My girlfriend and I have gotten into a discussion about the impact of fermented food on your gut health. The positions are between A) it is more beneficial for your gut health due to it being fermented or B) there is no documented benefit that goes beyond what eating a similar serving of raw vegetables would do.

Can you help us settle this?? Thanks in advance

I’m in search of kefir grains in the Katy, Houston area. I want to attempt making kefir at home. TIA.

Did this blackberry gingerbug coat all four walls, the ceiling, floor, everything I'm wearing and escape into the hallway? Yes, yes it did.

I'm looking forward to spending my weekend repainting 😅

1. soak cracked olives in fresh water for two days to debitter them.

2. 10% salt brine (of the water weight) with lemon slices & green chilli pepper + any aromatics of your choice.

3. they're ready to eat at 3-4 weeks. and can keep fermenting for up to 2-3months.

Cool fact: traditionally to measure 10% of salt, they used to put an egg in the water and keep adding salt until the egg floats since scientifically eggs float at 10%-12%.

Left is Sereno, jalapeno, tomatillo, garlic and onion with a bell pepper cap. Right is habanero, garlic, shallot, onion and green apple.

Red cabbage, green cabbage (about 5 days old), beets (1 day old).

I started this process by making a batch of tepache and then I reused the fermented pineapple from the tepache to attempt a batch of pineapple vinegar.

My pineapple vinegar has been in the process for 23 days now.

Is this skim (mother? scoby?) what I want in vinegar? It was sitting on the bottom until I stirred yesterday. I never had anything on the top like I see in some photos, it's always been on the bottom.

I've been stirring these every other day and they are covered with thin cotton cloth. This layer occurred early this week for the first time.

(in one of these photos you can see my fresh batch of tepache in the background)

I started this by putting my basically completely fermented pineapple from my tepache into a new batch of sugar water and once that batch of sugar water started smelling vinegary then I strained all of the pineapple out of it.

I split it into three jars. One jar I left with nothing in it, the other two I added a few additional spices and in one of those I also added a dried Thai chili pepper.

It smells like vinegar.

I am wondering if I should re-strain out the added spices now? Do I put the stuff on my fork in the pic back in if I do? Do I put on proper lids or do I leave them covered in cloth a bit longer?

Next question: since I'm starting a new batch of tepache while I'm currently brewing a batch of vinegar, do I need to be careful not to get the two things too close to each other in the same room or can I keep them on the same heating pad? (I'm in Vermont, the heating pad is necessary as "room temperature" is below 60.) Will I risk my tepache turning into vinegar if I keep it too close to vinegar? I'm thinking it might be okay to leave the vinegar at a lower room temperature since it's turned into vinegar now?