Klehm posts under "Weed Eater" at Arthurmag.com (click on this post's title to get there). She's a forager and she'll take you on a walk and point out all edibles along the way. The post I'm linking to is an excellent little essay on hunger and dirt and how anything alive experiences the former on their way to becoming the latter. As an experiment to help illustrate her point, she explains how bacteria process veggies and how they work with us in pickling. Along the way, she shows us a neat way to deal with floaters AND obviate the use of an oil barrier- she fills a plastic bag with brine and uses it to weigh down the pickles to be, thus keeping them below the waterline. Using plastic is problematic but then again, floaters and funky batches of pickles COST MONEY. I'm gonna try this trick quick!

Frontier

noreply@blogger.com (EconGrrl) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 22:50:00 +0000

It's been a quiet month here for cultures, after the frenzy of last month.

Sometimes right after a big pickling session, I don't even want to look at our abundance for a while. This week my body has been telling me that it misses the live microbial supplements I had been feeding it via the pickles, so I am back to experimenting with our cultures. I feel really lucky, because I do the same thing with my garden veggies, but after a month, the garden veggies are only good for composting, while cultures taste even better after a respite.

I am committing, now publicly, to eating at least a tablespoon of homemade cultured veggies every day for the next two weeks. We'll see how happy my body is then!

Enjoy!

Pepper Fool appears to know what's up! Sorta...

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Fri, 29 May 2009 03:05:00 +0000

From a Mid-Americanish guide to pickling and canning, this site has a great basic canning and pickling primer. They appear oblivious to living vinegar or the distinction, perhaps a Heinz generation. There are still a good number of pickling waypoints there for us to consider. And their recipes will be fun to work through, more to come on that!

pickling in Popular Science

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Wed, 27 May 2009 18:11:00 +0000

Popular Science has a website for DIY projects and they've published an article on home pickling. They did a good job of covering the important details, in the sense that this article is a good introduction to pickling. They also offered a recipe for pickled ramps (wild leeks), though it's not a pickle like we make. The neat idea included here is using vacuum bags (the heat-sealed kind) to make the anaerobic environment- fill the bag, squeeze out or suck out the air, and heat-seal. We're trying to move away from plastics to avoid BPA and other pollutants but this is an important idea to chew on.

The Gardener & Pickler's Fridge

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:15:00 +0000

Sorry about the lighting, this is from my cellphone camera. My sweetie counts thirty-some-odd jars of pickles right now, back behind the local, organically grown produce in there. Barely room for some salame! We're trying to plan a household around numbers that include a separate cooler for pickled stock, seeing as the American Third Coast is a lousy place to site a root cellar. And whatever ain't pickled now, I think I'll be reaching for soon, well, 'cept those peaches, I don't have pickled peaches figured out yet...

Birthday Love Sweet Pepper, completed

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 26 May 2009 02:09:00 +0000

This is the Sweet Pepper Birthday Love Batch, right next to my favorite Mister PotatoHead Parts Poacher. The colors show up well here, online, so you can get a good idea of the mix/ratios. The carrot always wears its orange, day in, month out. After that, the serranos and jalapenos show their dark(er) green, alongside red, yellow, and orange bell peppers and my baby's red lips.

Photos, Sweet Pepper Love Batch

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:55:00 +0000

We're trying to figure out how to measure the makeup of each batch or jar as we go. It's tricky- there's so much going on during a pickle that it's hard to keep up with little things like how much of what goes where. This is where a camera phone comes in handy: Here's the bulk of the Birthday Love Sweet Pepper Batch, done fermenting 1 June '09..

Birthday Love Pepper Batch

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 26 May 2009 01:49:00 +0000

John's birthday was celebrated with both organic and local love this year! Stacey Roussel's polychromatic carrots were added to Brad n Jessica's garden-fresh jalapenos, serranos, and fresno peppers. A couple pounds of sweet red, yellow, and orange lil' bell peppers added bulk and the liquid remains of the last batch of orange relish added garlic, onion, and some inoculants. I'm expecting this batch to be sweet and hot, just like an approachable peck of pickled peppers should be!

What We're Learning So Far...[updated]

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:33:00 +0000

We don't get to pickle as often as we'd like but we're working out some more enduring guidepoints. In no particular order,
- Checklists are handy when you're packing for a pickling off-site. Conversely, each kitchen DOES need its own canning funnel and cheesecloth. Did I say cheesecloth? I mean a nylon napkin from a middling-level restaurant. Cheesecloth is a dodo as long as we've got restaurants!
- Keep ingredients separate through processing and measure as you mix. It's easier to work out recipes and ratios this way. And recipes get useful!
- A kitchen scale is a real easy way to keep tabs on the above. Find one with a tare function, for easy measuring on the fly!
- Basic staples (garlic, onion, peppers (separate hot from sweet, or any special harvests), beets, cabbage, carrots) pickle just fine in their own jars and can be easier to work with post-pickle. Different members of the household love to make their own custom mixes. Sea vegetables especially make this a good rule- we're not liking the way they change cabbage/root mixes. Pureeing is overkill in pickling, grating or shredding is all you need. After the pickle, you can further process stuff for specific needs. Leave some stuff whole, like sm. onions, garlic cloves, or baby beets- these are good for "cocktail," escabiche, or related mixes.
- Cabbage expands. Beet stains. Asparagus delights. Garlic is ALL POWERFUL but still really mellow when whey is used instead of vinegar.
- Whey makes for mellower pickles, an especially nice detail when pickling ginger or garlic. Vinegar works great for power relishes and stuff with a sweet side. Cabbage has its own inoculants, at least more noticeably so than other stuff fresh from the dirt.
- Iodized salt is bad but coarse salt is fine. Pickling needs salt, either way!! Dry veggies want to soak overnight (after chopping) in brine. Brine is saltwater. It's heavier than water, more useful than just keeping putrefaction at bay!
- CO2 production makes batches both float and expand, so you either have to weigh your veggies down or cut your ingredients into spears that you can wedge into place. Spears are a better idea when pickling in jars and sealing with oil, while plates work well weighing things down in a crock. Beet-stained cabbage functopus juice bubbling up out of your jars is quite alarming, especially when the batch is inoculating in someone else's kitchen! It's better to be prepared: Line baking sheets with lots of newspaper and let your jars ferment on this.
- Smaller batches work better in jars, while larger batches work better in a crock. Large (1/2 gallon) jars bridge the gap well. And crocks (fired ceramic, cylindrical pots) can be had in various sizes.
- Jars and crocks both are worth skimming through resale shops for. Reduce, reuse, recycle that picklejar!
- Label and date your batches. Pickled food can last well beyond seven months and many pickles want to age and mellow for a few months. We enjoyed some pickles recently that were over a year old. The space issue makes it easy to envy Koreans who can bury kimchee crocks while they age!

Purple Mix

noreply@blogger.com (EconGrrl) — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 18:32:00 +0000

Our dear Brooke has volunteered to host the next pickle circle! We are going to attempt the 'Purple Mix', PeanutButter's cabbage & root vegetable mix. Currently looking at 2 or 4 weeks out; do you have a preference? Leave a comment if you do!

John & I made the hot sauce last night. This time we shredded everything and used the 1/2 gallon Ball jars. It went smoothly, but I missed Patrick's cheerful garlic peeling prowess. Tif took some great photos--we'll add those when she uploads....

Anyway, stay warm, stay funky, and post occasionally on what's fermenting in your world!
IntraSpeck

A whole new way to have fun AND be healthy

noreply@blogger.com (BadPixie) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:59:00 +0000

This is a new and exciting thing for those of us at BadPixie Central. Snoe's been enthusiastically adding some of the first batch to everything he's eating. According to him, it's even a wonderful way to spice up chicken and dumplings. I've found that I enjoy it mixed in with some black beans and brown rice. It was even a success with some pork and chicken mole I purchased from one of the wonderful Green Market vendors. I'm dying to see how it is on eggs, but that will have to wait until The Bear outgrows his allergy to them.

In addition to the gastronomic delight of the finished product, the creation process is great. As a history buff, I find myself pondering the days of yore when folks regularly got together to do this sort of thing, something that is rapidly disappearing in this increasingly isolationist society. It's a nice feeling, having a kitchen full of people talking, laughing and being industrious together. The mix of personalities is as much spicy fun as the results.

Now I'm eager for more, more, more. I'm thinking fondly of asparagus spears and garlic with dill. It will also be interesting to see how the probiotic benefits affect the baby, hopefully by easing his body's overreaction to certain common foods. I think I'll do some research into that area and if I find anything interesting, I'll be sure to share it.

Thanks again for including us in this community. Great people, great food--it doesn't get any better than that!

The Famous Peanutbutter Mix

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 18:20:00 +0000

Isn't this gorgeous? Special thanks to hand model Patrick Bertolino. Carrots, two kinds of beets, two kinds of cabbage, and a bit of ginger. It was ready to eat right after fermenting but the flavors developed and mellowed as it aged. And we haven't been able to recreate it since! That was a special batch...

Saurkraut

noreply@blogger.com (EconGrrl) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 16:57:00 +0000

Stelly & I made saurkraut last night! We were without our fearless leader (instigator?), but it was so simple. Totally manageable for two mildly experienced picklers. Even better, it was a short process.

We'll let you know more about the deliciousness in a week!

IntraSpeck

118 degrees F.

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:54:00 +0000

That's an important parameter for a number of biological processes. Water starts its phase-shift to vapor at that point, the liquid expanding into steam. Because of this expansion, our bodies feel 118 degrees F at the cellular level as pain- this is where our mouths start telling us "too hot!". Now, directly related, food starts losing its precious natural enzyme content at the same temperature- this is a process of cellular breakdown as water starts turning to steam. Multiple sources advocate a raw diet, primarily to maximize natural enzyme content and therefore maximize nutrient uptake. The dotted line to draw between warm and cooked is 118 degrees F. Cooking food beyond 118 degrees starts breaking down the enzymes that were there naturally, which makes your food harder to digest and keeps nutrients from getting added to our bodies. A fourth interesting thing happens just below this temperature, related in process but not culinarily- sperm dies. See: http://www.newmalecontraception.org/heat.htm. The testicles are outside the body because sperm start dying at 95 degrees F. Soaking your nuts (doesn't have to be brine this time) in water almost at the pain threshold (116) removes fertility for weeks. Men in India are having great successes at voluntary birth control using this method, take that big pharma!

One of the most important ingredients

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 18:22:00 +0000

Salt is an ingredient in almost every pickling recipe we use, whether it's added by the spoonful or making the brine other ingredients are soaked in. Iodized salt is bad but the rest is salt- the purpose of salt is to inhibit the growth of unwanted bacteria and other putrefactants before the fermentation process we're setting up can kick in. Lacto-fermentation takes a day or two to get started, depending on temperature, so the salt guards the door until the lactobacilli are up to the task.
If you're just getting started with fermenting, you might think that the salt will inhibit the growth of the little critters you're trying to cultivate. Seems reasonable only until you see how few pickling or fermenting recipes DON'T use salt. Or until you open something you were looking forward to sampling, only to be warned away by its smell (see the previous post). For instance, beet kvass, as explained by S. Fallon, only has three ingredients: beets, whey, and salt. Well, water, too. Kvass only takes three days to ferment, doesn't seem like much time for other bacteria to move in an set up housekeeping. And folks have complained about the saltiness of previous batches of kvass. We found out the hard way how important the salt is- the salt-light batch wound up slaking the thirst of the compost pile!
Many ingredient lists don't include salt explicitly but do call for a step of soaking the veggies to be pickled in brine- that's salt water. This step also makes sure that your veggies don't get too dry, such as when we had the problem with with floaters.
If you're making a batch of pickles without using an inoculant such as an existing strain of culture, whey (the living, liquid component of yoghurt), or unpasteurized vinegar, the salt is even more important. Root vegetables already have living bacteria in them from the soil they were grown in and can begin fermenting on their own if the conditions are right. This takes a bit longer to start than with an inoculant, so the salt is crucial in keeping bad bacteria at bay. We always use some sort of inoculant as a starter but we've learned to keep the salt in there, first. There's just too much heartbreak involved in having to dump a batch that you've put money, effort, and anticipation time into. And that doesn't even begin to cover the gastro-intestinal grief that comes with eating food gone bad!

Gone Bad

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:42:00 +0000

Humans have been recognizably human for a million years. Critters have been consuming fermented foodstuffs on this planet for longer than that; ask anyone who's observed birds eating fermented fruit if they saw any hesitation but rest assured it's been going on a while. Within this group, we try real hard to set up proper and specific conditions to create changes we're looking for but ultimately, we're putting control of things back into Mother Nature's hands. It doesn't always work out like we want and we have to be careful not to eat something that's spoiled. Case in point, two batches in a row of pumpkin seeds gone awry during the soak and dehydrate process. If you soak your seeds or nuts in saltwater overnight and then dry them slowly in the sun or dehydrator (or even oven, if you can keep things just over 100 degrees F), you will end up killing the enzyme-inhibitors that are intended to make that seed or nut pass through your bowels and make a tree later. This means you get to enjoy all the nutrients that would otherwise have fed said tree. So, it turns out that you need to change (and rinse) this water every 12 hours or so, otherwise, fermentation begins (as evidenced by fine bubbles generating and rising to the surface of your brine). If the telltale bubbles that we look for during purposeful fermentation didn't tip you off that you weren't properly soaking your nuts, then hopefully you got a putrescent scent to help out. This is a really good thing and it takes us back to the "recognizably human for 1,000,000 years" bit- our noses are exceedingly good warning devices, having evolved to detect putrescence as a defense mechanism through the years.

While fermenting or otherwise processing raw foods, always trust your nose. If you aren't sure, ask someone else to take a sniff and watch their reactions. Bad stuff makes for negative reactions and, truly, things aren't so dire yet that we need to eat putrescent food. Now, if you're some kind of mad scientist, we're all trying to figure out how buzzards eat putrefied flesh all day without getting sick but luckily, we don't yet really need this knowledge. Either way, if your nose detects an "off" odor, trust your nose and toss that stuff. Along the same lines, if you aren't trying to ferment something but wind up with little bubbles like you normally find during fermentation, be wary. And if you go to open that jar of pickles and the top wants to POP off, indicating an off-gassing inside, you might have a runaway jar on your hands. If you'll read back, you'll see that we previously had an issue with veggies that floated into the boundary layer that was meant to create an anaerobic environment for our fermentation processes. Once all the floaty bits were removed, the process was allowed to proceed. We started this culling process after fermentation had begun, so we happily tossed anything that smelled "off". And we later tossed anything that popped open once we released the lid's pressure- this indicated further putrefying activity. Jars that we weren't sure didn't have that "off" smell got labeled with a "?". These later turned out to have that telltale positive pressure and resulting "POP" upon opening. And the smell inside confirmed our suspicions- this shit ain't right. So, if that batch of garlic in oil wants to go POP when you open it, toss it. Botulism, for instance, just isn't on our menu. If that old stuff looks great but smells bad, say goodbye. Our noses are incredibly good at detecting food gone bad and our brains can spot these dangers in even more ways, it's a good thing to heed these warning signs Mother Nature offers us. Darwin Awards, after all, only benefit the living!

noreply@blogger.com (EconGrrl) — Mon, 31 Dec 2007 03:31:00 +0000

Hello and happy holidays, my pickled friends!

So far this season, I've given our pickles as presents to three of my Dearies, and it has worked out well in two cases (the third loves my-quirky-self enough not to mind).

What I haven't managed is to eat much of the darn good stuff we've been making! I am hoping it is just a sign of the holiday crazy schedule and the whirlwinds, both of which will be abating with the ringing in of the new year tomorrow.

The Kvass is rather like radishes for me--I resist beginning to drink it, but once I've 'broken the seal' I really enjoy it. It is good & thirst quenchingly salty.

Let's make a date early in the new year to play pickles! And take that darn poll!!

Wishing you lots of peace, prosperity, & pickles in 2008!

IntraSpeck!

What NOT TO DO when pickling...

noreply@blogger.com (Bla$) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 18:32:00 +0000

Hey kids...please take a look at the link I've posted...this is something that you really need to look out for when you are pickling...
Be a safe pickler!!!

Blas

Making Vinegar, including honey vinegar and more

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 19:40:00 +0000

http://www.gangofpour.com/diversions/vinegar/vinegar1.html
http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/how-vinegar-works2.htm
http://vinegarman.com/VinegarMaking.shtml
http://www.countrysidemag.com/issues/83/83-4/Countryside_Staff.html
http://www.publicbookshelf.com/public_html/The_Household_Cyclopedia_of_General_Information/howtomak_bjc.html

The last two links are the juiciest, offering recipes for many kinds of vinegar, including honey and liquor based, as well as a home acidity test.

Less of a group event, making vinegar involves setting up cider or wine (or other sweet bacteria food) to sit and ferment for months. The vinegar crock becomes a near-permanent addition to the kitchen and then storage vessels begin to multiply as time goes on. A good working setup is a barrel or crock for aging vinegar and a separate barrel or crock for generating vinegar. Aged vinegar and a constantly maturing flavor in the crock become the fruits of this new course of regular, light labor. Wine vinegar is merely feeding a growing colony small amounts of wine regularly and occasionally drawing off vinegar. Other kinds of vinegar, such as the honey vinegar referred to in the Countryside Magazine, are better as stand-alone batches that turn and are then bottled. White wine vinegar is more challenging but will be worth the effort. Apple cider vinegar seems to be the best choice for the pickling we do.
Vinegar is the oxidation of alcohol as carried out by a growing colony of airborne bacteria; acetic acid is the result.Vinegar will make itself if you leave wine or hard cider open to oxygen but, more expeditiously, use existing vinegar or "mother" to turn wine or hard cider at close to a one to one ratio. Mother is the visible bacteria colony, appearing slimy and filmy. It forms initially on the surface, looking spongy and grey and signaling the start of its growth process. The oxidation process is fostered by surface area, so a good vinegar-making vessel is wide-mouthed and covered with something porous like a cloth. Ceramic such as CPB's crock is excellent, avoid plastic and iron. Light ain't good for growing vinegar, so use an opaque vessel. Like our other cultures, vinegar needs a warm temp, 70-80 degrees f. As the bacteria colony consumes the sugar or alcohol and grows, mother will form inside the fluid. It will sink to the bottom once all the sugar or alcohol has been converted. The mother is then strained and the vinegar can be put aside for aging. Left unstrained and unrefrigerated, vinegar will continue to grow until it spoils after a few months. Five percent acidity is required to culture vegetables like we do, lower strength is courting nasty problems.

composting

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:07:00 +0000

We got to talking about composting and under-sink worm bins lately. Keeping worms under the sink to feed table scraps to goes back a long way but current lifestyles could find it a bit funky- you have to put up with some smells sometimes, as well as fruitflies. Of course, some systems are cleaner than others but we are talking about a living process here.
This link: http://ecotality.com/life/2007/12/10/indoor-composting-made-simple/ goes to a new product featured on the Ecotality blog, an indoor composter. This one is sealed, with a fan and a heater, so it fits into the "modern" lifestyle by alleviating older complaints. The fan helps control the odor and the heater keeps the process running. Says it can handle meat because of the heater, which means it will kill worms (rather, take the place of). So, for lack of outdoor space, this isn't a bad idea but it has limits and it adds to your carbon footprint.
Keeping worms under the sink (or anywhere dark and quiet) is a much older alternative. Feed them your table scraps (no animal products or fat, though- this is the advantage the heated system enjoys), give them moist, shredded newspaper to bed in, empty the worm castings every couple months. A container with a lid, as well as the paper bedding, keeps the fruit flies to a minimum. Bigger households can run stacked containers to handle larger loads of daily refuse. While full containers are being converted to compost, the one on top is still receiving scraps. http://www.compost-bin.org/vermicomposting-with-can-o-worms/ is a good commercial site for seeing what you can buy towards this end, where here's the wikipedia entry on vermiculture: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vermicompost. This site is all about worms: http://www.wormdigest.org/.
Worm dirt is excellent plant food. Well-fed plants (i.e. not raised for commercial profit plants) are excellent people food. Table scraps converted to worm dirt saves landfill space and stretches our budgets, as scraps wind up in our bellies, just the way this planet has been recycling its upper layers for the last few million years. Oh, got a fishing trip coming up? Got worms!

fermented beans and southern relish

noreply@blogger.com (Slingshotjohnny) — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 18:21:00 +0000

Beans (black and red, soybean) will ferment. This makes them easier to digest and offer up more of their nutrients when fermented first. Now, if you're the singing kind, you might not appreciate this but fermented beans don't bring the wind nearly as much as unfermented beans. To ferment beans, just add a couple fingers of unpasteurized vinegar to cooked beans (soak them overnight before cooking) and let them sit for five to seven days. Soaking the beans starts the germination process, breaking down the enzyme inhibitors and unravelling some of the tightly-packed nutrients. Cooking raises the level of available proteins.

http://www.tigersandstrawberries.com/2006/04/27/beans-out-of-gas/
http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/abstract.cgi/jafcau/1998/46/i12/abs/jf980674h.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/04/060426080023.htm:

~~ note: this article is easier to read if you click on the little
pencil at the bottom right of the post ~~


Ferment And Cook Beans For Gas-free Nutrition ScienceDaily (Apr. 26, 2006) — Fermenting beans and then cooking them not only reduces the majority of the soluble fibre that leads to flatulence, but also enhances their nutritional quality. Now we know which bacteria are important for the fermentation, reveal findings published online today in the SCI's Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture. Beans are already an important source of nutrients, and many people would eat more of them if it wasn't for the flatulence. In many situations treating food to remove one problem often reduces its nutritional value, but a team of researchers at SimÃ³n BolÃvar University in Caracas, Venezuela, have shown how flatulence can be reduced, while the nutritional value is enhanced. Flatulence is caused by bacteria that live in the large intestine breaking down parts of the food that have not been digested higher in the gut, and releasing gas. Led by Marisela Granito, the researchers had previous shown that fermenting the beans could destroy many of these compounds. Now this team of researchers at has identified the bacteria that perform this fermentation. Publishing their work in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture, they show firstly that Lactobacillus casei and Lactobacillus plantarum are the key bacteria. These can be encouraged to grow either by deliberately adding it to a batch, or by inoculating with liquor from a previous batch. Secondly, they discovered that once these fermented beans are cooked, the amounts of nutrients in the bean that could be digested and absorbed had increased significantly. "Our results show that L. casei could be used as a functional starter culture in the food industry," says Granito. About the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture is an SCI journal, published by John Wiley & Sons, on behalf of the Society of Chemical Industry, and is available in print (ISSN: 0022-5142) and online (ISSN: 1097-0010) via Wiley Interscience www.interscience.wiley.com For further information about the journal go to: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jsfa Adapted from materials provided by John Wiley & Sons, Inc..

Southern Relish
2 cans white shoepeg corn
2 cans worth of cooked, fermented black and/or red beans
2 medium yellow onions
4 jalapenos
1 small carrot
half a head of garlic
The beans will bring some of the vinegar flavor, so some folks add sugar if the corn isn't enough to offset the sour taste. Serve with corn chips.