Overcome Your Fear of Commitment—to Sourdough and Other Starters

A flip-top jar of bubbly sourdough starter sits on a black table

I can’t look after more than four starters. My ginger bug Mary Ann, my kombucha SCOBY Etheldreda, my sourdough starter Eleanor and my buttermilk Betty all need regular feedings or they’ll die. I take care of this little family in addition to fermenting all sorts of other foods that don’t require starters—kimchi, dill pickles, chutney, […]

Fermentation Tools, Equipment and Ingredients

You can spend lots of money on tools and gadgets designed specifically for making fermented foods—airlocks to let gas escape from jars, lids with small “windows” you open in order to release gas, glorified glass jars rebranded as “small fermentation crocks,” expensive weights, mandolines to cut vegetables quickly and uniformly… These tools all sound nice […]

Garlic-Dill Pickles

Top view of a jar of small cucumbers prepped for garlic dill pickles

For pickles, fermentation was the primary means of preservation until the 1940s, when direct acidification and pasteurization of cucumber pickles was introduced. — The Art of Fermentation Store bought pickles may taste good but to render them shelf-stable, food manufacturers pasteurize the cucumbers in vinegar. On the plus side, they last forever. On the down […]

How to Respond to Critics of Sustainable Living

Updated 06/22/17 Perhaps you’ve taken the Plastic Free July challenge. You’ve banned plastic wrap in your home, started carrying your reusable water bottle everywhere and maybe you’ve started making your own granola. You feel very excited about your progress (as you should)! Then your friends and family criticize you and burst your bubble. Sound familiar? “You don’t […]