Full Scoop on Fermentation

If you’re following me on Facebook and/or Instagram, you know that I attended an absolutely ah-mmaazinggg fermentation workshop last month. It’s taken me a few weeks to integrate all the juicy info, but I didn’t forget! Today I want to share some of the cool stuff I learned and of course, give ya a recipe to try. 😉

Fermentation, which is actually the transformative action of any micro-organism, was first harnessed by humans over 9,000 years ago to prevent food from spoiling. Good and bad bacteria exist everywhere. If you help the good bacteria become dominant and lactic acid builds up, you can actually delay the decay of food without any crazy additives or refrigeration. In fact, when the fridge first came out, people actually (and some still do!) called it the fermentation slowing device. Crazy, right?

Although many of us don’t often eat fermented vegetables, our diet includes a lot of fermented products: bread, cheese, yogurt, coffee, tea, alcohol, mustard, and more. You’d be surprised how unforeign fermentation is to your body, actually. And that’s because there are a lot of benefits. Fermentation jumpstarts the digestion process and lends anticarcinogenic (cancer fighting) qualities to your food. It also increases your immune system! Regardless of what hand sanitizer and cleaning product commercials tell you, bacteria is the only thing that protects against bacteria {tweet that!}.

So stop making excuses and incorporate fermented veggies into your diet ASAP, if you don’t already. It’s even pretty easy to make yourself (which I highly recommend so you can eat some at all stages of fermentation). Need some advice on where to start? Get my quick and easy whole brined veggie recipe here.

PS. Did you totally just eat all that up? Ashevillage got such good feedback about the workshop they decided to host another one this August. Head here for exclusive access.