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Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers;
A peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked.
If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers,
Where’s the peck of pickled peppers Peter Piper picked?
Well, I didn’t pick a peck of peppers, but I did pickle them. I have six quart jars full of jalapenos, lots of garlic, some onion, and some mustard seeds. I have never done this before, so I hope they turn out good. As you can see some of them have turned red. I love the color they add to the jars. I followed my basic sour pickle recipe, with the changes noted above. I also ran out of celtic sea salt and had to use some of my kosher salt for the brine.
Since I won’t be canning (heat processing) these peppers, they will remain alive. They will be full of life-giving probiotics. If you want to learn more about that, check out the book I recommended recently.
Look for my garden update coming soon.
I grew these pickling cucumbers this year specifically to make homemade pickles. I’ve been making them for a couple years now, but I always bought cucumbers from Conrad’s in the past. These are so easy to make and SO good for you. Looking for more ways to get probiotics in your diet? These are for you.
These are naturally fermented pickles. They will not be canned. Canning is a way to preserve your garden bounty, but the process of heating will kill all the beneficial enzymes, vitamins, and friendly bacteria.
If you’re new to naturally fermented foods, you may be thinking, “Ewww, I don’t want to eat something fermented!” But lots of food you already enjoy is fermented–vinegar, sauerkraut, kimchi, wine, beer, cheese, yogurt, miso–to name a few. Even more food was fermented back in the days before canning. It is a natural way to preserve food. This is how people back in Bible times kept food from spoiling without refrigerators. Fermenting actually increases the vitamin content of food. Eating some fermented food every day aids digestion.
I like to use a cross between a recipe from Wild Fermentation and Nourishing Traditions.
You will need:
-filtered water
-sea salt (If Celtic, make sure to sterilize, like I mentioned here.)
-dill seeds or fresh dill heads
-mustard seeds (optional)
-few garlic cloves
-cucumbers, either whole, sliced, or cut in spears
-whey (optional)
-glass jars or crock
-something to weigh down and keep the cukes submerged (see photo)
I mix 6 tablespoons of Celtic Sea Salt with 8 cups of filtered water, stir to dissolve.
Place a couple cloves peeled garlic in each jar, add seasonings, dill and mustard, if using. Add cucumbers to the jar. If you are using whey (this just gives them a little kick-start on fermenting, it’s not essential), add a couple tablespoons to each jar. Then cover with brine. If you need to mix up more brine, do so with the above ratio. You will need enough brine to cover the cucumbers and you will want to leave about an inch of head room.
Now for the important part–you need to weigh your cucumbers down so that they stay submerged. Any part of the cucumber that is above the brine level will rot and have to be thrown out. If you’re using a big crock, you can use a plate to weigh them down. I use mason jars (see above picture), so I use little plastic containers filled with dry beans as my weights.
You will now leave these cucumbers out at room temperature to ferment. I do mine for 5 days. The bigger your cucumbers the longer the ferment. If you leave your cucumbers whole, it will take longer. I always slice mine, like you see in the picture.
You will see the liquid turn cloudy (that is good!) and the cucumbers turn from bright green to the darker pickle color. Cover your container with a cloth to keep flies away. After they are done fermenting, store in the fridge (with lids on the jars).
Now at this point, your germaphobia may be telling you that you can’t leave cucumbers out on the counter for 5 days! But this is wrong. Bacteria and mold cannot survive in certain conditions, salt and acid are two of those conditions. The brine you made is very salty, nothing bad can live in it, that’s why we have to keep the cucumbers in that brine. If they poke above the liquid, they aren’t protected and will mold and rot. In the process of fermentation the sugars are turning to acids and that keeps baddies from growing, too. Good bacteria are multiplying and keeping bad stuff at bay as well. If you want to learn more, click here.
Oddly enough, even though the brine starts out very salty, it changes during fermentation. These pickles are not too salty. If your’s taste too salty, let them ferment longer.
You will need to check on your pickles every day and skim any mold that is growing on the surface. It’s not essential to get all of it, just do your best. Again, I know this sounds weird, but don’t worry, the pickles in the brine are safe. This is how true kosher pickles are made. This is how pickles were made in barrels for hundreds of years. Unfortunately all pickles sold in regular grocery stores are only vinegar-soaked, not truly fermented, and so they don’t have the same health qualities. In addition, store pickles are then pasteurized/heat sealed, which kills them. These pickles are a living food and will last for months in your fridge.
If you are concerned with how these will taste, you can buy Bubbie’s at Whole Foods (sold in the refrigerator section, next to the cheese and yogurt). They are made the same way I have detailed. Bubbie’s are spicier, though.
Also, an added bonus–you will have pickled garlic–a wonderful, natural antibiotic. The garlic takes longer to pickle than the cucumbers. Typically the garlic is ready when the pickles are all gone. If the garlic taste like a pickle, you know it’s done. If it still tastes strong, like garlic, then you know it’s not done and you can just leave it in the jar, in the fridge. I beat colds and flu with garlic, but it’s much, much easier to eat when it’s pickled! My kids will eat it, too, and love it! Occasionally, I will drink some of the pickle brine, too, since it has lots of good stuff, good acids, good bacteria (probiotics), probably some essence of the garlic, etc.
These are easy (probably takes me 30 minutes or less), but they require a little patience (you don’t get to eat them for a few days), but it is SO worth it! Hope you enjoy!
This week I am making…
Beet Kvass,
Beet Kvass
Kombucha,
Kombucha
Yogurt & Buttermilk,
Yogurt
Pickled Green Tomatoes,
Pickled Green Tomatoes
and
Sauerkraut.
Sauerkraut
Why, you ask? 1 – it’s fun and easy. 2 – they’re yummy. And…3 – they’re chock full of goodness!
Beet Kvass, according to Nourishing Traditions, page 610, is, “loaded with nutrients, an excellent blood tonic, promotes regularity, aids digestion, alkalizes the blood, cleanses the liver and is a good treatment for kidney stones and other ailments. May also be used in place of vinegar in salad dressings and as an addition to soups.”
Kombucha I wrote about earlier, see here.
Yogurt is full of probiotics and protein. I make buttermilk to have on hand as a starter culture for sour cream and for recipes that call for it, such as biscuits, pancakes and such.
The pickled green tomato recipe I got here. It’s a variation of the pickled cucumber recipe from Nourishing Traditions. I varied a bit from the recipe listed. I sliced my tomatoes and used dill seed instead of weed. I have never made these before; I really hope they turn out. I tried a garden this year, well, really just one container. I grew tomatoes and basil and was really happy with the turnout. I picked all my green tomatoes on Sunday to save them from the frost.
Sauerkraut picture 1 is shredded cabbage. Picture 2 is the cabbage that has been salted and has wilted, plus some caraway seeds were added. Picture 3 is the kraut in jars. This recipe is from Nourishing Traditions, page 92. Sauerkraut has been known as a health wonder for millennia. Roman historian Pliny wrote of it around 50BC. Captain Cook could not have discovered Hawaii, Alaska, New Zealand and the eastern coast of Australia had it not been for sauerkraut. He brought barrels of it on his voyage and ordered his men to eat it, punishing those that tried to refuse. Sauerkraut was the wonder food that protected the crew from scurvy. We now know that it is high in vitamin C.
All of these naturally fermented items contain enzymes, probiotics, and loads of vitamins.
When I first picked up Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon (as I mentioned in My Food Journey) I just read through the nutrition information, I didn’t really pay much attention to the recipes. Quite frankly, a lot of them looked odd to me, leaving things out on the counter for days to ferment and such. Kombucha was one of those things—this weird drink that you could only make if you had a special “mushroom”.
Well, as I also mentioned in My Food Journey, I grew a lot while I was a member of the discussingNT Yahoo Group. A support group really is a great thing! People there were talking about kombucha all the time. One day someone mentioned they were giving away the mushrooms, really called SCOBYs. So, about a year ago, I sent this kind lady some postage and she sent me a starter. I have been making the drink ever since.
I don’t drink soda (maybe once a year at a restaurant), almost never drink coffee, and rarely drink hot tea. I enjoy my raw milk daily, but mostly drink water. Kombucha is a nice alternative drink I can enjoy that is healthy at the same time. To me, the drink tastes appley and tangy. Sometimes it has some carbonation. (You can actually work on increasing the carbonation, but I don’t bother.) Some say it tastes like apple cider vinegar, I would say it is reminiscent, yet not quite so sour. Others say it has a wine taste. You have the ability to make it as sweet or sour as you like, but the longer you let it ferment, the less sugar/carbs it has in it.
What is kombucha? (I say kom BOOK a, but there is debate on the pronunciation.) It is sweetened tea that has been allowed to ferment. This is where it is going to sound weird, we know sugar isn’t good for us, BUT the SCOBY (Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeast) feed on the sugar and the caffeine in the tea and produce glucuronic acid. (The end product tastes nothing like sweet tea.) I use a mixture of black tea and green tea to make mine. (Only organic to avoid fluoride and other toxins.) The acid lightens the tannins of the tea, also, so it is a lighter color. Besides the glucuronic acid, Kombucha contains B vitamins, protein, and probiotics.
Your liver normally produces this glucuronic acid to neutralize toxins, but in today’s world we are overloaded with toxins so drinking Kombucha can boost our liver’s detox ability. Because this drink is clearing your system of toxins you need to start out with a small amount each day and slowly increase. When I started drinking it I would feel a very slight headache in the forehead and a slight neck ache and aches in my kidney area (it flushes through the kidneys). (I have a theory that it was flushing the lymph system also, since I had neck muscle aches.) These side effects never lasted very long and they weren’t at all severe, just slight. They did last for a couple months, though. I almost thought that maybe the drink wasn’t agreeing with me and was about to stop, but then the side effects stopped, the sign that the toxins were gone. Some don’t have any side effects whatsoever, though. Perhaps I was quite toxic!
You can read about the wonders of Kombucha on the Internet or in books. I checked out a couple at my local library. One in particular makes it sound like a cure-all. Perhaps if you are in severely poor health you will find that Kombucha does wonders. For me I wouldn’t say it’s a cure-all, but then, I wasn’t in severely poor health, either. I feel more energy when I drink it (maybe the B vitamins) and I feel it releases a bit of water retention. When I eat carbs I hold water, but the Kombucha seems to balance that out for me. Some believe that by eating certain foods our bodies become too acidic, but others don’t. The people that do go along with this theory tell us that animal protein makes us acidic, but veggies alkalinize us, carbs (like bread, pasta, cereal) make us too acidic, but acidic foods like citrus fruit, vinegar, pickles, sauerkraut, and plain yogurt will alkalinize us. Kombucha fits into this category of foods that are acidic, but in our bodies they bring us back into balance. I don’t know if this theory is right or not, but I do know that I feel better when I drink Kombucha. On a side note, when I watched King Corn I learned that the modern treatment of cattle is very poor—they are kept in small quarters, not allowed to graze on their natural diet of grass, but are fed corn/soy feed. The result is that these cows die early from acidosis. Hmmm—cows eating refined carbs, rather than grass (our version of veggies), and their systems become too acidic? Perhaps the acid/alkaline theory is correct. Whether it is or whether it isn’t, guess what? The foods that keep us in balance are whole foods that aren’t processed! If God created it….
I will add that I believe you can have too much of a good thing. There are some that say there are no limits with Kombucha, there are others that say the limit should be 8 ounces a day. I worked myself up to quite a bit a day, around 20 to 24 ounces. I have been dealing with, what I feel is, a mineral deficiency ever since I gave birth to my 3 year old and I noticed the symptoms return when I was consuming this high amount of Kombucha. I have backed off to an average of 8 ounces a day and am fine. I really hope this won’t scare anyone off. I had these same symptoms if I drank too much water daily, too. I feel that too many years of whole grains (not properly prepared), sugar, and distilled water stripped my system of minerals.
If you would like to learn more about this unusual drink, click on these links.
Gunther Frank – lots of info here
(You don’t have to make quite as large batches as him, though.)
If you would like to try making your own, let me know and I will get you a free starter. (If you’re out of state, I will ask that you cover postage.)
Any questions, just let me know.
If you are just now joining this blog, you will want to read Part 1 and Part 2 of My Food Journey.
Here I pick up with what I learned from my research into lowcarb dieting. I learned many things. I learned about how our body releases insulin and about the insulin rollercoaster. I learned more about how important protein is. I learned about the glycemic index and how we can lower the glycemic index of the carbs that we eat by including fat and/or fiber. But the thing that was most enlightening was that fat is not evil!!! This thrilled me, to say the least—I do love my butter! I learned that there are good fats and bad fats and I learned what trans fats are.
This information made me feel great that I was raised on the good fats, butter, cream, and red meat, so I wanted to know more. I picked up a book called, Know Your Fats, by Dr. Mary Enig. This is the definitive guide to fat. I learned about Omega-3s, Omega-6s, saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated oils; and much more. Everything you wanted to know about fatty acids can be found in this book. Dr. Enig was pushing the FDA to include trans fats on food labels YEARS before they actually did. She is a champion of healthy fats. It was all starting to make sense to me. As a child I was told that hydrogenated oils were bad, but now I was learning why.
This started an obsession for me. I kept reading and researching and learning, I couldn’t get enough! This is the point that I started to make changes to my diet. I threw out all the margarine, Smart Select butter, shortening, trans fat peanut butter (Skippy, Jif, Peter Pan), and starting scrutinizing labels. At this point trans fats were not labeled on food labels. I checked out the book, The Trans Fat Solution by Kim Severson and Cindy Burke. This is a really short informative book that tells you why trans fats are bad, but also how to tell if food contains it. With this knowledge, now I know the REAL way to tell if an item has trans fats in it and guess what? It’s not by looking at the gram listings.
Some time after this I found the book, Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. This book is really big, most of it being recipes. The first time I checked it out from my library I just read the nutrition information, it was really eye opening. I kept checking it out from our library and kept reading new things in it. After borrowing it from the library about ten times I decided it was time to buy it. This book opened my eyes to phytates, the substance that is in grains that leaches minerals from our bodies. I then started playing around with whole-wheat sourdough. I learned all about raw dairy in this book and then quit buying pasteurized dairy products and started making my own yogurt. From this book I learned how important animal protein is so I started making my son eat meat at dinnertime. He never liked meat very much and I convinced myself he was healthy if he had peanut butter and eggs. Not so after reading Sally Fallon’s book. (He enjoys most meat now.) J
About a year ago I joined the Yahoo group discussingnt; these are all folks that have read Nourishing Traditions. This really helped me along in my changes. I started making a lot more changes when I joined that group. There is something to be said for support, whether that is a friend, or an Internet discussion board, or even a private journal (this at least helps with accountability). Anyway, I saw that there are so many real foods that we’re missing out on because of mass marketing. According to FDA safety guidelines, food must be sealed in order to be shipped and sold on a mass scale. This is good because it prevents rotten food from being sold, but the bad news is that this process kills the nutrients in those items. (Moral: We should be getting our food locally.) So I started making my own naturally fermented sauerkraut, dill pickles, ginger carrots, and beet kvass. When these items are let to naturally ferment and then stored in the refrigerator instead of heat-sealed through traditional canning methods they are alive and full of nutrients and beneficial bacteria. Also while I was a part of that discussion group I started making Kombucha and still drink it practically every day.
Other changes I have made include less cooking with olive oil, I do use it on salad, on pasta, and to dip bread in. It is a very healthy oil when it is cold, but it will get damaged when heated. I do most of my cooking with butter and some with coconut oil. When I switched to lowcarb eating I learned to like a lot more veggies, since veggies have a lower glycemic index than breads and pastas. Thankfully when my husband went on his diet we cleared the cupboards of the snack cakes and boxed macaroni and cheese. He had quit drinking soda and Kool-Aid many years before. He switched to Baked Lays in his diet days and I have since got him to switch to plain corn chips (Baked Lays are about as processed as you can get). I have since got him off the granola bars; I now make him muffins to take to work for breakfast. I now make our own lunchmeat from boneless, skinless chicken breasts, rather than buying processed lunchmeat. He lost his weight by really watching his portion intake and cutting most fat out. Since I learned all about healthy fat, I now feed him lots of fat in his meals and he hasn’t gained any of the weight back. He still watches his sugar intake. I take coconut oil daily now. I started taking cod liver oil last fall. I occasionally take a probiotic supplement, but I feel I am getting a lot of beneficial bacteria from my homemade yogurt, Kombucha, and naturally fermented veggies. I started making my own sour cream and buttermilk (more beneficial bacteria). I have switched to aluminum-free baking powder (Rumford). About a year ago I stopped using commercial shampoo, conditioner, bar soaps, shower gels, lotions, and facial cleansing products (I’ll give more details in a later post) because of the chemical content. I switched from drinking distilled water to filtered water (spring is best, we’re just not there yet). And I use plastics a lot less now, I’m not completely away from them, but I am taking my babysteps.
Now keep in mind that all these babysteps I took were over a period of years, this really all started about 6 years ago. I’m just hoping that my list will inspire you and encourage you in your changes.
Looking back over my food journey shows me 1) I ate pretty good as a child, but there was a high level of phytates, which I think accounts for my dealings with mineral deficiencies now and 2) it is SO important to teach your kids about healthy eating and why you choose to eat what you eat. I wasn’t taught and had to educate myself as an adult after eating poorly for about 10 years. It may look like I have come full circle and now eat the way I did as a kid, but there are a few differences. I watch my carb intake; I don’t eat a lot of breads and pastas. Even if you’re choosing all whole-grain bread products you can still go overboard, remember, balance is key. We ate a LOT of grains in our family; my blood sugar just can’t handle that now. I feed my kids more carbs than I eat, but I do make sure they are getting animal protein every day.
The journey doesn’t end here—it goes on and on. We all should never stop growing, never stop learning, and never stop changing!
Update: I forgot to mention that I have started soaking some grains, we eat soaked old fashioned oatmeal once a week and soaked multi-grain pancakes on occasion.
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