The Food Renegade has a new weekly event called Fight Back Friday. Here is where all the foodies, slow foodies, Nourishing Traditions, Paelo eaters, and others who have decided to step away from manufactured and processed food and have decided to reclaim their health despite what the USDA or the Food Pyramid tells us to eat, gather to exchange ideas.
I decided last year when we went low-carb that the USDA did not have my best interests at heart. I’m not sure who’s buzzing in their ears, but if I had to guess, I’d say the corn lobbyist.
When I picked up Nourishing Traditions last year at the same time we began low-carbing, I was totally overwhelmed. She had no carb counts for her food and just about everything called for whey. I thought she meant the whey you buy at the store to put in body building drinks. That stuff is ridiculous and expensive. What she means is the stuff that drains off of yogurt, that’s whey!
I once again picked up Nourishing Traditions after seeing Food Renegade on Menu Plan Monday and perusing her blog. She’s got a ton of great articles and information. I decided to give a few of the recipes a try.
I knew that getting my family to accept that a fermented food would A). taste good and B). not kill them from food poisoning would be a serious task. Slowly but surely, they are coming around. I’m thinking the three things I’m making this week are going to be the catalyst to propel them to my line of thinking. They’ll be begging for more ferment if these babies perform like I think they will.
Today I made lacto-fermented pickle relish, lacto-fermented ketsup (from Nourishing Traditions, no link, sorry), lacto-fermented salsa (my second batch), and the grand daddy of them all, a gallon of Kombucha is fermenting and will be ready for drinking on Tuesday of next week. The crazy thing about fermenting these condiments is how SIMPLE it is. No sterilizing, no boiling, no pressure cooking, etc. You just chop up your veggies, pour some salt, whey, and water over it and put it in a jar to ferment for two days. Easy.
Please be sure to check out Food Renegade’s blog and check out the other’s who are submitting articles for Fight Back Friday.
Mar 19, 2009 @ 21:05:04
thanks for entering the give away.! I just gt into the strange glass jars of stuff sitting everywhere myself- Ain’t it fun!!! and I wa snervous about the food poisionng too!!
Mar 20, 2009 @ 07:34:00
I figured it hadn’t sat out *that* long LOL. I love all the jars of goodness though. I’m becoming a bit of a jar freak!
Mar 19, 2009 @ 21:18:09
Oh, congratulations on starting these ferments! I love lacto-fermented dill pickle relishes and salsas. The ketchup took some experimenting before we found one we like.
Thanks, too, for participating in Fight Back Friday! My post is up now, so you can go there and submit the link to this post in the Mr. Linky widget. Also, please be sure to change one of your links here to link back to the carnival post on my blog so that your readers can find their way to the carnival and check out what everyone else is sharing.
Cheers,
KristenM
(AKA FoodRenegade)
Topics about Animals » Archive » Fight Back Friday
Mar 20, 2009 @ 00:00:33
Mar 20, 2009 @ 08:52:46
Our two favorites so far are the Pineapple Chutney and Tomato Pepper Relish from NT. I can’t make them fast enough. I’d make more than a quart at a time, but I’m out of fridge space!
Mar 20, 2009 @ 09:01:29
I’ll have to give that pineapple chutney a try. My kids love pineapple.
Mar 20, 2009 @ 09:57:56
you make it sound so easy, maybe I will have to give it a try! That was the one thing on my post that i have zero knowledge about, guess i need to finally go buy the book, even though my to read list is piling up!
Mar 20, 2009 @ 14:14:24
Cookingupafamily, I would have thought the fermenting would have been more difficult, but after fermenting as well as pickling, canning, etc, the fermenting is the way to go for this lazy cook! The only question I have though is what to do with a bountiful harvest? I don’t think these ferments last extensively, so I’m guessing I’ll have to do some canning this summer (keeping my fingers crossed for a bountiful harvest!)
Mar 20, 2009 @ 14:45:45
I have yet to really play with home fermentation. You are making me think that I am going to give it a shot though!
The Sog
Mar 20, 2009 @ 22:15:49
I call my fermenting my “food experiments”. It makes it sound all science like, which makes my boys take notice.
Mar 20, 2009 @ 16:24:50
Thanks for your words of encouragement on my food box post! lol. It’s nice to know there are other people out there slowly increasing food tastes
Congrats on the natural condiment making btw, that looks cool! My family (other than myself) ate a TON of condiments growing up. My mom used to buy a GALLON of Heinz every two weeks and fill up the plastic bottles…. ack!
Perhaps that’s why I don’t like condiments… hehe.
I will be sharing your condiment making style with her!
Mar 20, 2009 @ 22:16:35
Let me know if your mom tries out the ketsup. I’m anxious to see how well it goes with a hotdog.
Fight Back Fridays | Food Renegade
Mar 25, 2009 @ 21:45:08