Experiments at Home: Sauerkraut

Real Sauerkraut is different than the type you'll buy in most stores and the recipe is simple as heck:

• cabbage
• salt
• water

The real added ingredients are microbes in the air & on the cabbage and time.

1. Slice cabbage very thin with knife or food processor.
2. Scrunch up with some salt until the cabbage starts shedding some of its juice.
3. Smoosh the cabbage into mason jars or a large crock
4. Keep cabbage under the liquid so no air can get to it

It will be ready to eat in 2 weeks and gets better with age.

This is also the way that they make kosher dill pickles, but this is, as my wife says, some "pretty funky stuff." I love it.

Experiments at home: Live Foods

For the past few years, I've been kind of amazed by live foods & yeasts. If you've ever had a kosher dill pickle or yogurt, you've had a live food. That same acidophillus that everyone says is so good in yogurt is available all over the place (it's on you right now!). A lot of cheese is also very much alive and it's the aging that allows these microorganisms to thrive in whatever food we're eating.

It's a very good thing.

Our body is loaded with tons of these little microbes, inside and out. We can't really digest food without them. By adding in other foods with these organisms already in them, we are making our digestion work better and being healthier. It's pretty amazing really.

What this looks like is a bunch of jars on my counter being left out for weeks on end. Instead of going bad, the bacteria help to preserve the food! It's been done this way for centuries in cultures all over the planet.