Healthy Home Fermentation 101, with Ben & Jessa Greenfield

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Okay, pressure's on. So I'm Ben Greenfield, and this is my wife Jessa. And we are here to talk to you about putting germs in your food, basically. So we talked last week actually at the Otis Orchards library. I saw you there and familiar faces in here from that talk. But basically what we realized there was that it's gonna be a little bit better. Rather than giving lots and lots of individual recipes to focus on, giving you the overview of why you even want to do this in the first place. And then some of our favorite go to fermented food so that you can then take some of our go tos and then explore in depth. Because frankly, like Jessica stand there for probably three hours telling you like, everything that goes into making her awesome loaf of sourdough bread, but, you know, it's still one of those things just difficult to squeeze into a talk like this. We're going to give you a really good overview of some of the things that, that we kind of thrive on in terms of fermented foods in our house. The last rush. Cool. So, you know, one of the questions that I run into a lot is why you would want to do this in the first place, right? Like why you would want to ferment foods or eat foods that have bacterial rich strains added to them. And it's really interesting because a lot of cultures have tapped into this for a while. Like how many of you have been, for example, over to Asia or Japan or spend much time over there. You know, they pick up everything, cabbage, vegetables especially. But then we also see lots of, like, Ukrainian type of cultures doing lots of yogurts and pickles and meats and fishes. Chocolate, believe it or not, is actually technically a fermented food. Yay. You'll see from Russia a lot of kombucha as a fermented beverage that originates over there. Fermentation really is a practice that you'll find prevalent in a lot of cultures that have relied on it not just for preservation. You'll learn a little bit more about how you can use it for preservation here in a little bit, but also for a lot of the health benefits. Whether or not early cultures knew of these actual health benefits. That were occurring or not they were actually going on. And I suspect that they were aware of what happens when you do or when you don't include ferments or good bacteria in your diet. So some examples of that. Vitamin K2. How many of you in here are familiar with vitamin K2? It's pretty hard to find vitamin K2. It's also a little bit difficult to make vitamin K2 unless you have the adequate amount of bacteria in your stomach to actually produce it. What is vitamin K2? It's responsible for you actually being able to absorb vitamin D and utilize vitamin D. It's responsible for things like facial symmetry and bone growth, which is really important in children. It's also very important for things like blood clotting factors and bone density in adults. And if you don't have adequate bacteria in your stomach to make K2, you, you have to eat a lot of things like butter and organ meats and things along those lines. Not that it's bad to eat butter and liver, but the amount of that that you have to eat compared to what you can get in Terms of vitamin K2 from fermented foods is pretty daunting. And you probably could do liver and butter every night. But we've got better ideas. So another thing that fermented foods are important for is, is this whole idea of the gut brain connection. So these bacteria in your gut are not only responsible for producing a lot of serotonin precursors which are going to help with like, the feel good, happy chemicals in your brain, but when we're forming as embryos in mom's tummy, we've got two different branches of our nervous system, our central nervous system, and what's called our enteric nervous system or our gut. And those two are connected via a nerve, it's called the vagus nerve. And, and if you actually have a gut that doesn't have adequate bacteria in it, it affects your central nervous system, it affects your brain. And a lot of times you'll find that people who have been on an antibiotic regimen or a Z pack, or who maybe grew up on soy milk and formulas rather than on breast milk, they'll have low gut flora, low amount of good bacteria, and that can manifest itself in neurological symptoms and things like brain fog, food cravings, things along those lines. And it's really interesting. You can actually, you can get tests to look at the bacterial balance in your digestive tract. Probably the most popular test to do something like this. It's a really fun one. It's a Stool panel where you literally are pooping into a tray for three days and collecting and putting it in a tube. You send it off, you FedEx it in, but you get a look at the bacterial profile in your gut. And a lot of times I will look at people's bacterial profiles after they're done this time. And their gut is just a wasteland in terms of the actual amount of good bacteria that's in there. And that allows you to not only not get some of these benefits as far as vitamin K and vitamin B and these neurotransmitters I was talking about, but it also sets you up for an overgrowth of bad bacteria. So you've heard about things like candida and yeast and fungus and a lot of these infections basically that can take over your gastrointestinal tract. It's very, very difficult for that to occur. And if you've got good gut flora, but if you've got a little bit of like a floral wasteland and you haven't been eating a lot of these things, it can happen pretty easily. So that's another reason. Detoxification. You'll find that a good amount of bacteria in the gut can help with detox. It can help to bind things, especially heavy metals. Bacteria do a very good job helping to bind and pass heavy metals. And so us living in this post industrial era, I don't know how many of you live on, on top of a pristine Himalayan mountaintop, but I don't. And as many different detoxification compounds as I can get into my body, I'll take it. So those are some of the health reasons. There are other reasons as well. Probably the last, most important one would be your immune system. Over 80% of your immune system resides in your gut. And when you don't have adequate bacteria in your digestive tract, you. You set yourself up for undigested food particles, undigested proteins passing into your bloodstream through that single cell layer in your GI tract and causing things like autoimmune issues, food intolerances and food allergies. You'll find a lot of times people who couldn't handle, say, milk or can't handle grains like quinoa, amaranth or millet or wheat. Once they restore the gut, bacteria that helps to heal the lining of the gut. And all of a sudden you can start eating things that you couldn't handle before. But first you have to rebuild the gut using some of the foods and the strategies that Jess and I will talk to you about today. So why how many of you in here, take like a probiotic capsule or something like that. And I do that. When I travel, I always have probiotics with me because I know I'm not going to be exposed to the wide variety of fermented foods I would get at home. The problem with probiotics is typically they're just a few small strains, bacteria. And so if you're just relying upon a probiotic as your primary source of good bacteria, you're shorting yourself from a very, very wide variety and wide range of bacteria that you can get by including a wide variety of fermented foods. Even if you're doing a probiotic, let's say you walk out of here and you're like, screw that. I'm not going to make kombucha or sourdough bread or ferment anything. At least switch up the probiotics that you take. The probiotic brands that you use, you're exposing your body to a variety of different strains. The same can be said for yogurt. A lot of different yogurts have different strains of bacteria in them, and yogurt is a very good source of bacteria as well. But even switching up your yogurt brands can be useful. That can be a prudent thing to do to expose yourself to a wide variety of bacteria as well. But the deal with probiotics is even though they're good, you're shorting yourself in terms of the spectrum of probiotics that you expose yourself to. The other question, in addition to why don't I just take a probiotic that I get is why don't I just go buy my fermented foods at the store? The main reason for that is the average store that you go to, you're looking at the olives are not fermented. They're usually just treated in like, lye and salt, not fermented at all. A lot of, like the sauerkrauts, the pickles, a lot of the good vegetables that Jess will talk to you about in a second here, they've been heat pasteurized, right? So they're really tasty. But most of the bacteria is completely dead. A lot of the yogurts have also been pasteurized, or you're getting probiotics, but you're also getting craploads of high fructose corn syrup and whatever rotten fruit they had left over to put in the yogurt and everything else that you'll find in modern commercial yogurt. So a lot of that stuff you have to be careful with as well. There are some companies, such as, like, the grocery store whole paycheck. We don't have one of those in Spokane, but they do a pretty good job, including some better fermented foods, like some of the more expensive grocery stores. The problem with that, of course, is purchasing the $4.99 bottle of kombucha that, based off of what you learned today, you could make for, literally, like, a nickel at home. So the markup on the probiotics that you find at the grocery store are pretty huge. So those are some of the reasons why you'd want to use fermented foods and introduce good bacteria into your as well as why you may want to think beyond a probiotic and beyond buying fermented foods just from, like, say, the grocery store. So we're going to delve into a bunch of different kind of kind of probiotic rich foods that we rely on in our house. And this is super duper casual, you guys. So if you have questions as we go, just feel free to, like, raise your hand and ask questions. If you have questions about anything I've talked about so far, questions. But in just a second, I'm going to turn it over to Jessa to talk about some of her favorites as far as fermented foods and recipes. We'll go back and forth, too. I'll throw in my nerdy science stuff here and there, but you guys have questions about anything I've talked about so far?

Yes, I thought of this after last time. It seems to me that if you populate your gut with healthy bacteria and they're colonized and they're doing fine, how often do you daily repopulate or why are they not flourishing?

You'll get bacterial turnover. Like, this is one of the reasons. Actually, a good way to outline this is kind of a gross example. But you hear about people doing, like, detoxes and enemas for their colon, right? And I don't have anything against that kind of cleansing. There are some benefits to it in terms of introducing, like, gut peristalsis. And the liver produces more bile when you do those kind of things. But a lot of people think that your colon can store, like, 72 days of undigested food particles. You hear about all this stuff in my detox clinics. That's not true because those cell walls turn over, and they'll turn over as few as every seven days to every three months. So you're constantly getting turnover of these cell walls in your digestive tract. And so if you start in the probiotics and Then you quit. Seven days later, you'll start to get shedding of some of those cell walls. Within a few months, you'll have that reintroduction. So it's like constantly nurturing a garden over a compost pile, right? Just trying to keep bacteria consistently foraging.

Questions where is the skill sample test?

The best company to get this test is Metametrics makes a good one. Now, if you ask your physician about this, typically a naturopathic physician or an alternative medical practitioner or a functional medical practitioner will be more open minded about ordering this test for you. If you order it through a doctor and you use the copay, it's gonna cost you about $99 or so. If you order it online yourself, which you can do, you can just buy these tests online and ship straight to your house, you're looking at closer to about 3.99. And you can add on like you can add on clostridium and blastocystis and everything else you want to test for in your digestive tract and spend as much as 500, 600 bucks on one test. But you go through your doctor and you go through what's called an easy pay, which is just a little no bill or insurance.

What's the difference between a prebiotic and a probiotic?

A prebiotic is typically just something like chicory or inulin or some kind of a starch that a probiotic can feed upon. And so a lot of probiotic capsules that you'll see these days, you'll see them including little prebiotic fibers along with the probiotics. The fact is you don't need to pay extra for that kind of probiotic if you're eating a lot of vegetables, which you should be doing anyways. So most people who eat enough, like dark leafy greens, like I eat 20 to 25 servings of vegetables a day, tons of vegetables. I'm not worried at all about the good bacteria in my stomach having something. So the prebiotics are pretty. You can pretty much get that. Well, Justin, do you want to jump into some of your favorite ferments?

So I'm going to show you or tell you about several different ways of fermenting food. And the main one that I want to talk about is the lacto fermentation, which is what you're going to find. Sauerkraut pickles, kimchi, ginger, carrots, beans. All those things can be lacto fermented. And I just kind of want to give you a basic overview of what exactly that is. What is lacto fermentation and kind of the basic overview of how to do it. Lacto fermentation. The word lacto is from the term lactobacilica, which is the, which is the bacteria that naturally grows on all things. It grows on you, it grows in the dirt, it grows on vegetables. Every single kind of vegetable is going to have this on there. And what it does is it protects, it's a bacteria that protects from bad bacteria. So that's why we have it on. It's protecting you, it's protecting me, and it's protecting your plants. Now plan plants that grow closer to the ground are going to have more than plants that grow in like, let's say the trees. That's why a fruit is harder to lacto ferment because it has less lactobacilica on it. And so things like pickles and cabbages that grow directly on the ground, or like beets that grow in the ground, or carrots, those all have a lot of lactobasilica. And so they're going to be a lot easier to ferment. And those are the ones that I kind of push people towards to start out with because they're pretty much guaranteed success because it's very easy to do it with those. What happens is when you lacto ferment, so you've got these vegetables with all this great bacteria in it. Well, that also, lactobacilicate also is present in your stomach as well. It's one of the bacterias that is already in there. And so this further grows that good bacteria, that protective bacteria in your stomach. Now when you salt it, the form of lacto fermenting is you salt, you heavily salt the vegetables. And what that does is it creates lactic acid. Lactic acid is there to grow good bacteria and to inhibit bad bacteria. And that is really what keeps fermented foods from rotting is the salt, which is really, really important. And it also grows good bacteria in your stomach. So there's two really good reasons to lactoferment and it's technically considered a probiotic. This type of fermenting is a probiotic food, much like yogurt, sourdough and a lot of other things. So basically when you're fermenting, there's two forms of salt that are really easy to use. You don't want to use iodine salt. It's going to leave this gross, disgusting scum on top of your fermented food. It's just not good. So you're going to want to use high quality sea salt, Kosher salt works or like Himalayan salt or something like that. And that's just full of good minerals to begin with. So you're getting two really great things there. Or you can use whey. Now, whey is basically the salt and the water that's left over in the milk. Like when you make cheese or yogurt, that's what's left over you want. They say you separate the whey from the curd. You've got the whey here and you've got the protein here. So what you're gonna.

When you buy yogurt too, just that little thin.

Yeah. That scum that people get grossed out.

By, that's just whey.

That's whey.

You can use that.

But there's a couple really ways to get your hands on whey that I use all the time. If you're already making yogurt at home, it's generally a little more runny. That's just the way it is. Because a lot of the stuff you get in the store has either had put like bar gum in it or it's got gelatin in it or other ways to thicken it up to give that kind of Greek yolk texture. That's not natural necessarily for yogurt. It's naturally a little bit on the runny side. If you make it at home, it's gonna be runny. What I like to do is I get like a nut milk bag or cheesecloth and I pour it in there and then hang it and then the whey just drips off. And then you can have a really thick yogurt or you can have like a real spreadable yogurt cheese, which is pretty common in Poland and more of the Slovakian cultures, they use this cheese a lot on their toast and stuff like that. And so then you have this great product. You have whey here and then you've got really delicious cheese here. Really simple. You could do that with store bought yogurt. But you will not get as much whey as you would if you got it from homemade yogurt. So you can use this whey to use in your lacto fermentation. So a real simple recipe or. Yeah, simple recipe is sauerkraut. So like, I would take one head of sauerkraut. I would use. I'm sorry, cabbage. Excuse me. We're making sauerkraut. One head of cabbage, shredded. You're gonna put one to two tablespoons of salt on there, depending on how salty you want it, and then four tablespoons of Whey. And that alone is going to be like. That's all the ingredients for sauerkraut, a basic sauerkraut. What you would do is you would sprinkle this all over the shredded cabbage and you have two options. You can sit and wait. What will happen is all the water is going to draw out of cabbage and create this kind of blue. Or you can get a mallet and you can pound it and this makes it happen a lot faster. So you have however fast, however much time you have, you got options and.

You get worked out.

Pounding does take a while. Yes. So how much time then? If you didn't pound. If you didn't pound at all? I generally wait about four hours. I let it sit for four hours. Yeah. And then it will just do it on its own. Did you say it goes covered? Not yet, but I do cover it. Especially if you're doing this in the summertime and there's things like fruit flies. They love anything fermented and they will go for it big time. So make sure it's really sealed up in the summer, the fall, when lots of people are doing this, because generally fall is when people do make sauerkraut and pickles and that kind of thing. There's fewer fruit flies. So covering is a very good idea. Yes. Yes. The fruit flies will go in there. Yeah. And a little soap. What happens? You shake it. They get on the bubbles and the pop and. Yes, it works very well. Yes. Another way. Another way to get whey is fresh mozzarella. You've seen it, I'm sure. And it comes in that, like, yellowy liquid. That's whey. So that's a really easy way to get it. Yes. You said you could use whey in addition to salt, so could you just use a bunch of salt instead of it? You could. So if you're like, do you have trouble with milk or something like that, or perhaps you're vegan or something like that, you can do three tablespoons of salt. That's generally what I do.

Good.

Okay. So after we've got our brine and our liquid, you're going to. Oh, yes.

Yeah.

That's what I think. I missed something. Cabbage shredded. Three tablespoons of salt. If you're not going to do it today and let you. No water.

Okay.

Because what will happen? The salt will draw. Because that's what salt does. It draws water out. So you just mix all that up and. Yeah, and then you'll come back and there will be a nice little puddle in there. For you? Yes, it's in a bowl, in a large bowl, preferably a non reactive bowl. Not metal.

Isn't yours like stainless steel?

No, I use, I generally use like a ceramic bowl. Oh, that I like to use. Yes. You're gonna score it after you score it. Oh, I'm getting there. You're okay, you're leading up to it. So after you've created this brine from either sitting and letting it wait or by pounding it, you're going to take it and you're going to be putting it in like very clean mason jars is what I like to use. Especially if you're just starting out. I suggest people do mason jars. There are other methods. You have like crocks and you have off gassing lids and all kinds of things. But just start out with the mason jar and you can put the cabbage in some of the briner. You're going to press it down as far as you can. And you want at least a little bit of liquid on top. Hopefully an inch is what you want. And the way you keep it from the cabbage from floating to the top because the water, the brine, protects cabbage from getting any kind of bad bacteria on it. So you don't want coming to the top. I go out, I send my kids out actually, and they go out and pick rocks up and then I boil the rocks, sterilize them, and then I use them as weights in my jar to keep the cabbage down. So and that's really it for. And you're going to set it on your counter for two days. That people think that's weird, but that's how that needs that, that heat that warms to grow the bacteria to get it going. Then what you're gonna do is you're gonna have to. They call it burping lids. Gas is gonna start building up in there because it's fermenting. If you don't like just unscrew the lids and let some of the gas off, they will blow off. So for the first two days you're gonna have to just like in the morning maybe if you're at home in the afternoon and night, just take the lids off. Don't pull them all the way up. You just have to unscrew it and you'll hear it, it'll hiss and then just screw it back on. Then after those two days, it goes into cold storage. Now if you have a root cellar, great. But most of us don't have root cellars this day and age. So your fridge is going to be your only option. In the summer. So you're going to be putting it in your fridge in the winter. I like to put it in my garage. Your garage stays really nice and cold and then it's not taking up all your fridge space. Not going to freeze because it's salt water. You won't have to worry about it freezing and then you can go out and grab it whenever you feel like. So that's really the basics of lacto fermentation. There's lots of others. Like I said, you can use this for carrots, beets, beans, turnips. I make a really awesome turnip.

Trout.

It's really good. All kinds of things. Kimchi. These are all forms of lactofermentation. Another form that I like to talk about is kombucha. It's kind of all the rage right now. You know, I'm sure you've heard about it through Lindsay Lohan who swear she got a DUI because she drank kombucha.

That's actually why you gotta like go to the alcohol section in Whole Foods now to get kombucha. Cause all the Lindsey William thing and it does have trace amounts of alcohol. Some people swear they get buzz off kombucha.

Yeah, there's very, very little.

Yeah, it's probably more than. It's more. The bacteria.

Yeah, it's like nothing but. Yeah.

And by the way, kombucha is another one. Like I mentioned, it's not only expensive at the grocery store, but I don't know if you've looked at the back of a bottle of kombucha, but they add so much sugar to that after the fermentation process. Right. A lot of people look at the label and they'll be like, oh, there's sugar in there. Because that's what the bacteria fermented on. So it's. So it's all gone now after the fermentation. They add more sugar to it to satisfy our little western palates. But when you make your own kombucha at home, it doesn't taste like you're drinking soda.

Well, you have more control and it.

Doesn'T have the same effect on your blood sugar levels.

So kombucha is basically. It's another form of fermentation where you use a scoby. And I don't know if you've ever seen scobys. They look like a giant booger. And they're just like the most disgusting looking thing for kids.

For boys.

We have twin boys. It's like the Kobe. Coolest thing ever. But it's very simple to make kombucha once you have a scoby. And if you know of a friend who already is doing it, I guarantee you they'll have a new one every month. They'll have a new scoby to give you. Every month we have one. And every month I have to either throw it in my compost pile or give it to someone because it's just constantly reproducing this bacteria, these little life boogers. So basically what kombucha is, is a fermented tea. The only ingredients you need to make this tea is black tea and a lot of sugar. That's really all you need. You brew a large amount of tea, like a gallon of black tea, really strong black tea, and a cup of sugar per gallon, and then you let it cool off completely. You put your scoby in there and you let it sit for a week and you basically have kombucha after that. And that's really has oxygen. So I like to use T shirt material to go over the tops of my kombucha because little fruit flies cannot make their way through T shirt material. They can make their way through everything else. And it's just like the most horrible thing when you go to open your kombucha and there's just little flies and maggots in there and then you have to get rid of your scoby and you have to get rid of everything and then have to acquire a new scoby or something like that. So basically, yeah, that's the first fermentation and you can drink it and get all the probiotics from kombucha. After that point, if you like it busy like you get in the store, you have to do a second fermentation, which I generally give it a really heavy dose of sugar, bottle it and close it. And basically what happens is the bacteria feeds on the sugar, but it's not letting off the gases. So it internalizes the gases, which is what gives you the bubbles.

Those like glass beer bottle type of things you'll get from like home beer making stores with the rubber stopper on them, they work really well. They make like really fizzy kombucha. Like if you like it fizzy because you just regular lid, it leaks a little bit. But like those rubber stoppers work really well. Keep it for three, four weeks.

So you just use regular cranberry sugar? Yep. You would use other sweeteners. Nope. There's really no reason to.

Sugar's not a sweetener. Like it's just like, by the time you consume it, I mean, it's very low sugar, low calorie. By the time you drink it.

Yeah. It is fermented.

Yeah.

Yeah. The caffeine is also gone. So it's funny because we got our kids hooked on this stuff because it makes them burp. And they're the coolest thing ever.

They're boys.

So our kids don't like soda, but they like kombucha. And I'm like, oh, it's the win. Yes. I've been making it for about 25 years now. I have to keep starting over with a new starbie because, like, after the second or third batch, it belts.

Okay.

And I'm really clean. Super. Yeah. You mean, like, going to the store and like, buying, like, a fresh. Do you save any from the last batch? I tried to, but like I said, that was like two or three batches. I know. It's mine. Gets real cloudy. Yeah.

Yeah.

It could be. I could talk to you. Yeah, it could be. No, you're right. Okay. So I could get more into, like, making kombucha. And if you have more questions about kombucha, it's a really inexpensive, easy, cheap way to get a really good probiotic into your diet. Another way is making yogurt. Yogurt or kefir or water Keeper, all really, really easy ways to also get probiotics into your diet. Making yogurt is very simple to do, especially if you have a dehydrator. It's even more simple if you have a good dehydrator. But really all you need is a culture, which you can get. You can purchase them, or you can literally just go to the store and buy a very good fat, a very good yogurt, and just use, like, a quarter cup of that. And it has all the bacteria that you need in it already to make yogurt. So you don't have to go out, you know, on Amazon and order your yogurt cultures and wait days and days and days. And honestly, I've had really awesome success with just going to the store and purchasing.

It's the brand that you get for yogurt.

I normally just get the Nancy's, and that works great.

Stony Brooks is good. Yeah.

And then I get, like, a half gallon of raw local milk from around here, which is one of the great things about Washington is you can buy raw milk in the storehouse, which is great. I know so many people who cannot do that. So basically what I do when I make yogurt is I Put half a gallon of milk in my crock pot and warm it on low for three hours. And then I let it. Then I turn that off, let it cool to 109 degrees. Basically, that's the temperature where it won't kill the bacteria anymore. While I'm letting it cool, I let my yogurt sit on the countertop because I like it at room temperature. So when I put it into my yogurt, it's not cooling my milk off. You want to keep the milk warm so that you have. You have a perfect breeding ground for bacteria to grow. Then I whisk it in there really well, and then I put it in my dehydrator at 105 overnight. And then in the morning, you wake up and it's this lovely batch of yogurt. You put it in your fridge and you can do whatever you want from it. That's what you can serve it, eat like that, or you can make cheese, like I said before, or whatever you like. I use it in. I use it in place of, like, buttermilk, when the recipe is called buttermilk. A lot of yogurt, stuff like that. You have a question? Yeah, I just, I think, let it sit at room temperature. The yogurt, yogurt culture that I'm going to use. And you let that cool down? Yeah, that. How long do you keep it? Three hours is what I. I heat it on low for three hours. Okay. And then turn that off. Let it cool at room temperature. Let it cool until it reaches 109 degrees. You're going to need a thermometer. Okay. And then while it's cooling off, I have my quarter cup of yogurt sitting out on the counter at room temperature. I want that at room temperature. The reason for that is I don't want it to cool down the milk that we just spent all that time warming up. Does that make sense? Let's suppose one doesn't have a dehydrator with a rack. Good question. Okay, so what? I didn't always have that either. And what I would do is I would let it do all that cooling and everything, and then I'd take towels and I'd wrap it around and wrap it over the top and just basically create something that can hold heat for as long as possible. And I put, like, two towels wrapped all the way around it and over the top of it. And that works. That works for me.

Great.

So if you don't have a dehydrator overnight when you're done. Yep. Yes.

Yeah.

That would Work great, too. Like a little pad underneath it. You can use the hot or even your regular hot water heater. Yeah. A lot of times that where you keep that. So stuff. That's true. And the room will stay very warm. Yes. Things that you can do. You want to know how to thicken it up or. It was okay. What could have happened is it didn't stay warm long enough and so the bacteria didn't get to grow as well. But like I said, homemade is generally a little bit more runny. It shouldn't be like soup, but it is a little more runny. And if you have trouble with it, you can add a little bit of gelatin to it. Like a teaspoon of gelatin. If you get a nice. Like, what's the one? Great Lakes.

Yeah, Great Lakes is good. Bernard.

Gelatin is not gonna hurt you. Anything's gonna help your stomach. If it's from a good source. You can add a little bit of gelatin if you want it. When would you do that? You would do that when you stirred in the yogurt? Yes. Did you say that? So if we did want to collect away from it vegetables, you would use a cheese cloth?

Yeah.

You can use cheesecloth. I've used nylons. Cut the feet off. You just pour it in there, make sure they're clean. The cool thing is you don't want to put jam in your yogurt.

Once you strain that whey off, if you strain it for long enough, you're gonna have a really thick yogurt cheese left over.

It'll be a light cream cheese.

You can blend that with herbs. You can make like an herbal cream cheese style spread with that. And it's really good, like crackers bread and stuff like that. Actually, we should talk a little bit about bread, too.

Yes.

I mean, obviously, like I mentioned, like, the whole, like, sourdough process is very involved, but basic overview, I mean, because we're very careful. Again, like fermentation. I didn't touch on this too much, but it can actually deactivate some of the enzyme inhibitors that would naturally be in something like grains. And when you combine that with the fact that a lot of the bread from even like some of the local grains that we buy, that wheat has been bred for high yield crop that really concentrates the wheat, germagglutinin, which basically has like the texture of human hair. Right. In small amounts, it's not gonna cause an issue. But in the huge amounts that we find that in today's commercial pastas and breads and Stuff like that. It can cause some gut inflammation in people who get like bloating and gas, like these symptoms of light gluten intolerance. Even if you don't get a tummy ache, it can cause neural inflammation. Your brain specifically can react to that particular protein. So fermenting your grains is another really, really smart thing to do if you want to have your bread. And for a long time I just went without eating bread because I was aware of so many of the health consequences. And then once justice started churning out the sourdough bread, now I probably punish like half a loaf a week at least. So she can give you kind of the overview of the basics behind the sourdough.

Okay, well, there's. Sourdough is an art. And I tell people that when they first start getting into. Don't be disappointed if your first five loaves just fail. I mean, it could, it's really, it's. It's something that I've been really practicing hard at for the last probably three or four years. And now I'm feeling very comfortable with it. And I can generally put out the same product every time now, but it's taken me a while to get there. And you can purchase a culture online. Lots of them like to tell that they're 100 years old and that's really great and everything, but you can easily make your own start at home. It's really simple. It takes about a week to do. I like to use rye and spelt when I first start making a start because that's traditionally what sourdough has been made with in the past. And so and it does very, very well when you're making it start. It makes a very good active start. And I can tell, I can kind of give you the basic overview of how to do that if you're interested. But I would really.

The wheat source that you use, the.

Wheat source, we're really fortunate. We live in an area where that produces a lot of wheat, but it can also produce a lot of different kinds of wheat. And we are one of the few places left planet that can produce. That produces Einkorn meat, which is the only true, like, lasting form of ancient wheat in the world, as far as I understand. It's Einkorn. It's spelled E E I N K.

O R N. I think I'm pretty.

Sure you can get it at Main Street Market and Azure Standard is carrying it now too. So that's pretty awesome. Main Street Market downtown or if you're part of like the Azure Standard, maybe some of you know what this is. You can order it through them now, which is really cool. It's pretty new, I think, for them. Yes. As you are standard.

It's a Z U R E standard. It's a place where you can order a lot of these type of supplies, including.

They're out of Oregon and they have all kinds of organic stuff and you can get it very cheaply through them. But you have to be part of like a little group. There's groups all over the place. Yeah, they're very easy to find it. I'm sure they can direct you to a group that's near you. Yeah, you can get. Yeah, a lot of starters. So I like Einkorn wheat is what I like to use. And there's a grower here in Spokane, I think it's called Bluebird. I keep. I can't. I'm hesitant to say it's Bluebird something. They carried it Main Street Market for a while and they don't have it there anymore. But I think if you Google Bluebird Einkorn meat, you're going to find the grower. And I think they're very, very near us. So they're really. It's a really great. If you can get it locally, go for it. I feel like that's the best option. Rye is really good for sourdough bread. It's, like I said, one of the most traditional forms of sourdough bread. And you can get it in its whole form, which is pretty easy to do. It's one of the few flours that they take away all the bran. It's really got a nice nutty flavor and it's definitely worth trying out. You already make sourdough yourself, so those are really my two. And spelt is a good one as well. So those. Like, if you have a vitamin, that would be great. Yeah. The fresher you can grind or grind it, the better because it actually keeps intact. Like more of the vitamins and the proteins that are naturally present that are gone generally by the time it gets to us. Yes. Yeah, I generally. Yeah, I generally do them 50. 50. It's like the day I'm like feeding it, I'll make it to rye and then next day I'll do spell just so it's nice and round. Any other questions? I would go more into sourdough rye, but like Ben said, it could take hours. It's fun hours.

We'll do a separate class. Separate class on that. I wanted to make sure that I got a chance to. To give you guys some Resources, too. And we'll also allow some ample time for Q and A here. Three good resources for you. One is this book right here, Nourishing Traditions. It's got a lot of really good fermented recipes. This is one of our favorite. Our favorite cookbooks. Yeah, it's by Sally Fallon. It's called Nourishing Traditions, the cookbook that challenges politically correct nutrition and the diet dictatorship. So there's that one. There's another one called Wild Fermentation. Really good book, too. Wild Fermentation. And then for looking at this from more of a health standpoint, if you're wanting to introduce this for, like, a kid who's got ADD or autism or for yourself due to neurological or gut issues, there's a book called the GAPS Diet. G A P S stands for Gut and Psychology Syndrome. And it goes into, like, the link between your gut, your brain, and why healing your gut is so crucial for neurological function. Those are some good resources. I'm trying to get Jess to write a book called Dirty Kitchen, but I think it's a great title, but she hasn't. So let's go and take some questions. Your questions on bacteria, fermentation, health effects of this stuff, recipes, things like that. Yeah.

Coconut milk has been my most successful. It's generally pretty runny, but you can add the gelatin, like I said, if you want that thicker texture. You do have to refresh it, though, with your bacteria or your yogurt, with, like, a milk, because it will eventually die because it doesn't have the correct proteins to keep it alive. Yes. Where do you get your first scoby? My first goby. I made mine. And it's very easy to do. You brew a cup of very very. Or a mug, a very strong black tea with a lot of sugar, and you let it cool. Then you add in. Basically just get a raw kombucha from the store, and you pour some of that in there. And I waited about three months and it grew. Yeah, you just. And you just. Because it has all of the.

You don't even have to use the whole bottle.

No, you only need to use, like, half the bottle. And then you just cover it. Make sure you cover it because of the pesky fruit flies who like to get. Yeah, I just get the raw, plain. Nothing in it. Yeah.

Even though ultimately it doesn't matter that much if it has sugar zone at that point, because you're gonna ferment it anyways.

Most fermented people.

I'd probably stay away from the stuff with the chia. Seeds floating in it. That might be a little messy, but.

Yeah, that's why I'd like to put the T shirt. T shirt works great. And I. The sauerkraut, you don't let it break. Yeah. Something has to.

Hear stories about the whole family. Yeah. Botulism. Well, Jessa, why don't you go into some of your cleaning procedures? I mean, like, for example, the biggest.

Thing in godliness is next to godliness. In this instance, what I do is I boil to make sure that I'm not going to kill my family, I boil a bunch of water and I pour them into whatever vessel I'm going to be storing my sauerkraut or pickles or whatever. I let them sit there for 20 minutes. 20 minutes is the adequate amount of time to kill whatever bacteria. I'm pretty sure this is a common practice, especially when canning. You boil your jars and that kind of stuff, and just make sure that all your utensils that you're using are very, very clean. There's not like, leftover or something like that. Also, when you open it and you see green fuzz or something like that, throw it away. I mean, that's basically. That's. You don't know how deeply that goes in. Just throw the whole jar away. If it has a bad odor, really, basically, you need to use your instincts. It has a bad odor, throw it out. If it was a weird texture, get rid of it. You know, they're just. It's just pretty. Just using your common sense. That sounds horrible, but a lot of it is just using your instinct, knowing when something smells off. But making sure everything is clean and sterilized is a big deal.

A lot of boiling. I mean, with any raw milk, you want to get it from a clean farm.

Yeah. You are heating it. Yep. You do heat it. You don't boil it, though, or pasture it regularly. There are certain foods that kill off the good bacteria.

You mean foods that you eat that would kill the good bacteria in your gut? Typically, the issue is feeding of yeast and fungus and candida with lots of sugars and starches more than it is foods that would kill off a lot of the good bacteria. I mean, if you overdid it on nutraceuticals like oregano and berberine and artisan and a lot of these things, like, you'll find prescribed for as natural remedies for, like, bacterial issues and digestive tract or infection or something like that, that can make a little bit of a dent in it. Antibiotics, you can easily wipe out the bacteria. But as far as actual foods that would kill bacteria, usually the issue isn't.

That as much as feeding. I think you're just worried about the imbalance.

Yeah.

Because there's, there's bad always it's just whether which one's out.

Yeah. But there's no foods like, you know, say like ginger or something like that that are going to like kill off the good bacteria. So that's typically not something you have to worry about too much. Cheetos. I don't. We'd have to experiment with Cheetos. Those things are pretty nuclear.

Nobody knows what they are for certain. Quite know.

Yeah. Do you have a question back there?

Oh yeah, I've done cherries before. I did a really great cherry orange chutney. Ginger, carrots are a really good one. Radishes, turnips, pickles, obviously you could do asparagus stems, you can do beans. What's that? Use a basic recipe of the salt and the whey in everything for the most part. So that's like a standard when. Oh, go ahead. When you said one head of habits. Yeah, they can I. Well no, I don't know off the top of my head, but I generally just use like a medium average head of cabbage. And if you want, I mean if you want more water or brine to come out, you can salt more. But the more you salt, you gotta. If you're really salty, if you go too far with the salt, I use either Himalayan salt, the real salt that you can find in the store is a good one, or natural sea salt. I don't have a real specific brand just as long as it hasn't been iodized because I that just like ruined. It's not good. You know, pickles are awesome because I remember when I first had my first fermented pickle ever. And you like bite into it, it actually has like an effervescent to it actually has like a fizz and bubble to it because it's been fermented and they're crunchy. They're really good. They're unique, but they're really good. Unique in a good way. Yeah. Yes, for the most part. Well, I grow a lot of my own, so. But if I'm going to the store, yeah, I will. Just because you don't know what the pesticides are, how they're going to react with everything else.

Not that much. Like a tablespoon of sauerkraut has enough bacteria to populate your gut. Really the trick is more variety than volume. Right. So if you're Going through a typical day and maybe you've got a little bit of kombucha in the mid morning as like a beverage for the mid morning and you've got a little bit of sauerkraut with your, with your salad at lunch and maybe a pickle. And then that afternoon later on with dinner you've got a little bit of yogurt, a bit of sourdough. So the trick is just having a wide variety in your fridge, kind of spreading it out, dark chocolate later on.

Well, I think in Japan they every meal they have, they have a small side of some kind of fermentation.

Like we didn't talk a lot about it. It's not a lot. It's like a very one powerhouse in Japan, especially for the K2 that I talked about, the vitamin K2 is natto. Anybody in here ever had natto? So it's like a slimy, snotty ferment of a soybean. It's actually very easy to make yourself. You can buy a little thing of natto from the local Asian grocer and then you can lay out your own cooked soybeans and let that natto that you bought from the grocery store just mix in and ferment.

The same idea as like yogurt, like buying.

And then you set it up and you got your own natto starter and you can grow your own natto. And that stuff is super duper rich in K2. It goes well with like more kind of Asian type of food. Like goes all with rice and seaweed and stuff like that. But that's a really good one too is natto. And again expensive but easy to make yourself. But yeah, I mean how we got on this was for example, you know, when we go to Japan, like I go to a triathlon in Japan, sometimes we go there. It's pretty hard to eat breakfast, lunch or dinner without having a fermented vegetable or some kind of ferment in your meal. And you know, even though I kind of take it for granted now, if I look back at every single day's meals, for me there's something fermented every meal. And so, you know, kimchi, kombucha, sauerkraut, yogurt, the fermented grain. And once you start to start to have a lot of these things in your fridge, when you open your fridge, you've all of a sudden just got a wide world of stuff to take care of your gut.

Can you talk about tempeh pepe? I actually have never made it.

You haven't made tempeh.

I've wanted to try it, but I just haven't done it yet, so I couldn't.

Anytime you ferment soy, you knock out a lot of the deleterious health effects of soy. We've never made tempeh.

I've looked at it. It's a little bit involved. Yeah. What's the average shelf life? So the vegetables can generally last six months. Fruit is about three months, tops. Like I said, it doesn't have a lot of the. Like I said, the lactobacilica generally, and it had a lot of sugar in it. So that affects. How do you feel about that with raw milk or. Or just when you were making. It isn't any different than eating yogurt because basically it's just yogurt with less water in it.

Did you.

I didn't. I wasn't practicing this, but I would have if I had.

No, there's no reason not to eat.

A lot of these foods.

I. Yeah, I mean, one issue could be, you know, like, with dairy foods, you hear about, like, constipation and stuff like that. Ultimately, as far as, like, harmful compounds, I wouldn't throw back your yogurt with it with the martini coffee when you bring it. But. But I think the yogurt itself, assuming you've made it safely. I mean, fermented periods of pregnancy are other questions. This is nourishing traditions and. On our website, or on my. I guess it's our website, even though it's named after me@BenGreenfieldFitness.com if you go to BenGreenfieldFitness.com and I'll have some cards up here for you guys if you want. You can ask more questions through that site. My wife and I, we have like a. Like a membership website that. Where you put a bunch of, like, healthy cooking living videos.

We do all kinds of things.

Not just like a Q and a forum, just a bunch of stuff. We do like a monthly webinar and a few different topics, and that's a good resource, too. So, yeah, there's a podcast, too. There's like an audio podcast that you can listen to. Glad somebody's listening. And yeah, that's a pretty good resource for you. But we're totally open to answering questions if you send them through on the website. And I'll give you my contact information here on my card if you guys run into trouble or you're driving to the hospital because you infected yourself with kombucha. No, I don't mean to Scare you? Like, Jesse, like, keep a clean kitchen. Boil the stuff that you're making this stuff in. You know, use. Use glass, steel crock pots. You know, like, good cleaning materials. Not like plastics and aluminum and stuff like that.

But it is kind of a miracle to see where this stuff has come from. Literally, like the stone age.

Yeah.

And they were able to pull it off. Soft drinks. What's that? Like Waterkeeper. I have it. Have you.

I've got a book on brewing it.

I would like to try that. Yeah, I'm sure it is. Yeah. Yeah. It is just a waving game. Can you talk about Water Keeper? I've done it a little bit. Our kids just generally prefer kombucha, so that's what I make. But it's really very simple to make. What you need is. You can't.

You don't also $4.99 at the grocery store.

Yeah. And I. Literally, all it is is kabita. So it feeds on sugar for the most part. But it's varieties of sugar. It doesn't just do, like, white sugar like kombucha. It likes to have things that have, like, real raw sugar. You can get at, like, Asian food stores. It has, like, all the molasses still intact and everything. It likes stuff like that. Putting dried fruit in is a really good idea, too, when you're making Water Keeper, because, like I said, it doesn't just like white sugar. It likes to have a lot of the molasses fibers. It feeds on those. But it like kombucha. It does it a lot faster than kombucha. You don't have to wait a week to two weeks to have it. You can do. You can be done with WaterKey for three days. It's ready to go. A lot of people like it because they can do, like, lemonades with it. And kids do generally really like it. It's a lot easier than Congo Jello, I'll say that. Yeah, you should. And, like, you'll. You'll get to a point where you have so many water grains that you're gonna have to pass them off to your friends. Same thing with. If you do a milk. No, I've ordered my. I order my packets when I do it. Because you really can't get the grains.

From stuff like a beer starter.

Yeah, probably almost certain they do. Does your website give you.

In some of the places, like, when people ask us questions in the forum, we'll usually include, like, get some of the stuff. But we don't necessarily have, like, a dedicated page to go buy your permit just because it kind of vary from area to area, but we're pretty good there about answering questions, stuff like that. And really like, you know, what you learned today as far as like the kombucha or the yogurt from your grocery store as a starter and Azure standard is a place for like a sourdough or starters.

A lot of ways we try to, I feel like I try to empower people to do it themselves. I don't like to have, for me personally, I don't like to have to depend on a lot of things, so I like to do it myself. And so I generally learn how to do a lot of it on my own and then I'll teach people how to do it. If they don't want to do it on their own, then I will obviously point direct them somewhere else.

They do.

Yeah, I just haven't done it yet. My appliance section is an offer El.

Just tell her we're Amish. Take our horse and buggy home. Yeah, let's take one more question.

There's a really good resource book called Brainmaker. It has excellent gut bacteria. So good.

Yeah. My friend David.

Yeah, what's the name? David Perlmutter, Brain Maker. And it has recipes for all this stuff. Awesome.

Yeah.

Have you read it?

I haven't read it yet.

Who wrote it?

David Perlmutter, Rainmaker. Cool. Well, thanks for coming, you guys. I'll leave some cards out if you want to contact us or visit the website. And yeah, now you can all go home and have some sourdough bread, some yogurt, some vegetables.

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