Eight Acres

We bought 8 corn cobs for $2 at the farmers market and knew we couldn't eat all of it and I really really wanted to try making relish (was hoping to grow corn, but that didn't work out), so it was a perfect opportunity to try a fermented relish and a vinegar relish based on these recipes: Fermented corn relish  recipe  and general  fermenting advice Vinegar based corn relish  recipe They both started the same way, cut the corn from the cob, chop some capsicum, cucumber, tomato and blend. For the vinegar relish I then cooked about half the corn/vege mixture with salt, sugar, vinegar, tumeric, cumin, mustard and pepper. The other half of the mixture was mixed cold with whey, salt and coriander (by the way, I freeze the whey, so it hasn't been sitting the fridge since January!) These are the finished products, lactofermented relish on the left, vinegar relish on the right. Comparison: I like the taste of both relishes, the lactoferm...

I have been waiting to do this course for SO long!   Elisabeth Fekonia is a practising permaculturist who grows and produces much of her own food on her property at Cooroy, Sunshine Coast, QLD.  Among other things, she runs workshops on cheese (which we went to last year ) and sourdough and fermented food.  Since I did the cheese workshop and learnt so much about fermented food from Elisabeth, I really wanted to do this course as well.  I was hoping that she would de-mistify sourdough for me, and she didn't disappoint! Elisabeth has a very practical approach, her methods use common household equipment, are as quick and cheap and "no-fuss" as possible, and are definitely not overcomplicated.  This is what I learnt about sourdough and fermented foods..... Sourdough We only had one day for the workshop and sourdough takes longer than a day to make as it needs to ferment for 12-24 hours, so we kind of started in the middle and worked around to the star...

I love the taste of gherkins/pickles, but when I wanted to buy some recently I found that every jar in the supermarket contained green food colouring.  That's when I decided that I'd better grow my own, because I wasn't going to buy any of them! a pickling cucumber With my own pickles, I can use a lactic fermentation rather than pickling with vinegar.  I did later find a jar of vinegar pickles at the markets that didn't contain green food colouring, and this has kept me going until I could make my own, however I would rather eat lactic fermented pickles than vinegar pickles if I have the option. What's the difference between lactic fermented pickles and vinegar pickles? Lactic fermentation is the traditional method of preserving vegetables using naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria to partially digest the vegetables and produce additional nutrients.  This also increases the acid content of the brine, which acts to preserve the vegetables against inf...