hanging on to my mason jars

(This post is shared at Fight Back Friday and Freaky Friday.)

I was vegetarian for eight years, and for four of those years I was vegan. I ended up with severe health problems as a result of being vegan, and although it was initially a grudging process, it was ultimately simple to fall into a real food diet. 

I knew I had a lot of healing ahead of me, and I figured that cultured foods would be a large part of that process. My gut was ravaged by a diet based on untreated whole grain, including several servings of wheat each day, in a gluten-intolerant system. I won't give too many details, but my digestion was a mess. For over a year I was literally afraid to eat, because it seemed like no matter what I put it my mouth, my gut rebelled. 

For a while, cultured foods were the only thing I could eat that would settle my stomach without next-day consequences.

The first cultured food I tried to make was cucumber pickles. Jeremy used his big food-grade beer-brewing bucket to store our cukes as they got busy getting' fizzy. After a few days, though, everything in the bucket collapsed into a soggy gray mess. I didn't try fermenting again for a long time. I bought cultured foods from the store, mostly kimchi and kombucha, but these were very expensive, so I knew I'd have to figure out how to ferment my own foods without making such disgusting mistakes.

For quite a while I was trying to ferment foods only in open containers, like secondhand ceramic crocks covered with weighted plates. These experiments have not worked out for me very well. They do seem to be quite susceptible to mold, and I'm suspicious of the casual suggestions to scoop off the nasties on top and keep going. I was never very successful or confident about fermentation until I started using Mason jars.

I've never had a Mason jar ferment go bad on me. Most foods don't last beyond a few months, but the handful that have stayed in my refrigerator – or even on a kitchen shelf – for longer than a year are still delicious and look the same as the day that I made them. 

But then I read this post (which has really been making the rounds!). In short, KerryAnn claims that fermenting in crocks or Mason jars is not producing cultured food at all, and is in fact unsafe and detrimental to those with gut problems, and the only way to produce truly safe, truly fermented foods is to purchase an air-tight Pickl-It or Harsch crock. This post, and those that followed, have rocked the traditional food community, leading some to feel that their every effort at culturing has been worthless, and to wonder if they should abandon the effort altogether. Some have wondered why the "gurus" of real food, like Sandor Katz and Sally Fallon, didn't tell them "the truth" about fermentation.

As for me, my initial reaction was doubtful. I try to keep an open mind and be accepting of adaptation, but this entire fermentation series reads like an advertisement for the Pickl-It to me. I am immediately suspicious of any "controversy" with a profit motive. More fundamentally, though, my heart simply rebels against any statement that complicates the simple arts of traditional food. This way of life has served a millennia of human beings across a limitless range of variations. Our ancestors couldn't traipse off to the store – or online to Amazon.com – and find just that perfect device to produce the perfect food product. They used what was available to them, like stone crockery and sheep stomachs. Some of the implements they used may have been air-tight, but it's not possible that all of them were.

Our ancestors most likely discovered fermentation by accident. Storing milk in an animal stomach lined with rennet made cheese. Honey washed out by a rain made mead; rice left too long in the pot made vinegar, and then wine; cabbage cured with salt made 'kraut. Perhaps our ancestors realized the health value in these foods, but I think they were mostly excited about the preservation potential, because they didn't waste anything. This is the primary reason that I culture foods. Having an arsenal of different preservation methods makes it possible to be frugal about food and to grow a wide variety of foods myself.

But I have used ferments therapeutically as well. They are the first thing I seek when I am sick. If my stomach is upset I assume that kimchi is the answer. When I'm abstaining from sweets, caffeine, or grains (as I am right now), I rely on cultured foods during the transition. My whole body breathes a sigh of relief when I eat these foods. And, although it is overwhelming to consider it right now, I have hoped to undergo a long-term healing project with cultured foods taking center-stage.

So my next reaction to this post was fierce rejection. Many low-income families cannot justify an expense like the Pickl-It system or the Harsch crock. The “lowly Mason jar” is an incredibly affordable device, costing roughly a dollar. It's an incredibly simple device as well, making the process of culturing foods possible for even the most overworked person in the tiniest possible kitchen. Therefore, I thought, these devices are unnecessarily complicated and expensive. "If it ain't broke..."

But then I started to wonder, what if she's right? Whenever I fiercely reject an idea, I know I must consider it carefully, because it must carry some truth that I fear. I would fear this being the truth because I cannot afford one of these systems and cultured foods have been an integral aspect of my lifestyle and my healing for the past several years. It's deeply disappointing to consider that I might have been doing it wrong all this time, or that I must add yet another expensive homesteading purchase to my list of things I'll probably never be able to afford to buy.

So I started to think of this issue in a more nuanced way. Most people do not undertake the project of fermentation because they are on the GAPS diet and require these foods for their therapeutic value. I think that most people try it because they are considering the prospect of developing practical skills and becoming less dependent on corporate food production. We're in the midst of a small but burgeoning renaissance in home-produced food and cultured foods are integral to this philosophy. For this purpose, I think a Mason jar is the ideal vessel – affordable, easily maintained, widely available, commonly shared, and compact in size. And as most of us can attest, it is also safe.

What it is not is air-tight. KerryAnn is right that oxygen exchange occurs even below the level of the brine. And so, perhaps she is also correct that lactic acid and probiotic production are not what they could be. She may even be correct that tentacles of mold are stalling or reversing the healing that is otherwise possible.

But I do not believe that this means we should reject Mason jar fermentation. Instead, we should be very careful to avoid mold altogether. We should sterilize our equipment and avoid fussing and fiddling with our ferments. In most cases, the ring can simply be loosened once a day to allow gas to escape, thereby minimizing oxygen flow. If we are using ferments primarily for their therapeutic value (as with the GAPS diet), then we might want to invest in a Pickl-It, or perhaps just some Fido jars.

We have something to learn from KerryAnn's series, and for some of us that might be the need for a Pickl-It in our lives. If I were undergoing the GAPS diet I would seriously consider it. But those of us in the real food community tend to take a good-better-best approach to most of what we do. This is because we are a practical bunch of people and real life tends to be a drag on our highest aspirations. This issue is no different. Ultimately what we should do with the information provided by KerryAnn and her Pickl-It affiliates is simply the best we can do, where we are, with what we've got -- just as our ancestors have done.  

All questions of science and faith aside, what disturbed me the most about KerryAnn's posts were the comments that followed. So many seemed to be taking her words as gospel truth, neglecting to do their own research and experimentation before deciding that their fermentation efforts were a waste. To me, this is a symptom of how far we still have to go. We are still recovering, collectively, from decades of being led into dependency by our corporations/government. They say that we can't do it ourselves, that we can't do it safely or efficiently, that we need someone else to do it for us, and should spend buckets of money in the process. We can buy our way to safety, security, and sustainability, according to our corporations/government, and for too long, we have believed them.

Little by little we are defying this notion, but we are so easily beaten and defeated by self-doubt. These debates feed on our worst fear: that we cannot do it ourselves after all. I don't believe it, and neither should you.

Real Food is a real movement now, with real momentum, and it is very threatening to the industrial food system. Whatever knocks down a people's confidence in human-scale, community-centered, people-powered food production, whatever drives them back to the false security of anonymous capitalist exchange – those powers will welcome it. If you don't think fermentation can be a radical act, you must never have eaten a bowl of homemade sauerkraut, made with your own cabbages, alongside sausage made from illegally home-slaughtered pastured pork. We've got to keep the momentum going. Don't let fear hold you back. 

Here are a few of my gut's favorite things...

Costa Rican Chilero

Cultured Dill Cucumbers 

Fermented Sweet Peppers

Watermelon Radishes with Jalapeño

Indian-Spiced Baby Squash

Lacto-fermented Garlic Cloves

Nam Pla 

Preserved Lemons

Raw Milk Yogurt

Traditional Kimchi