Garden's End

I got this contraption from a Lehman's catalog.  It is a jar top fermentation kit.  If you haven't heard, fermented food is the new/old health craze.  So healthy in fact, it will cure all that ails you.  Probiotics, enzymatic, vitamins and minerals, things that can't be found in pills, will aid your digestive systems.  This used to be done in crocks over a long process, but can be done in a few days with this implement.  All you use is water and Celtic Sea Salt.  

You can be creative with your fruits and vegetables and make pickles, kraut, kimchi, antipastos.  I used the last of my jalapeno peppers for this batch.  After 4 days, I poured out some of the brine and replaced it with cider vinegar. I will store them in the fridge, then probably stuff them with cheese or something for the holidays.  

I also found this new apple cider vinegar that is unfiltered "with the mother" in it.  I'll have to see how it tastes.

Fermentation.  The new/old health food.

Fermentation Bandwagon

I have been canning and putting up my garden bounty of late; I'm getting burned out.  But, I am beginning to learn about fermentation, and want to try it out.  I was going to begin with kimchi, but these cayenne peppers fell off the plant early and I decided to go with pepper sauce.  

What is fermentation?  Think probiotics.  Good for your gut health.  Supposedly, there are numerous health benefits from fermented foods, which is basically food left in a slurry of live bio-cultures and a lactobacterial-salt slurry of microorganisms. For thousands of years, humankind has preserved food thusly; think wine, milk, bread, soy sauce, kimchi...  Food wasn't pasteurized or refrigerated like today's food.  I do draw the line at rotting fish and/or birds buried underground to ferment. 

Did you know cocoa beans must first be fermented in the production of chocolate?  I have to let these peppers ferment for two weeks, then place them in a blender, and voila, pepper sauce.  I'll let you know how they turn out.  Fermentation - it's the new/old thing in food.