Lacto-fermentation, and you?
November 10, 2008
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Fermentation is a correlative of life and of the production of globules, rather than of their death or putrefaction.
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Instead of using ceramic sauerkraut pots, I used my Grams’ old Bauerware, covering the shredded/salted cabbage with plates and whatever weighty material I had to press and immerse it under the brine.
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Towards the end of the week whenever I walked past these stacked Morandi still lives, little bubbles would appear from under the plates now submerged in brine. I understood this to be direct communication from the lactobacilli, that they had in fact fermented the cabbage to my satisfaction.
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Just like Pasteur said, “It’s the microbes that will have the last word.”
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An extract on Pasteur’s Memoire sur la fermentation appelée lactique (1857)City Picklers video on pickling
The Gut Microflora Story, from the European Food Information Council
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Bumper sticker
November 7, 2008
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My dear friend Carolyn Strauss from Slowlab gifted me up a family heirloom! Now I don’t actually own a bumper, nor do I remember how to drive one, but I sure am going to hop on my bike and find a frame for this artifactual finger wag from the Old Country, a quote from American agrarian Wendell Berry.
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Survival through dehydration
November 4, 2008
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Looks like rat tails and bones. Guess I’m just getting visually prepared for the future!
Well if the whole world goes to pot (and not in the good way) at least I will have dehydrated exactly 2 days worth of essential parsley root. And if I keep at it, soon I’ll have saved enough celeriac chips to barter myself a dirty vodka martini.
No offense Mormons and Survivalists, but as much as I adore playing with my food and eating like a Tibetan nun, I’m having a hard time finding the sexiness in dehydrating personal stores of food. In the mean time, I’m taking this cool dehydrator tool for a spin, though in my heart I prefer a community pickle and a community solution. Maybe I should have dessicated something a bit more joyous than beige roots or things perfectly capable of preserving themselves. Maybe I’ll revisit the raw food folks. Despite the rhetoric, they do the cuisine végètal a nice turn.
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Handy-to-mouthy for drying pumpkin seeds. In case I ever run out.
I’m not knocking the Excalibur. Technically and visually it’s handy as Hell, but it would be a dang sight handier if I had big batches of summer fruit to process. Anyway, I’m banking on my kimchi making skills to get me through the Apocalypse. Denial?
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Apricot drying in the Old Country, back in the day. Image used entirely without permission.
If I remember correctly, as a kid growing up in California, we used to dry the family’s summer haul of apricots, plums and figs on large redwood trays delivered to the house. (M & D, how did that work? Did the trays stay? Was it a municipal service for apricot-rich people? Are you out voting correctly right now?)
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Cots and cots, as far as the eye can see. Image used entirely without permission.
Today, KvR and I agreed that all of these high-end kitchen tools need to be about increasing joy and variety in the belly, not about merely surviving or practicing deprivation. It’s not the Excalibur’s fault that it’s hugely popular amongst overly sober goat-knitters. But food flow begets food flow, and a cook in the habit of ‘moving’ food is certainly the most resilient in any type of crisis. Yes, us urbanites living in cities’ with a mere 4 days of food in store for us, most of it in transit, are wise to be prepared for transitions and downturns. Like Sharon Astyk says, your skill as a versatile cook will be your most important tool.
Surviving the New Depression: Tip #43
Steve Delahoyd made a series of ‘Just get on with it’ videos, this one is about New Local Economic Transactions.
But seriously…
Historic images of Sunnyvale in Santa Clara County California (a Blue State) where, ‘It used to be ALL orchard.’Transition Culture dot org, Robert Hopkins is an expert without being gloomy.
The Excalibur Dehydrator - the definitive food dryer
Juliano’s recipes using the dehydrator have lots of joy, if not evangelical zeal.
debra at 20:39 | Comments (2) | post to del.icio.us
