Why We Ferment

Thanks for all the feedback on my fermented feijoa drink - I'm planning on trying it with quince next.  I wanted to explain my reasons for fermenting food - other than the obvious taste benefits.  Above is a picture of some lacto-fermented pickles I made recently. I used a few handfuls of olives from my tree, some dandelions, some of the last courgettes and tomatoes, small onions and herbs - put them in brine for a few days at room temp and then into the fridge.  The olives are still bitter so they might take a while in the fridge before they reach perfection.

In our modern germ-phobic society micro-organisms often have a bad name (germs are just a naughty word for micro-organisms).  I'm not a big fan of sterilizing everything in sight - those hand sanitizers give me the creeps and I'm convinced that the recent increases in auto-immune diseases are related to our war on the germ.  We seem to forget that micro-organisms basically run our bodies and that most of them are harmless or very useful - particularly in the digestive system - helping to break down soluble fibre and make nutrients more absorbable etc.  Apart from cheese and the good old lactobacillus acidophalus yogurt our supermarkets seem to be freakishly microbe free - food keeps longer that way.  But traditional cuisines are full of lacto-fermented pickles, drinks and all kinds of other cultured foods.  Fermented food is easy to make and not particularly time consuming.  Here are some fascinating blog posts on fermenting food:

Fermented foods
Fermented food: benefits of lactic acid fermentation
Fermented food for beginners

Nourishing Duck

I have found that the easiest way to find nourishing recipes online is to use the word "nourishing" as a key word in the search engine.  Earlier tonight I was asked by a friend to find recipes for duck as her partner has been duck shooting recently.  "Nourishing duck" turned up the following results:

Roast duck with sour cherry sauce 
Low carb roast duck experiment - with spice rub
Chinese duck soup with salted vegetable


 The first two appear to be blogs that are deliberately linked to Nourishing Traditions and the WAPF, the third looks like it might be a traditional Chinese recipe - but I'm no expert.  I find this method of searching for nourishing recipes to be quite fruitful.  I've never actually cooked duck, myself.  Does anyone else have any suggestions or experiences?

Feijoa skins

I'm making up for my lack of blogging by posting twice in one day. I wish I could blog about all the food I make, but I seem to be rather occupied most of the time. Recently, I've been bingeing on feijoas - as many New Zealanders do at this time of year.  I hear they're also known as pineapple guava, but I've never heard them called that here.They grow very well in our sub-tropical climate and everyone seems to have trees, I'm still suprised they sell in supermarkets when they're easy to get for free.  I picked up two buckets of them from an offer on Oooby and also got two lots from someone on Freecycle.  I find their juicy, sweet, tart flavour irresistable and am always suprised that some people don't like them. Some people love them so much they eat the skins which are a little sour for my tastes, but I have devised a way to get more of the goodness out of the skins before I compost them.

Fermented Feijoa Drink

I loosely fill a 1.5 litre sealable jar with the empty skins, then fill it almost to the top with water and add about 1/4 cup of sugar (I'm using organic fair trade sugar, but I guess honey would work too). I started off using kefir (converted milk kefir) to ferment the feijoas, but then realised that the powdery stuff on the feijoa skin is actually yeast and the kefir grains weren't doing much. The flavour leaches out of the skins, along vitamin C and other things, I assume, and makes a delicious feijoa tasting drink in a couple of days. When the weather was warmer it took two days on the bench to get to the fizzy-drink stage but now I'm experimenting with putting them in the hot water cupboard after a few less fizzy brews.

I've also tried chopping the skins up into small pieces and cooking them in honey for a while - it creates a sort of glaze which would be great over a cheese cake, or it could be poured into a jar and consumed as marmalade. My daughter loves eating the glaceed feijoa skins - she's convinced they're candy.

It's may already!

Wow, I must have been busy. I have some adjustments to make to the blog - suggestions by my supervisor have included changing some language to make it less ambiguous. I have now written around 13,000 words althought it is very much a work in progress. I have also changed the structure of my master's considerably. It's going to go something like this:

• Abstract
• Intro
• Methodology
• Selective literature review
Brief history of food
Food sociology
New social movements (theory) }
New food movements } – the role of the internet
• Praxis: breakdown and response
Scientific paradigm, consensus and dissent –
Case study: Fat – break down in praxis
Hard sciences and lay understandings
Case study: Raw milk
Weston A. Price
WAPF and Nourishing traditions – example of praxis
• Blog research
Blog/internet literature
• Discussion

Getting on with it

It's February and I have until November to get everything finished. Some days it seems like 30,000 words isn't enough, other days it seems daunting and I feel pressure to get writing.

1,000 down, 29,000 to go! I'm not in an intensive writing phase just yet. I'm still trying to get my ideas in order.

Here's the general outline of my research:

Literature review:

1. Traditional nutrition: General overview of nourishing traditions and the research of Dr. Weston A. Price


2. The Weston A. Price Foundation: What has been written about WAPF – academically? Non-academic? Written by them? (I'm struggling with this at the moment. Very little has been written about WAPF academically)


3. Key ideas of the WAPF – case study: fat (I've done some research on this before)


4. Other similar movements, compare key ideas: Bio-dynamic, organic, slow food, etc.


5. Movement in a global context - new social movements


6. Blogs – what they are etc.

Empirical research:

1. Methodology
   
   
2. Blog research (I will expand on this later)
   

Now for some food...



Sourdough french toast with maple syrup and yogurt






This recipe is very simple, almost so simple that I don't need to explain it at all.

Ingredients:
Two eggs
1/4 cup cream
Six small pieces of sourdough bread
Butter, salt and cinnamon to taste
Maple syrup and yogurt

Mix the eggs with the cream, add a pinch of salt and sprinkle of cinnamon. Soak bread in the egg mixture and then fry in butter until golden. Serve with maple syrup and yogurt. Eat immediately!

My Research Project, Blogging, and Research Ethics

I am currently enrolled at the University of Waikato in New Zealand to do a master’s thesis in Sociology. The research project I am undertaking for my thesis relates to a new social movement based on traditional “nourishing food” and includes a consideration of how recipes in blogs incorporate the principles and practices of that tradition. I am interested in the way in which blogs contribute to new social food movements by putting people into contact with one another and sharing ideas and information.  I have decided to start a blog myself to help me understand more about blogs and blogging, to present some aspects of my research journey with anyone who might be interested, to share my own thoughts about some of the food issues I have been concerned about for some years, and to post some interesting recipes. I welcome any comments that anyone might want to make on any of these matters. The main aim of the blog is not to gain such comments to include in my thesis. However, some comments may turn out to be useful to use directly in my thesis. If this happens, I will contact the person who made the comment to check that it is ok to use it in this way and whether they wish to be acknowledged. This approach to the use of comments has been approved by my Research Ethics Committee.

If you would like further information please contact me or my supervisor John Paterson

Sugar-Free Deserts?

I'm really going to have to get into the habit of blogging if I'm going to do it right. I often remember to take photos of food while I'm making it but then I don't always get around to putting them on the computer, let alone writing about them.

Recently, in an attempt to feel healthier and less sluggish in the evening I have been experimenting with sugar free desert. I am still using fruit, which contains sugar, but I'm not adding extra sugar. I have been using a lot of Fibre Sweet, which is soluble fibre made from chicory root and tastes like candy floss. It's a pre-biotic too.

Here is a picture of my Pineapple donut cup with banana-strawberry ice cream.




Pineapple Donut Cup (grain free)
Makes three-four

1 tin of pineapple rings in juice or fresh pineapple cut into rings
50 grams melted butter
150 grams almond flour or ground almonds
3 eggs
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
pinch of sea salt
6-8 teaspoons fibre sweet (or other natural sweetener)
Cinnamon to taste.

Mix the almond flour with the eggs and melted butter, then add the baking soda and salt. This makes a nice batter. Spoon the batter into the bottom of ramekin dishes and then sprinkle a teaspoon of fibre sweet and some cinnamon onto each. Add a pineapple ring and then repeat the batter, fibre sweet and cinnamon. Fan baked them for about 15 minutes at 160 degrees.

These were very cute and puffed up. They weren't particularly sweet so you could add more sweetener if you like, but the ice cream helped to moisten and sweeten them.

Easy Banana-Strawberry Ice Cream
I make ice cream without an ice cream maker, and this recipe is particularly easy.

4 eggs
500 mills cream
1 banana, mashed
1/2 cup strawberries, crushed
1/4 teaspoon Vanilla essence
2-4 tablespoons fibre sweet or other sweetener
2 tablespoons alcohol (I use butterscotch liquor) to keep it from freezing too much - optional

Whip the cream until almost stiff. Beat the eggs and other ingredients and then slowly pour into the cream while stirring. Cover and freeze.

Variation:
A lighter version of this recipe uses only one egg and just the strawberries with no banana. It's almost like a frozen mousse