Hey Urban Scout-
How is the fermenting going? Do you have any recipes to share with us. I know dairy products aren’t super wild but are people interested in having articles on how to make yogurt and paneer cheese over on the wiki? I can do that.
Hey Pennyscout, I’ve been wanting to share a really great ferment i’ve discovered called ‘Gundru’. It comes originally from nepal, and is unique in that all it requires are the greens of any plant in the brassica family. No salt,
no water, nothing but the greens and the living bacteria on them.
I took some rutabaga greens, let them wilt in the sun, then crushed them with a rolling pin to get the juices flowing. Then just cram them into a glass jar, mashing them in as hard as i can to get the juices out as i go. The idea is to get as much greens stuck in the jar as possible and so mashed in that they are submerged in their own green juice. After accomplishing this i let it sit in a warm room for three weeks with the lid on, after which they magically become pungent, tart, complex, enzyme filled delicious gundru. I love my sauerkraut but this is way better - less civilized. I’m making some now with feral kale i gathered - a bona fide wild ferment we’ll all be able to enjoy after the apocalypse!
oooh, i’m definitely interested in how to make yogurt.
here’s my two cents on the rewild philosophy: i don’t feel like–within our generation, at least–that we’re going to be able to achieve a level of feralism comparable to pre-columbian america or any untouched-by-civilization society, for that matter. we have all been raised, entrenched, steeped in civilization from our births, and we will carry some of its stench to our graves. also, when we do get the chance to begin to fully live anything like an uncivilized life, it will be as the civ is going down. we won’t be able to walk out of our apartments and mortgaged homes and immediately join a tribe with a tradition and heritage that teach us how to live. we’ll be surviving as we begin that heritage ourselves. so anything that we can do along the way to get by, even if it builds off the fruits of civilization will be important to our survival. if there are dairy cows or goats around, i’m going to milk them. if i can stretch the longevity of that milk by fermenting it into cheese and yogurt, then i’ll do it.
sorry if i hijacked your post, penny. but i feel like anything that helps us get through the downfall of civilization is pertinent to this forum and to the wiki.
</end rant>
Penny,
I’d love for you to add some yogurt recipes to the field guide! I’m about to make another batch of sauer kraut, so I’ll take photos this time and build a wiki page in a few days.
Miles,
That’s rad! Would you be willing to do it again, take photos, and make a field guide article for it? That would be awesome!
Miles-
hey man! i made kale gundru too, a couple years back! No wait…actually I think I used collards. I really didn’t like it that much at the time, but your success has inspired me to try again with different greens.
yay for gundru!
Urban Scout -
Sure thing, i’ll document my next batch for the wiki
Willem -
Yea it is definetely a complex flavor, the first few bites i was really trying to figure out if it was ‘fermented’ or ‘rotten’. After those first bites i was in love with it though - yay for gundru indeed!
Miles-
do you know if the fermenting process takes any of the bitterness out of really bitter wild mustards? That would be useful and that’s what I’ve got to work with here.
I don’t know how it will work with them really bitter greens - only one way to find out. What it will do (fermenting) i imagine is neutralize the antinutrients that brassica greens carry, and atleast complement the overwhelming bitter flavor with some tangy, pungent and smoky flavors.
Whaaaaa!? Antinutrients in brassica greens! You’ve broken my heart. I never heard of such a thing before.
The antinutrient is called goitrogen - it supresses thyroid function, hence the ‘goiter’ in its name. Found in soybeans too. Apparently good saturated fats elevate thyroid function though, maybe balancing other factors.
In any case i deeply apologize for the wounds i’ve inflicted, Willem
As previously mentioned, I’ve been buying raw milk from a local farm. So I would like some kefir starter and I would like to get “good” stuff but the websites confuse me all saying our stuff is the best, the other stuff sucks, it won’t work. I don’t know what to do. I checked out the body ecology diet website but that smiling picture of Donna Gates in the corner annoys me and I’m reluctant to buy her trademarked crap. Not to rag on you guys who follow the diet, it’s similar to a ton of other health diets so I’m sure there is something to it, but I can’t stand the commercialness of that site. Only use these pans, try this kitchenware, buy my book, buy this expensive stuff from me.
There’s got to be a better way. I want to follow a diet that is adaptable and regionally based, and open to all people. Not something where moneymaking is so obviously an objective, that requires me to buy bottles of their product, and things like baby coconut or coconut oil that besides being imported from other countries aren’t even available in my local stores. End rant. Approach point. Does anyone have a bit of kefir starter that works that maybe they could trade me?
There are so many things I don’t know because everyone just wants you to buy their stuff. Once you have it going is there a way to dry it for future use if you aren’t going to save part of the last batch of stuff you made all the time? Like what happens if you put a bunch of yogurt or kefir in the food dehydrator? Then I’m thinking for after the collapse. Like can you make new yogurts out of bacteria in the air by trial and error like you can make sourdough bread or is it something that absolutely has to be passed down? I don’t really get the whole thing. Like you know how most yogurt is made of S. thermophilus and L. acidophilus? Can it be made of something totally different? If so will it taste different? Was there once a yogurt diversity in the world that we have made into a yogurt monoculture through our regulations? Or is yogurt pretty much yogurt?
All Kefir “culture starters”/powders enter the world via the laboratory. Screw that! Check out:
http://www.torontoadvisors.com/Kefir/kefir-list.php
and find a nearby person who you could get a REAL LIVE Kefir grain, the living breathing colony of thousands of interacting and interdependent species. The laboratory-crafted starters only contain at most a half-dozen different lactobacilli strains, if that.
The history of the kefir grain tells a magnificent story in and of itself. I don’t know why they decided to domesticate the grain in the lab, but they found they couldn’t, so they have “kefir starters” instead, which don’t match the power of the grains, which look like little squishy cauliflowers or brains.
yummy, I know. good luck!
Thanks Willem, squishy cauliflower brains do sound yummy actually, like a living dumpling. What does it taste like if you just put the grain straight into your mouth?
it tastes like something squishy and gross coated in kefir. 
[quote=“Miles, post:10, topic:169”]The antinutrient is called goitrogen - it supresses thyroid function, hence the ‘goiter’ in its name. Found in soybeans too. Apparently good saturated fats elevate thyroid function though, maybe balancing other factors.
In any case i deeply apologize for the wounds i’ve inflicted, Willem [/quote]
Yay! Just found this thread. I want to try this fermented gundru stuff! I am also familiar with goitrogens, as I have hypothyroidism and am supposed to not eat brassica family veggies raw (supposedly cooking/steaming kills most of the goitrogens). And I used to be vegan but am no longer because, well, I ate a lot of soy, like almost all my diet was based on it, so I think it contributed to my thyroid condition! Booo for soy!! Coconut oil is the best for thyroid support! I used to use it for all my oil needs, but haven’t for a while because I just haven’t gotten to a grocery store that has it!
The kombucha mushroom people, Sitting around all day, Who can believe you, Who can believe you, Let your mother pray, (sugar)
yay kombucha, I love it! my friend grows this in Portland but I have never tried it… do you know how to initially get a culture “mushroom”? do you just let a jar sit out?
I’ve purchased Kombucha at ahealth food store, and had Kombucha running for several weeks before I forgot about it. It was very healthy, very cleansing. Didn’t really adjsut to it, so I left it behind. I think just leaving it out opens you up to all kinds of weird bacteria-fungi. Stamets talks about in his book Growing Gourmet and Medicinal Mushrooms about his attempt to determine the actual content, but couldn’t get a patent because of the complex of species, by today’s scientific standards, is ‘contaminated’ and cannot be raised with the same effects without growing together. I think the particular complex of species from the indigenious area is what makes it possible.
wow, thanks emily, i forgot about this thread! also you reminded me to investigate two jars of gundru on my counter from june. the radish greens smelled absolutely putrid. but the cilantro/spinach jar had a really odd unfamiliar flavor, interesting, will continue to experiment with eating it. i think you can take the next step and dry it to flavor soups and whatnot. maybe i’ll try that this time.
kefir–weird, intriguing, tasty milk-beer turned into a high maintenance pet with a proclivity for expensive and sometimes difficult to procure raw milk and soon wore out its welcome with me despite outrageous health benefits. i think i ate 'em.
my two cents on kombucha? i don’t fear the mystery fungi some warn about, EVERYTHING i ferment is a mystery culture, a way of intertwining my body further with the communities of tiny critters that haunt my local air–my microbioregion! i strongly suspect that the acetobacter (acetic-acid making bacteria–vinegar!) dominates the whole community if you leave it long enough (which i tend to do). yes, if you buy a bottle of the unpasteurized kind and leave it out, you’ll get a scoby. works best in a wider-mouthed container for max air exposure. i recently discovered a scoby that looks just like my kombucha mothers in a nearly empty bottle (capped) of raw apple cider vinegar. things that make ya go hmmmm. . .
about the brassica goitrogen thing, i read of some controversy recently on another list about whether fermenting neutralizes it. i think the “final” word from the sally fallon camp said the goitrogen survives fermentation. so, eat other stuff too! moderation.
Check out thishttp://users.chariot.net.au/%7Edna/kefir_brine.html It’s how to preserve food with kiefer, even meat.