Showing posts with label probiotics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label probiotics. Show all posts

Saturday, September 7, 2013

How to Make Sauerkraut

By Lif (“experimentation in the kitchen is fun”) Strand

Sauerkraut, like all fermented and cultured food, is really good for you.  Fermenting improves the nutritional value of food.  It may sound yucky, but anything you eat that is  produced through the breakdown of carbohydrates and proteins by microorganisms such as bacteria, yeasts and molds increases your overall nutrition, promotes the growth of friendly intestinal bacteria, aids digestion and supports your body’s immune function.  But beware!  Commercially prepared fermented and cultured foods have preservatives in them and are no longer “live” foods.  They’re just junk food in disguise.

Oh, and just let me add that fermented beverages - beer, wine, cider - are only sorta good for you, since the alcohol that's produced tends to kill off the friendly bacteria in your guts.  Just sayin'.

Equipment what I used (and/or what normal people use):
·         Large stainless steel bowl (any large bowl would do, I just like stainless steel)
·         Wooden spoon (you don’t really need a spoon, but I had one out on the counter just in case.  Plus I also like wooden kitchen utensils)
·         Stainless steel coffee cup to use for “bruising” the cabbage (you can use your hands or a cooking mallet)
·         Grater
·         Knife to chop pieces that are too floppy for the grater
·         Chopping block
·         Stainless steel fermenting container, holds at least a gallon (ceramic sauerkraut crock, glass container with wide mouth or large canning jars).
·         A dish or something that won’t absorb liquids or react to them (glass or stainless will do) that is just smaller than the diameter of your fermenting container. 

Ingredients:
·         Cabbage (4-5 lbs or so)
·         Salt (1 - 1 ½ tsp per lb to taste)
·         Some other spices if you want (juniper berries, caraway seeds, coriander for European style, or ginger, garlic, hot peppers for more Asian style)

Directions:
1.       Plant some cabbage a few months before you plan to make the sauerkraut.  It’s easier if you use a tight head cabbage, like most everyone is used to seeing in the grocery store.  Loose headed cabbage is fine, though - practically any veggie can be fermented. 
2.      Buy a couple heads of cabbage after you give up on growing your own.  They should add up to about 4-5 lbs.
3.      While your cabbage is still green and crispy (before it gets all yellow and soft because you either forgot about it or kept putting the project off), first clean them, then peel off the outer leaves and put them aside.  Shred the rest (except for the hard stem part) into sauerkraut sized pieces.  You can do this slowly and tediously with a knife, or you can use a hand grater or maybe even a food processer – whatever you use, make sure the pieces are thin.
4.      Every few cups worth that you’ve shredded and put into your bowl, sprinkle some salt over the cabbage and pound it with the stainless steel cup (or squeeze and mash with your hands).  When you’re done with all the shreds, they should be kind of beat up and soggy.  Taste the cabbage – you want to taste some salt flavor but you don’t want it real salty. If it’s too salty, add more shredded cabbage or rinse part of it with water, drain and mix back into the batch in the bowl.
5.      Add your spices and mix well.  I wanted caraway seed but I didn’t have any, so I put in powdered coriander, dill (because I like it) and a good amount of ground cumin (because I really, really like cumin and besides, cumin seeds look like caraway seeds, so that’s pretty close).  I also went outside and gathered about a teaspoon’s worth of ripe juniper berries.  I’m not fond of gin so I figured a few berries - maybe 15 - would go a long ways.
6.      Shovel all that cabbage out of the bowl and into the fermenting container – the crock or jars or whatever.  Note that if you didn’t have a large container, you can still do this with a few smaller containers if they’re at least a quart each.  You want at least 3 inches between the packed cabbage and the top of the jar.  Pack it in tightly – the nice thing about glass is that you can see air bubbles, but oh well, I was using stainless steel, so it was a matter of smushing it with my stainless steel cup.  The cabbage shreds are supposed to be submerged in their own liquid.  Oops.  Mine was all moist and soggy but as much as I packed the cabbage with the cup the vegetable matter wasn’t going to be submerged in liquid.  Add a little water if you have to – just enough so that the shreds are fully submerged, because any veggie stuff that’s exposed to air will rot (ewwww!)
7.      Arrange the leaves you set aside earlier over the top of all the shredded cabbage, making sure the shreds are totally covered.
8.      Now you need a weight to make sure the shreds stay below the liquid and away from the air.  Place your weight on top of the leaves – it could be a plate or bowl or even be a resealable plastic bag with rocks inside.  A plate is good because as long as the water is above it, you know your cabbage isn’t exposed to the air.  You don’t want a whole bunch of water, mind you, but you want that cabbage covered.  A little mold might form in your crock, but if it’s just surface stuff just scrape it away and remove anything that’s discolored compared to the rest.  Let your nose tell you:  Sauerkraut doesn’t smell great but it shouldn’t smell rotten.
9.      Over the first 24 hours keep your cabbage at room temperature.  Check it 3 to 4 times and press it down to make sure that the water level rises to just above the cabbage.  Any time that there isn't enough water to completely cover the cabbage, mix a brine in the proportions of 1 teaspoon of sea salt with 1 cup of water and add brine to just above the level of the cabbage.
10.  For the first few days, store at room temperature, then move your crock to a cooler location, such as a basement.  You can cover it if you want, but remember, this is fermentation and pressure can build up so if you’ve got a good seal, burp it every day or two, especially in the beginning when it’ll be bubbling – hey, that’s what happens in beer, too.
11.  The rest is up to the sauerkraut gods.  The cabbage ferments all by itself – the microbes that do it are on the leaves (and on those juniper berries I added).  Let it do its thing for a week and then give it a taste.  Check every week until it’s sour as you like.  That could be a soon as a week, but if it’s cooler or if there weren’t so many microbes on the leaves it will take longer.  Just remember, fermented foods are the most potent source of beneficial bacteria (probiotics) there is.  The longer sauerkraut ferments the more probiotic support it offers your digestive system, and isn’t that why you are doing this in the first place?  No?  You just wanted to make Reuben sandwiches? 
12.  Store it in the fridge in its own container or in tightly sealed jars at that point to stop the fermentation – it’ll keep for months, because it is alive!

Disclaimer:  I’m an irreverent cook and  stuff I make rarely comes out the same two times in a row.  Follow these directions at your own risk!


Sunday, March 24, 2013

52 Weeks to Preparedness Week 12

 52 WEEKS TO FAMILY PREPAREDNESS FOR TWO

WEEK #12

Follow this for painless preparedness that will get you going on the path to being ready for catastrophic events and that, at the end of the year, will leave you in the best position to thrive in the event of any emergency.

You can do this! The cost is spread out over a full year, plus you will have a year to work out your storage. Substitute where appropriate depending on personal needs/requirements.


Food Storage  30 lbs of wheat
Extra Item  11 lbs of macaroni or spaghetti

72 Hour Kit  NON-PRESCRIPTION DRUGS
Place the following in a Ziploc bag:
Children's aspirin (81 mg), adult aspirin or NSAID, vitamins (if you already take them), laxative, Aloe Vera, bug repellent, anti-diarrhea, cough drops and other items as desired.   (Note that probiotics are excellent during times of stress.)






Preparedness: Probiotics


This article is about Probiotics for horses but Probiotics are good for people, too, so KEEP READING!

Originally posted on Facebook by Lif Strand on Friday, November 12, 2010 at 1:59pm

Disclaimer: The information provided here on probiotics is not a substitute for veterinary care or your own research.  Keep in mind that some veterinarians may know little about probiotics or support a nutritional approach to health and healing and may not support your use of probiotics.

Probiotics are "good" gut bacteria. They work with enzymes and such to break down food enough to allow nutrients to be absorbed. Probiotics keep intestines clean by feeding on putrefied waste, fungi, harmful bacteria, yeast, poisons and other nasty substances. These bacteria also aid the body in producing essential elements such as hormones, vitamins and proteins needed for proper growth, immune function and healing. Good gut health is key to a healthy immune system.

Unrelieved or sufficiently intense stress, whether from emotional or physiological causes, kills off the good gut bacteria, resulting in a nasty feedback cycle wherein the body becomes more stressed because of inability to metabolize nutrients and the presence of stress hormones, which causes more stress, and so on.

Physical things that may cause stress kill-off of good gut bacteria include but are not limited to: Dehydration, alcohol (can happen with feeds that ferment in the gut), diets high in fat and protein that are not immediately utilized by the horse’s body, large quantities of sugars, the chlorine and fluorine so often found in our drinking water, antibiotics, other drugs, illness, fever, and overheating.

Some studies have been done linking the presence of adequate numbers of probiotics in the gut and mood in humans. "Gut immunity and neuro-immunity are intimately bound, sharing the same receptors and the same signals. Information that initiates in the gut ends up in the brain and vice versa, providing a comprehensive cross talk between the two sets of tissues." http://www.nleducation.co.uk/resources/reviews/a-novel-approach-to-treating-depression-how-probiotics-can-shift-mood-by-modulating-cytokines/. There is no reason to assume there would not be the same relationship between gut and emotions in horses as well.

I have myself seen a direct relationship between flooding a horse's gut with probiotics and behavior improvement - particularly with mares!

I don't recommend any particular brand, but I do highly recommend making sure that if you're using a probiotic powder that is supposed to be refrigerated that your source is refrigerating it! Also, a DDS-1 strain of acidophilus is preferred because DDS-1 acidophilus can handle the acid environment of the stomach much better than other strains. You do not need to get anything fancy that's got specialized bacteria, either, and don't bother spending big money on probiotics - anything that costs a lot has got other ingredients in it to pump up the price. The bacteria themselves are inexpensive to produce and therefore should not cost that much.

Probiotics for a horse in need

You can readily get probiotics for horses in two forms: Feed stores sell it in tubes and in bulk as a powder. Buy both forms: Get two tubes and one tub of the powder - it's not expensive at all.

The instructions on tube probiotics generally have you spread out several doses from one tube - but instead, give one tube in the morning, one tube in the evening. The flavor is nice so generally horses aren't resistant to the stuff.

The next day start giving the powdered probiotic in a small amount of low-energy moist feed (e.g. beet pulp mixed with Bermuda blend pellets or grass pellets if you can find them), well soaked. Whatever the probiotics directions are, feed about twice the dose three times a day for a few days, then twice the dose twice a day for a few days, then the regular dose twice a day for a while, maybe forever, depending on how your horse responds.

I buy powdered probiotics for equines at $12 for a half pound container from my feed store (refrigerated). The label says there are 48 servings in the container. My 27 year old mare was on it till the day she died to help keep up her weight and I give some to my stallion to help him keep even, and I take it too. Of course, you can buy acidophilus for humans almost anywhere nowadays, and you may prefer taking capsules rather than dealing with a powder.

The brand I get is Super Pro-Biotic manufactured by Animal Health of Eugene Oregon. It has just 4 kinds of bacteria, including acidophilus DDS-1. Any brand will do as long as it doesn’t contain fillers, the acidophilus is the DDS-1 strain, and you trust that it’s been kept refrigerated.

Probiotics for dogs & cats

While I have seen good results using horse probiotics for dogs, I recommend getting a blend that is made specifically for carnivores, as different bacteria flourish in and support different pH in the gut.  Meat eaters need more bifidus for a more acid environment than herbivores (plant eaters), which benefit more from the alkaline gut that they get from acidophilus.

Probiotics for people

I'm not a doctor, not a nutritionist or a scientist qualified by virtue of a degree or license to give nutritional advice, so I'm not.  Reread the above info about animals.  Use your brain.  If you can't use your brain, in my opinion you for sure need to be taking probiotics.  Seems to me that if probiotics work for horses, then any human who lives a stressful life (which is most everyone nowadays) would benefit from them.  I'd go without almost any nutritional supplement at all (except for L-lysine) before I'd go without probiotics.




More info:
Here's a link to the article on probiotics and their relationship to depression. 
Wikipedia info on probiotics
Harvard Medical School on probiotics
Mayo Clinic on probiotics
WebMD on probiotics