So Easy a Caveman Could Do It....Lacto-Fermentation

Ever thought of how people in the past survived without refrigerators, freezers, and other modern luxuries? When you read about our past history, you soon discover that they had a wealth of knowledge on how to preserve food. 

 

Besides their cold cellars, insulated milk houses, or other even more simple ways to keep food cool (such as placing buckets of milk in a stream, or placing roots in a hay lined hole), they also lacto-fermented or cultured food to preserve it. This simple method not only preserved food, but also gave a wealth of nutrition.  Lacto-fermented foods span the nations. You will many traditional recipes for lacto-fermented foods from all over the world. If so many peoples thought this an important part of their diet in the past, I think we should pay attention!

What is Lacto-Fermentation?
Lacto-fermentation happens when the starches and sugars in vegetables and fruit convert to lactic acid by a friendly lactic-acid producing bacteria. This produces not only a tangy, delicious product (like the lemon cucumber recipe below), but it also preserves it….. and does so much more than that!

Health Benefits
The health benefits of lacto-fermented fruits and vegetables are wonderful. I think we probably only know a small part of why they are so good for us. For example, unpasteurized sauerkraut and kimchi got a lot of buzz in recent years after some scientists found that birds fed kimchi or sauerkraut would often start recovering from the Avian Bird Flu!

Here’s what we know, when you lacto-ferment vegetables it increases in vitamins, it is more digestible and you get a plethora of good bacteria when you consume it!
“The proliferation of lactobacilli in fermented vegetables enhances their digestibility and increases vitamin levels. These beneficial organisms produce numerous helpful enzymes as well as antibiotic and anticarcinogenic substances. Their main by-product, lactic acid, not only keeps vegetables and fruits in a state of perfect preservation but also promotes the growth of healthy flora throughout the intestine.”
Sally Fallon, Nourishing Traditions, pg 89
A healthy nation in perhaps wiser times would be getting healthy, good bacteria from numerous sources, including lacto-fermented vegetables and cultured drinks every day. Today, instead we bombard our bodies with chlorine (not just in the water we drink but we also absorb it from our showers and baths) and antibiotics (in our milk, meat, and what we take ourselves).

Recipe for Spicy Lemon Cucumber Pickles

Use organic ingredients whenever possible...
Ingredients:

*5-6 lemon cucumbers, sliced into wedges
*1/4 large red onion, sliced
*1 Serrano chili pepper, seeded and minced
*1 tablespoon minced ginger
*1 tablespoon fresh lime juice
*1 qt. glass Mason or other jar
*1 Tb. Himalayan or sea salt
*filtered water

Directions:

1. Place sliced cucumbers in a large bowl and mix with the minced pepper, ginger, and lime juice. Pack this mixture into your 1 qt. glass jar.
2. In a separate bowl, mix the salt with 1 cup filtered water. Pour this into the jar over your cucumbers. Add more filtered water to bring the liquid about 1 inch below the top of the jar. All of the cucumbers should be covered (rearrange/remove a few if they are not).
3. Cap tightly and allow to sit for 3 days at room temperature.
4. Open the jar and see if the liquid is fizzy. If not, re-cap and allow them to sit for 1-2 more days. If there is evidence of lacto-fermentation (that's the fizziness), go ahead and taste a pickle. If you are satisfied with the flavor, transfer to the refrigerator for storage.

Adapted from Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats.

Good Luck at Two Crones Farm Today!

For the first time since our hens began laying I actually cooked up some of the eggs.  I fried up the egg in real browned butter and served it on crispy whole wheat toast with a freshly sliced heirloom tomato on the side.  Nothing quite like a backyard breakfast to start a day in the garden! 

The surprise in today's breakfast was that one of the eggs was a double yolk!  Come to find out, there is a .01% chance of having a double yolk in a normal dozen store bought eggs.  Being a novice hen host I was quite surprised to find this egg in the pan.  Double-yolked eggs are reasonably common for ducks and chickens, despite the fact that we so rarely see them in stores. It is estimated that 1 in 1,000 eggs (out of 50 billion produced annually in the US) have double yolks. Eggs increase in size as the number of yolks increases, but most of them are caught by "candling," or holding the egg up to a light source to reveal a shadow of what is inside the shell, and used for other egg products instead of being mixed in with single-yolks. Stores that do offer the eggs usually have one local source for them. The chickens, ducks and other birds that lay them have a genetic tendency to produce the eggs, so if a farm is stocked with such birds, most of their eggs with have double yolks. The eggs are popular with anyone who likes yolks and are also believed to be good luck by many.

Far less common are multiple yolk eggs, including triples and quadruples, like the one pictured here. Apparently, the greatest number of yolks found in one egg was nine! Can you just imagine the size of that egg? 

For those of you concerned about cholesterol and eggs there is plenty of scientific and nutritional information showing that the risk has been overstated.
Eggs have long been the voice of evil because they contain cholesterol, so much fear that most people refrain from eating one of the most perfect of foods that nature provides. The truth is that the egg is rich in cholesterol, but the latest findings tell us that cholesterol in food does not affect blood cholesterol levels or cholesterol in the blood affects the development of cardiovascular disease. Myths about the harmful effects of saturated fat and cholesterol from foods of animal origin are slowly but surely destroying. Modern science provides ample evidence that saturated animal fat, or cholesterol, have nothing to do with the typical diseases of modern man, and it is known that from time immemorial have constituted an important part of human nutrition. Today they are already available scientific evidence about what actually causes cardiovascular and other chronic diseases. Cardiovascular disease (blockage of vessels, heart and cerebral infarction) are caused by chronic inflammation in the arteries, which arise from excessive consumption of refined carbohydrates (sugar and flour) and excessive intake of vegetable oils rich in omega-6 fatty acids. Why a paradigm shift going so slow and why these new findings are not generally known and recognized, are the questions to which the answer is not short, so we leave that topic for another time.

Enjoy a meal that includes whole, farm fresh eggs....It does your body much more good than harm.
Bon Appetit!