Probiotic Heaven - Our First Advanced Fermentation Course

Last Saturday marked a first in our fermentation calendar: our advanced fermentation course was held for the first time!

We dragged our feet a bit in developing this course, simply because we didn't have the time to experiment with all the things going on at the farm. As all you fermenters out there will now, you don't just whip up a fermented something overnight. No, you have to wait for days, weeks but mostly MONTHS. THEN you know whether you're on to something good. 

Kimchi-inspired carrots, one of our faster ferments actually
(photo credit: lovely Pernilla Elmblad)

We finally got our act together and boy are we glad we did. We've had loads of joy experimenting with kimchi variations (spicy!) and all types of drinks - both savoury and sweet. Kvass, kombucha and ginger bug. There's been plenty of bubbling, fart-like gasses and fruit flies in our kitchen in the last few months!

 

My favourite among the probiotic drinks - beetroot kvass

My biggest "fear" was messing up with the kombucha - a fermented tea drink. Which I promptly did. I actually managed to kill off some of the beneficial bacteria and yeast cultures in my first kombucha, that I had gotten from a Facebook group. Yikes! Lucky for me, I got hold of a very lively SCOBY from a reputable "dealer" in no time and was able to get the fermentation going well in time for the course. Phew!

A very lively kombucha culture, happily brewing away in the kitchen
(look closely and you see the "blob" on top of the jar)

For me, the key take-away was how very different our tastebuds are. One of the participants found the rowanberry kvass (rönnbär in Swedish) way too bitter, whereas others preferred it over the sweeter kombucha (me!). One thing we could agree on was that the longer the kimchi ferments, the better.

Ginger and lingonberry kvass (didn't make the cut for the course)
and blueberry kombucha (that one did, on the other hand)

Loving Our Village!

Here's a declaration of love to our village, Simlångsdalen.

Our apple trees decided that this wasn't going to be their year; we can count the number of apples for human consumption on one hand. The miniature, worm eaten ones are happily devoured by the chickens.

Lucky for us, we live in Simlångsdalen with generous people like Ylva and Anders who kindly let us pick as many apples as we wanted from their enormous apple trees. They even provided the apple picking tool! Two trips and four big baskets full of apples later and we have made eight litres of apple juice, which is fermenting into apple cider vinegar, and several jars of unsweetened apple sauce.

We are so grateful! Here's a big thank you to Ylva and Anders! Mwauh!

Getting Creative and Sour with the Harvest

Part of the not so ripe harvest - the really green ones are hiding at the bottom of the bowl.

Spring was late and summer a bit cold, which means we have a load of green tomatoes. What to do? Time to put the thinking cap on and hey presto… I came up with fermented green tomato salsa.

Chop, chop, chop.

Chop up a couple of kilos of green tomatoes, add around two tablespoons of salt and four to five chopped chilis (including the seeds). Mix well and squish with your hands till you get loads of liquid. Fill glass jars and make sure you press the tomatoes down, removing any air bubbles. Let the jars sit on your kitchen counter under a towel for around a week (or somewhere else dark and at room temperature). Taste it and if it is to your liking, then put it in your fridge to consume within a few months. If it isn't sour enough, then leave it on your counter, tasting every few days.

Green + red = brown.

First PaulssonPaleo Fermenting Course Done - Boom!

We organised our first ever fermenting course yesterday afternoon. Eight lovely ladies joined us at PaulssonPaleo HQ for three hours of discussion and cabbage stomping. It was absolutely glorious to impart some of our enthusiasm for fermenting on such willing participants. Cecilia talked about the chemistry behind lacto-fermenation, some history and health benefits. At times the chat drifted off to some of our other favourite topics, like healthy fats, soaking nuts and the evils of sugar.

After some uplifting 'fika' (Cecilia's paleo balls made another appreciated appearance, recipe here), I walked everyone through the practicalities: how to actually make the sauerkraut.

Our kitchen got pretty messy with all the kraut juices flying around, but it was great watching everyone get stuck in, chopping, squishing and stomping away. The ladies filled a jar each to ferment for a week or two and then we sent them on their merry way with their very own sauerkraut-to-be.

Success and high fives all round!

Read more about our courses here - there are spaces left on the 19th of September and more dates added in October.

Double, Double Toil and Trouble. Fire Burn, and Cauldron Bubble.

There is no fire involved in what we are making, but there are loads of jars of vegetables bubbling away in our kitchen and we are bubbling with excitement!

We are currently planning our courses for this fall and first off is a foundation course in fermenting. We are chopping, stomping and researching, ready for the 6th and 19th of September. Check it out on our website here.

Fermentation Experimentation Mode

I love growing stuff. 

Actually, let me rephrase that: I love it when Cat and mamma grow stuff. I just do not have the patience.

However, I do enjoy taking care of the stuff that comes out of our vegetable patch. Right now, our cabbages are growing like weed, which means that there are plenty of greens to take care of. You see, before you get those perfect little heads of cabbage, the plant consists of a helluva lot of green leaves.  Leaves that would usually go to waste in the "commercial" vegetable patch. 

Fading out the background does not help - it still looks messy

As we're making a bit of a sport of using EVERYTHING that we can, we are contantly on the lookout for new ways of using all parts of our produce. The cabbage leaves have so far ended up in our stir-fries (yum), our soups (yum), as a salad (not so yum, tasted too much of tree...), chicken feed (they were not too impressed), duck feed (they will eat pretty much anything), compost and cover material for the vegetable beds.

The latest experiment is sauerkraut. I am slightly hesitent about it, as the leaves behave so differently from a mature cabbage. They are much drier and more fibrous, so I have to add a lot of water after packing it with salt. To get the fermentation process started faster, I added some rejuvelac to it. Apparently, that did the trick, because less than 12 hours later, some of the jars have already started bubbling. 

Interesting! If it tastes like crap in a week's time, I will just feed it to the running ducks, our little quacking garbage bins. Might have to portion it out carefully, or it might backfire. Would not want them to have the runs. Funny. 

Green bubbles in a jar