Real Food Fermentation Live Radio Interview Sunday at Noon PST

I'll be on Wide World of Health with Cary Nosler this Sunday at noon PST! Tune in and listen at http://www.kste.com/. (Or tune to AM 650 if you're near Sacramento, California.)

[UPDATED 12/18/2012] Archive available here.

Win A Free Copy Of Real Food Fermentation

Would you like to win a free copy of my book? Each of the bloggers on my blog tour is giving away two copies of it! So follow along on the blog tour! (And if you don't win a copy, please consider buying one!)

Vote Yes On California Prop 37

Do you live in California? If so, Proposition 37 is the most important thing you will be voting on tomorrow.

It requires that food containing genetically-modified ingredients be labeled as such.

The initiative does not impose any penalty on manufacturers of GM foods, and does not say anything about whether GM food is worse than non-GM food; it just requires labeling.

62 countries, including such paragons of consumer protection as Russia and China, already require GMO labeling. (That's right—the U.S. is behind Russia and China on this one!)

Book Signings at Omnivore Books, WAPF Conference, Etc.; Blog Tour Continues

The blog tour continues, with great posts from Lindsey at Homemade Mommy and Britt at Honest to Goodness Living.

In real life, I have a few exciting events coming up! For full details, see my Events page.

• November 8, 2012, 6PM: Demo, talk, and book signing at Omnivore Books in San Francisco.
• November 10, 2012, 1PM: Book signing at the Radiant Life booth at the Weston A. Price Wise Traditions conference in Santa Clara, California.
• November 15, 2012: Event at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA as part of the Food Literacy program. (Details to be determined.)
• January, 2012 (not yet confirmed): A tag-team book talk and signing at The Ecology Center in Berkeley, California, with the fabulous Nishanga Bliss, author of Real Food All Year, Professor of Chinese Medicine, and practicing acupuncturist.

(Again, for full details about these and other events, see my Events page.)

Real Food Fermentation On Tour

Real Food Fermentation is on tour—a physical tour and a blog tour!

The next stop on the physical tour is at 6PM, Thursday, November 8 at Omnivore Books in San Francisco. Omnivore is a fantastic food-focused independent book store. If you're in the area, please stop by! Full details here.

As for the blog tour…

Every day for the next couple of weeks, someone different will be blogging about my book! Today, Melissa over at Real Food Eater made this awesome post. Head on over, pick up a free recipe excerpted from my book, and put your name in the hat to win one of two free copies of Real Food Fermentation!

Real Food Fermentation Comes To You

I have upcoming events

• on Sept 15 in Providence, RI;
• on Sept 18 in Boston, MA;
• on Sept 20 in West Concord, MA;
• on Sept 30 in Baltimore, MD;
• and on Oct 13 in Santa Monica, CA.

Come see me, get a book, and get it signed! Full details are on my events page, which will be updated as more information becomes available and more events are scheduled.

UPDATE (9/14/2012): There is a new event in Boston on Sept 18. The Cambridge event on Sept 20 has been cancelled. The list above has been updated to reflect these changes. Full info is available here.

"On The Menu Radio" Interview

My "On The Menu Radio" interview just appeared here. Very nice! It was great fun talking with Ann and Peter Haigh. I'm inspired to listen to some of their other material.

(For the impatient out there, my actual interview starts at the 2:00 minute mark.)

Book Event: October 13 At Gourmandise In Los Angeles

I'll be doing a book event on October 13 in collaboration with the Gourmandise School in Santa Monica, California. It is FREE, and space is limited—there are only 12 spots open as of right now!

It will also be an opportunity for folks to buy copies of Real Food Fermentation, and/or have their books signed.

The event is entitled "Follow That Chef with Fermenting Expert Alex Lewin". We will meet at the farmers' market at 9AM, shop for ingredients, then go do some fermenting.

I'm excited about the event—the Santa Monica market is awesome, and it will be really fun!

To register CLICK HERE.

See you at the market!

Excerpts From Real Food Fermentation Are Available On Google Books

I did a Google search for "hollow pickle syndrome" (a term that I believe I invented), and I came across some significant excerpts from my book on Google Books. I don't know quite what the rights situation is with Google Books, but I am happy to link to it so that folks can get an idea of the "look and feel" of my book before buying it:

Click here for the excerpts on Google Books…

The Boston Globe Interviewed Me

The Boston Globe, Boston's biggest daily newspaper, just ran an interview with me on the subject of my new book, Real Food Fermentation. Please comment here to let me know what you think of the interview!

Real Food Fermentation Amazon Bestseller Campaign Worked!

We publicized Real Food Fermentation massively yesterday. The goal was to get a lot of Amazon.com orders within a short period of time, so that the book would jump up in Amazon's rankings and attract other buyers.

It worked extremely well. I was thrilled with the results!

With your help, Real Food Fermentation climbed as high as:

#1 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Diet > Healthy
#1 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Canning & Preserving
#1 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Vegetables & Vegetarian
#1 in Movers & Shakers in Books
#1 in Hot New Releases in Cookbooks, Food & Wine
#1 in Hot New Releases in Special Diet Cooking
#1 in Hot New Releases in Canning & Preserving
#1 in Hot New Releases in Vegetables & Vegetarian Cooking
#3 in Hot New Releases in Diets & Weight Loss
#5 in Hot New Releases in Health, Fitness & Dieting
#18 in Hot New Releases in Books
#59 in Books

I don't even know what other categories exist on Amazon, where else the book might show up, or whether the above numbers were the absolute peaks. Amazon lists are hard to navigate.

Anyway, a big thank you to everyone, especially those of you who were able to buy the book.

And HUGE thanks to blogging compadres who supported me by reviewing or mentioning it:

• Jenny at Nourished Kitchen
• Ann Marie at Cheeseslave
• Kelly the Kitchen Kop
• Annabelle at Kombucha Fuel
• Erin at Erin's Eco List

My publicity plan consisted of the following:

• Asking a few fellow bloggers to look at the book, and do reviews if they were moved to. (More coming…)
• Stepping up my own blogging
• Emailing EVERYONE I know. Really. Twice. At least. In the process of this, I discovered that a good quarter of my address book no longer worked. I also discovered that gmail cuts you off if you send too many emails too quickly!
• Facebooking and tweeting vigorously throughout the day—and trying to reply or respond to every interaction that anyone had with me.

To be continued…

Make Real Food Fermentation A Best-Seller: Buy It Today

I want to sell a lot of copies of my book. But not so that I can make money. I didn't write the book because I thought it would make me rich. I wrote it because I have an important message that I want to share with the world:

Know where your food is from, and how it was produced. Learn to prepare it yourself. Make yourself healthy and whole. And have some fun, while you're at it!

I am encouraging everyone who's interested in my book to buy it today, June 18 2012, if possible. (Of course if you are reading this post after June 18, I would still love for you to buy my book...)

If a lot of people buy it from Amazon today, then it will have a much better chance of becoming a "best-seller" there. If this happens, other people will see it on the best-seller list, and they'll figure it must be good, so they'll buy it too!

Click here to buy it from Amazon

Alternatively, if there is an independent bookseller in your town, then by all means call them up or wander in; ask them if they have it; ask them to order it for you if they don't; and go buy it from them. By doing this, you will be directly supporting your local economy, which is really important, although your purchase may not have the potential snowball effect of a focused online purchase.

Either way, THANK YOU!!!

Fermentation In The News: Sandor Katz On NPR

Sandor Katz, grand-daddy of the modern fermentation revival, author of Wild Fermentation, and one of my inspirations in my fermentation work and in my life, was on NPR yesterday talking about fermentation and his new book, The Art of Fermentation. The segment was entitled: 'Fermentation': When Food Goes Bad But Stays Good.

Hah!

I am glad that fermentation is getting mainstream airtime. The more people hear about it, the better for everyone.

Sandor's book, The Art of Fermentation, is a masterwork on the subject of fermentation: how to do it, why, history, philosophy, biochemistry—everything. It is ideal for folks who want to know as much as possible about fermentation and fermented foods, who are already actively fermenting things, or who are not afraid of jumping in with both feet.

My book, Real Food Fermentation, is better suited to folks who want to get started with simple fermenting recipes in their home kitchens, who prefer something closer to a more typical cookbook format, and who want a beautiful book with pictures that make the food come alive. I will add that the first 60 pages of my book aren't recipes—they are a discussion of food preserving in general, "real food", sustainability, health, how to choose ingredients, what kitchen equipment to get, and other topics.

Buy one, buy the other, or buy them both!

(If you are buying my book, please consider buying it this coming Monday, June 18, to spike its popularity on Amazon!)

(And in either case, please consider buying from a local independent bookstore rather than online. If we stop buying books from local bookstores, they will all go out of business, and we will be sorry.)

First Review Of Real Food Fermentation

Someone I don't know posted this extraordinarily accurate and thorough (and positive!) review of my book on Amazon.com. He understood exactly what I was trying to do, and why, and how, and all of the decisions I made.

If you would like to know more about my book, I strongly recommend that you click here to read the review. He says it all better than I could.

We all feel misunderstood sometimes. Today I felt really understood. Thank you, Brandon Curtis, if you are reading this!

PS:

If you choose to buy my book, please buy it at your local independent bookstore (which you can find on this awesome list that my friend Paula sent me), or else buy it from Amazon.com on June 18 (or any other day).

I Wrote A Book: Real Food Fermentation

Dear Readers,
I have written a book called Real Food Fermentation. It will be on sale any day now. I have been working on it for over a year, and I'm very excited for its launch! If you don't mind, please wait until June 18 to buy it. If enough people buy it from Amazon on the same day, it will show up on their best-sellers lists, and more people will see it.
Here's why you should buy it:
It is a photo-illustrated, step by step cookbook that shows you how to make fermented foods. The photos really make the recipes come alive (pun intended!). And they are beautiful photos; my photographer is an ace. There are other fermentation books out there, including some new ones, but to be honest, mine is the prettiest by far, and the step by step pictures make my recipes very easy to follow.
Here's when you should buy it:
Please wait until June 18 to buy my book. If everyone buys it on the same day, then my book will rise on Amazon's best-sellers lists, and more people will notice it and buy it.
I'll post a couple more times before then with more details about the book.
(If you want the book but you don't want to wait until June 18, or you think you'll forget about it in the meantime, then of course buy it now!)
Click here to see it on Amazon:

Inspired By A Friend: Meat Of Known Origin, Revisited

I've blogged lots about Meat Of Known Origin. For some time I was strict only eating Meat Of Known Origin. Then I found myself working in an office where meals were delivered every day. They weren't always MOKO, and they were often hard to resist. And I didn't resist.

Recently, I've watched my friend Mike become aware of the problems with the modern food system. His horror and astonishment at how we make our food reminded me of my reaction when I started paying attention—and reminded me that nothing has changed. All the reasons I had for avoiding factory meat are still valid.

Mike recently made the following declaration on my Facebook page:

I'm turning selective carnivore here on out; I will strive to know where my meat came from and how old it was when it was slaughtered (no more growth hormones thank you very much) and what it was fed while it was alive and hopefully happy running around in a large field with just the right number of friends. I may starve…

Pretty inspiring.

Well, that was all I needed. I'm back on the wagon. "What he said."

To be specific: chicken, pork, and beef. Chicken and pork must be from a known small farm with known practices. Co-ops (like Niman Ranch) will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. Beef should be from a known farm, but if it's not it must be grass-fed (ideally 100%). If I'm at someone's house, I may or may not eat to be polite. (Jonathan Saffran Foer discusses this specific conundrum quite thoughtfully in Eating Animals.)

The problems with other land animals are much less dire than the problems with chickens, pigs, and cows.

The problems with seafood are a whole other story. If we can avoid farmed ocean fish and eat low on the ocean food chain most of the time, that's a good start. The Monterey Bay Aquarium has some good reference material on their website, and Taras Grescoe wrote a great book on the subject called Bottomfeeder: How to Eat Ethically in a World of Vanishing Seafood.

Does anyone have stories about their reactions when they learned about modern meat production?

Harvard Food Law Society Raw Milk Debate

The Harvard Food Law Society raw milk debate: Sally Fallon Morell (President, Weston A. Price Foundation) and David Gumpert (Author, The Raw Milk Revolution) representing the "pro-raw milk" side, vs. Fred Pritzker (Pritzker & Olson Law Firm) and Dr. Heidi Kassenborg
(Director, Dairy & Food Inspection Division, Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture) on the "anti-raw milk" team.

How safe is raw milk, compared to other foods like cantaloupe, spinach, ground beef, etc.? Should we have the right to choose what we eat based on what we believe?

The pace of the debate may be a little slow for folks new to the issues, but it is an interesting point of contact between the two sides, to be sure.

We can buy tobacco without having to drive to a farm, we can buy alcohol without driving to a distillery, and we can buy both without having to sign waivers. Surely these are more dangerous than raw milk--and yet raw milk is more difficult to buy in most of the US, and not available nearly as widely as cigarettes and alcohol.

How many deaths can truly be ascribed to raw milk, vs. alcohol and tobacco? Is it possible that raw milk regulations, and prohibitions in general, are motivated by something other than concern for public safety?

Fred Pritzker even said it--the regulatory status of raw milk is ultimately a matter of politics, not of science. The more we demand access to raw milk, the more we tell our politicians and regulators that it's important to us, and the more willing we are to defy ridiculous ordinances, the better our prospects for reasonable food laws.

Protest SOPA And PIPA

My blog, Feed Me Like You Mean It, is going black tomorrow to protest the US House and Senate bills known as SOPA and PIPA.

For information about how you can do the same for your site, visit here.

For information about calling your senators, go here.