Jane Casey's Kitchen

Lacto-femented foods are full of good bacteria and nutrients!

The good bacteria that resides throughout your intestinal tract accounts for 70% of your immune system.  It helps detoxify carcinogens, stimulates the bowels, improves the assimilation of nutrients and vitamins, and synthesizes vitamins like K and a few of the B vitamins.

To sum it up, lacto-fermented foods help build your immune system and detoxify your liver.

In May, I attended Autism One, a conference I attend every year.   This year I came across one of my favorite probiotics; Theralac.  I decided to use it as a culture starter to make lacto-fermented cabbage.  I usually use a culture starter that I buy on line from Canada, but I decided to give this a try.

The cabbage is truly amazing; both in flavor and in texture.

To my surprise, my family enjoyed it from the beginning and now we eat  a tablespoon of lacto-fermented cabbage with our  lunch, dinner and snacks.

Here is the recipe that I am using:

Lacto-fermented cabbage

Ingredients:

2-3 heads organic red or green cabbage (green is easiest to start with)

3 Theralac probiotics or  Culture starter like Caldwell’s

1-2 tablespoons salt.   I use either Celtic sea salt or Himalayan sea salt.

filtered water

Kitchen Equipment:

Cutting board, and Knife or food processor

4 large Mason jars with lids

3 bowls

• Chop cabbage finely or use a food processor.  Put all ingredients (except water and culture starter or probiotic) in a large bowl.

• Add salt to chopped cabbage.
• Dissolve the culture starter or probiotic in a cup of room temperature water and set aside for 10 minutes.  This will activate the starter.
• Put the water and culture starter in with the cabbage and salt and massage with your hands for about five to ten minutes.

• Place the mixture into the glass Mason  jars and press down leaving one inch from the top.
• Make sure the cabbage is submerged under water in the containers.
• Put the lids on the containers and let it sit for five to ten days.

• Eat!
• Refrigerate after five to ten days.

Our family just finished moving for the third time in 15 months. This particular move has been great because we are moving into the city of Portland. This move allows our family to do everything we need to by foot. This includes our trips to church, school, the grocery store, train, bus you get the idea.

The past couple of weeks our diet has suffered. We were in the process of packing and I just kept forgetting about dinner.   So we would go to the store and buy some frozen food to cook for dinner. I was so thankful that there was frozen GF foods to choose from. But at the end of the week when we put our recycling bin out I looked at all of the cardboard packing I had used.

I am counting my blessings that the food was available, but now it is time to start cooking from scratch again. And my first dish is a fabulous Serbian navy bean recipe.

Stay posted this week. I am in the process of  soaking the beans.