Category Archives: Cultured/fermented foods

The leaky gut and the gastroenterologist

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StethoscopemirrorA couple of weeks ago, I accompanied a friend of mine to an appointment with her gastroenterologist. She has serious, chronic gut issues, and was meeting with him to discuss them. (She asked me to come along because I take good notes, might think of additional questions, and could more or less act as her advocate.)

I liked her M.D. He was thoughtful, responsive, open to questions, and in general didn’t have the “I’m a doctor, therefore your questions are irrelevant, mere mortal” attitude that some physicians unfortunately have. (And he told her the surgery wouldn’t help her symptoms.) However, when I asked him about the possibility of testing her for leaky gut, he looked kindly at me and said, “Conventional medicine doesn’t believe in leaky gut.” Continue reading →

Recipe: Sauerkraut, Pecorino and Ricotta Pancakes

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This is brief, but I just saw this recipe (thank you, Tasting Table, you’re one of my favorite inbox distractions) for an unusual appetizer and think it looks fabulous. Look at the ingredients: sauerkraut, whole milk ricotta and pecorino. I’d switch it up a bit and use sprouted flour in place of the all-purpose (or, for those avoiding grains completely, about 1/4 cup coconut flour), but everything else is spot on in terms of Weston Price-friendly cooking and eating.

Let me know if you make it and how you like it!

Tasting Table SF: Sauerkraut, Pecorino and Ricotta Pancakes | TastingTable Recipes.

Are all bugs bad?

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I’m thinking about the inevitability of bugs. Specifically, the ones that populate us humans. And about how people seem determined to paint all bugs with one brush – the “bad bug” brush.

I got thinking about this again after reading one of a number of articles about the possibility of a man in Massachusetts having been infected with brucellosis from drinking raw milk from a local farm. Brucellosis is a disease that has not been seen pretty much anywhere for decades, so it was exceedingly odd to have a possible case show up out of nowhere. But there were several stories about it, along with the usual reminders of “you see what can happen if you drink unpasteurized milk!” (This morning the news quietly came out that it wasn’t brucellosis after all, and that the milk was clean. I say “quietly” because there was only one brief article about it in Food Poison Journal – no mention from all the other sources.)

What I thought particularly revealing about the original article, and why it inspired this post, was its title: “I’ll Take Some Bacteria With my Raw Milk.” Continue reading →

Cooking the talk (mid-January): Basic vegetable recipe

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No photos this time, sorry – it was cold and we were hungry!!! I’ll take some photos tonight and do a second post.

Last night, we had:

  • Wild salmon (frozen, from Janae’s at the farmer’s market)
  • Broccoli/carrot/onion/parsnip (various sources, all FM except the broccoli which was Whole Foods)
  • Housemade green sauerkraut (a touch of caraway, new batch)
  • Flourless chocolate cake (Dagoba/Green & Black chocolate, Springhill butter, coconut sugar, farmer’s market eggs, arrowroot)

It was just lovely, and the main course took maybe half an hour. Even the cake took only about 20 minutes to mix up, so I put it in the oven around 5 so it would have time to cool nicely after baking, and we ate dinner about 7.

Easy basic vegetable sauté Continue reading →

Culturing buttermilk and other yummy things (including a handy tip)

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Buttermilk culture

When I was at the Weston A. Price conference last November in Dallas, I got a few of Cultures for Health‘s outstanding – and beautifully packaged – cultures. I’d gotten a couple of their sourdough cultures last year, and they were terrific. So I sprang for a buttermilk culture. I love buttermilk. I can never find it made from raw milk, so the idea of culturing my own yummy buttermilk from some good Organic Pastures or Clavarale Dairy milk – well, how could I possibly resist?

(By the way, nobody ever mentions the fact that one takes on a certain amount of responsibility when starting to play with renewable cultures.  Continue reading →