Category Archives: simple living

Food Fermentation Basics

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I used to think that the tradition of fermenting food was just a way to preserve food.
I didn’t realize that it also increases the bioavailability of nutrients and provides friendly bacteria that help balance the gut and support a healthy immune system.

I tired once, in my early twenties, to make saurkraut.  I used a large crock and left the cabbage salt mix outside.  I was a little uneasy with the results and they found their way back to mother earth without touching my digestive system.

More recently I became interested in the process of fermentation when I read about the tooth decay diet.  They suggested fermenting grains as well as vegetables.  I thought I’d give it a try.  I was particularly interested in making pickled watermelon rinds, since I had quite a few watermelon volunteers (Yes, only in Phoenix are you still harvesting watermelon in November and December.)

The supplies are rather easy to get.  I ordered mine from Amazon.  First you need to have a container where you can ferment the vegetables in the absence of oxygen.  A glass mason jar with food grade plastic cap and a bubble airlock with a stopper do nicely. I ordered my items separately which ended up costing about $45 dollars.  The caps were the big ticket item ($28).  I choose reCaps, because I could verify that they were BPA & Phthalates-free. Fermentation basics - jar, reCap lid, stopper and airlockIf you are price sensitive you may want to try this beginners kit which is only $25 and essentially has the same items.  I didn’t opt for the beginners kit myself, because, although it was food grade, I couldn’t find information about BPA and Phthalates.  However, the brew doesn’t normally touch the cap anyway and I wasn’t really impressed by the reCaps I used.

The fermentation process does best when it is warm.  If you want you can monitor the temperature with a Thermometer.  Since it is beginning to get chilly in Phoenix, I used a Heating Pad when it was getting below 65 degrees Fahrenheit.  Most heating pads these days have an auto off function, the one I used is a rarity.  It stays on until turned off manually.

The airlock comes in three pieces.  The main body, a plastic How to use the bubble airlockinsert and the plastic cap.  Remove the plastic cap and the insert.  Then fill the main body with water about 3/4 of the way full.  There is a “fill line” if your eyes are good and you can see it.  Then drop the insert back in and place the cap in position. See picture to the right.

Extra gas coming up from the fermentation vessel with push the insert up a little and release gas to the space above the water.  The extra gas then leaves through the pin holes in the plastic cap.  This device allows the carbon dioxide to leave and prevents any oxygen from entering, allowing the mixture to ferment anaerobically.

Now for the fun.  What can you ferment?  Anything vegetable and then some!  I started with watermelon rinds and green beans.  Here are my recipes:

Old-Fashioned Pickled Watermelon Rinds (no sugar)

Old-Fashioned Pickled Green Beans (no sugar)

Your purchase using the following links supports TESLI.  Thanks!




Malva as Food

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Young cheeseweed plant (Malva parviflora)

Young cheeseweed plant (Malva parviflora) Phoenix, AZ Dec 2014

Malva parviflora, (aka mallow, cheeseweed, and even pigweed by some) is one of my favorite plants.  It is a common weed.  It was abundant in all of my gardens in the Bay Area and now I find it loves the Phoenix desert as well.  Here it seems to have a specific season.  It avoids the hot summer, but sprouts like clockwork once it cools down.

Today I harvested a bunch to use as a pot herb in making a bone broth.  Malva isn’t a particularly exciting herb to eat, but it is packed with nutrients.  In Traditional European cooking it is not uncommon for vegetables to be cooked in water with or without meat to make a hearty broth.  Once cooked, the vegetables are discarded and the nutrient rich broth retained. Malva seemed a perfect plant for this: there is lots and lots of it around;  it is nutrient rich; and the plant itself isn’t that exciting to eat.

Freshly harvested Malva parviflora (cheeseweed)My plan to make a broth started last month.  I bought a couple organic Turkeys over the Thanksgiving holiday, one of them a Heritage Bird.  Since bones tend to store heavy metals, in particular lead, I was excited to get the cleanest birds I could so that I could prepare a bone broth.  Bone broths are rich in calcium, magnesium, and all the other minerals and nutrients essential for strong bones and teeth.

I reserved the bones after cleaning the carcass of the meat in November.  Today, I pulled them out of the freezer and put them in a pressure cooker.  I covered the bones with water (about 3/4 of a gallon) and then filled the cooker up with as many Malva plants as I could jam in (they will cook down to nothing).  It rained last night, so the Malva pulled easily out of the ground roots and all.  The roots are just as good as the tops, so all I did was rinse them off and put them in the pot whole.  Young Malva Parviflora cheeseweed

I cook my bone broth more than other people.  I intend to have the bones so soft they can be eaten without a crunch.  For a chicken carcass this takes about two hours in the pressure cooker.  The turkey bones are a little bigger, so the cooking time is about  three hours.  Most of the bones are soft with that, but the long bones need longer.

What do I do with the bone broth?  Well, I’ve been dreaming about good hot and sour soup.  I’ll use this broth as the stock for one of my favorite soups.  In anticipation of this I made the broth with about a tablespoon of white pepper (the ingredient that makes the soup “hot”).  I’ll add vinegar (for the sour) and then egg (to make the egg flower).  Other traditional ingredients are tofu, stripes of meat, and tree ear fungus.

The Story of Stuff

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Over the course of the last few months two of my stove burners stopped working. I am currently running a successful airbnb rental and while I can get along with two burners, I am looking to keep my home as functional as possible for my guests.  Besides, with the income I’m getting I can afford to fix the stove.  It crossed my mind to just get a new stove, or to get my mother a new stove and use her old one, but scraping an old stove is outside of my values.  I decided to repair the stove instead.

I called TLC Appliances.  TLC (Transitional Living Communities) is a 30 year old program for people transitioning off drugs and alcohol.  I worked there in 2013 as their massage therapist.  I also ran a mindful gardening program, a mindful relapse prevention program and trauma healing groups for them.  They not only have about 600 halfway house beds in the Phoenix area, they run an outpatient treatment program, TLC yard maintenance, TLC towing and recovery, and TLC appliance.

I called David at TLC Appliances (480-809-8356) to get the stove fixed.  If you need anything repaired from AC to stove and refrigerators, he is the man.  TLC will also take your donation of used appliances and you might be able to pick up a reconditioned used appliance from them if you are in need.  They are the ones that gave me my swamp cooler.

One of the first things he told me was, “if the computer is bad, I can get you a new one, but it will cost about the same as buying a new stove.”  I already knew that.  It is something called planned obsolescence.  Watch one of my favorite videos on this:  The Story of Stuff:

As it turned out, the wiring to the twonew burners on stove burners had melted. I probably could have gotten by with about a $50 repair, but for $109 he fixed the faulty wires and replaced all four burners and their drip trays.  This was a blessing, since a few of the burners just wouldn’t sit right; they weren’t level.  Here is my beauty now: