daystar1952
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 3255
posted
The probiotics we buy in powder or capsule form are good to include when on antibiotics...but they can get expensive. I like to make my own fermented foods, such as kefir, fermented bean dip,fermented salsa, kombucha tea, other naturally fermented beverages and fermented vegetables.
On the days when I don't have time to eat the fermented foods or just feel that I need more probiotics...then I take the commercial pills. Whole fermented foods include beneficial organisms that haven't even been discovered yet plus a wider range of the probiotic organisms.I think its fun to experiment and have a little bit more control over the quality of food we eat
For those of you who aren't recovered enough yet to make your own, there are raw fermented foods you can buy in the healthfood stores. Try to buy the foods that do not have sugar.
Take a look at the fermented ginger carrot recipe on my blog below. Sometimes you have to experiment to get the proper strength or acidity to suit your personal taste.
posted
My girlfriend makes me fermented foods sometimes, she follows the body ecology diet. I've noticed that when i eat them i get really dizzy and have to lay down. Do you know whats causing that? i'm fine if i drink kefer or take the probiotic pills but for some reason the food does this i dont know!
Posts: 58 | From Silicon Valley | Registered: Sep 2008
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MariaA
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 9128
posted
Take a look at the recipes in my signature, too.
I just made cabbage rejuvelac, (look on the internet for the recipe if I didn't have it in my signature thread)
Which food is causing the dizziness? That's a starting point to figuring it out. My guess would be that she's making something that also ferments up some alcohol (kefir is this way, weirdly) and the alcohol is bothering you, or the yeast that's present. Most of the time fermented foods are just from beneficial bacteria, not yeasts, so I don't know what to think.
-------------------- Symptom Free!!! Thank you all!!!!
posted
Daystar, Thank you for the post. I am so inspired to make fermented foods now, but I am a little worried that I will ruin the recipe somehow.
How will I know if the good bacteria suddenly turns bad? How do you know if you are not actually consuming rotten food?
Knowing me, I will probably make a big jar of fermented carrots and then be too afraid to eat it.
Any advice??
-------------------- When we are no longer able to change a situation---we are challenged to change ourselves. (Viktor Frankl- Holocaust survivor) Posts: 460 | From Maine | Registered: Apr 2009
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MariaA
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 9128
posted
quote:Originally posted by thejoje:
How will I know if the good bacteria suddenly turns bad? How do you know if you are not actually consuming rotten food?
Any advice??
Yes- if it's bad, it'll smell bad. It's really not that big a concern. Some things, like sauerkraut, smell a little funny at first, but that goes away as fermentation proceeds.
Start with kimchee or sauerkraut first, i'ts the easiest thing to ferment because it already has Acidophilus bacteria (like what is in yogurt) on the leaves.
You can also open up a probiotic capsule into your fermentation container (along with the right amount of salt from the recipes) and that gives the 'right' bacteria a head start.
The last good trick that many recipes recommend is to add some live 'whey' from yogurt (not the dried stuff like a supplement). You get the whey by making or buying some plain yogurt, and you put the yogurt into a cloth-lined colander (I've done this with a paper towel in a colander, in a pinch). Put the whole thing in a bowl so you can collect the whey.
After an hour, some of the liquid whey will drip out of the colander (and the yogurt will be thicker, which can be nice for sour cream replacement and so forth). That whey is full of yogurt bacteria, which can be added to the veggies to help kick-start the right cultures when you start fermenting them.
-------------------- Symptom Free!!! Thank you all!!!!
posted
Thanks Maria, Do you have a quickie recipe for the kimchee?
Also,I am lactose-intoll, so I can't do the whey-- but I can do the opening of the probiotic capsule trick. Yipee!
-------------------- When we are no longer able to change a situation---we are challenged to change ourselves. (Viktor Frankl- Holocaust survivor) Posts: 460 | From Maine | Registered: Apr 2009
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MariaA
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 9128
wow, it's been a while since i checked into Planet Thrive other than certain pages, so I missed the fact that my kimchee link in the probiotics thread has been dead for a while. I've re-registered there and hopefully I'll be able to find it there again.
in the meantime, the recipe:
For years I"ve been making kimchee, and I think it's a bit easier than sauerkraut, though the result is similar. My kimchee isn't very traditional- there's garlic, but not nearly as much as what I've had in Asian restaurants that serve kimchees as condiments.
Kimchee is fairly fool-proof because it relies on making a brine of known salt proportions to protect the cabbage (or whatever vegetable) from the wrong microbes, and it's easier to get the amount of salt right even if you don't know how much (by weight) cabbage you're really working with- you just pour brine over it till it's covered. You generally dont get molds or other undesirable things growing in or on kimchee during the processing, unlike kraut (I think), because the kimchee is easier to keep submerged in brine.
You can kimchee lots of different vegetables. Cabbage is a nice crunchy texture of course. In traditional kimchee the dominant spices are ginger and garlic and very hot peppers. I've done very untraditional kimchees red cabbage, a little bit of turmeric, and a beet thrown in for good color. Eye candy!
Besides Korean kimchee, other cultures made ferments using brine to easily preserve vegetables- for example, Russians and Ukrainians brined many different vegetables (those Jewish refrigerator cuke dill pickles are brined rather than heat-processed like American canned pickles are) and Russians even brine-preserved fruits like watermelon and apples.
step 1: -small head of cabbage -half a large daikon radish or a bunch of other radishes. You can leave the radishes out if it's too much work or you don't like radish. The flavor won't be strong once it's fermented.
slice cabbage into small pieces (I just put it through the food processor) and cut the daikon into half-moons: slice it in half lengthwise and then slice the halves. soak for 24 hours in a brine with the following proportions of salt/water: 5 cups water 2 1/2 Tb salt if you need more than 5 cups water, then retain the same proportion of water/salt.
Krauting 101: you need the salt to inhibit the wrong bacteria (think compost bacteria) and to encourage the salt-loving lactobacillus and other sauerkraut/kimchee bacteria. If you don't like salt you can always rinse the kraut before eating, though it wont' resemble Korean kimchee anymore if you do this because the spices will rinse off also. If you use too little salt it'll compost. Yeck. if you use too much salt then it'll be inedible and no amount of rinsing will save it (ask me how I know)
soak the cabbage and daikon for 24 hours in the brine, in a bowl with a tight-fitting plate on top to weigh it down. That'll make it shrink a little so you can squeeze it into jars more easily.
Step 2: Then: Drain most of the brine off into another bowl mix the following condiments into the cabbage:
several Tb of grated ginger several cloves of garlic several scallions cut into little bits 1 Tb cayenne pepper or several hot peppers minced 1 Tb sugar
For some reason I believe the hot pepper gets less hot after fermenting, but I could be wrong.
Mix all this with the cabbage and pack some big glass jars with it.
The cabbage wants to float to the top after a while and that's where the evil compost bacteria will get it. I weigh the cabbage down by stuffing a ziplock bag into the jar, and filling it with brine (rather than water, in case it leaks!). Sometimes I stick a pint beer glass down on top of the ziplock bag to keep it all in the jar.
Let ferment for 3-7 days, it'll have a slightly off flavor earlier on and should stabilise to a nice sauerkraut tang a few days later.
-------------------- Symptom Free!!! Thank you all!!!!
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