Fermentation Demo! Boston Public Market, March 4 1PM-3PM

Boston Folks:

I'm doing a demo from 1PM-3PM Saturday March 4 at The Kitchen at Boston Public Market!

Come learn how to ferment. Get a signed copy of my book.

And maybe there will be a sneak-preview of recipes from my new book with coauthor Raquel Guajardo!

Full info here: https://fermentation_101.eventbrite.com/?aff=Alex

Space is limited.

Hope to see you there!

Boston Fermentation Festival! FREE! Aug 28 2016 10am-4pm at the Boston Public Market

Combining several of my favorite things! Fermentation, Boston, Boston Public Market, books, people.

I'll be signing books and helping keep order.

Lots of other book-signers, speakers, sponsors and exhibitors, etc.

We are working out how to live-stream it. Ideally I will put a live feed on this page.

Suitable for kids of all ages!

And FREE! As in "free beer" AND "free speech".

For more info: http://www.bostonferments.com/#!2016-festival/dzg2z

Basic Fermenting Recipes

I'm making this post for attendees at the hands-on the workshop I did at Pollinate Farm & Garden in Oakland, California on April 19.

But anyone else is welcome to read the post too. :-)

Please post in the "comments" section below if you have questions, or if you'd like to discuss other ways to eat these fermented foods (I've offered a couple, but I've only scratched the surface).

My book, Real Food Fermentation, has more information about fermented foods. Click here for information about how to get the book.

Basic Sauerkraut

Ingredients and Equipment

• cabbage (round, green or red)
• salt (1/3 ounce or 2 tsp. per pound of cabbage; or 20g per kg of cabbage)
• large, sharp chef's knife
• large cutting board
• large mixing bowl
• mason jars, preferably wide-mouthed (a bit more than 16 oz. capacity per pound of cabbage)
• a digital kitchen scale (available from your favorite brick-and-mortar store, or online)
• (optional) a thin, narrow-mouthed mason jar to stuff with

Instructions

• chop cabbage, finely or coarsely
• put cabbage and salt in mixing bowl
• squeeze cabbage and salt vigorously with hands until liquid runs freely (this may take a few minutes)
• put cabbage and liquid in mason jars, leaving an inch or two of "headroom", and close lids
• leave to sit, not in sunlight, but somewhere you won't forget about it (kitchen counter?)
• "burp" the jars every day for the first few days (if you don't do this, they may spill over and/or break the top!)
• it's ready after 4 days or 4 months or somewhere in between, depending on how you like it

Eat it

• on its own
• on a sandwich
• as a side dish with grilled meat
• juice it!

Mixed/Fancy Kraut

Follow recipe for Basic Sauerkraut, but use a mixture of vegetables instead of just cabbage, slice or cut into shapes and sizes as you like, and/or add herbs and/or spices to taste. Caraway seeds are a classic seasoning; 1 tsp per pound of cabbage is a ballpark amount, although different caraway seeds have different potencies. Things like garlic, ginger, turmeric, horseradish, burdock, etc. can provide nice flavor and health benefits.

Beet Kvass

Ingredients and Equipment

• a handful of beets (red or golden, number needed may vary with size)
• 1 Tbsp salt
• large, sharp chef's knife
• large cutting board
• half-gallon mason jar
• (optional) vegetable peeler 

Instructions

• fill jar halfway with water
• add salt
• put lid on jar and shake until salt is dissolved
• if the beets are not organic, peel them
• cut beets into 1/2-inch cubes
• put beets in mason jar, to fill about 1/4 or 1/3 of jar
• fill jar nearly to top with water, leaving an inch or two, and close lid
• beet greens, if there were any, can be fermented as "Mixed/Fancy Kraut" recipe above
• wait a 4 days to 4 weeks, tasting the liquid periodically
• once you like it, strain out the beets and store them separately
• the liquid is "beet kvass"
• the fermented beets may be slice and used in a salad, or juiced, or whatever

Drink it

• a shot first thing in the morning
• in a cold vegetable soup or gazpacho
• in a Bloody Mary cocktail, or with beer for a michelada

Preserved Lemon (Citrus)

Ingredients and Equipment

• lemons, Meyer lemons, limes, or citrus of your choice, ideally from a garden rather than from a shop
• salt (approximately 10% of weight of citrus)
• knife & cutting board
• mixing bowl
• big mason jars
• (optional) "pickling spice" mix from store (without preservatives; read the ingredients)

Instructions

• cut citrus into approximately 1/2 inch (1 cm) squares
• squeeze citrus over mixing bowl; add the peel to the bowl as well
• add salt and optional spices to bowl; mix
• pack the mixture tightly into mason jars, leaving an inch or two of headroom, and close lids
• let the lemons sit for months or years

Eat it

• anywhere you might use fresh lemon
• in your potato salad (or tuna salad or chicken salad)
• cook it with fish or roast chicken
• add a shot of sweetener for a fermented lemonade

More Things to Read

• health benefits of fermented foods
• reflections on beverages 
• how I make kombucha (it's certainly not the only way)

Boise Food & Health Weekend May 3 and 4 2014!

Last year, blogger and friend Raine Saunders hosted a Food & Health Weekend at her home in Boise, ID. We had a fantastic time--I led a fermenting workshop, and there were also presentations on liver and pâté, and on "sun, sleep and supplements". In between, we visited farmers markets, spent time at the local hot springs, and had a real food potluck!

Good news: We are doing it again! It will be the weekend of May 3 and 4, 2014.

Details follow. Please sign up and pay in advance, so that we can make travel arrangements and get the right amounts of materials.

Full info, schedule, and sign up are here. Or:

BUY NOW Alex's fermentation workshop, $40 --> http://bit.ly/1m3UAk6
BUY NOW Raine's yogurt workshop, $15 --> http://bit.ly/1gwT56y
BUY NOW Cheryl's GAPS & Leaky Gut presentation, $10 -->http://bit.ly/1qD3CVW
BUY NOW Mary's kombucha/kefir workshop, $12 -- > http://bit.ly/PAH4Y6
BUY NOW All event workshops and receive $7 discount -->http://bit.ly/1cFEpq5
BUY NOW Alex's book --> http://amzn.to/1gwiYXQ

If you have questions, please comment on this post and I'll answer them ASAP.

EVENT LOCATION: 406 W. Iowa Street, Boise, Idaho 83706
Phone contact: 208-869-8860

SCHEDULE: SATURDAY, May 3rd

12:15 PM GAPS and Leaky Gut Syndrome with Cheryl Carruth 

1:30 PM Homemade yogurt with Raine Saunders

2:30 PM Demo on soaking nuts and oatmeal with Alex Lewin & Raine Saunders

2:45 - 4:45 PM Fermented vegetables - sauerkraut, kimchi, and beet kvass with Alex Lewin, author of Real Food Fermentation and the blog Feed Me Like You Mean It

8:00 PM Join us in Idaho City at The Springs for a hot mineral soak to end the day!

CLICK HERE to reserve your spot at The Springs on Saturday, May 3rd -->http://bit.ly/1gqyOmS

SUNDAY, May 4th 

1:30 PM Demo on soaking nuts and oatmeal continued with Alex Lewin & Raine Saunders

2:00 PM Kombucha & Kefir with Mary Korte

3: 30 PM - ?? Everyone is welcome to attend! Bring a dish to share and come meet the members of your local food community, with a real food potluck at our workshop location (see address above).

Autumn Real Food Fermentation Events

Lots of Real Food Fermentation events this fall! Including:

• September 20-22, 2013, at the Mother Earn News Fair in Seven Springs, PA
• October 8, 2013, at the San Francisco Public Library
• October 18, 2013, at Stonewall Kitchen in York, ME
• October 22, 2013, at the Dewey Square Farmers' Market in Boston, MA

Click here for full event details.

Please come say hi!

Win a Free Copy of Real Food Fermentation

Win a free copy of my book! Quarry Books is hosting a give-away on Goodreads. Two winners will walk away with free books. Click here to enter.

Real Food Fermentation Book Events This Month

• A book talk and demo at The Ecology Center in Berkeley, California from 7PM-9PM on Thursday February 28. Come see fermentation and ask questions! Free and open to the public.

• A "Fermented St. Patrick's Day" hands-on workshop culminating in a very tasty full meal at 18 Reasons in San Francisco, from 6PM-9PM on Monday March 11. We will be eating such goodies as fermented cabbage leaves with corned beef, craft fermented beverages, and more. This event costs money, and space is limited. Sign up now!

For both events, I am teaming up with the fabulous Nishanga Bliss. She is the author of book Real Food All Year and blog Gastronicity. She is also a licensed acupuncturist, professor of Chinese Medicine, and of course an avid fermentor!

Full details, maps, etc. for both events are available here.

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!)

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!

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: