Shannon Stonger - Traditionally Fermented Foods

Traditionally Fermented Foods

Innovative Recipes and
Old-Fashioned Techniques
for Sustainable Eating

Shannon Stonger

founder of Nourishing Days and writer for Cultures for Health

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For Cynthia, for your friendship and for telling me,
in no uncertain terms, to write a book.

When the food we ate tasted of the soil from which it came, there were no large freezers to keep our food in for the winter. When able bodies were needed to work the land, true nourishment from the food on your plate was one of your most valuable resources. And when laundry was washed by hand, gardens needed planting and water was heated on the wood stove, fermentation was a part of the everyday workings of a traditional food(s) kitchen.

This sounds like the pioneer storybooks of our childhood, but it is also my reality, or at least part of it. For at least twelve years now, I have known that I wanted toand needed to, reallypursue what is commonly called homesteading. For ten of those years, both on- and off-grid, I have been practicing what has become an invaluable tool in our homestead kitchen: fermentation.

As a newlywed, I hesitantly put a bowl of milk inoculated with a bit of yogurt into a pilot-lit oven. Eight hours later it wobbled its way into my refrigerator. Homemade yogurt soon became a weekly mainstay that aided us in pinching penniesso that we could pay off student loans; so that we could buy a couple of acres of land.

A year later, I felt more of a push to get away from industrialized foods and embrace local food culture and a DIY lifestyle. Not surprisingly, this sudden conviction coincided with the birth of our first child, as these things often do.

And so I began fermenting farmers market vegetables and storing them in half-gallon jugs in our refrigerator, bringing together my desires for nourishing traditional foods and local, homegrown foods. We planted our first garden in the backyard of a rental. I hung laundry with a baby in a sling, dirt under my fingernails and kefir smoothies fueling my morning.

The more in touch I became with the land, the more fermentation seemed an outpouring of my desire to give our children a more sustainable way of life. It became a tool that I would come to use more and more when we finally made the jump to live off-grid.

Sourdough baking, milk kefir making and kombucha brewing all became a regular part of my week. I was at home raising babies while continuing my lifelong interest in science. Many thought my chemistry degree was going unused but I was harnessing food chemistry to benefit our health and forward our homestead dreams. To this day I am amazed at how fermentation weaves together the threads of my life.

Eventually we did move off-grid, though we are not the Little House on the Prairiehomesteaders you may envision. We are somewhere between where we were and where wed like to be, chopping firewood and hauling water one minute, running laptops and the Internet off of solar panels the next. We buy weekly groceries and order bulk grains online; make kefir from our goat milk and ferment okra pickles from our garden.

Our reality, when juxtaposed with our goals, makes the simple life seem like a misnomer.

I try to remember that these things are not built in a day; that starting from scratch may mean our generation will see few of the benefits our children will. Mostly, we just try to keep planting and fermenting with the hope that the heritage we leave is one of proper stewardship.

I get asked a lot by those who read the Nourishing Days blog about the why behind the life that weve chosen. A cookbook could not encompass all of those reasons, nor should it. But I will attempt to share one of these reasons as it pertains to food and agriculture.

It is estimated that approximately 2 percent of the population of the nation I inhabit practices some form of agriculture. And yet the other 98 percent of us must eat, too. That this fact is startling to me is an understatement; that the fruit of this is large corporations controlling our food system and poisoning our children for profit cannot come as a surprise.