Making My Sourdough Starter

I recently received my Desem Sourdough Starter from Cultures for Health and I was ready to make my sourdough starter.

There were clear instructions and an expiration date on the package so I was sure to make the starter at the ideal time. Easy so far!

I gathered my ingredients: starter, water, sprouted whole wheat flour, giant jar (it doesn't have to be this large, but I'm ambitious), wooden spoon, Nourishing Traditions for inspiration and my pineapple top that I'm sprouting that hopefully will become a plant and will fruit in about three years... if I'm lucky. It's worth a shot.

Don't really need a sprouting plant when you're making starter, but it was there and it hurt no one.

You need flour, however, and I've found a great source for freshly ground sprouted flour. As if souring is not enough, the fact that the grain is sprouted makes it much more digestible--your body recognizes it as a vegetable and no longer a starch. The whole point for me in undertaking sourdough bread making and kefir making and raw milk yogurt making is to improve the health of my family. It's not difficult, but it does take a mindset that you're going to do it. And the more you know, the more you know, you know?

I put the starter in the jar and then my daughter helped me by stirring, as I poured in the water.

Once that was well blended, I added the flour and my daughter stirred.

I spilled some flour--my bad. But, my daughter enjoyed stirring and didn't spill a thing.

That was it! It couldn't have been easier. The starter from Cultures for Health had a great hearty, yeasty smell and I was hopeful that it would actually work. Would the starter develop? Would it create a frothy souring blend? I hoped so. It seemed promising.

I put a cloth towel over the top and held it in place with a rubber-band.

Now we would see how active the starter was. I couldn't wait to see bubbles.

I let it sit for twenty four hours and saw that it was beautifully bubbly. So I then again added water and flour to feed the starter. It's yet another living food, at least until it gets baked.

I have fed it diligently and will let it rest and then make some fresh starter from it that will get used in a recipe for bread.

I can also report that this is a very vigorous and robust starter, not easily messed with, even when someone is distracted by her parents who are visiting for the weekend to go to the kids' dance recital and she starts the oven to make something and then realizes that the emanating yeasty smell is her baking her starter which she had so cleverly put in the oven with the light on to nudge it along. Oh. My. God!! I fried my starter!!

It was OK, thankfully, and I will make a loaf of no knead bread this week.

A total success so far, but almost a total disaster... I dodged that one.

The Making of Kimchi, a Photo Essay

Well, I made the kimchi. I used the recipe I found in the great traditional foods cookbook, Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon. and had one modification in that I used 2 teaspoons of red chili paste instead of the red pepper flakes--next time I'll use the flakes. Oh, I couldn't find Napa cabbage either, so I used bok choy instead. There are all sorts of vegetables and even fruits that can be made into kimchi, so I felt OK about that substitution.

What is kimchi? A mainstay of Korean cookery, it is a fermented, intensely flavored cabbage condiment. It is made in a similar way as sauer kraut, but is full of ginger and garlic and has a tangy, spicy taste. Because it's fermented, it is full of probiotics and helps with digestion. Why am I making it? Because I don't want to spend around $8 a jar for the very good kind of kimchi that I've gotten at Whole Foods...

Look what my husband got me for my birthday.

It's a crock! And, I mean that in only the best way possible. In this very countrified 1980's crock, I can make as much kimchi as I want.




See the pretty decal on the side?



It was this, for 5 bucks at Goodwill, or a Harsch fermenting crock for over 100 dollars...Say what?!



Beautiful, isn't it? Oh well, I can easily forgive my crock the cutesy little flowers at the top. I will defile it with stinky cabbage and that's just going to have to be OK.

Let's look at what I used to make kimchi.

Here's the whole group of ingredients: Bok choy, green cabbage, carrots, daikon radish, scallions, ginger, garlic, kosher sea salt, red chili paste.

Look how great all of these veggies look. Doesn't this all look so healthy?

To make kimchi, you have to salt the cabbage and other vegetables, which inhibits the growth of bad bacteria that would rot the vegetables. What will happen instead is lactic acid fermentation which preserves the veggies and has all sorts of healthful benefits to me, my gut and the billions of micro flora that are always having a party in my intestinal tract. (yours too, by the way...) Par-tay!!

You shred the veggies, salt them and then add the flavorings--garlic, ginger and the chili paste. Mush it, mash it and the salt will begin to draw out the juices from the vegetables.

I got tired of mashing at this point and recruited my husband--even though he thinks kimchi is completely heinous. Love is expressed in many ways, isn't it?

Here, we're pretty much done. See all of the juices that have been drawn out? The vegetables will remain submerged under all of that and will ferment in a few days time.

Here's the kimchi in the crock and...well, it looks, uh, kind of...well, perhaps not so palatable. I will admit that.

Blech...

It's a good thing that kimchi is not about looking, it's about tasting. And, I tasted it on Monday and again on Tuesday and it is already delicious. Crispy, yet softened up some, juicy, gingery, garlicky, and spicy. Yum.

I've made kefir, yogurt, kombucha tea and now kimchi. My journey into whole, fermented or cultured traditional foods is expanding. I think I'm going to try to make cheese next. Ricotta is supposed to be easy. I'll let you know.

NOTE: I forgot to add this picture that shows my creative daughter's idea for what to do with discarded carrot tops. That girl has an eye.

What?! Why Do You Drink Raw Milk??!

Why?! Why would I?! Why in the world would I drink raw milk? Why wouldn't I drink pasteurized milk? Doesn't the pasteurization protect us? Isn't raw milk filthy with germs and microbes and disease? Didn't Pasteur have something there? Well, maybe. Maybe sometimes for some things, but not for milk that is obtained from grass fed cows who graze out in the sunshine and eat their natural food--grass. Those cows are healthy and produce healthy milk just as they have for the thousands of years that people have consumed raw milk all over the world from various animals. Cows, goats, sheep, horses, llamas, camels, yaks, water buffalo all have provided humans with quality protein, minerals, and vitamins for millennia; especially in places where you can't really grow crops, but you can graze animals.

Besides, towards the end of his life Louis Pasteur said, “The germ is nothing; the terrain is everything.” He sort of turned around on that one, didn't he? If the organism is strong, and supported, and bolstered up, the germ doesn't have much of a chance. The object for good health then is not in destroying every germ that comes, or trying to create fields of sterility in our homes, but in bolstering up all of our immune systems through natural means that don't compromise our strength. Raw milk does this.

In Ron Schmid's book, The Untold Story of Milk: The History, Politics and Science of Nature's Perfect Food: Rw Milk From Pasture Fed Cows, he explains why pasteurization came to be the mandate here in America and why it has made milk less nutritious and detrimental to good health. What otherwise, when raw, would be a cure for asthma and allergies is recognized by some as a cause of heart disease, when pasteurized and homogenized.

Some questions to ponder: Are people dying from consuming raw milk around the world? Are salmonella outbreaks occurring in raw milk supplies or pasteurized? Why would that be? How is it that mankind has survived and thrived living on raw dairy for generation after generation after generation? How can that be if raw milk is dangerous and bad for us?

Why do I drink raw milk? Because I know that I am getting good nutrition and my family is and that we are getting: vitamin c, minerals and dozens of bacteria fighting components such as Lactoferrin, Polysaccharides, Medium-Chain Fatty Acids, Enzymes, White blood cells, B-lymphocytes, Macrophages, Neutophils, T-lymphocyes, Lysosyme, Mucins, Oligosaccharides, B12 Binding Protein, Bifidus and Fibronectin. All of these components are actively fighting bacteria when consumed raw but are destroyed when milk is pasteurized. Pasteurization removes the pathogen destroying property of raw milk. Raw milk helps protect me and my family from illness. Except for a bout of flu, which only lasted three days for each of us (three days and then one day a week later for my daughter), my kids have not had any colds this whole winter. No sniffles. No cough. No sore throat. No malaise. No fever, which would be good any way for burning away whatever the sickness is--it being the body's natural mechanism for killing the invaders. We have missed very little of any class or field trips or gym days for a very long time.

Generally, my kids are very healthy. I think drinking raw milk contributes to that.

That is why I drink raw milk.

I Drink...Raw Milk!!

I drink raw milk!! I do. Not only that, but...I...give it to my children!!!

For more information about raw dairy, read Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon.

Kefir and Why You Want it.

Kefir: A fermented milk drink common in the Caucasus mountains in Soviet Georgia. Milk is cultured at room temperature with kefir grains that multiply and grow with each ferment. Here are some grains.




Kefir tastes like a tangy, slightly effervescent liquid-like yogurt. It has even more probiotics in it than yogurt. Where yogurt adds some good "bugs" to the gut, kefir colonizes the gut with a whole range. Here is a passage from the book Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon that is quoting from the book The Body Ecology Diet:

Kefir is a cultured and microbial-rich food that helps restore the inner ecology. It contains strains of beneficial yeast and bacteria (in a symbiotic relationship) that give kefir antibiotic properties. A natural antibiotic--and it is made from milk! The finished product is not unlike that of a drink-style yogurt, but kefir has a more tart, refreshing taste and contains completely different organisms...kefir does not feed yeast, and it usually doesn't even bother people who are lactose intolerant. That's because the friendly bacteria and the beneficial yeast growing in the kefir consume most of the lactose and provide very efficient enzymes (lactase) for consuming whatever lactose is still left after the culturing process...kefir is mucous forming, but...the slightly mucous-forming quality is exactly what makes kefir work for us. The mucous has a clean quality to it that coats the lining of the digestive tract, creating sort of a nest where beneficial bacteria settle and colonize...

You know how you make kefir? You buy some kefir grains, throw the grains in a jar with some milk and every once in a while, as you walk through the kitchen, you swirl the jar. Let the jar sit overnight and the next day you have kefir. That's it!

Dom's Kefir site helps with information on how to make kefir, and what to do with it once you've made it.

A really great book, Wild Fermentation, by Sandor Katz also has information and recipes for cultured foods.

Why am I telling you all about kefir? After all, what does that have to do with trying to not buy anything new for a year? The thing about kefir is that the kefir grains multiply. You can buy some grains initially and then give away your extra grains as they multiply. And then those who have received your kefir grains will give away their extra, and they'll tell two friends, and so on, and so on, and so on. Perfect.

Here is a recipe for a kefir smoothie:

Into a blender throw in,

1 banana
1/2 cup strawberries
1 to 1 1/2 cups orange juice
1 to 1 1/2 cups kefir
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 Tbsp. coconut oil
honey to sweeten

Blend. With any leftovers, you can pour into popsicle forms and have them later.

If you start doing any reading about cultured or fermented food, you find there is a rich history of it in almost every culture and that we, our bodies, are walking collections of microflora. Cultured food, like yogurt, kefir, kim chi, sour kraut all feed and introduce friendly microbes to help your digestion and immunity. You can support that inner ecology, the good bacteria, and build it up for your good health by eating cultured foods.

As Stephen Wright says, "Support bacteria - they're the only culture some people have."