mason jar

Coconut Milk Yogurt

March 14, 2012 by KerryAnn 39 Comments

Finally, the recipe so many folks have been asking for. Coconut milk yogurt with all real food ingredients! The CTF Facebook page has been excitedly waiting for this one while seeing my multiple posts and pictures on the progress of the recipe.

This recipe is from the Menu Mailer, Volume 4 Week 29. Please consider supporting our blog by making a purchase of a Menu Mailer subscription or buying some of the issues of the Back to Basics Menu Mailer series. Mailers contain the recipes, shopping list and prep schedule for 6 meals and one dessert every week. We add extras such as this coconut milk yogurt as we develop the recipes. The Mailer runs as low as $1 a week. You can receive a free Menu Mailer that was published in January, 2011 if you sign up for our mailing list.

Coconut milk yogurt from the recipe as written, unstirred, incubated 20 hours.

The slightly tan color comes from using rapadura as the sweetener to feed the beneficial bacteria. If you need a white yogurt, use honey.

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Fermentation Friday: Fermented French Fries

March 13, 2011 by KerryAnn 42 Comments

We’ve fallen in love with this recipe and this is the only way I will make fries in the future. My kids inhale these and ask for more, no matter how many I make. They are just like I remember fast food fries to be- crisp on the outside, hot and soft on the inside. And since they’re fried in tallow, I feel good about my kids eating them.

When I developed this recipe, I’d been in a fermenting funk. I was having a hard time coming up with something creative. Don’t get me wrong, I love my sauerkraut and kefirs. But I needed something…. more. Different. Something my kids would love. One of my dear friends, Loztnausten, had a post about making shoestring french fries and one on fermenting fries. I had read it long ago, but I kept on having the ‘too much work’ mantra scroll in my head. Hand-cutting all of those fries…. I wanted a food processor with a blade that could do it for me, but it was out of my budget. If I wanted french fries, I would ask my husband to make them for me as a treat, when I was working a late night and he had some free time and was looking to dote on me by whipping up something special and junky in the kitchen for us to munch on while I slaved away on the computer. Last January my husband made some french fries, using the mandolin slicer I had recently acquired from a friend. He asked me to look up what temp to cook them at, as his last batch had turned out too oil-logged. We knew he needed a higher temperature, so I surfed over to Everything Free Eating to see how LZ does her fries and I again saw the fermented fries post.

A light bulb went off.

The Research

I did a little research. In this paper, fermentation with a lactic acid bacteria (LAB) resulted in a reduction of the acrylamide in french fries by as much as 90% after 15 minutes. Fermenting in an anaerobic environment is the best way to encourage the production of LAB at home so your can achieve this same result without needing a lab coat, a college degree and an industrial process to cook your diner.

Why do we want to reduce the acrylamide? It’s a carcinogen. Anything that browns while it cooks- bread, potatoes, chips, biscuits, pretty much any baked or fried good, forms acrylamide as it browns.

How does LAB fermentation work to reduce the acrylamide? A quote from Science Daily tells us

“Acrylamide is formed as a reaction between the amino acid asparagine and simple sugars such as glucose and fructose. Put simply, the lactic acid bacteria remove these compounds and inhibit the formation of acrylamide.”

If you’d like to read more about how LABs consume these simple sugars, this book is a good place to start studying. The paper mentioned above, Lactic acid fermentation reduces acrylamide formed during production of fried potato products, was published in the journal Aspects of Applied Biology. It says in its summary:

“Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) metabolise simple sugars rapidly, producing lactic acid which lowers pH and reduces the Maillard reactions initiated by heat. This method can be used in industries producing fried potato products to reduce their problems with acrylamide formation. Applying the LAB method to French fries shortly prior to the pre-frying step reduces acrylamide formation as much as 90%. Browning reactions consequently are reduced. Sensory analysis shows loss of colour and burnt smell and taste without affecting quality of final potato sticks. A fermentation time of approximately 15 minutes is needed given a dense LAB culture. The results from large scale industrial- batch as well as continuous experiments – indicate that LAB fermentation provides the best means for acrylamide mitigation in the production of fried potato products.”

The Application

So the research says that LAB thrives best in an anaerobic environment. Anaerobic means that oxygen is not present; aerobic means that oxygen is present. In order to get LABs to proliferate, I needed to provide an anaerobic environment that would encourage their growth while discouraging the growth of all non-beneficial species, especially the aerobic ones.

So, how can be get an anaerobic environment in home fermentation? That can only be accomplished with a seal that prevents oxygen from entering while an airlock allows carbon dioxide to escape. Without an anaerobic environment, the LABs will not flourish and the acrylamides will not greatly diminish. Open air fermentation will not reduce acrylamides to the same extent due to the lack of LABs. As the bacteria produce carbon dioxide and use up the oxygen, it reduces the population of undesirable, aerobic bacteria and allows the LAB to flourish in the oxygenless environment. The Pickl-It provides this type of environment, as it as an airtight seal and an airlock for the growing carbon dioxide to escape. An open bowl provides a continuous supply of oxygen, never increasing the amount of LAB present and giving an environment that is ideal for the undesirable, aerobic bacteria to flourish. A mason jar would not, either, as it has to be burped regularly to allow the building carbon dioxide to escape. Any time you burp a mason jar, it allows oxygen to rush into the vessel, starting the process all over again. Not burping the jar would cause explosions, as I have had happen in the past. An air-tight vessel with an air lock is the only way to see the LABs flourish and therefore reduce the acrylamide in the potatoes.

This makes sense to me. The examples of ancient fermentation crocks I have seen contained wooden lids and were buried while they ferment. A good example is Korean Kimchi. Ditto for the Icelanders and their fermented shark, called Hakarl, which sits in the ground for 6-12 weeks to ferment. You don’t get air circulation under the ground.

You will notice in the study, that the concentration of LABs used to reduce the acrylamide by 90% was a 1% solution. In order to reach a concentration of 1% in your own kitchen, you need your potatoes to be in an environment where oxygen can not enter for 3-6 days, according to the Handbook of Fermented Functional Foods. If you preview this book on Amazon using their Look Inside! feature, you can read about it on page 402 of this wonderful and very detailed book. Other parts of this book are available on Google Books, if you’d like to read the beginning of the book.

The Recipe

Mmmmm… crispy outside, soft inside, and just the right amount of salt!

Busy Summer on the Mini-Homestead

July 22, 2010 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

This summer has proven to be incredibly busy, much busier than I expected. A few weeks ago, I felt like the Lord was tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to get organized quickly and declutter as much as we can. We have some elderly family members who might need assistance, and we need to prepare for that possibility. So I have kicked myself into high gear, trying to school on our year-round schedule, do my job and handle the garden and daily chores in addition to the extra workload this presented. And we have managed to accomplish everything on a shoestring budget while we save for some needed car and home repairs.

Despite spending time gardening and even expanding our garden, we have lost most of what we planted. What the Mexican bean beetles and squash vine borers didn’t destroy, the chickens did when the town mowed down a post of our garden fence when they were tending the ditch with their machinery. The chickens got in and decimated what was growing in short order. What we have left is some green tomatoes we hope will ripen, about 5 sunflowers that are now over 10 feet tall, and we’re waiting now to see how the potatoes did. The onions are still tiny, despite supposedly being close to time to be pulled. We have replanted the winter squash on Monday and we’re now organizing to put the fall and winter garden in.

The last few weeks I have spent time at the farmer’s market, buying wholesale. The Lord has plopped some incredible deals on produce in our lap. While canning I worked a full week of VBS at our church and managed to wear myself out between the two. We processed our extra roosters over a period of two weeks and sent them to freezer camp. We cleaned out the freezer that needed defrosting and got everything organized in an effort to have enough space to hopefully purchase half of a cow this fall. I found I had one whole shelf full of stock bones that I need to use. I also got all of the remaining meats grouped by type, to better help me plan our meals and use what we have wisely.

I have started setting up ‘centers’ for everything I do at home, where everything needed for that project is centrally located to where the work is performed. I have created centers for laundry, baking, dry goods in use, personal care, herbs, school and work, gardening and more. This inspiration came from listening to Vicki Bentley at the NCHE conference Memorial Day Weekend. Vicki is an excellent speaker, and if you ever have the opportunity to hear her, I highly encourage you to do so. I would be willing to drive to a conference just to hear her speak, she gave so much inspiration, encouragement and practical advice. (You can purchase MP3s of Vicki’s presentations from the conference here.) Her chore and star chart information alone has been a huge help to me in getting my kids motivated to do chores and take initiative without being asked. Vicki said in one of her presentations that if you spend just 5 minutes looking for one item every morning and every evening, you waste over 60 hours a year. I have found that I am going up and down the hallway and the stairs too often because things are not centrally located, and I wish to free up that time so I can accomplish more.

For the baking and dry good centers, I took one cabinet and placed my measuring cups and measuring spoons along with mason jars of xanthan gum, salt, baking soda, baking powder on the bottom shelf. In racks hanging below the cabinet are all of my spices. Each spice has a label on the lid so I don’t have to hunt for the correct one. The rapadura, flours and dry goods are located behind me on a baker’s rack. Each item in stored in a quart to half-gallon size mason jar with a labeled lid. I do not have to take extra steps in the kitchen, saving me time and energy. We also reorganized and deep cleaned the kitchen.

For the laundry center, we reorganized the laundry room so that we now have a rotating system for the clothes hangers, separated by type. Each day when we get dressed, the empty clothes hangers get hung on each bedroom doorknob. One child is tasked with the chore of retrieving all of the clothes hangers, taking them downstairs and putting each hanger where it belongs. This has solved the problems with wrinkled clothing and additional ironing time because it had to be hauled up the stairs after coming out of the dryer while we hunt for the clothes hangers that fit the item. And you know any time kids haul a piece of clothing, it’s bound to wind up wrinkled. 😉 All of the different clothing and fabric types now each have their own bin to facilitate quick sorting and washing of the laundry. We finally installed the utility sink that we purchased in 2007 in the laundry room.

For our school supplies we use daily, we repurposed a rolling cart which is now located within reach of my computer. We also located a bookcase and the filing cabinet beside my desk in order to facilitate school, bill paying and handling my job. Now, when mail comes in, I can handle it immediately and drop it right into the correct file folder in the filing cabinet. Paper doesn’t have to be handled twice, nothing gets lost and I don’t worry about any bills or other important paperwork getting missed. We located a locking cabinet with doors in an unused area of the living room that holds shoe-box sized rubermaid containers. These boxes contain our items that are in pieces, such as the math blocks and flashcards, as well as the games and the small-piece items such as K-nex and Legos.

I updated my household binder (Flylady style) and created binders for family recipes, every mailer I have published, our school records, and the gardening and homesteading records. I also have one binder where I keep info on ideas or things I want to try, build plans for potential projects and the like.

I obtained two rolling carts, one for each child. These carts now hold the library books and are parked beside the homeschool cabinet. These carts are incredibly handy and stop the problem of having to haul the books to the car and into the library, breaking my back. This has just about eliminated our hunting for a book that is due and it keeps the books out of the kid’s bedrooms.

I created two memory card boxes. I used the Simply Charlotte Mason Memory System and made one for our scripture verses and made one for the myriad of other things I wish my children to memorize. We have included everything from family members phone numbers to poems, science and history facts, songs and more. These boxes set atop our rolling school supply cart.

I still have to get the dining room chairs recovered so we can reclaim our dining room table. We are also looking for an effective storage solution for our canning jars, both full and empty. Both of these projects are likely going to take some cash, so I’m looking for the most workable solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg.

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KerryAnn Foster runs Cooking Traditional Foods, the longest running Traditional Foods Menu Mailer on the internet. KerryAnn has over nine years of traditional foods experience and is a former Weston A. Price Foundation chapter leader. Founded in 2005, CTF helps you feed your family nourishing foods they will love. Each mailer contains one soup, five dinners, one breakfast, on dessert and extras. You can learn more about our Menu Mailers at the CTF website. For a free sample Menu Mailer, join our mailing list. You can also join our forum to chat with other traditional foodists and learn more.

Homemade Corn Syrup Replacement Recipe

December 24, 2010 by KerryAnn 4 Comments

One of the biggest problems with holiday foods is avoiding the high fructose corn syrup in products and the corn syrup in your Christmas baking. Even when you decide to make compromise foods, many of them call for corn syrup. That cuts whole classes of recipes out.

After talking with some online friends, I found that some use agave successfully for replacing corn syrup in some dishes, but I couldn’t find where anyone said it had worked well on candies. So I started googling and I found several recipes online to make a corn syrup replacement. This recipe worked the best for us, and is now my go-to so I can make pecan pie and caramels and nougats for Christmas parties.

Corn Syrup Replacement

From the Christmas Menu Mailer
1 cup sugar
¾ cup water
¼ tsp cream of tartar
Pinch salt

Combine everything in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cover. Cook for 3 minutes (this washes down any remaining sugar crystals on the sides of the pan back into the solution so it won’t crystalize later). Uncover and cook to softball stage. Pour into a clean, hot mason jar and cool completely. Will store for a long time in the fridge.

Stretching Soups

January 14, 2011 by KerryAnn Leave a Comment

I posted my curried pumpkin soup a few days ago that I made this past weekend. It was slated to be polished off for today’s lunch, but I didn’t have enough to feed the three of us. I had about 2 servings left in the mason jar and two hungry children plus myself.

This morning I did my Flylady zone work (we’re in the kitchen this week) and found a small amount of green lentil flour I had left over after grinding some for another dish I’ve been working on. A light bulb went off. Lentils work wonderfully to thicken liquids. With a strongly flavored soup like the curried pumpkin, I was pretty sure it would hide any lentil flavor. Whole red lentils have no shell and they dissolve when cooked. Green lentils will hold their shape when cooked. But when ground into flour, it doesn’t matter what type of lentil you’re using, it works beautifully as a thickener. Using cooked red lentils would have worked for me if I had the time to cook them, but it was already lunch time and the kids were asking for something to eat so I went with the flour.

I put a small amount of the soup in the bottom of a saucepan. I whisked in the leftover tablespoon of lentil flour until smooth. Then I whisked in the remaining soup, enough extra stock to make it three servings, and a little coconut milk I had leftover from breakfast. I brought it to a boil, reduced to a simmer and cooked it long enough to make sure the lentil flour was cooked through. It thickened nicely. I did have to adjust the spices since I added stock. The kids didn’t notice any difference and they ate it without a word. SCORE!

Like rice, lentils are low in phytates. I don’t worry about the occasional use of a small amount of unsoaked lentil flour as long as it is well cooked to void any digestive upset uncooked legume products might cause. If you aren’t working on the fly and you can prepare ahead to soak your lentils, I would have whisked the lentil flour with a tiny amount of acidic water (1 cup water to 1 Tbs lemon juice or whey) and allowed it to sit a few hours before cooking lunch.

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Sneaky Herbs

February 22, 2011 by KerryAnn 3 Comments

This past Spring, I joined Herb Mentor and stayed with them for a few months, learning all I could about the use of herbs. One of the tips I picked up is that you can soak an herb in vinegar and use that in your cooking.

I’m always looking for ways to get medicinal herbs into me in ways that don’t resemble forms of torture. I know some of you laugh, but some of herbs I use are especially difficult to get down and I’m the type that can swallow anything. I am totally not picky when it comes to the taste or texture of what I have to swallow, a skill I learned while I was so ill and going through chelation. I found that some of the less palatable root herbs, like dandelion and burdock root, are easily done in vinegar without it becoming a mind-bending flavor.

So I began using the burdock and dandelion vinegars in all sorts of dishes, including uncooked things like my quick honey mustard dip (recipe below). So far, no one has noticed any change in flavors or made any comments. I now soak all of my apple cider vinegar in burdock or dandelion prior to use.

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