My Excuse

Okay, why did I title this blog post “My Excuse”? That’s because my absorption in the Master Food Preserver (MFP) program has been - and probably will be for the foreseeable future - my excuse for everything...my single focus on all things food; my negligence to all other interests, including quilting; and most importantly my untimely blog posts (note my two December blogs posted in February).

I’m beginning my fourth year in our county’s MFP program and my interest has yet to wane. Not for what might seem the obvious reason, because I love to preserve food. And not because I’m a do-gooder and want to save lives. (In case you don’t know, food poisoning can kill!) There are reported cases every year of people being hospitalized (and occasionally dying) from eating home (improperly) preserved food. And not for social reasons. I’ve never been an overly “social” person and I doubt that will change at my stage of life. So, what’s the attraction? Without getting wordy (I’ll do that below), the simplest answer would be “food”. It’s not only a basic need, but it’s one of the simplest pleasures of life. Both Verne and I love to browse cooking magazines and books, try new recipes, new foods and new restaurants. It’s just been in the past few years that we’ve begun to focus on the health benefits of certain foods and their method of preparation and in some cases, preservation.

Not all of what I’ve learned as a MFP is particularly healthful. My initial interest, jams and jellies, is certainly something that Verne and I could do without. Making and canning my own preserves provides an opportunity to control and limit the amount of sugar that goes into the final product, but simply eating the fruit in its raw state would always be the healthier approach. As far as preserving the quality and health benefits of food in general, freezing and dehydrating are more economical and superior methods to canning for retention of nutritional value. A method even superior to those, and one that actually adds nutritional value to preserved foods, is fermentation. My first experience fermenting cabbage went against all I’d learned in my food safety training. Letting food sit on the counter at room temperature (in our case it sits in our dark, cool pantry) for days on end while lactobacillus bacteria eat away at the natural sugars in the cabbage until it softens (rots) in its own juices and lactic acid, which is formed as a byproduct of the process, and the cabbage magically becomes sauerkraut as it’s called in its fermented state. The best sauerkraut I’ve ever eaten, I might add. I should actually say “we” because Verne is my partner in most fermenting projects and makes all of our sauerkraut. When we’re down to a quart it’s time to buy cabbage and begin the process anew.

The following year we made our second fermented product, old-fashioned deli pickles. We’d made “quick” pickles that are brined in vinegar and canned and found them to be delicious. It was the fermented pickles that made us believers in the fermenting process, in particular the unique taste of fermented foods. The hardest part of the process is finding fresh, small pickling cucumbers, which are called Kirby cucumbers. Our local grocery stores occasionally have them, but they’re usually too large and never fresh enough for our taste. We wait until they’re available at Davis Ranch in early June, picked fresh daily and sold in 3-pound bags or by the case. We take them home and thoroughly but carefully scrub them (lots of dirt in those wrinkles), trim off the blossom end (it contains an enzyme that will soften the pickles), pack them in a half-gallon jar with garlic, fresh dill, and a chili pepper, cover them with a simple brine made from water and Kosher salt, and top the jar with either an oak leaf or grape leaf, which is also thought to help retain their crispness. The jars may be covered with a thin cloth or an airlock device like those used in the wine and beer craft (we use the latter) and placed in our dark, cool pantry. And we wait. Just like the sauerkraut we wait for the beneficial bacteria to do its job and consume the natural sugars in the cucumbers and create an environment that is hostile to pathogenic bacteria, thus preserving the cucumbers. More magic!

Our home fermenting didn’t stop with sauerkraut and pickles and by 2015 we were fermenting kimchi and I was brewing kombucha on a weekly basis and beginning every day with a large glass of it. The pronoun change was intentional. Verne loves making and eating sauerkraut, dill pickles, and even kimchi, which he uses in a delicious kimchi fried rice recipe he developed. But the man has drawn the line at kombucha. It’s just too scary for him. He claims that he gets his probiotics from beer and wine and doesn’t need to drink “the booch.” I admit the SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast), a pancake-shaped gelatinous slab of cellulose that inoculates the drink and is commonly referred to as the “mother,” is like nothing I’d ever seen before. And, my first reaction was to be frightened by it. Once I began caring for it and enjoying each week’s birth of a baby SCOBY, a sign that the mother is a healthy, functioning mass of beneficial bacteria and yeast, I looked forward to the ritual of bottling the week’s brew and caring for my SCOBY by feeding it a gallon of freshly made sweetened tea (next week’s kombucha). At any given time I have as much as 2-3 gallons of kombucha fermenting downstairs in our dark, cool pantry. Actually, we no longer call it a pantry. Filled with fermenting sauerkraut, pickles, kimchi, kombucha and Verne’s sourdough starter, it is now called “the fermentation room.”

SCOBY on top of Kombucha ready to bottle

If you’re wondering why I’ve become so interested in this type of food preservation, my entry into the field of fermentation tracks with the USDA’s testing and approval of fermented products for teaching by master food preservers nationwide. For your understanding, the USDA along with its agency, NCHFP (National Center for Home Food Preservation), is the top dog when it comes to home food preservation. Secondarily are the universities and their extension offices in each state. The master food preserver program is county-specific with a coordinator (employed by the state’s land-grant university, California’s is UC Davis), and local volunteers who receive training in food safety and preservation, report to the coordinator, and teach the public safe home food preservation methods and techniques. I’m in that last group, a volunteer who spends an inordinate amount of her time reading, learning, experimenting so she can be the best of the best teachers when she shares her knowledge with the public in the form of classes and articles. Both kimchi and kombucha were additions to the list of USDA approved homemade foods to teach in 2015 and more recently yogurt, my current focus, and kefir have been added. However, let’s get this straight. I have the MFP program to thank for the nudge into the world of fermented foods, but it's really been the hours I've spent reading on the subject that have pushed me over the edge and made me a true believer in the health benefits of having a probiotic-rich diet and the fun of fermenting foods at home. If you are even remotely interested in the subject, begin your reading with Wild Fermentation by Sandor Ellix Katz.

The Breadman

And, know that if I'm a little late in updating the family blog, that for now it's because I'm busy with my yogurt experiments. For example, "What is the quality difference between yogurt made at home from commercial store bought ready-to-eat yogurt containing a live and active culture versus a reusable heirloom-variety yogurt starter culture available on the internet?" Or, "What is the quality difference between yogurt made in a dedicated yogurt maker that holds the temperature constant at 110 degrees for the required 8-10 hours compared to that made by improvising and using a warm oven or a heating pad?" I'm all for the latest in technology and the latest gadget (just ask Verne), but some people don't want to spend $50-$100 for a yogurt maker, so I try to offer low-cost alternatives. And, you can't do that without firsthand experience.

So, goodbye for now...it's back to the lab for me (that would be our kitchen)!