Another way to ferment vegetables and fruit

 This morning our Simple Living Group held a fermentation workshop at Food for Life. The presenter was Elspeth Haswell-Smith who is a women's health coach. We were given a list of ingredients to bring along but salt wasn't on the list and we wondered if it was left off by mistake as I am quite keen to start fermenting with my sea salt I bought at the Farmers' Market recently. However, Elspeth doesn't use salt but kefir starter culture and yoghurt starter culture instead.

After explaining the benefits of using the starter cultures we set to work with cutting up our veggies and fruit....

...and this was what our table looked like after a couple of minutes. It wasn't long before my hands were red and covered in beetroot and red cabbage juices so few photos were taken after this one.

 

One of the ladies at the table was being very artistic.

There were a variety of vegetables used by everyone. We had 24 at the workshop and I don't think two bottles looked the same at the end.

I didn't ferment any fruit separately although I did add one apple to my vegetables to see how it turned out but some people were using apples, dates, lemons etc.

This is Elspeth with Margy our Simple Living Toowoomba co-ordinator. 

This is the Kefir Starter from Kultured Wellness and which can also be bought from Food for Life. It sells for $40 and can be used for several ferments before losing its potency. There is some interesting information about this culture and the yoghurt culture on Kultured Wellness so take a look at the various articles if you are interested in gut health.

 

This is a recipe book that is included in the kit that Elspeth had for sale today with the starters cultures, coconut cream, etc. It is available as an eBook or a hard copy and I bought the eBook today online as it is a little cheaper.

I have yet to sort out how cashew cheese is made but it did look very colourful. 

This was the kefir starter culture already made up and we were all given a portion to add to our vegetables.

This was the yoghurt starter culture. 

I did buy a Probiotic Dairy and Vegetable Culture a couple of years ago from Green Living Australia which thankfully lasts from 2 to 5 years in the freezer as I have forgotten about it to be honest and usually use salt when fermenting veggies as Sandor Katz makes it look so easy. However I should get it out and use it up very soon as I am not quite sure when I bought it. 

So all in all it was another very interesting workshop. There is a cafe at Food for Life which is called

Primal Urge and it is just across the road from our major shopping centre Grand Central.  If you happen to be in town and want to have some healthy food then call in and there are also other products apart from the starter cultures on sale there as well.

Today is the last day of our warm weather as the temperatures of 23C or so have been well above our winter average but tomorrow we are back to our cold mornings and 17C days but is has been nice to be able to shed the layers of winter clothes for a few days. I could cope with 6C to 23C year round I think. It is easier to sleep on cool nights :-)