New Years Day, No-Soy Miso Club

The inaugural meeting of The Victoria New Years Day Miso Club didn't go exactly as expected, but it was a great deal of fun.


Two types of Soy Free Miso were made:

One gallon batch of One Year Chickpea Mugi Miso

• 1 kilo dry chickpeas cooked with kombu
• 500g Mugi (barley) koji cultured with spores from GEM cultures
• 200g Salt
• 1 Tbs South River Chickpea Miso

Stored in a cool place, my garage, protected from temperature extremes.  To be opened Jan 1st 2016.

Mashing chickpeas

About 1.5 ltrs, 2 month Lentil Mugi Miso

• 200g red lentils from Saanichton Farm cooked with kombu
• 200g Mugi (barley) koji cultured with spores from GEM cultures
• 24g salt

Stored in my pantry at room temperature.  To be opened last week of February.

For both misos, I used the instructions in The Art of Fermentation by Katz.

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I'm a bit nervous about these, not just because it's my first time making a year long miso.  But because the koji grew on the barley with surprisingly enthusiasm.  Instead of stopping when the barley was white, I let it grow olive in colour, which means the koji mold was getting ready to produce spores.  Some people seem to think it should be great when used, others seem to believe it will impart an unpleasant flavour to the miso.  We shall see.

The other thing I did differently was to line the miso vat with a huge, food safe plastic bag.  Now I strongly dislike using plastic with my food, but this time I decided to try it because I was curious to learn if it actually makes the miso better.  We put the miso in the plastic lined vat as per usual, then press it down well to remove any extra air, then tie the bag tightly before weighing it down.  Like they do in this video.

The other reason I did this is because I don't know if there is any lead in the glaze of the crock I'm using, and I didn't feel comfortable having the food touch it for a whole year.

On re-watching the video, I realized I also made my miso a wetter than they did.  Hmm,  I'll make dryer miso next time.

Affordable (a very rough estimate):

Chickpea Mugi Miso

$7 for the chickpeas

$3 for the barley koji

$1 for salt, kombu, &c.

Total $11 for one gallon

Lentil Mugi Miso

$1.25 for the lentils 

$1 for the barley koji

$0.75 for the salt, &c.

Total: $4 for about one quarter gallon

Of course, it doesn't need to be this expensive, there are more affordable sources of beans and barley.  Mine was this much because I bought many of my ingredients locally, or when imported, from small, family run grocery stores.  

Traditional and Transitional, these two go hand in hand.  Both rely on locally sourced materials and skills you can practice in your own home.

As for allergies, these recipes are flexible.  You can use any bean you like, almost any grain you like, and there is even miso made without beans, and miso made without rice.  Most of the recipes are in The Book of Miso.

Getting ready for Miso Club

The first rule of Miso Club, we talk about Miso
The second rule of Miso Club, we love making miso

Tomorrow will be the inaugural meeting of Miso Club.  I've invited a very good friend over for what I hope will be the start of a long and happy ritual, New Years Day Miso Club.  The idea is that since red miso takes about one year to make, or longer, then we would get together every New Years day and make miso, then when finished, dig out the miso we made the year before and enjoy it.

Also, winter is the best time to make red miso.  Sweet miso like I've made before can be any time of year, but red miso, that's made in winter.

To prepare for miso making, I've been making koji barley.  This is barley grain that has been blessed with koji mold.  Yes, mold.  Mold is awesome.  What it does is it transforms the starches in the grain into sugars which can then be fermented into miso paste.

It takes three days to make the koji barley.

Day one, soak and steam the barley, then incubate it at about 90F for about 24 hours.

barley getting ready to steam

steamed barley is like a giant rubbery lump
and must be separated out before adding koji spores

wrapping up the barley to keep it warm while the mold grows

What I learned is that after 12 hours, the koji grain begins to produce it's own heat and the challenge quickly changes from keeping it warm to keeping it cool enough without getting too cold.  Thankfully koji is a loving teacher and can survive well outside the 'ideal' range.

Day two of koji growing, mixing the grain up every couple of hours, separating any clumps that form, then spreading the grain to abut 1 inch thick (the instructions said two inches, but this was far too hot) then wrapping it up again.

day two, spreading the barley out into an even layer

I should have stopped at the end of day two when the grains were mostly white with mold and a few yellow patches.  But I kept going because the instructions said to.  The morning to day three, all the grains were yellow and starting to spore - which is okay apparently, but not as sweet smelling as day two.  Next time, I'l stop when the grain says to, not when the instructions tell me.

Now I lay the grain out in a thin layer to dry and cool a bit before storing in the fridge.

The barley I'm working with is pot barley, the koji spores came from GEM cultures in the US.  I have tos ay, the koji spores worked like a charm,  I followed the recipe included with the spores.



The next step in preparing for tomorrows miso making is to soak the beans we will cook up tomorrow. Instead of soy beans, we will use chickpeas, sweet delicious chickpeas.  I toyed with the idea of making a lentil miso with local red lentils, but after this week's kitchen failure, I decided to use a bean I know and trust.



Some books about making your own miso at home
The Book of Miso by Shurtleff and Aoyagi
Wild Fermentation by Katz
The Art of Fermentation by Katz
The Miso Book by Belleme

Affordable:
2 gallons of miso will cost me
$14 for the chickpeas
$6 for the barley and koji spores
$2 for the salt
unknown for the electric bill, let's guess $3

Total of about $25 for two gallons of artisan made red chickpea barley miso.  This is totally awesome since the same miso sells for $36 for roughly 1/8th of a gallon in the stores (if I did my math right, that's $576 if I were to buy 2 gallons in the shop).

Next year it is my great hope to grow some if not all of the ingredients for New Year Miso Club, or at the very least, source as many ingredients locally as possible.  Maybe even some local sea salt.

Transitional and Traditional - funny how these two go hand in hand - miso can be made from locally sourced materials, excepting possibly the koji spores.  The Art of Fermentation by Katz has instructions on how to capture your own wild koji and to create koji starter when you already have koji growing.

Soy-Sub:  I'm making a soy free version of red miso.  Any bean can be substituted for some or all of the soy in miso making.  By making miso at home you can have complete control of every single ingredient

Review: Feeding Change Chickpea Miso

I was delighted the other day when I found another company making soy-free miso paste.  Feeding Change makes a Chickpea Miso paste that is "soy-free", "gluten-free" and (most importantly) "GMO-free".   It also claims to be 100% certified organic (awesome!).

Feeding Change's Chickpea Miso paste is smooth, sweet and salty tasting, and very delicious in cup of soup.  It's a sweet miso, meaning that it has a short (less than a year) fermentation period.  The website says it's a 60 day process, which is more than double most sweet miso ferments.  It's packaged in glass, with a plastic label and plastic lined metal lid. (Why the sudden interest in plastic in packaging? More on that later this week).

This miso paste is also Unpasteurized, which has it's advantages, and disadvantage (I'll get to that).  It is also Vegan Friendly.


After trying this paste in a few things, including my favourite breakfast cuppa-miso (I put some miso paste in a cup and pour hot water on it), I've come to the conclusion that there are definitely some aspects of this miso paste that I adore, and some serious room for improvement.

The thing I like best about Feeding Change Miso is the taste.  It's sweet and salty, has a smooth miso flavour, but not overpowering; has a smooth chickpea flavour, but again, not overpowering.  How to describe it?  The flavour is suitably strong, but not so aggressive that it can't be drunk on an empty stomach.

"Miso Happy There's No Soy", a slogan from Feeding Change's website.  With my sensitivity to soy and growing concerns about the sustainability of agriculture, having gmo-free, soy-free alternatives like this make my day.

Their website also claims that this chickpea miso paste is made (or at least hand stirred) in wooden vats - way to go for using traditional and renewable materials in production.  What they mean by double fermented, however, I don't know.  Unless they are referring to the koji growing part of production as a fermentation.  The word fermentation has so many uses these days, it's becoming quite the catch all.  But koji is a vital part of making real miso, so I'm glad they are including it.

Feeding Change Chickpea Miso is also a few dollars less than other chick pea miso(s) on the market right now. Every penny counts these days, and the only way I know to get a more affordable soy-free miso is to make it yourself.


And now for the needs improvement part of the blog post.  As much as I am enjoying this product, there are some areas the company can improve on.

First, the packaging.  Kudos to Feeding Change for using glass jar.  Not only is plastic touching food an increasing health concern, plastic waste (as I'm learning) is a major environmental issue and could doom us all if not dealt with soon.  However, plastic label on the jar indicates to me that they didn't think the plastic-free packaging all the way through.  The plastic on the inside of the lid is (more or less) unavoidable, and it's better than having the metal corrode into the food.

Next, I noticed that when I got the jar home and went to open it, there was an immense amount of internal pressure in the jar.  The lid shot off the top and landed on the far side of the room.  As startling as this is, it's not a health concern (like it would be in pasteurized food), it simply means that the miso paste has continued to ferment in the jar.  Being unpasteurized has major health advantages, however, it also means that the ferment will continue to 'breath' and gas build up is not uncommon.  I'm grateful that the jar was strong enough to contain the pressure, but I wonder how much longer it would have lasted before exploding.  Perhaps the miso paste was subjected to a prolonged period of un-refrigeration (or whatever the proper word is to describe being room temperature) during shipping or storage?  It certainly wasn't out of the fridge long enough on the journey home from the store to explain it.

As it was when first opened fresh from the store.
Not the tidiest presentation.

Another aspect of the packaging they need to improve is the size of the jar.  The jar is far too large for the product size which can lead the customer to feel short changed.  Though, I did check, that the weight of the chickpea miso paste (without jar) is as it states on the label (it is).  Still, having all that open space inside the brand new jar of miso has that negative psychological impact.

Again, as it was when first opened.
Notice the gap in the top and the large air bubble in the bottom right.

But that's not the biggest problem with the packaging.  Like the now defunct Organic Lives Chickpea Miso, another company with good ideas and lots of potential out of Vancouver,  There are a lot of air pockets in the miso.  When miso is packed with air pockets, it leaves it open for the possibility of mold growth.  Considering that koji (an essential ingredient in miso) is mold, the problem isn't one of safety.  The potential problem is two fold.  first, the  perception (so much of selling something relies on perception) that all mold is bad for us - not true - but still a prevailing meme in our society.  The other problem with mold growing in pockets of air is that it causes the miso around that pocket to develop a musty, unpleasant flavour.

These problems in packaging are very amateur and the company should have figured this out with the minimal research.  The Book of Miso talks a lot about this, and that's pretty much the go to English language book for learning how to produce miso both at home and commercially.

I'm confident as the company grows, they will find ways to improve their packaging.



One final thing, and please forgive me, I'm just being nitpicky here, however, the website brags that the Chickpea Miso paste is grain free - yet, the last time I checked (and every time before that), rice, a main ingredient in miso, is a grain.


Am I going to buy this again?  Yes, I think I will, especially if they fix how it is packaged in the jar.  Feeding Change is off to a good start with this product, and I can't wait to see how they evolve.

Baked Samosas with chickpea and leftover rice filling

My current culinary quest - to learn to cook and love Indian food.  Today's experiment: Samosa!

I found this recipe in Everyday Indian by Bal Arneson.  A very enjoyable author who has a great selection of Indian-Canadian dishes with a Pacific coast twist.  I have a couple of books by her and I like how she isn't afraid to meld indian flavour with West Coast ingredients.  

Some of my modifications were to half the salt, change up the fats, and completely alter the ratio of the filling to match the collection of leftovers in my fridge.  Basically I took some leftover rice, leftover chickpeas, leftover fresh cranberries, replaced some of the whole wheat flour with white... &c. and used her recipe as a guide.  

stuffing the samosa

I'm not going to post my recipe here because it's a book well worth reading.  Your local library should have it, and if they don't have it, they should and you should tell them that they should.

The red sauce is Pataks mango chutney, which turned out to be a bit sweet for this meal.  The dark dot is tamarind chutney (recipe from the same book as the samosa).  Tamarind chutney is extremely flavourful, and impressively spicy.  

I'm very excited to find out what else I can stuff in these triangles.

Affordable Cooking:  The filling today was purely leftovers and spices.  Since the chickpeas I used were cooked from dry (about 1/4 cup when dry), it brings the price down quite a lot.  Even if I was starting with ingredients bought specifically for this meal, I estimate it would be between fifty cents to two dollars for eight samosas.  

Bento:  This looks like the type of food that will travel well.  I'm definitely trying this in bento.

Even though it's my first time eating samosas, I'm filing this under comfort food.  It's just that good.

Allergy friendly:  I don't know how well it would be with different flour, but just about everything else can be changed up, from oils in the dough, to filling.  

Health:  Yes!  Arneson talks about this as the health 'lunch to go' food that she often cooks for her daughter, a highschool student.  Chickpeas, spices,  whole wheat flour, are all good things and in good ratios.  I can't find any fault with the healthy aspect of this recipe... except it's yummy and makes you want to eat a lot of them.

Vegetarian and vegans:  The original recipe looks vegan friendly, but I added some ghee when I made mine (to replace some of the flavour lost from cutting down on the salt).  But even still, it's vegetarian friendly fare.

Comfort pasta: Yaki Udon in a miso sauce

I'm not going to go into what life is like right now, except to say that this last month has been a shit-storm ... and then it got a whole lot worse.

There is a dire need for comfort food in my life right now.  Something comforting, high in energy, but also healthy enough to keep me going.  Unfortunately, there has been zero opportunity to go shopping, so the pantry is getting sparse.  Thankfully I have a garden full of growing things.  

Comfort food for me starts with pasta.  You can have the chocolate and icecream.  I'm keeping the pasta.  

When I saw the udon noodles hidden under the chickpeas, I knew that's what I needed.  Yaki udon (basically meaning fried udon) sprung to mind.  Yaki udon always has cabbage, a protein and a sauce.  Usually a specific kind of sauce... a sauce that got used up weeks ago.  Too hungry to think of a better meal plan, I decided to improvize.

I found a wedge of cabbage at the back of the fridge, cut off the bad bits and shredded up enough for one serving.  The garden donated carrots, cauliflower, and green onions.  But what to use to make the sauce?  I have miso on the mind right now... so why not give it a try?

The results were delicious; albeit not photogenic.

Yaki Udon in a Miso Sauce 

(serves one)

1/2 brick of udon noodles

drizzle sesame oil

1/2 cup of shredded cabbage

1 small carrot, sliced thin

1 floret of cauliflower, sliced thin

1/2 tin tuna, drained

2 Tbs sake

1/4 tsp soy sauce or soy sub

1/2 tsp honey

1 tsp + miso or soy-free miso paste (chickpea miso tastes best in my opinion)

one green onion, chopped into rings

• Bring a small pot of water to the boil and par-boil the noodles for about one min (this is a good time to chop the veg while you wait).  Strain the noodles and place to one side.
• In a small fry pan or wok, fry the veg in sesame oil on high, until starts to brown a little around the edges.  Stir in the tuna and cook another minute.
• Add the noodles and everything else except the green onion.  Stir well and simmer at medium-high until the sauce reduces.  Stir frequently.
• Just before serving, mix in the green onion.
• Enjoy!

Fast food:  All in all this took me less than 10 minutes.  That includes digging everything out of the cupboard and garden. 

Healthy treat:  All the ingredients are good for you.  The miso, honey, veg, even the tuna.  Of course, some of these ingredients are not so health in large quantities... the salt in the miso, the sweet in the honey, the whatever-it-is in the tuna... but truthfully, these are not large quantities.  Besides, it's comfort food. Any healthy that happens is purely accidental.

Affordable: 50 cent for the noodles (if you buy the expensive ones), Somewhere between 20 to 50 cents for the rest of the stuff.   Let's round up and call it a dollar per serving.

Cooking with allergies:  This is easily customizable to accommodate allergies.  I mentioned using the soy free miso and sauce, but you can change anything you want.  Gluten free?  Just use other noodles.  Vegan? Replace the honey and tuna with (vegan friendly sweetener) and tofu.

One pot pasta comfort food or Un-recipe for pasta pottage

I've been in desperate need of comfort food lately, and when it comes to comfort food, there is nothing more soothing than pasta for me.

The trouble with pasta (aside from me eating too much) is that it's fussy.  Pasta wants specific timing, and water and sauce, and draining.  All of which requires my attention and additional dirty dishes.

Then one day I saw this recipe where you can cook the pasta and the sauce in the same pan at the same time!  Revolutionary!  

As soon as I realized that it was possible, I set about finding a way to this recipe my own.  For starters, I cut down on the volume so that it's just enough to feed one hungry farmer.  I even started cooking it in the bowl I would eat it in - a special korean ceramic bowl specifically for cooking on the stove.

The beauty of this is that it's simple, doesn't mind being left cooking for an extra two hours, and of course, it's delicious.

My un-recipe for Pasta Pottage:

1. Get a small handful of pasta from the cupboard and put it in the pot.  Add water so that all the pasta is covered.
2. Go to the garden and fetch something that looks yummy.  Beans, tomatoes, whatever.  Chop them up and toss them in.
3. Go to the cupboard and/or fridge and fetch something that looks yummy.  Sundry tomatoes, capers, olives, pre-cooked chickpeas or lentils, can tuna drained, leftover chicken breasts.  Chop it up and toss it in.
4. Spice it up.  Salt.  Pepper.  Fresh or dry herbs.  A few drops of Spicy Rooster sauce. All of the above.  Whatever floats your boat.
5. Put a lid on it.
6. Cook on medium low for at least 20 minutes, or it comes to a boil and the pasta is tender.
7. Add cheese.
8. Mix it all up.
9. Enjoy.

There you go, nine simple steps to delicious pasta.

It is an awful lot like an old fashioned pottage.  Only, unlike the pottage of old, this cooks up in as little as 20 minutes, not 6 hours.  Although, I have been known to leave it cooking for up to 3 hours.  The pasta is a bit mushy by then, but the flavour is great.

Affordable?  I think so.  Because I cram so much extra veg and stuff in the pot, I don't use much pasta.  Maybe a quarter cup at most.  And as for the additional ingredients, when I do the purely store bought stuff, I use two sundried tomatoes, half a teaspoon of capers, quarter teaspoon of chopped olives, and a few drops of spicy rooster.  Unless I have some other protein in it, I use about two tablespoons of cheese.  Somewhere between 50 cents and a dollar for a hearty meal.  Include leftovers and garden veg, replace some of the pasta with pre-cooked chickpeas, and the price plummets.  

Healthy?  That all depends on what gets tossed in the pot.  I use wholesome and simple ingredients, most of which were living plants just prior to cooking.  Of course I'm sure there is a way to make this unhealthy, but you would probably have to try really hard.  

I think this would be great for camping.  One dish, everything tossed in together: This really should be called pasta pottage.

How about allergy friendly?  A simple un-recipe like this is very simple to modify for dietary needs.  Chances are the pantry is already stocked with things you can eat, and probably also things you like to eat.  It's just a matter of going to the cupboard and finding something good.  By the way, pickles taste great in this for some weird reason - if you can find a pickle you can eat.

I think this is a fantastic dish for making use of local resources and therefore a great transitional food.  Of course when the balloon goes down, or up, or whatever they say, I imagine that dry pasta would be harder to come by as it's manufactured and shipped from far away.  But when that happens we can go back to the more traditional pottages of beans with a smattering of fresh pasta tossed in at serving time.

 

Cucumber, garlic scapes, and dill fermented pickles recipe

Here's a very delicious fermented pickle I've had the privilege to make.  The garlic scapes are from my garden, but the cucumbers and dill are from the store.  I plan to make this again later in the year with my own cucumbers and dill, but use whole garlic instead of the scapes.  It's tasty enough, but the scapes add a special something that is really yummy.

The other day I was lamenting the price of cucumbers in the store.  It was considerably higher than normal for some reason, but fresh fruits and veg are doing this more and more frequently these days.  But I found some cucumbers that had just come in at my friends shop, and bought the lot.  They are those lovely small cucumbers, tiny little seeds, so crunchy and tender.  

A good 20 plus pounds of cucumbers plus a garden full of scapes, and a few other vegs tossed in the pot for good measure, means that I made 6 gallons worth of pickles in an afternoon.  This recipe isn't for that much, but you can easily scale it up or down to your liking.  I'll do it per pound, so per each pound of veg you add...x this and that... very simple.

My recipe is inspired from this... okay, it's basically the same only modified for the open vat ferment style instead of the small jar ferment style.  Very good recipe, but far too small an amount for how good it tastes.  The ratio of dill, garlic and cucs is up to you entirely.  If you want pickled garlic with a hint of cucumbers, do that, if you like cucumbers best, do mostly those.  If dill drives you crazy with love and passion, go nuts.  But basically, I tend for 10 to 50 garlic scapes per pound of cucs, or one bulb of garlic for 2 pounds of cucs - I love garlic.

Cucumber and Garlic Scapes Dill Pickles

• cucumbers
• garlic or garlic scapes or both
• fresh or dry dill.
• salt
• optional - chili pepper, other veg like carrots
• water

1. Weigh out the veg.  For every pound of veg put aside 2 tsp of salt.  Add one Tbs of salt to the pile (for the pot as they say).  
2. Cut up the veg how you like.  The more surface area the faster they will ferment.
3. Layer it in a clean crock (no antibacterial soap, this will kill the bacteria that we need to ferment the pickle), layer of veg, sprinkle herb, layer garlic, layer of salt, layer of veg... and so on.  Save a good Tbs of salt for the top.  When you run out of veg, sprinkle the rest of the salt on top.
4. Put a plate or cut a piece of plastic or wood or whatever you have on top of the veg/salt layers.  It needs to be smaller than the opening so it can weigh down the pickles, but not too much smaller that the veg can get around the inner lid and float.  Weigh it down with a jar of water or clean rock, or the like.
5. cover the whole thing with a cotton or linen cloth to keep the bugs out and stop the dust getting in.
6. Place somewhere at cool room temp, between 10 and 20 C is ideal and ignore it for 12 to 24 hours.
7. The veggies will make their own liquid, but probably not enough.  Add clear, clean water to the vat until the veggies are submerged.  Cover it back up and ignore it.  
8. After three days to a week, open up the vat and take out a few cucumbers (with clean hands/tools) to taste.  If you like it, put the pickles in jars in the fridge.  If you would like it more sour, replace the inner lid and weight to make certain everything is submerged.  Cover again with cloth and ignore for another week.

There may be mold.  It happens but is seldom harmful.  If the mold is black or the vat smells rotten - toss it it the compost immediately!  Otherwise, trust your senses to tell you if it's okay to eat or not.  Mold isn't always bad for you.  In fact, a great number of molds are good - antibiotics come from mold, blue cheese, miso soup, sake rice wine... all contain friendly molds.  Most molds don't care about humans one way or the other, some are helpful and some are harmful.  But the point is, not all molds are bad.  If you feel uncomfortable with mold, then don't eat the vat.  If you don't mind it, and it's not black mold, then scrape off the mold, maybe sprinkle some more salt, and make certain everything is submerged below the water.

If you are making this in the heat of the summer, which is likely given the way cucumbers grow, and don't want to eat it right away, then feel free to add more salt.  In the summer, I usually put in 1Tbs salt per pound of veg.  In the winter, when it's cool, I'll add a lot less salt, maybe 1 tsp per pound of veg (this is my basic guide for all vegi ferments like kimchi or sauerkraut).  

You can make these pickles for the flavour, or to preserve the cucumbers or for the health benefits of probiotics.  I find this recipe very affordable, especially when my own cucumbers are in full production... although if you are buying the cucs, then maybe wait for them to be on sale.  

This is a traditional method to preserve cucumbers, and also one very good for transitioning away from dependence on big business and long range food transport.  Make this in the summer when you have cucumbers coming out your ears, then you will be able to enjoy pickles well into the winter, maybe even next spring.  For preservation, it's helpful to keep it in a cooler location.

Yes, this is vegan friendly.

In Celebration

I had a certain something last week, so some friends of mine treated me to a very special cake to celebrate.

It's from Fol Epi, one of the few places in town I trust not to include wrong foods.  They make the most amazing things, like this devilishly divine raspberry chocolate cake.  They even mill their own flower there and  often donate the excess bran to local farmers.

What a treat to be able to eat yummy cake!

Homemade pepperoni - my first dried sausage adventure

For the holidays I received this wonderful book called In the Charcuterie by Taylor Boetticher and Toponia Miller.  It's full of beautiful photos and well worth a gander.  Most of the book is about working with fresh meat, how to create beautiful finished dishes like roasts and instruction on how to debone and create different cuts of meat from a carcass.

The section on curing sausages is short but empowering.  The authors give a general recipe on how it's done, including different casing sizes, drying environments and all the necessary and sufficient conditions to be a success.  For example, lamb casings or thin hog casings are more forgiving and don't need as specific an environment to ferment and dry in than great big fat bung casings.  Which means, that if I turn the heat off in my room for two weeks, in the middle of winter, I can cure and dry my own sausages.

I followed the recipe for pepperoni except that I used smaller hog casings and changed the drying time/conditions accordingly.  But this book is friendly towards that kind of change.  Basically they take the attitude that people have been curing sausage like this for a few thousand years, without refrigeration or fancy electrical curing chambers. What's more, they didn't have shops to buy specific fermenting cultures from, instead they used things like a splash of wine in the mix.  This stance is quite different from the usual 'you must do this specifically and buy all this fancy stuff, or everyone dies' approach to curing meat.

Feeling empowered by the book, I gathered together my spices, curing salt, and garlic.  I used 7 lb of old goat, 1 lb of pork and 2 pounds of pork fat.

Mixed it in with the cubes of meat and stuck in the fridge overnight.  

Laundry rack transformed
into sausage hanger

I have this antique meat grinder that I found at a yard sale, so I thought I would give it a try.  It works marvelously well, just like the books say they should.  When I tried my modern grinder that I bought from BigBoxMart (I'm not proud of that), I could see that all the problem's I've had making sausages in the past were not me, it was the tool being completely useless.  This made me giddy with joy to have a meat grinder that works effortlessly, although, it was a bit small and can only process 1 tablespoon at a time - I am going to keep an eye out this year for a much larger one.


After stuffing the sausages, making sure all the air is removed (both of which I need more practice with as I'll show you later), then it's time to hang them to dry.  Ideally the temperature will be between 65 and 70F, and be constant for the two weeks.  I choose 68 degrees because, well it's cold enough thank you.  Each room has a thermostat so it was easy to keep my room a steady temp.  As the humidity was dry that week, I lightly misted the sausages with fresh water a few times a day for the first three days.

I was a bit disappointed because none of the friendly white mould formed on the outside of the sausages.  This mould is suppose to help keep things safe and prevent bad microbes from settling in.  Next time I think I'll pick up a piece of sausage from the local Salumeria and put it in the same room as my hanging sausage, the mould should migrate just fine.

After a week, we started testing them, yummy, but still a bit raw texture in the middle.  Left them another week, and much better.

Look how beautiful and red that meat is.  This tastes amazing!

But wait, not all of them look like that.  Some of them look like this:

Sort of yellow/brown inside.  Not appetizing at all.  Though they smell okay, I'm not happy with them, so they get tossed out.  I don't know why they look like this, but I have suspicions.  Maybe, I didn't get all the air out of the casings - I admit, I did have problems with this - or stuff them full enough.  Or possibly the outside casings dried too quickly leaving the moisture inside to rot the meat instead of fermenting and drying it.  I don't think this second one is what happened because I would expect a bad meat smell, where there is no real change in smell from lovely red insides and ugly brown ones.  Only about a quarter of them turned ugly, so three quarters good, that's great for a first attempt.

What I've learned from ugly brown insides is that I need more practice making cured sausage.  How exciting.  I wonder what flavour to make next.

Cooking with Allergies:  There is a lot of room to adjust for allergies when making your own sausage.  If you have problems with meat and mould, this is probably not the recipe for you.  However, spices, wine and other allergies issues can easily be accommodated.  In the book there is a recipe for your basic cured sausage with specifies the ratios of meat, salt, curing salt and fat.  Page 232 gives you everything you need to know about this, and you can play with your spices and herbs from there.

The recipes in this book do not include commercial starter or filler which can be a source of allergies.  HOWEVER, it does include nitrates (curing salt #2).  Some people are sensitive to this.  There isn't any mention on not using curing salts (nitrates/nitrites).  From the research I've done, omitting nitrates/nitrites from whole muscle cured meats like bacon is possible, just increases the risk of spoilage. However, omitting it from dried sausages is not a good idea for a person with a Western immune system.  If you want to omit the curing salt #2 from your dried and cured sausages, do your research first!  And know that in the West our bodies are no longer trained to handle a strong bacterial load (both good and bad).

Affordable?  Pork cost about $3 a pound, pork fat $1, the goat roughly $4 a pound.  The goat was old and angry, so the meat isn't much good for roasting or much else.  This used all the little scraps of meat that would often go to waste in butchery.  That's about 7 percent of hanging weight that would usually be lost.  So do we count the cost of the goat since it's salvaged material?  I think I will because it makes a fair comparison for later on when I run out of angry goat.

Meat was $33, but it was (mostly) grown on the farm and raised organically.  Spices, garlic, wine, casings, let's round it up to $2.  Take into account that although I started with 10 lbs of sausages, they lose about 30% of their weight so I ended with 7lbs.

$35 for 7 lbs of artisan cured sausage that I know exactly what went into it, is $5 a pound.  I don't think that's bad at all, though I can't remember off the top of my head what the going rate is in the shops, but I wouldn't be surprised to pay between 2 to 4 dollars an oz for artisan sausage.

Then again, I do need to knock off a quarter of the finished amount for my learning mistakes.  So really, this batch was almost $7 a pound.  But I expect to get better at this and have less waste in future.

Healthy?  Yes.  In small amounts.  There are some medical studies kicking about these days that say you should have less than 1 oz of cured meats a day.  I suppose if you are on a fully Western diet full of wonderfully creative preservatives and manufactured salts like MSG, adding cured meats to your diet would increase the stress that salt puts on your body.

However, that said, people have been eating this sort of sausage for several thousand years, and up until the last 120 years or so, the amount of salt used, and nitrate/nitrites used were considerably higher.  This kind of food was a staple in the diet, and the diseases attributed to cured meats only started appearing in the last hundred years.   My interpretation of this is that perhaps cured meats is simply a scape goat for a greater problem in the Western diet.

But even still, the flavour of this is so intense, it makes a better condiment than main dish.  I know everything that went into my sausage, so compared to big factory made peperoni, I feel this is healthier.

Safety?  Since I have no artificial colours or aesthetic ingredients added to the meat, I can tell right away if there is something wrong with the appearance or smell.  Because they are made in small batches, it is easy to do quality control.  Though large scale, factory production of cured meats don't fulfill these conditions, they are usually safe.  But when they go wrong, they go wrong on a big scale.  There has been a few issues with cured meat production in Canada over the last few years, with deaths.  I feel safer doing things at home, however, I arm myself with the knowledge needed to create safe food.

Bento: one pot beef-yaki

I found some flank steak on sale and thought it would make some fantastic beef bento dish (which I can't remember the name of - probably something-yaki which means something-fried).

The recipe is from the book 10 Minute Bento. I don't normally eat beef because it gives indigestion, however, when it's cooked this way with sake, something changes in the beef making it easier to digest.

I put some more of those daikon pickles (really starting to like them), but there was still something missing.  So I put some tiny tomatoes on it, and look, a lovely christmas coloured lunch.

Allergies:  I substituted the mirin for vinegar, the sugar for honey and the soy sauce for rice based soysub.

Affordable?  This is about 2 oz of beef, so basically you are getting a lot of flavour for a small portion of meat - my favourite kind of meal. It also tastes good with other red meats like goat or lamb, depending on what you have at hand.   But make sure to slice thinly and across the grain or things get tough to chew.  Other ingredients include frozen peas, onion, veg, rice... although I don't remember how much the cost of the beef was, the rest of the ingredients were about $1 to $1.50.

What I really like about this recipe is that it is fast food.  The book suggests we can make this in 10 minutes, however, that's only if you are super-mum.  Prep took about 5 min, cooking and assembling, 15 min.  But 20 minutes for a complete and completely delicious bento is well within my happy range.

As for Healthy: I'm going to go with yes.  Meat is full of all sorts of things that are good for your body, and having it in small quantities like this is great.  Though I thought while eating it, I wish I had put a bit less rice and a lot more veg in it.  Next time I'll try a different way of assembling the dish that includes more veg.


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Fermented Hot Sauce Recipe from Dried Chilis and Excessive Amounts of Garlic

I adore those long, thin red spicy peppers that go so well in stir fry.  The garden centre calls them Super Hots, the grocery store Thai chilis, the grocery store in the garden center calls them chilis, and nothing else.  I call them yummy.

Every year I grow a few and buy a few, and it's always a few extra.  So they get threaded and hung to dry.  Dried chilis are great...except after a year or two of storage, they tend to loose their colour and pazaz.  So I decided to try a little experiment.

Fermented Hot Sauce with Garlic

For each 1/2 cup of dried chilis
1 clove head of garlic and
1 Tbs of salt
water

• Roughly chop up the chilis, or not.
• Peel the garlic and roughly chop it up or not
• Combine salt, garlic and chilli in a small jar.  Add water to cover.
• Use something to press down on the chilli mix so that every part of it is submerged.  I cut out a circle out of plastic container and then filled a small mason jar with water to use as a weight.
• Leave on the counter for at least a week... I um, forgot about it and it was there for over a month.  If anything, I think the longer ferment was good for it.  Check it every couple of days (or not if you forget) to make certain everything is submerged and to scrape off any mould that forms.  If the mould is black, toss the whole thing, otherwise, it should be fine.  The spices, garlic and salt are strong enough to kill just about anything bad, but if it develops an off smell, don't eat it.
• When it's time, place the chilis, garlic and brine in the blender or blitzer.  Blend or blitz till it's a lovely puree.  You may want to add a pinch of sugar or a few drops or honey.  A few drops of apple cider (or other natural) vinegar also go good in this.
• Store in the fridge, eat within... I have no idea how long, but it will probably last a year.  You can store it at room temperature, but it may go mouldy after a month or so.

Roughly chopped
This is a fresh one I found in the back of the fridge
so I decided to toss it in with the others

chilis and garlic kept submerged in the brine

Very hot sauce with strong garlic taste.  yum.

Affordable:  Yep, the chillies were getting too old and destined for the compost, garlic was from the garden.  The only thing I paid for was the salt.  But to buy these ingredients in the store are usually cheaper than buying a good quality hot sauce.

Vegan-Friendly: Yes....unless you add honey at the blending stage.

Healthy and allergies:  By making your own hot sauce, you can avoid any additives or ingredients that you may be allergic to.  Also the probiotics from eating a live food, are good for you too.

I could do the same old song and dance about this being a good Transitional food, but you know it all by now.  Encourages self-reliance, and stuff, so forth.

Soy Free Sweet Miso Paste Recipe, with just a little bit of soy-free Tamari on top

For those of us with soy allergies and sensitivities, finding a soy-free miso paste that we can enjoy (and afford) isn't easy.  So I decided it was time to make my own.  I'm not certain what surprised me more, how affordable it was to make or how easy.

Miso paste and tamari
both made without soy

You can use any pulse, be it lentils, chickpeas, fava beans, black eye peas, anything, to make miso.  You don't need soybeans.  The only potentially difficult ingredient to get is Koji rice, but most asian grocery stores can order it in for you already cultured.  You can also make it at home with a bit of dedication.  It takes a couple of days, and you can get the koji spores from GEM Cultures.  The third ingredient is salt.

The method for making sweet miso is easy: get the koji rice ready the day before and soak the beans.  Next day, cook the beans, mash them (or not) and then mix them with the koji rice and salt, and maybe a bit of bean cooking liquid.  Pack it in a vessel with a inner lid and weight to press the miso down, then tie it up with a cloth and leave it on your kitchen counter for 2 to 8 weeks.

Red Miso, has the same method for making it, only different ratios of ingredients and it needs to ferment for at least a year.  It also requires different temperatures.  Since it's more fussy, I decided to start with the Sweet Miso recipe.  But I have everything I need, including confidence, to try one year miso later this winter.

For this first batch I cleaned out the back of my cupboard and used a mixture of forgotten dried beans (mostly Romano and Black Eye Peas).   But like I said before, you can use any bean to make miso paste.  Most people use chickpeas for their first soy free miso making experience.

I used an antique food chopper to mash up the beans
but you can use anything you like from stick and bowl
to cement mixer.

The references I used for this are The Book of Miso, especially this chapter, and Katz's two books, Wild Fermentation and The Art of Fermentation.  This is the recipe I used for the second batch of sweet miso as the first batch didn't have nearly enough saltiness to it and tasted a bit sour.

From what I've read, 1 gallon is about the smallest batch of miso you want to make at a time.  Something to do with the ratio of surface area to the volume of the something something.

Miso ready to dig out of the 1 gallon vat
you can see that some white mould has formed on top
that's normal.  Koji is a kind of mould, a delicious one.

So that's what this recipe makes, 1 gallon.  The ingredients cost me just under what one pound of soy-free miso paste is in the shop.  Since it made close to 10 pounds, I'm very happy with how affordable this is.  Next year I plan to grow my own beans which will cut the cost in half, and culture my own koji rice, which will take price of making this from $15 down to about $5 per gallon.

Soy Free Sweet Miso Recipe

1 kilo of dried beans
1 kilo (or just over) Koji Rice
140 grams sea salt (non iodized) plus extra
water
Kombu/kelp (optional)

Some other stuff you will need:
A container that fits more than 1 gallon (otherwise known as vat)
Something to mush the beans with
A plate or inner lid that fits inside your vat leaving as little room between the walls of the vat and the plate as possible.
A weight, could be a rock that has been purified with boiling water and scrubbed with salt
A cotton or linen, tightly woven cloth
...and other things.  This link covers it better.

• Wash the beans well, and soak overnight.
• Rinse the beans and boil with lots of water until they are mushy.  How long this takes depends on the kind of bean and how long they have been sitting in the back of your cupboard.  The older, the longer.  Usually for me it's about 2 hours, but some beans can take upto 14.  You can also use a pressure cooker for this step, but beware if yours is aluminium as sometimes that can contaminate your food.
• While the beans are cooking, bring your koji rice to room temperature (if it's not already).  I'm going to assume at this point that you read the entire recipe before starting out and already have your koji rice ready to go.
• Drain the beans, reserving the liquid.  Mash them up however you like.  It can be a paste, or it can be chunky, some miso recipes, like Natto Miso, keep the beans whole.  I do moderately chunky and puree or not as required when I use the finished miso.
• If you are using kombu then keep in large pieces and soak in tepid water now.
• Combine the salt with about 1/2 cup of bean cooking water, make certain it dissolves completely.  
• When the beans are below 140F (aka, you can put your hand in them and they feel somewhat warm, but not hot), then add the salt water and koji rice.  Mix really well.
• Add more bean cooking water as needed.  The goal here is to make a fairly moist, but not too moist mush.  To tell if the texture is correct, make a ball, like a snowball, from the bean mush.  Toss the ball firmly and assertively against a surface, like the bottom of your miso vat.  If the mush ball spatters everywhere, it's way too wet.  If it cracks upon impact, it needs more water.  And, if it just settles in, not cracking but not spreading out everywhere, then that's about right.  See the video in this post for an example of what you are aiming for.  
• Make certain the inside of your vat is clean but don't use any antibacterial soap on it as this will damage the miso.  I often use a bit of sake or vodka to wipe inside the vat before the next step, but this is optional.
• (Optional) Wet the inside of the vat and sprinkle lightly with salt.  Most people say this isn't necessary for sweet miso, but I find it makes a huge difference.  
• Firmly press your bean mush into the vat, so that there are no air pockets.  I do a few snowball size bits of bean mush at a time, stop and massage them into the crevices, and repeat.
• When the vat is almost full of bean mush, smooth off the top.  Evenly sprinkle at lest 1/2 a tsp of salt on top.  Cover the surface (directly on the surface) with clear wrap, or even better with kombu seaweed that you soaked earlier.  I go for a double layer, ripping the seaweed as needed to cover every last part of the surface of the bean mush.  
• Place your plate or inner lid on top, and then your weight on top of that.
• Cover with a tightly woven cloth and tie the cloth down so that no dust or insects get in.
• Place the vat in a secluded part of the kitchen where it can stay at a fairly steady temperature, room temperature.  Check it after two weeks, but it will probably take a month.  There should be a layer of liquid on top (the Tamari, see below), maybe some white mould from the Koji Rice, and should smell like miso.
• When you are ready to try some, drain off the liquid (keep it to one side for tamari, though if the miso is still immature, you may need to put it back in the vat again) and scrape off the mould.  Dig out half a cup from the center of the vat to try.  Press the bean mush back together to ensure there are not air pockets, smooth off the top, sprinkle salt on it, and wrap it up as before (kombu optional), replacing the tamari on top.  Try the miso you dug out.  If it's not ready yet, wait a week or two before trying it again.  If it is ready, then you can put all your miso in jars in the fridge, or you can use this same method to dig out miso you need for the week and let the rest continue to age.

You can see the coarsely mashed beans
and bits of koji rice in the miso
Sometimes I leave it as is, other times I puree it before use

Tamari (No Soy) Recipe

This is the liquid that forms on top of the miso paste while it's fermenting.  It tastes like super-strong-super-salty soy sauce.  Only if there are no soy beans in the miso, there won't be any soy in the tamari that forms on top.

Before you dig out your miso from the vat, drain off most or all of this liquid.  It's probably going to have some mould on top.  Remember, mold is one of the three main ingredients in miso (Koji Rice = special mouldy rice).  If the mould is white, yellow, or a bit blue-green, it should be fine.

Strain the tamari to remove the mould, sometimes this takes many strainings or even a bit of tightly woven cloth.  Bottle and store in the fridge.  Use as you would soy sauce, only use less of it, this will be much stronger.

Soy Free Tamari
Very salty taste, but delicious

Affordable:  Yep. I talked about this above

Vegan Friendly: Yep.

Healthy: Yep. There are some really fascinating studies out there about how daily consumption of miso has helped prevent radiation sickness, improve gut function, detoxify heavy metals from the body, and other good-for-you things.

Traditional:  Yep.  Until about 60 odd years ago, most families in Japan made their own miso paste, and each region (and family) had their own recipe.  Nowadays there are only a few dozen misos commonly available for sale in the shops.  Which is a shame.

Transitional:  YES!  With the consolidation of miso making to mid size and large companies, we have become very reliant on global trade and long distance shipping as a means of supplying our miso.  I think making our own miso paste can serve a role in transiting away from a lot of the problems we have with the current food system.  It's not just good for soups, but also for preserving pickles, marinades, condiments, and has huge health benefits.  Even those not use to eating miso could find this salty-savoury-sweet treat a beneficial addition to their daily diet.



There are a lot of different ways to make miso out there, this is just one of them.  The Book of Miso is currently the best English language book about miso, history, manufacturing, everything.  You can make miso from different pulses, grains, and even vegetables.  This experiment has opened up a whole new world, and I'm looking forward to exploring it all.

Everything's coming up Miso!

I made some soy-free miso paste at home and I love it.  Still working on the post with the recipe and my miso-making experience. Just in case anyone was wondering where I got to.  (ps, thanks for the comments earlier.  I'm also working away at Holiday letters and parcels.  So many letters to write.).

Anyway, I want to share this video with you.

I love the idea of a group of friends getting together to make a lot of miso.  I imagine at the end of the day, and after an amazing dinner of miso goodness, they each take home a share of last year's miso.  Like a Miso Club, one person has the place and gets together the ingredients, and the others subsidize the cost and help with the labour.

Back to work writing about soy-free miso and experimenting with different things you can make with it.

Some amazing things you can make with Fil Mjolk, Viili and other room temperature yoghurts.

After my previous adventures with Viili the shop sent me a replacement culture.  Since they were so helpful, and I know other people who have had good success with their cultures in the past, I decided to order some Fil Mjolk (also spelled Filmjolk) starter at the same time.  I'm so glad I did.

Viili and Fil Mjolk are considered room temperature yoghurt cultures.  In that you do not need a yoghurt maker or insulator to make them, rather you can culture them at room temperature.  Very awesome.  They probably aren't actually yoghurt in the true sense of the word, but English does not seem to have a word for this and it beats calling them 'cultured milk products' every time.  The taste and texture is also like yoghurt, so we call them that on the basis that they share the same qualities.

The Viili is yummy and tastes a lot like The Captain remembers real yoghurt tasting like, but it's tricky to culture.  It takes a lot longer than Fil Mjolk, is fussy about temperature, and it requires you monitor it frequently and not miss the point where it sets - that's a bit more bother than I like in a fermented food.

What I demand from a fermented food (and just about every food) is that it be flexible.  That it is quick to prepare and can be put on hold if something happens.  That it can grow in just about any temperature range, with the understanding that there may be an alteration in flavour and timing.  That it can be used to make several different things, and that if I'm suddenly called away and miss the deadline, it will happily wait for me.  Fil Mjolk does all this for me.

I'm going to keep going with the Viili, but more as a snacking yoghurt than anything else.  The Viili is flexible in that I can use it to make a drink, yoghurt, and two different cheese (with whey left over for other uses).  I can do all this with the Fil Mjolk as well as making butter, buttermilk and buttermilk cheese.  But the taste between the two is very different.  Each has it's unique charm.

Here are some of the amazing things I've made with my Fil Mjolk (and sometimes Viili).

Yoghurt drink (Viili and Fil Mjolk)

I haven't tried this yet, not on purpose anyway, but by culturing a low fat milk, or not letting the culture work long enough, I ended up with a thick liquid.  Soon, I want to try blending this with fresh fruit for a yoghurt drink.

Yoghurt (Viili and Fil Mjolk)

This is pretty easy, you start with one Tbs of the old batch per cup of milk in the new batch.  Mix well, cover with a cloth, and leave at room temperature for 12 to 24 hours till set.  Put in fridge for 6 hours before removing starter for next batch and enjoying the rest.  At least that's what the instructions say, and it works well for the Viili.

For the Fil Mjolk, I find I only really need 1 teaspoon of starter (old batch) per cup of milk.  Adding less, takes longer to go firm, but it has two advantages:  It's less sensitive to timing, and it makes a lovely sour taste.

For a thicker yoghurt, use cream, for a thinner yoghurt, use milk.

Yoghurt cheese (left out method) with live culture whey (Viili and Fil Mjolk)

This is easy, and I discovered it by mistake.  I forgot that I had some yoghurt culturing, and when I found it two days later, it had distinct curds and whey (it had clabbered, what a great word, clabber).  I used some cheesecloth to strain the curds four about 12 hours, then I mixed a pinch of salt (per 2 cups of yoghurt used) in with the curds.  It made an almost creamy cheese, with a bit of sour taste like cottage cheese.

The whey from this is fantastic.  It has live culture in it, which can be used to add probiotics to your food.

Yoghurt cheese (cooked method) with cooked whey (Viili and Fil Mjolk)

To make this cheese, I heat up the yoghurt in a pan, stirring frequently.  Forget the thermometer.  If it boils, it's too hot, if you see the yoghurt curdle, then it's hot enough.   I strained this for 18 hours, or for a night and a morning, then mixed a pinch of salt (per two cups of yoghurt used) in with the curds.  It made a fantastic cream cheese that would be great savoury or sweet.  I think I might make a cheese cake for christmas using this.

The whey from this is cooked, not live culture, but it's still jam packed full of nutrients.  Use it in soups, bread, and anywhere else to substitute some or all of the water in a recipe.

Cultured Butter and Buttermilk (Fil Mjolk)

I've posted the instructions for regular and cultured butter here.  I'm surprised how easy it is to make, and I adore how it tastes.  I wait for the cream to be on sale at $1.99 per litre, then I buy them out.  The milk usually expires in one or two days, so culturing it helps the butter last longer.

Per litre of cream I get one pound of butter and half a litre of buttermilk, which can be used to make cheese and whey, or used as is in baking and cooking and drinking.

So far I've only tried it with Fil Mjolk.  I don't know if it would work with Viili, or if it did, if the taste would be good.  One day I'll give it a try.

Buttermilk Cheese and resulting whey (Fil Mjolk)

Made the same way as Yoghurt Cheese (cooked method) above, but use the leftover buttermilk from making butter.  Can be made with buttermilk made with uncultured butter, but you may want to leave this buttermilk at room temperature for about 24 hours before hand to sour it.

Update: Tried this yesterday.  It didn't make as much cheese as I would like, but I don't think I heated it up enough.  Taste is good and now I have some whey for bread baking tomorrow.



Did you notice how I avoided using quantities to tell you how it's made?  You don't need it, just the ratios.  So many recipes require gallons of milk and to be frank, most people don't want to make that large a batch.  You can make butter with half a cup of cream, or with 18 gallons, the method and ratios are the same.  Same with the yoghurt cheese.  If you have one cup of yoghurt that's been in the fridge too long, then use that, if you have more, then use that.  Salt to taste, but use at least one pinch per cup of finished cheese for preservation.  Or eat it faster and leave out the salt all together.

These are recipes for everyone.  They don't need fancy equipment or knowhow.  The only knowhow you need is to tell thick from thin, how to stir, and for the cheese to tell when milk curdles (it gets lumps in it). They are very forgiving if you get the measurements wrong, and the Fil Mjolk is kind enough to work in a wide range of temperature (65 F to 75F).



So is this affordable?  Oh yes!  It's a great way to take advantage of about-to-expire-therefore-on-sale milk and cream.  When I do this, it ends up costing about 1/4 the price of buying the already made products in the store.  And I know exactly what goes in making this, so know how healthy it is.

Allergies:  Well, you always have milk allergies to think about, however let me share something with you.  I've always been sensitive to milk, since I was a couple of months old, especially cow's milk.  And yet, on occasion, in some parts of the world, and only specific brands of milk, I can enjoy milk products with no negative effect whatsoever.  I don't know if it's something they feed (or don't feed) their cows, but I suspect it's something in the pasteurization process.  The organic milk from Avalon Dairy is one of those milks I can have no problem.  Their non-organic products have some effect, but when cultured with Fil Mjolk or Viili, they don't bother my gut either.

I suspect, that it may be possible, that some people with milk sensitivities will be able to enjoy milk products made with traditional milk cultures.  Maybe they can eat cultured butter but not regular butter.  But each person is different and if you do give it try, let me know how it turns out.

Transitional: So basically, these are easy to make, more affordable than the commercially made products, less wasteful than said products, and more variety than said products.  On top of that, you have the probiotics from the yoghurt cultures.  This is an excellent way to transition from dependence on big buisness.