{"id":831,"date":"2010-05-22T12:20:33","date_gmt":"2010-05-22T19:20:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/?p=831"},"modified":"2010-05-22T12:20:33","modified_gmt":"2010-05-22T19:20:33","slug":"fff2010","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/2010\/05\/22\/fff2010\/","title":{"rendered":"Freestone Fermentation Festival 2010"},"content":{"rendered":"

Quick, name some fermented foods.\u00a0 What did you come up with?\u00a0 Beer? wine? cheese? pickles?\u00a0 Let’s not forget yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, kombucha, natto, tempeh, vinegar, and bread.\u00a0 These and more were the focus of the second annual Freestone Fermentation Festival<\/a> in Sonoma County, California, May 15, 2010.<\/p>\n

This was my first time at this “low-waste, alcohol free, pet free, smoke free and must have fun event.”\u00a0 I went with my blogging friend Laureen Hudson<\/a>, her daughter (Michael stayed in Petaluma with Miriam and Aurora’s big brothers), and Laureen’s friend Lisa.<\/p>\n

Held at the beautiful and green Salmon Creek School (pause a moment to lament that we don’t live near enough for my daughter to attend a school with such clean air and lack of chemical stink), it was a mix of hippie aesthetic with practical advice, local businesses, and of course samples galore.<\/p>\n

\"Cyndi<\/a><\/p>\n

Fermentation roughly falls into two categories: dead and alive.\u00a0 This event covered both.\u00a0 Alcohol and bread are the two best examples of the former.\u00a0 You can’t make them without fermentation (excluding things like crackers or tortillas) but we eat them for the taste and general nutrition (and they preserve foods without winter or electricity).\u00a0 There are few to no probiotics.\u00a0 Probiotics are what make ferments live.\u00a0 You eat these for all the usual reasons but also for the nutritional powerhouse of the yeasts and bacteria.\u00a0 Yoghurt, kefir, krauts, and pickles are the best known live ferments (though they aren’t always sold live).<\/p>\n

As regular readers of my blog know, I make a variety of vegetable ferments (krauts and pickles).\u00a0 And I long to make more.\u00a0 I’ve tried my hand at coconut yoghurt and have plans to make water kefir next.\u00a0 Another project on my list is dairy-free cheese (something pungent, like blue).<\/p>\n

Many attendees lamented the lack of alcohol at a festival dedicated in part to its production.\u00a0 But there were workshops covering spirits; my guess is logistical concerns kept out the samples.\u00a0 Cheese (from cow, sheep, or goat milk) was another large component.\u00a0 Since dairy and I don’t get along well, I had to skip that part.\u00a0 No one there makes non-dairy cheese but I will make this my mission to find out how.<\/p>\n

\"Gabe<\/a><\/p>\n

The Beverage People<\/a> in Santa Rosa has classes and equipment\/ingredients for sale for a wide variety of fermented products, but their specialities are beer, wine, and cheese.\u00a0 My friend Gabe Jackson, who works there, even made us a case and a half of blackberry wine (picked from our garden–and yes, a post on that is coming!).\u00a0 He’s promised to keep his eyes open for information on non-dairy cheesemaking.\u00a0 His dairy cheese class at the festival was a big hit.<\/p>\n

I attended classes on sauerkraut and pickle making, both with demos and fairly straightforward advice for beginners.\u00a0 Kathryn Lukas, the owner of The Farmhouse Culture,<\/a> demonstrated a simple cabbage ferment.\u00a0 The woman next to me sounded peals of joy when Kathryn said don’t bother to pound your cabbage, just massage it a bit with salt to release the juices.\u00a0 Since it had never occurred to me to pound my veggies, I just smiled, but now I wonder what I do that isn’t necessary or what little things I might be missing.\u00a0 Kraut making is pretty easy, but there is a lot that can go wrong too.<\/p>\n

Another thing that that hadn’t occurred to me was the sugar content of the vegetables.\u00a0 Usually with ferments sugar is a good thing, even necessary, as it feeds the yeasts.\u00a0 But *aha moment<\/em>* what makes krauts go off often is the yeasts gaining control; krauts and pickles are a bacterial ferment, not so much yeast.<\/p>\n

Most of our kraut is red onion<\/a>.\u00a0 Most of the time it comes out fabulous.\u00a0 Once in a while we get an unwelcome surprise.\u00a0 I asked Kathryn her opinion and she said it was likely the sugar in the onions.\u00a0 Which can vary a lot.\u00a0 I don’t know how to fix this…can I add some acid?\u00a0 Can I measure the sugar to know which onions to avoid?\u00a0 I don’t want to mix with large amounts of other vegetables.<\/p>\n

Kathryn says to keep your vegetable blends no less than 75% cabbage so they come out well every time.\u00a0 That works great for kim chee<\/a>, which I also make, but sometimes you want something different.\u00a0 I asked her if there was a chart of different buggies (desirable and undesirable) but she didn’t know of one.\u00a0 I would find that very helpful, since I know what my off ferments look\/smell\/taste like and could match the bugs.<\/p>\n

Jill Nussinow (the “Veggie Queen<\/a>“) taught pickles.\u00a0 These should be easy but even more can go wrong than with krauts.\u00a0 I’ve made cucumber pickles<\/a> and had one fantastic batch, a couple okay batches, and one batch we couldn’t eat.\u00a0 Turnip pickles<\/a> were so-so and tomato pickles were a total fail (though I sat near someone who said her green tomato pickles come out great, so I’ll give it another try).\u00a0 Cool temperatures seem to be pretty important (you can get away with summer temps with kraut) and so is good technique.\u00a0 Other than that, I’m not exactly sure why mine fail so often.<\/p>\n

\"Pickling<\/a><\/p>\n

This very expensive crook was much touted at the festival.\u00a0 What do the experts say? does it make better kraut or pickles?\u00a0 The answer is no, but it does make it a lot easier.\u00a0 You still have to weigh down the veggies (you never want them to contact air); this crock does come with weights.\u00a0 But apparently when you fill the outside rim with water and put on the lid, you get a seal that lets CO2 leave without letting air in.\u00a0 So less chance of trouble.<\/p>\n

\"Cultivate<\/a><\/p>\n

In addition to the pricey rimmed crock, Cultivate<\/a> in Sebastopol had a variety of crocks and other equipment, at decent prices.<\/p>\n

One ferment I’ve been wanting to make for a while is water kefir.\u00a0 Dairy kefir is pretty common and makes a drink similar to liquid yoghurt, though the buggies are totally different.\u00a0 Instead of using a bit as a starter, like you do with yoghurt, you strain and save the kefir grains, which are like tapioca.\u00a0 You put the grains into your new liquid and go again.\u00a0 The grains will multiply with time so there are plenty to share.<\/p>\n

You can use dairy kefir grains in a non-dairy liquid and they will turn into water kefir grains.\u00a0 It’s the same minus a few cultures that only reproduce with dairy.\u00a0 So you can’t make dairy kefir with water kefir grains.<\/p>\n

Water kefir is delicious and can be made fizzy or flat.\u00a0 Apple juice is a common base, so is coconut water (not to be confused with coconut milk).\u00a0 But you can make it with water too, as long as you add some sugar to feed the yeastie beasties.\u00a0 Like with all ferments, the bugs eat the sugar and you’re left with a low (or at least lower) carb product.<\/p>\n

\"Serving<\/a><\/p>\n

The folks at Cleansing Ministries Rejuvenation Center<\/a> in Santa Rosa gave a demonstration on making ginger root beer water kefir.\u00a0 I can’t wait to make it.\u00a0 Once I get my hands on some water kefir grains, I’ll blog the full recipe and my results.\u00a0 Miriam adores kefired apple juice, which she had at a friend’s once, but I am allergic to raw apples and apple juice and found that the symptoms kicked in after too many samples of apple ginger kefir.<\/p>\n

Nowhere could you see the hippie\/mainstream dichotomy of the festival better than by looking at the water kefir demo and the “Fermented Foods and your health” talk. Karen Miller-Youst admonished us not to make kefir in a room where there had been anger and Dr. John La Puma<\/a> gave us isolated sounds bites about the medical wonders of fermented foods.<\/p>\n

John started us off with his credentials (part his resume and part the famous people he’s worked with), accompanied by a glossy flyer advertising his book.\u00a0 The flyer was similar to the talk, filled with little tips like “cooked carrots and cooked tomatoes are better for you than raw” (something that is not only banal but wrong: soft or ground carrots make it easier to get the nutrients out but raw whole ones still have them and there is exactly one nutrient, lycopene, in tomatoes that is present in higher amounts when cooked, not exactly a reason to give up raw produce).<\/p>\n

But onward to the talk.\u00a0 What would you consider the number one reason to eat live fermented foods?\u00a0 John’s was that probiotics lower the incidence of antibiotic-induced diarrhea (he even said it twice and had it on a slide).\u00a0 Yep, it’s true, but…\u00a0 His other reasons were about how probiotics are good for various gut conditions.\u00a0 Also true.\u00a0 But very allopathic.\u00a0 You can’t be a doctor unless you treat disease, and all bodily workings are mostly separate from each other.\u00a0 Right? Not really.<\/p>\n

Granted, I left the talk before the end (the room was giving me a headache, the only problem I had in the building), but not once did I hear him say anything about the normal role ferments play in human health.\u00a0 How every traditional culture has them in spades.\u00a0 How they exist in nature as well and are part of non-agricultural societies cuisines.\u00a0 How they work and why they are not just “healthy” things we can eat but essential to keeping our bodies balanced.<\/p>\n

Fortunately, the organizers and attendees in Freestone needed no convincing.\u00a0 The emphasis was on how to get more ferments in our lives, not why.\u00a0 A nice playground and a butterfly ride for the kids, tons of samples (I could could have drunk Farmhouse Culture’s pickle juice all day), foods for sale, and live music rounded out the day.\u00a0 I’ll be back next year!<\/p>\n

\"Laureen<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Quick, name some fermented foods.\u00a0 What did you come up with?\u00a0 Beer? wine? cheese? pickles?\u00a0 Let’s not forget yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, miso, kombucha, natto, tempeh, vinegar, and bread.\u00a0 These and more were the focus of the second annual Freestone Fermentation Festival in Sonoma County, California, May 15, 2010. This was my first time at this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[26,63,66],"tags":[7,6,49,8,11,51,77,113,78,112,34,59,5,12],"class_list":["post-831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food","category-food-commentary","category-meals","tag-dairy-free","tag-egg-free","tag-ferments","tag-gluten-free","tag-lowcarb","tag-photos-family","tag-photos-food","tag-photos-friends","tag-photos-misc","tag-photos-places","tag-raw","tag-sonoma-county","tag-vegan","tag-vegetarian"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=831"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/831\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/norwitz.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}