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A Renewal

5/14/2018

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Well, it is that time of year again...the time when I need to decide if I want to keep paying for a website I completely ignore or if I am ready to just let it go. I chose to pay for another two years!

I've decided to renew my website and my passion for fermenting. I need it!

This year has brought about a lot of stress and I haven't been using the best coping mechanisms to deal with all of that. Some changes this past year have been our family relocating an hour away from the place we called home for the past nine years. Now we are the proud owners of TWO homes. Yikes! Fortunately, after an accepted offer on our old home fell through, we were able to find a family to rent it over the winter.

Financially it was time for me to ask for full time hours at work. With that came two promotions! I went from working barely 15 hours per week to becoming the Food Service Leader at our store (that means they put me in charge of the kitchen). I love my job but it really stresses me out sometimes. I have nightmares regularly about messing everything up at work.

Anyway, what is the point of all of this?

I recently read Cait Flanders book, The Year of Less, and of all the books I have been reading about leading a simpler life this one really struck a chord with me. I can really relate to her story about compulsive shopping and other unhealthy habits. When I am stressed and feeling depressed I do two things, I drink too much wine and compulsively buy things. So, what does this have to do with this site? I started thinking about my habits and short cuts I have been taking because I think I don't have the time. These are just sad excuses! I have time, I just don't use it wisely. Now that I am working first shift I am usually home shortly after noon. What do I do with this quiet time before the kids come home? I am on FaceBook or Amazon while sitting on the sofa watching yet another rerun on Bravo. It's pathetic...

So, I have decided that my new habit will be to ferment again!

Let's Ferment! Instead of shopping on Amazon.

Let's Ferment! Instead of that glass of wine, stay on top of your fermented beverages and enjoy those instead. Yes, I know wine is a fermented beverage but you get my point.

Let's Ferment! Instead of being lazy and grabbing a jar of Bubbies pickles at the store I need to get back to making my own. Seriously!

Let's Ferment! Get those creative juices flowing again! When I am feeling creative and proud of what I made, I just feel better about myself.

Let's Ferment! I need to get back in touch with the passion I had for fermenting.

So there it is. I am putting this out there to hold myself accountable. Perhaps my days of teaching classes and wanting to pursue selling my products are behind me, but this feels like a very productive path for where my life is now.

I look forward to sharing more with you.

Currently Fermenting: Milk Kefir (because lately I have been eating my weight in kefir dips), Jun, and a basic Sauerkraut


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8 Months!!!

11/12/2015

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It has been eight months since my last blog post. Wow. Although, looking back at those eight months I am not surprised. What have we been doing? So much!!! Some of those experiences include:
 
We got three lambs that we raised for 4H. My kids showed them at the fair and my daughter got a first place ribbon for one of her lambs. I had a very difficult time as the time neared for two of them to head off to the butcher. I became much too attached to those guys.

I also helped to coordinate our areas first Food Camp. That was an amazing experience, a little stressful at times, but still so much fun.

We celebrated my mother-in-law's 90th birthday.

We took quite a few day trips to explore WI.

I increased my hours at Kwik Trip so I am now working 25-30 hours each week.

Our homeschooling now truly includes all four kids this year.

Plus, my husband and I have continued to renovate our home.

With all of this (and this is just some of the major stuff) it is no wonder that those months have just flown by. Also, I have been participating in quite regular fermenting classes for libraries and other venues, such as The Free Market. Plus, somehow I even found time to keep fermenting.

One of my favorite fall ferments will always be cultured apple chutney. The original recipe that I used to make was from GNOWFGLINS website, her 5-Spice Apple Chutney is amazing!!! While I do stick to the basic ingredients of a apples, starter (usually kombucha vs whey), sugar, and salt, I like to experiment with many different things to accompany the apples. This week we made this and since I only had 1 Tbs of the Chinese 5-Spice left in my cabinet I decided to also include 1 Tbs of cinnamon and 1 Tbs of turmeric. My apples might be a little freakishly yellow but it is one of the best versions I have made.

Do you have a favorite fall ferment? I would love to hear about it!!
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Family Tradition

3/9/2015

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    Once when my mom was visiting we were talking about fermented foods and how our family used to make lots of sauerkraut. Of course they did, we are German! My question is, why did we stop???? Anyway, my mom was telling me about how someone in the family used to line the bottom of the crock with bell peppers and pack the cabbage on top of that. She said she looked forward to getting to the bottom of the crock for those peppers.
   
    This story has stuck with me and was the inspiration for a jar of kraut that I made this summer. I packed red and green bell peppers on the bottom and filled the jar with cabbage, onions, kale, and...I'm not sure what else was in there but it sure was good (I'm working on getting better at writing down the ingredients so I have a chance of recreating it). We have been enjoying the kraut and I have been patiently waiting to get to the bottom. This evening as I was packing up fermented foods to take to a class at the library I decided that the this half full jar was too big to travel with and I needed to downsize. This means that the peppers from the bottom, were now on the top!!!
   
    I have been waiting 7 months now to taste those peppers! I could not believe the pop of flavor and beyond that...the crunch! It is no wonder that this was my mom's favorite part of the kraut, these peppers are fantastic. This is going to be a staple in my home for now on and I hope that one day, as I share this story with my kids, that they will continue on with this delicious tradition.
   
    Do you have any family traditions that have influenced your ferments?



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Butter!

10/16/2014

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I admit that even though butter is super easy to make that I have only made it a few times in the past few years. I figured I would just purchase locally made butter so that I didn't have to bother with it. Well, our budget has gotten a little tighter and I have had to find creative ways to stretch our real food dollars.

One reason that I haven't bothered with it is because our last source for raw milk did not have a lot of cream on it and I wanted all of that fat in the milk for the kids. Well, we changed sources at the end of summer and I noticed that the amount of milk we were going through went way down. We had been going through 2-3 gallons a week and now we weren't even going through a gallon per week. At first I thought maybe it was just the heat but then I realized that they were turning down the milk when I offered. I asked my kids what the problem was and they said it tasted funny. I knew the milk was fine though I can say that I couldn't make a statement on the taste because I don't drink milk. I have never cared for the taste...milk is for coffee, kefir, yogurt, and cheese...in my humble opinion. I have never had an urge to drink a large glass of milk...even as a kid. The only way my parents got milk into me was when it was pink from Nestle Quick. I even have a plastic bunny cup to prove it. It makes my stomach turn to even think about drinking that stuff now. YUCK!

Anyway, I pushed to see what it was that tasted funny and my oldest said, "It is just so thick!" I took notice to the jars and she was right, there is a lot of cream on there!

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So, a couple of weeks ago I pulled off a pint of cream and I was left with about the amount of cream that was on our last source of milk. Holy cow, that is quite a bit of cream! My first attempt I cultured that pint of cream  with kefir grains and made butter from that...well, the family did not like it and I will say that it was a little strong tasting even for me. It might have gone too long, I'm not sure but it was butter that tasted like cheese. Even if the butter was not a huge hit what really mattered is that the kids were much happier with the taste of the milk! They finished it off the night before our milk day. I would have been more excited but I had to drink my coffee black the next morning. 

The first attempt also did not get us through the week but I don't want to pull all of the cream off of my milk so I decided to add a pint of organic cream from the store. It is hard enough in this state to find raw milk...raw cream is almost impossible! At our last source I was able to occasionally ask for it but that quart of cream cost more than an entire gallon of raw milk. OUCH! So for me skimming half the cream off of my milk and mixing it with a pint of organic store bought cream is making us almost a pound of butter each week that costs less than the local butter I was buying. Also, I personally think it tastes better too but maybe I am biased.

My method for butter making...I pull a pint of cream from my milk and allow it to culture at room temperature for about 24 hours. I remove the kefir grains and move the cultured cream to the fridge for a few hours to slow down the culturing.  I pour the raw cultured cream and the store bought cream into the bowl of my KitchenAid and begin to whip it until the solids separate. Here are the instructions that I followed for making butter in a stand mixer and I can attest to the silky smooth hands that she mentions that come from using your hands to remove the buttermilk.

Such a little thing, I know...but part of me wants to stand on my front porch and shout, "I am making my own butter!!!"


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This is half of tonight's butter that is going to the fridge.
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Check out the beautiful color next to a stick of store bought organic! My butter is as yellow as my butter dish!
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Little Bites of Summer

9/23/2014

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This summer I kept seeing lovely photos of blueberries being preserved in honey on the Facebook fermenting pages I follow. Sadly somehow I missed blueberry season...well, the one place that I wanted to go and pick had some crop issues so for the few days that they opened up for pick your own, they did not allow kids so I couldn't go. I did pick up a small container at the farmers market but it was too small to really think about preserving so we just enjoyed them.

The other week, even with the awful weather, I was determined to stop at the small farmer's market down the street. Since we were not able to have a garden at home I have been relying on this market every week for our produce.

I don't want to get too off topic here, but I just have to comment that going to our small market with only one true gardener for most of the summer has been such a lovely experience! Week after week we went straight for their stand to see what we could find. Each week we would chat a little more, my kids became very comfortable with them, I shared some of my ferments...I am going to miss this!

Anyway, back to the blueberries. It truly was awful out this day, I think there were only four vendors that bothered to come out. It was cold, rainy, and windy...my kids wouldn't even get out of the car. I went to our regular vendor and then I decided to swing by a new stand. As I was feeling like winter was coming on too quickly I spotted a few containers of blueberries. I had to get them, I had to hold onto the last few moments of summer.


I also felt I really wanted to make these berries last! I am not going to lie, I totally hid them from my kids. I knew if they saw them they would be gone by the time I got home from work that evening. They sat in the fridge for a few days while I figured out how to make them really last and then I remembered those delicious photos! The process is so simple and the results are amazing!

This method can be used with almost any berry with the exception of strawberries as they do not hold up. I have read that frozen can be used as well but the texture may not be quite as nice.
Pour the berries into a jar and pour raw honey over them to cover them by about 1/4-1/2". Cover with a lid and let them sit on the counter for 2-6 days. This is going to vary depending on the temperature of your home. It was quite cool those few days so I let them sit for 5 days. The berries are going to float above the honey so each day I tipped the jar around to cover the berries with honey. When you are ready, move the berry and honey mixture to the fridge where it will keep indefinitely. That's it! We are loving it and we can enjoy these in much smaller quantities so that we can really stretch it out. This is delicious drizzled over yogurt, pancakes, and oatmeal.

Have you ever tried this? I can't wait to try this with more berries next year, but for now I am so happy to have these little bites of summer to get me through another Wisconsin winter.



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Sorry for the not so awesome photo...I have been putting off writing about this until I got a better one but that just never seems to happen.
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Learning to Bend

7/24/2014

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Does anyone else feel like they are dragging their husbands along on the natural living path? It is funny that I even feel this way because when we met he was the natural one. It was my husband who introduced me to aloe, natural deodorants, going to the chiropractor, and so much more. Yet over the years the roles have reversed. He fully supports most of it but it is the food where we bump heads. This really shouldn't shock me because when we met he NEVER cooked. Him and his son had a routine of Burger King for breakfast, fast food or school food for lunch, and usually an Italian or Chinese restaurant for supper. My stomach hurts just thinking about all of that!

A few years back when I discovered the Weston A. Price Foundation and the cookbook Nourishing Traditions I thought our meals would be easier since after a decade of being a vegetarian I decided to go back to meat. Interestingly our food fights have gotten worse. The more I push, the harder he resists. One example would be bread. As I was building my sourdough bread skills I stopped buying bread, I wanted everyone off of store bought bread. What does he do? Starts bringing home his own bread from Kwik Trip!

The other night I made a fritatta for dinner and he happened to be out of his gas station bread so I toasted up some spelt sourdough for everyone to enjoy. Well, they all did except for my husband. It was then that I realized that maybe I need to move a little slower for him. It is probably asking a bit too much for a 56 year old man to switch from his soft chemical bread to a more dense, very sour loaf. I would be making huge progress if I can make a loaf of bread that he prefers over store bought. So, I made the decision to bend a bit and buy yeast. GASP!!! Well, my bending has been met with him bending. He really likes the bread and this is huge! This microwave meal man is hard to please, I can probably count on one hand the things that I make that he likes. I feel like I have made a huge breakthrough in the fact that now his morning egg sandwich that is made with a pastured egg and raw cheese will now be on a much healthier bread. Yes, you read that correctly...I make him an egg sandwich every morning. We now live right next to the feed mill that he manages and when the kids and I get up I make him an egg sandwich and one of the kids walks it over to him. I would call him spoiled but I'll keep my mouth shut since this has kept him from stopping at McDonald's for breakfast. Now, I just need to work on what he eats for lunch...

I went back to this King Arthur recipe that I used to use as I was just venturing into sourdough bread.

Ingredients:
  • 1 cup "fed" sourdough starter
  • 1 1/2 cups lukewarm water
  • 2 teaspoons instant yeast
  • 1 tablespoon sugar(I use turbinado)
  • 2 1/2 teaspoons salt
  • 2 1/2 cups whole wheat
  • 2 1/2 cups spelt
Mix all of the ingredients together and knead until it is smooth. Place dough in a well greased bowl that allows for the dough to double in size and cover with a damp cloth. Allow the dough to rise until it has doubled in size, about 2 hours. Once it has doubled, punch it down and divide into two loaves. Shape loaves and put each loaf into a well greased bread pan. Cover with damp cloth and allow the loaves to double again, about an hour.

Heat oven to 425°F. Once heated rub the top of each loaf with water and cut two slits into each loaf about 1/4 inch deep. 

Bake for 25-30 minutes. I checked mine with a digital thermometer at 25 minutes and the internal temperature was only 68°C, by 30 minutes the internal temp was 94°C. 

You may need to allow them to cool quite a bit before they will pop out of the pan. Once I was able to pull them out I let them cool completely before cutting.


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Summer

7/16/2014

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If there is one thing that this past winter has taught me, it is to enjoy the warmth. After six years of WI winters I still find it difficult to deal with and this one was the worst! I swore that after all of our below zero days that I would not complain about the heat. I have pretty much stuck to that except for maybe one complaint that my stuff was fermenting too quickly in our non air conditioned kitchen.

It saddens me that July is half way over but so far this has been a fabulous, lazy summer. We have been busy working on our new home but have managed to fit in a few trips, foraging for food, a new hobby of geocaching, lots of trips to the farmer's market, and many days at the park.
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A great day in Rhinelander, we learned what a Hodag is.
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Our first find at Geocaching!
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The kids went crazy when we found a raspberry bush on a nature walk.
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Getting outside as much as we can to soak up the sun!
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You Can't Take PA Out of the Girl...

7/2/2014

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I was born and raised in central PA and man does it have it's claws in me and in ways that I never even realized. First of all, let's just say it was an eye opener when my husband (who is from WI, where we now live) and I moved out of the area to northern Virginia. My first New Year's Day celebration in our new town was held at my sister in laws house. I could not believe that we were not being served pork and sauerkraut! How else were we going to ensure good luck for the new year!?!? If you have no idea what I am talking about...it's a Pennsylvania Dutch tradition that when growing up I really never thought to ask about, we just ate it. Casey, from Good. Food. Stories. writes about it on her site. 


"The formerly green cabbage of the sauerkraut and the abundant fat of the pig symbolize riches and prosperity for the coming year, the pig doing double duty to stand for progress as a forward-rooting and forward-thinking animal (its four hooves all point toward the front).Slavic superstition also dictates that you should eat the long, skinny threads of sauerkraut to give you a long life—smart thinking when you consider the probiotics and other wonderfully healthy byproducts of the fermented cabbage."

Think that's strange...wait until you here this. After the shock of New Year's Day I went on with adjusting to life in VA and enjoying the many things DC has to offer. Then September rolled around...September 29th. It was a day like any other day...that was the problem. Why wasn't anyone eating goose? See in PA in Mifflin County on September 29th we celebrate Goose Day. Many restaurants in the area will be focusing on one thing...goose. I called my dad to tell him that people in VA had never heard of Goose Day! Sadly, living in a bubble had caused me to think that this day was a national day...it makes sense, we all celebrate Groundhogs Day (another thing that started in PA). He broke the news to me that this is pretty much just something we do in our small county. WOW! What next? Santa and the Easter Bunny don't exist?

Seriously, I'm not making this stuff up! You can read about Goose Day here. 

Well, tonight was another...I made one of our favorite meals for dinner, one that I remember eating as a child. Chicken and Waffles. It is a delicious meal, for me I make sourdough waffles, they are topped with leftover roasted chicken that has been heated in homemade gravy. After our meal I stopped by the farmer's market to chat with my friend and I mentioned what we had for dinner. She gave me an odd look and asked what that was. I told her and she replied, "Ok, I never would have thought of that pairing." I came home and asked my WI husband if this was another one of my weird PA things to which he said "yes". So of course I had to get on my phone and check this out. It was actually this evening that I fell in love with Good. Food. Stories. as I love learning about foods that made my childhood and the story behind them. She is from Pittsburgh and she gets the PA thing, so of course she had a post about Amish style chicken and waffles!

I think it is so much fun to learn about the food from your roots and the story of how it came to be. It must be the German in me...this interest came after I discovered how much I LOVE sauerkraut. 

While we are on the subject of Pennsylvanian food, may I just tell all of you that what you call pot pie really is not pot pie. Pot pie is a soupy, fatty, meaty meal that is not shoved neatly into a crust. Just the thought of chicken pot pie takes me back to my parents in the kitchen and my dad tossing homemade noodles into the mix. I'm going to call my mom soon and see if she can remember the recipe she used to make (I will certainly share if she can) but until then I might give this one a try. It sounds pretty close to what I used to enjoy.

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No False Pretenses

6/10/2014

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When we first moved to WI almost 6 years ago, I reached out to a local group to meet other moms. I heard that many of them were under the impression that my family NEVER eats fast food. I had to come clean as this just was not the case.

Yes, I am against GMO foods.

Yes, I am a Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader.

Yes, I strive for as much organic, local food as our budget allows.

Yes, I try to make as much as possible from scratch. 

Yes, I make our body products, cleaning products, herbal medicines, use essential oils, a chiropractor, homeopathy...for crying out loud the Facebook quiz I took said I was "The Queen of Crunchy!"

What I'm not is the mom that drives her kids through the drive-thru just to toss the happy meal in the trash. 

What I am is a mom that knows I can't control everything. 

My kids have been away from me, visiting grandparents on the east coast and eating fast food. They have come to me and told me how eating that much made them feel awful. We talk about that and they remember this.


We have been on toll roads with a car full of screaming kids with only the rest stops to feed them. We have traveled on planes and all we had to feed our starving crew was fast food at the airport.


My kids will grow up and have to make their own choices about the food they put in their bodies. Where I am coming from is a place where I have seen how being very strict had a tragic outcome. I worry that by making certain foods completely off limits might lead my kids to go crazy when they get out there on their own. Yes, we talk about how this is not good for us. They understand how the grass fed beef, pastured chickens and eggs, raw milk, and all of our fermented foods nourish us. Yes, I have been that parent whose child is eating cake at a friend's birthday party and looks up and asks, "Is this organic?" My kids help me ferment, soak nuts, make sourdough bread, and pull the bones out of the broth. If on the rare occasion my husband feels overwhelmed while I am at work and wants to take the kids out for dinner, so be it. If we are traveling and there is nothing else to eat, so be it. I am hoping that by raising kids who love to be in the kitchen and know how to feed themselves, they will understand that junk food is something saved for the rare occasion or last resort.

So, there you have it. I am not perfect. I do my best and that is all that I can do.
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Many Changes...

6/9/2014

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I have not been very active on here but I have a very good reason. We recently purchased a home that we have been working on practically day and night. It has great bones but needed and still needs quite a lot of work. We had to be out of our rental on June 1st so most of May was spent driving the 3 miles between both homes moving, moving, and moving. This is our second move in 18 months, I hope we stay put for quite some time.

As we finish up our first floor I am getting antsy about getting back to hosting classes! I have been working on so much that I look forward to sharing, some of these include my recent dive into traditional Japanese ferments such as shio koji, nukasuke, natto, and miso.

I have also been tossing around the idea of having a page for local businesses that focus on sustainability to advertise and I would like to feature articles written by local business owner. Local to the Fox Cities of Wisconsin that is...If you would like to write for the blog or know someone that might,  please send me a message.
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    Hi, my name is Thomasa and I have a serious passion for fermentation! I have also discovered that I am also equally enthusiastic about sharing the benefits of making these living foods with others.

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