Fungi Fun Guy

Rick's Homemade Tempeh

I have been experimenting with and cultivating various strands of yeast, mold, and bacteria for several years now. Georgianne and I have been making our own yogurt for about 30 years, we've also had a sourdough culture bubbling away in the fridge for the last 20 years. Three or four years ago I was introduced to the writing of an interesting "fermento" by the name of Sandor Ellix Katz. Sandor's books, Wild Fermentation, The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved, and The Art of Fermentation changed the way I think about food. Katz points out that fermented cultured food has been an important part of our diets for thousands of years, providing a safe and easy way to preserve food while enhancing it's flavor and nutritional value, but our modern love affair with antibiotics and our obsession with sterilization is destroying our culinary culture along with the bacterial cultures we need to survive. The big food and agro business conglomerates have managed to convince most people that genetically modified, shrink wrapped, artificially colored, chemically saturated, irradiated, vitamin fortified "food" produced in factories is somehow safer and healthier than fresh home cooked food and foods preserved using traditional time tested techniques. These mega corporations lobby for government regulations in the name of "food safety" that require traditional foods to be produced in multimillion dollar laboratories and clean rooms rather than in kitchens or on farms. That's crazy pants! When you use traditional, low tech methods of food preservation, like drying and fermentation, you are creating an environment that makes it impossible for toxic bacteria, like botulism, to survive. Modern techniques like canning, vacuum packing, and sterilization, do just the opposite. They wipe out the beneficial and benign bacteria, creating an environment that is easily colonized by toxic organisms. And unlike the smelly slimy organisms that cause food to rot and decompose naturally, many of these toxins can't be seen, smelled, or tasted.

Rooster Rick's Oyster Mushrooms

Since reading Wild Fermentation I've enthusiastically joined the ranks of passionate fermentos. When you walk into our kitchen you will be confronted by the sounds and smells of my various fermentation projects. At the moment I have a cranberry wine must fermenting in an open crock, a batch of hard cider bubbling away in a one gallon air-locked jug, a half gallon of kombucha (fermented tea) with a mushroom like SCOBY (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast) floating on top, two small oak barrels of live apple cider and wine vinegar, a quart of milk being transformed into a pro-biotic fermented super food by some magical kefir grains, and my latest fermento adventure: a bag of soybeans inoculated with the spores of a fungus called Rhizopus oligosporus that will yield a pound and a half of delicious tempeh. Meanwhile, down in the basement I have a box of coffee grounds and newspaper that I am using as a substrate to grow some very tasty Oyster mushrooms.

All this made possible by friendly yeast, mold, and bacteria. So many people fear these organisms, not realizing that they are responsible for creating so many of our most popular foods: yogurt, bread, cheese, coffee, tea, wine, beer, sauerkraut . . . They may also not realize that their own bodies are host to billions of bacterial cells. According to the National Institute of Health's Human Microbiome Project published in 2012, 90% of the cells in a human body are non human microbes. A healthy human body contains two to six pounds of bacteria, friendly bacteria that aids in digestion, protects our skin, and keeps the bad guys in check. By the way, antibiotic means anti-life, take a pro-biotic stance, eat real food.


Photos by Rick Jackofsky