Fermentation!

I recently joined an organic produce co-op. The pickup point is at a little health food store an hour away, which would be a real drag if I had to go and p/u the produce myself every week. But my raw milk source is also in the co-op. She (Sherry) gets mine when she gets hers and I just pick mine up when I get my weekly milk. It's a real sweet deal for me! Sherry has to be in that part of town every Friday anyway for her sons' piano lessons. The produce is excellent quality w/ very good selection and prices comparable to conventional produce. Much cheaper than Earth Fare, at any rate.

So anyway, I've been trying out new fermented veggie recipes in Nourishing Traditions (NT). I'd done traditional sauerkraut before and we like that pretty well. Now I'm branching out a little. I did some cortido, which is Latin American sauerkraut, and I've got the ingredients for kimchi. That is Korean 'kraut. I never liked 'kraut growing up -- the smell was just so gross I couldn't bear to taste it. One of the ingredients in kimchi is daikon radish, which I will have leftovers of once I make the kimchi. So I'll try some pickled daikon, too! I'm still making beet kvass, which is basically fermented beet juice. It's not that bad -- it just tastes like salty beets, really. I don't drink it for the taste, though, it's just supposed to be good for ya. One thing about the fermented veggie recipes in NT that you have to look out for is the salt. I use about half the salt called for in the 'kraut and kvass. I always consider cutting it in half when I make a new recipe. The first thing I ever tried was ginger carrots and they were inedibly salty.

Sherry and I got some yogurt cultures from www.dairyconnection.com. I got the ABY-611 culture, which is on the commercial side of the site. She had ordered that strain from them before and let me taste the finished product. I made a quart this week using my crockpot on "Keep Warm" as the incubator. It worked pretty well, and the yogurt was nice and thick. Noah and Claire love it w/ some mashed banana mixed in. Kefir is much easier to make so I'm still using that for bread, oatmeal, granola, and other cooking stuff, but yogurt is easier for the li'l lambs to eat.

I've also got some coconut granola soaking (recipe below) and some raw milk separating into curds and whey on the counter. My kitchen is Bacteria Central! I think that is a good thing, as it is good bacteria. :) This is my first attempt at the granola. I got it from Sally Fallon's book Eat Fat, Lose Fat (EFLF). Sally Fallon is the author of NT, and EFLF is basically a coconut-centric primer to NT. I'm looking forward to having the granola around for breakfast. Sometimes you just need something quick and easy like that. I haven't bought cold cereal in 3 years (except for one box of Frosted Mini-wheats at Myrtle Beach when I was pregnant w/ Claire and STARVING). I was making regular granola for a while but it is supposedly hard on the digestive system because of the unsoaked oats. We'll see how it goes!

Picking up my milk has become one-stop shopping lately. Besides milk and cream, Sherry has fantastic free-range eggs (very dark orange yolks), my produce, and homemade bacon. They butcher the hogs and smoke the bacon themselves. It is pretty thick, but has an excellent flavor. Not too salty. I also get some good conversation thrown in for free. Sherry is a believer and homeschools her 2 boys. I really enjoy talking to her. Last week we got to see a calf that had been born only a few hours before. I'd never seen one so "fresh" before. Noah likes playing w/ her youngest boy, Carson. I think he's 6 or 7 years old. Her oldest is 9. Sherry is also into NT so we talk about that, too.