Well what do ya know about that? (Probiotics)

Aren't they cute?  (Keep reading)

Some of you may know that one point in my professional career, I was doing some work for a pharmaceutical company... I learned a few things there.  In addition, I've listened to a guy named Gary Collins, a former FDA special agent (for the government) and his comments back up what I've experienced... call me tin hat if you want, but I heard it and so did he: 

The major pharmaceutical companies want you to be sick.   Why?  Well if you are sick, you need their medicine!  If you need their medicine, they get your money!  They don't necessarily want you to be healthy, then you might stop taking their medicine... they prefer you feel good and stay sick.  

But what if there were an alternative?   I subscribe to the "you are what you eat" club, and a healthy digestive tract is mostly bacteria, to the extent that it makes up 90% of the cells in our body!  Where does the bacteria come from... well if you were not fortunate enough to be born (you pick up some good bacteria in the birth canal on the way out if it's not a c-section) of a mother with a healthy digestive tract, then you have to eat them.  You can buy them or make your own... you guys know I    prefer to make my own, as you can read about here (click here for a list of all my fermenting articles).  
So my manager at work recently announced he's moving on to another company and has since been, well... coasting, just ever so slightly?  The other day he sent out an e-mail with a link to an article on 3D printing body parts for medical research.  Interesting stuff, really... but what I found more interesting was at the bottom... this article goes well with all of the things we are doing to try and be healthy... check it out yourself!

Probiotics dramatically modulate liver cancer growth in mice

Interestingly enough, that wasn't the only one at this site... which goes against what I've typically seen.  Yep, back to the tin-foil hat conspiracy stuff again... if you are a company that wants the public to think something is good, one way you can control that thought process is to "donate" lots of money to a university and have them publish a study that says your product is safe and great for everybody and anyone who thinks otherwise is stupid!  I think the medical, pharmaceutical and big agriculture industries have all done this... but I'm getting side tracked.  The point I raise here is that this type of research doesn't seem to have any strings attached.  It doesn't have anything to sell... so what's the point?  Could it be that it is nothing more than true research for the benefit of man kind?  (I honestly can't tell... but I'm open to ideas and suggestions!)

Regardless, here are a few other articles from the same site that I found to be very accurate, considering my understanding of the human bacteria relationship...

Microbes in the gut help determine risk of tumors

Gut microbiota transplantation may prevent development of diabetes and fatty liver disease

Bacterial imbalance contributes to intestinal inflammation and carcinogenesis

Study finds link between liver cancer and gut bacteria in obese mice

This one rings home for me... considering the issues my son recently had with his blood work!  Researchers find link between intestinal bacteria and white blood cell cancer

Collaborative effects of multiple bacterial strains in the gut may help prevent onset of certain inflammatory diseases

Need any encouragement to breast feed your baby? Breast is best: Good bacteria arrive from mum's gut via breast milk

Well that should keep you busy for a few minutes...

LAND OF THE FREE: CASE #0001

So I'm looking into selling Sauerkraut and thought maybe I should check out the legality of it first (potentially mistake #1 - Ask permission first.)  So here's how it's gone so far...  

(Hint: The Government = Department of making you sad!)

Hi,

I'm wondering if it is legal to sell home made sauerkraut and pickles.  If no, 1) what are the health concerns that make it so? 2) Can I give it away?  My family and I eat it on a regular basis and I was curious.

Thank you,

Clinton

Clinton

No, those items would not qualify for either a home bakery or a cottage food exemption and therefore must be made in a commercial kitchen which adheres to good manufacturing practices to ensure proper sanitation. Because of the process involved, FDA may have special guidelines for producing these types of products (sauerkraut and pickles) depending on how they are produced.

The law doesn’t prohibit anyone from giving food away.

Thanks for your inquiry.

(Gov't employee),
Aside from not being in the home, what are the requirements for a commercial kitchen?

Thank you,

Clinton

(Gov't employee),

I just did some research and located a commercial kitchen for rent in LOCAL TOWN 30 MINUTES AWAY.  If I were to use this facility, what other requirements would your office have? 

Also, do you have a contact for me at the FDA, or should I send an e-mail over to their general contact box?

Thank you again,

Clinton

Update

Clinton:

You will need to contact the Ohio Department of Agriculture at the information below and they should be able to help you.  If you still have questions, please feel free to contact our office.

Ohio Dept. of Agriculture Food Safety
8995 East Main Street
Reynoldsburg, OH 43068
Phone: (614) 728-6250
Email: foodsafety@agri.ohio.gov

Sincerely,

(Gov't Employee) 

Well I left it at that and decided to contact the department of agriculture.  (Can somebody explain to me why in the world the department of agriculture is dictating to me how I should process veggies that I buy from somebody else?)  Here's how it went:

Hello,
I have been referred to you by the Hancock County Board of Health.  I am trying to determine what is required before I can legally sell fermented vegetables like sauerkraut and pickles.  As this does not fall under the cottage industry regulations, the only requirement I have been able to determine so far is the use of a commercial kitchen to prepare the veggies. 

If you can help me to understand what will be required in addition to this, I would very much appreciate it! 

Thank you for your time,

Clinton

You will need a facility that is inspected by the Division of Food Safety and complies with Good Manufacturing Practices (http://codes.ohio.gov/oac/901%3A3 ).  There will be a registration fee based on the size of your facility.

(Employee)

Chief

Division of Food Safety

Ohio Department of Agriculture

 I was planning on renting time in a local commercial kitchen to process the veggies.  Is this the facility you are referring to?
Thank you,
Clinton

That should work as long as it is inspected by the Division of Food Safety.

So now I'm left to wonder how to interpret all of the legal lingo in those codes mentioned above... 

On a side note, I have officially given away my first quart of pickles... I'm told she will donate $10 to the cause... 

1/2 Qt left after offering it to everyone I could find...

Anyway, it appears I need to find a commercial kitchen nearby and possibly get in touch with a lawyer and tax accountant!  This could be fun...

Update!  02-02-2016

 Sorry, I'm a little behind right now... anyway, last Friday I had a good conversation with a guy we'll call Daniel.  He's a food safety supervisor for the Ohio department of agriculture.  I got an e-mail from him asking me to call him... I expected a Ben Stein like personality, but was surprised to speak with a level headed real person!  He took a good bit of time to explain to me all the little catches and gotcha's I might run into, and it seemed I was on the right track.  We talked about the need for a commercial kitchen and what the requirements are to have one approved...

Here's what I gathered in terms of requirements for a commercial kitchen:

• A 3 bin sink to wash stuff (not sure what is special about the number 3)
• A sink to wash your hands that you can turn off and on without using your hands.
• So much light per square foot...
• A surface to work on that can be cleaned (doesn't catch dirt)
• Screens on the windows, doors that don't let dirt in... common sense stuff.
• If it's on well water, the water has to be tested once a year for bacteria..

Here's the big one...

• A plumbing permit: if the drain from the sinks goes to a septic field, you need the approval of the county to tie in first... <sigh>  (I doubt that would ever fly... and I'm afraid to ask in case they come out and inspect and find something wrong!) 
• This is stupid... the amount of water that we'd use could easily be stored in a rain barrel and be used to water the garden!

There's one last hope... if I can find a nearby commercial kitchen that is already approved, I can do it there... now I just need to go find a kitchen that will let me rent/use some space!

We'll see how things go... if we can prove it out in the back of somebodies kitchen, we may attempt to build a shed in the backyard and get it approved... it's a thought...

I gave somebody a quart of pickles the other day, with the understanding that she'd donate $10 to the cause... I guess it really was too good to be true...
 

DIY Crock weights... on second thought?

Well I thought I'd give an update... I trimmed the wooden disk down to a smaller radius, thinking that would be good enough... it wasn't.  I just ordered another set of weights ($25) as I don't have the time (or is it energy?) to deal with that right now.  Hopefully later on I can come up with the ideal design on some wooden weights...

One thing I did lean, however, is that the wood can harbor mold and yeast cultures... so on second thought, maybe it's not my best idea as of yet...

Videos?

This one is quick... I have a refurbished Cannon T3i camera that can take video in NTSC and PAL format.  I'd love to take some videos of what I've been doing to put up on here, but so far have yet to find a good translator from NTSC to MP4 or whatever Microsoft Movie Maker will accept.  If any of you have any suggestions or experience with this, please let me know!

In the mean while I'll keep recording in hopes that one day I'll be able to figure it out...
-Clinton

DIY Crock weights

$20 Plus shipping... and a few days...

Recently I found myself in a pickle... well, it was still a cucumber actually.  I had 25lbs of cucumbers packed into my crock with salt, dill and garlic... all in need of a way to submerge them, so they don't get nasty!  I'd hard of boiling a rock and putting that on top... eh, no thanks!  I'd heard of putting a plate on top and submerging it... there's got to be something better!

Well I decided to take matters into my own hands and see what I could do.  In the garage I had a section of 2x12 that I'd bought to make some apple crates... I can work with this!  The inside of my 5 gallon crock measured a hair over 11" in diameter, so I figured going a quarter inch under size would give me plenty of wiggle room... so I measured and found the center of the 2x12, on the flat side and made my mark by drilling a small hole through it.

A blank slate...

Next I used a scrap piece of wood to create a compass to draw a perfect circle.  10.75 / 2 = 5.375 or 5-3/8in long for my compass.  I measured it, marked it and drilled two more holes.  The nail seen above goes through the compass into the wood and a pencil goes through the other hole to draw a circle.  Next, cutting it out on the band saw and drilling holes so I could pull it out of the crock...

Houston, we have a problem...

Well it worked well enough at first, but after a week of being submerged while we were away on a trip, that wood soaked up some water and expanded.  When we got home it was wedged in the crock pretty good and going nowhere!  I'm actually quite fortunate that it didn't expand more and bust my crock!  As you can see above, I had to put some screws into the wood and use my crowbar to pry it out...  a quick trim on the band saw (Let's try 10-1/2in diameter this time) and it's good to go!  It did seems to require some weight on top of it, as the wood is less dense than the stone... but I cam sure make a bunch of these for the $20-$50 I'd spend on more weights elsewhere!

(See my follow up to this article here)

Lacto-fermenting Dill Pickles, Part 1

A dill pickle (Thanks Wikipedia!)

Lacto-fermenting Dill Pickles... it's on everybodies to do list, right?  Eh, maybe not so much... but after diving into Sauerkraut for a few months now, we have begun to broaden our horizons!  But let me first start off by stating what may be obvious... pickles are pickled cucumbers.   The pickling process can either be done using vinegar to provide the acid, OR, in our case, letting Lactobacillus, which lives on the surface of a lot of veggies, digest the veggies and produce lactic acid... while living in a salty environment, which prevents the growth of some nasty bacteria until the acid levels come up.

The recipe we used came out of this book:

Available on Amazon here

25lb Pickling Cucumbers
112 cloves garlic
4 cups dill weed
1/2lb Salt (Not sure about this one, my memory is failing me after 2-1/2 weeks)
A couple gallons water... eh, you'll need to check the book out from the library or buy it...

That said, I've got some pictures... those are more fun that reading anyway!

Pack'em in there!

The first step for me was to pack a layer of cucumbers in the bottom as tight as I was able to... I didn't think everything was going to fit into our 5 gallon crock.

Adding the dill, and garlic in there...

I would pack in a layer, like the first pic, then thrown some garlic in there and half the dill, then do another layer of cucumbers and throw the rest of the spices in... I think there was only two layers before I got this thing about topped off.  Either way, the next step didn't go quite as it will next time...

This recipe was for a gallon crock and I scaled it up... only problem, I packed the pickles in a bit tighter than the recipe expected and I didn't have room for all the brine.  I can't recall what I did, but I eventually had to taste the brine in the crock and compare the taste to some brine from the book.  Next time I'll mix up the brine in a jar and pour it in until I top things off... oh well... it seems to be working so far!

I'll try to take some more pic's and show you what it looks like as it ferments!

Sauerkraut 2015, Take Three

Well we ran out again... so we made some more again!  I wrote in my post Take Heed! Watch those fingers... about slicing the end of my thumb off, well we did finish up that batch, before my Stone Creek Trading Cabbage Slicer came in.  So after the half failure I wrote about in my post Sauerkraut 2015 Part II - A Lesson in Fermentation, we have learned from our mistakes and I've been checking it every day or two since it's conception.  It has been in the basement for about a week now and I thought I'd share some pic's.

CO2 bubbles coming up between the fermenting stones.

You can see above that there is a decent about of foam forming on the surface, as well as a decent amount of cabbage that has floated up to the top.  Previously we have put large cabbage leaves between the cabbage and the weights, which may have contribute to our partial past failure, as they might have trapped the bubbles... just a theory.

Fresh cabbage and sauerkraut soup, just what the doctor ordered!

Okay, I'll admit... for the first week or so, this stuff does stink.  Each time I go down to skim off the surface, I smell it.  It's not overpowering, but I smell it.  It's nowhere as bad as changing a diaper blowout, believe me!

Anyway, this is how I cover the crock while I'm fermenting... it's a kitchen towel and a shoe string with a prusak knot and a bowline so I can tighten it up when I'm not inspecting it.  Talk about fermenting on a shoestring budget!  (Sorry,  I couldn't help it)

My kitchen towel and shoestring lid...

Okay, I guess I don't have as many pics as I thought.  Hope this was informative for somebody!
~Clinton

Speedy delivery... speedy delivery! (A Stone Creek Trading Cabbage Slicer Unboxing, Size Large)

Well that was a pleasant surprise!  Last night I walked in the door of my home and was greeted by my beautiful wife and children.  I am a wealthy man!  Then I walked in a little further and found a large box with my name on it.  I had mentioned previously (Take Heed, Watch those fingers...) that I ordered a cabbage slicer after I skillfully sliced the end of my thumb off.  Amazon told me it was going to be another week before it might be delivered... but nope, there it was.

Unopened, my first cabbage slicer.

At first glance... "Wow, that's big!"  Now I know that the description in gave the exact dimensions, but I didn't really pay attention to it.

After pulling it out of the bag, it looked decent.  It used some chintzy nails to hold it together (I was taught from a young age that fine woodworking doesn't use nails, especially from a nail gun!), so I question how long that will work (I'm tempted to drill through it and glue in dowel rods, before it breaks).  I think I may have been taught some obsessive compulsiveness at the same time...

"Hi, my name is Clinton and I think  I'm OCD..."

The blades on this thing are certainly sharp enough to slice the remaining skin off my thumb!  But it also looks like this thing may be big enough that I won't have to do anything short of sliding the box up and down, keeping my fingers far from the blades!  (That will be nice, if it is in fact the case.)  There are three blades in this unit (the extra large has four) and they are removeable, should they need to be sharpened.  I don't know if you can get replacements if need be... not to self, check on that.

UPDATE: STONE CREEK TRADING DOES NOT SELL REPLACEMENT BLADES!  (DON'T MESS THEM UP IF YOU GET ONE OF THESE.

The box uses a standard box joint at the corners (versus the dove tail join that my dad would have encouraged me to use, would I have built one), which is probably good enough...

Yep, the box will slide right off...

The description off Amazon says "This is a natural unfinished wood product. This means it does not have a varnish or paint coating on top of the natural wood. However, it is sanded smooth and ready for use."  I take that to mean that it has been cleaned up with sand paper.  While that may be true on the flat pieces, the edges could still use some sandpaper to knock off some loose ends.  Again, not necessary... but I wouldn't put my name on it till I had done that!

Instructions!

So it is untreated poplar wood, made in Poland... interesting.  They say you don't need to treat the wood... I'm not sure about you, but I have alarms going off in the back of my head when I read that.  I've read some suggestions to coat wood with mineral oil (too much consumed can have a cleansing effect), let dry and wipe off excess.  The method I plan on going with, however, is walnut oil.  It was used extensively in France during somebody's reign (probably some Louis the umpteenth) as a wood coating and it's food, so what more could you ask for?  Oh, I've also read that olive oil can go rancid... no thanks, not in my food!

Now I'd like to go back to something in the picture above real quick... at the bottom of that little card with instructions and care, the retailer was kind enough to also put their website.  Now this might seem insignificant, but it's not!  Being the curious person I am, I ventured over there to take a look at the other things they sell... and happened to see this very product for sale with a price tag of $25 less than I paid off Amazon!  Now I don't know about you guys, but that's significant in my book!  But what about the shipping cost?  Ok, yep... got that one too!  The shipping to my house is estimated @ $9 from these guys, so the real price delta is 16$, still significant!

Well I have yet to use this thing, but it appears as though it will significantly speed up the process of shredding the cabbage the next time we need to ferment some foods.  I'll be sure to post an update when we use it!

Till next time, God bless!

Take Heed! Watch those fingers...

A few times I have written about using my Borner mandolin slicer... well last night I was using it and I got bit!  I won't show you a picture, but needless to say, my thumb ain pretty!  Recently I had been discussing with my wonderful wife if we should invest in a quality cabbage slicer... well, I think I answered that question! 

Now on order with Amazon is this little wonder of food science creation...

Wood Cabbage Shredder - Slaw Board - Large

Now one issue with this thing is that I don't see a board that goes inside the "sled" to push down on the cabbage.  I'll have to make one of my own, so be on the lookout for that, along with a review. 

On another note, we recently purchased another 5 gallon Ohio Stoneware crock.  I looked all over the internet and found the best price of roughly $70... then I called the local Ace Hardware... they had one in stock for only $56.  Whoohoo!  While Ace may not be a "local" store, its sure a step in the right direction compared to Lowes or Menards!  While I was there I saw a manual meat grinder (looked decent actually), a food strainer and a few other cool things for a homesteader.... I'm gonna recommend you guys check them out!

So all that to say, we are turning into fermenting fools!  I recently checked out a book from the library titled In The Charcuterie: The Fatted Calf's Guide to Making Sausage, Salumi, Pates, Roasts, Confits, and Other Meaty Goods.  That's a cool book!  It covers broth's, fat's, butchering and processing of meats.  Hopefully sometime in the future I'll be able to acquire a sausage press and start making some fermented meats... bu that's a road I'll have to wait to travel until a later stage right now...

To close, keep your fingers away from your blades!  They don't play well together...
~Clinton