Lacto-fermentation with your Winter CSA

By : Elizabeth Wilson

I am delighted to write this post to share my mild obsession with pickled vegetables. My family’s dinner table famously includes pickles, apple cider vinegar, sauerkraut, and lacto-fermented CSA vegetables. Everyone in our family is required to eat one of those daily; guests are encouraged and occasionally inspired to partake, but not required.

To be more accurate, this post is about lacto-fermentation, but “lacto-fermentation” is not a good hook to get you to keep reading. “Pickling” is technically with vinegar and heat; a process which does not produce pro-biotics, which are great for your intestinal health. Various pickled/fermented foods have been a staple of my family’s diet since 2001, when my acupuncturist recommended a tablespoon of sauerkraut for me first thing every morning to improve my gut health. (I blame my poor intestinal health on the fact that I was on low levels of antibiotics for acne for several years as a teenager – antibiotics kill off good bacteria in your gut).

I maintain that this is the best way to prepare all of those winter CSA root vegetables because lacto-fermented veg:
            1. can be stored on the counter – I find that winter CSA root vegetables leave no room for anything else in the refrigerator.

            2. is delicious and great for your intestinal health.

            3. preserves the veg for up to a year - are you actually getting through all of those turnips and radishes every week?

I won’t go into all of the benefits of fermented foods, because you can read all about it in the websites below. But let me just say that you really don’t need any special equipment, I just use unfiltered tap water and I don’t even stress much about sanitizing. You can do this with nothing special, just the time you need to chop (which can be done by food processor or mandoline).

There are endless recipes to look through, so I narrowed it down for you to the ones I have used with success. I often put all of the root veggies in one big jar, in a big mix, but I do experiment with various flavorings in these recipes:

1. 1. The pickled turnips you get in shawarma – great on any sandwich! 
   2. Try these delicious flavorings for fermented beets. 
   3. In case that last website felt overwhelming, this one is a more basic one for beets 
   4. And, of course, you need this one for all of the radishes. 
   5. Still staring at those massive rutabagas from a couple weeks ago?
   6. And get ready for the summer CSA with these recipes: 
   7. Cucumber pickles 
   8. Hot sauce
      

Happy fermenting! Feel free to reach out to me at erwilson at gmail for pep talks and encouragement.