I get told all the time, “I would eat healthy if I could afford it.” The truth is you can eat healthy and save money and I am not talking about eating skimpy tasteless foods. We are talking about foods that pack a health punch that many entrepreneurs would love to package and sell. I am talking about Lacto-Fermented foods. Yes, them again. When you find a good thing you want to shout it from the hills.
Fermenting Food Is Cheap
You will be using common regular vegetables for most of your fermenting projects. A couple of heads of cabbage will make a great sauerkraut and what did that cost? A few dollars? Around here we make it a half gallon at a time. Yup a half-gallon of sauerkraut. We are talking stuff that makes your mouth just wanna say mor-…, sorry should not talk with my mouth full. 🙂 And this food is packed with vitamins and active enzymes, “Best Ever” Lacto-fermented Sauerkraut * How about a snack for the kids? We always have a jar of what we call Carrot Pickles in the fridge door ready for the kids. Can you believe that our kids are learning to snack on vegetables. What kind of health costs will they save them over their lives! It took only a dollar or so of carrots to fill the jar and keeps the kids in snacks for 2 weeks. Some friends of ours make them by the half-gallon because their kids snack on them so much! See Lacto-Fermenting: The Easy & Healthy Way, for the recipe on Carrot Pickles.
The hardware needed for fermenting foods is affortable and lasts for years. A few jars and some Lacto-fermentation Air-lock Kits are not a giant investment. Pennies when you look at how much food you can produce. Shannon is still using the proto-type fermenting kits I put together, I do hear comments, “When can I get some of the neat kits my readers are using?” Honestly I think she is getting some of the kits, after all I only made a few proto-types and I see 3 times as many jars being fermented. Maybe I need to do the math. Lacto-fermentation Air-lock Kit
Preserves The Food
Foods that have been fermented last much longer than un-fermented foods in the fridge. I mean look at that sauerkraut, it lasts nearly 6 months in the fridge, try that with your head of raw cabbage. Now you see why we make a half-gallon at a time. We only have to make it once every few months, sadly it never really lasts 6 months, somehow the jar ends up empty before then. Talk about taste, as these foods age in the fridge some of them do get better and better tasting. After all the live probiotics that are preserving the foods are still active.
Have a large harvest of vegetables from the garden, put some of them up by fermenting them. Wow! Your own great tasting foods completely off the grid. It is so rewarding in the fall when it is getting cold out to be eating on some of your own “homegrown” and fermented foods.
Eat Less Food
Yes, lacto-fermenting causes you to eat less food, well maybe… The foods do taste so good and since they are new, at first you will want to eat them all up. Overtime though you will find that you may eat less food overall, because the fermented foods are so nutrient dense. Basically, the enzymes and vitamins become enriched or “super-charged” so you don’t have to eat as much volume of food, to get the nutrition your body needs. If you want to know a secret this is one of the concepts I use with my Clients when consulting them about weight-loss. Eat better nutritionally and you will lose weight naturally. If you want to read more about how fermenting helps make nutrient dense foods, see the benefits section of Lacto-Fermenting: The Easy & Healthy Way.
Get Me Some Fermented Foods
There is one drawback of fermented foods. If you want some you will have to make them yourself or find someone else who makes them to mooch off of, the latter of which I do. Now let me share a fact for all the guys.
(Women please don’t read past this point. 😉 )
Ok guys listen up, I can’t say this very loud. Making fermented foods is really an easy thing to do and yes even us with 2 thumbs can do it. I even know of a few guys that made some, but we keep it a secret. After all if the women learned we can do some cooking and are not totally helpless in the kitchen, what would be next, dish-pan hands? 😉
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