Starting the journey

This week I slowly turned the lid on the Mason jar, and Chinese 5-spice lacto-fermented apples started spraying across my kitchen. Hmmm, maybe this is what they meant about needing to "burp" the jars. And is it supposed to taste sour and bubbly when it's done, or did I "over-ferment?" Is "over-fermenting" even a possibility? Clearly, I'm new to this whole thing, and I've got a lot to learn in the area of traditional foods and cooking.

In an attempt to get a handle on this new skill, last Thursday I found myself on a teleconference with KerryAnn from Cooking Traditional Foods.  Six months into this journey, and I was amazed at what I didn't know. It also made me think about how I got on this phone call in the first place.

I'm not a big joiner.  Okay, my marriage and my church are big exceptions, but I generally don't like to join groups or jump on bandwagons. I don't go to the YMCA for exercise classes. I like my exercise videos in the privacy of my home.  I read the books about how important breast-feeding is, and then when I hit huge problems in that area, I just fought through them. I didn't even think about joining a support group.  I don't like any of the facebook status updates insisting that if I truly loved my husband, Savior, child, or mom, I would copy and paste this in my status immediately. I don't need a status update to prove my love, and I always ignore them. So how did I end up committing to the traditional foods bandwagon?

I was raised in skim milk and non-fat yogurt land. My mom has always tried to make us healthy food, and  she was taught that fat is bad. We were served lots of whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and lean meats. I continued this style of cooking in my own home. My big problem was that the more non-fat yogurt I ate, the more weight I continued to gain.

Last winter I read an article in Reader's Digest about how I should be reducing carbohydrates and eating more eggs because fat doesn't make us fat. Yeah! Any reason to eat more bacon and eggs sounds good to me. Of course, not wanting to actually join anything, I read up on the Atkins diet online and made up my own meal plans based on their suggestions. I lost 10 pounds, and I was really proud of myself. I started buying Atkins meal replacement bars since they were sweet, and I missed sugar and carbs. We also joined a local CSA as a strategy for buying more local, organic produce.

All this time, I had this slightly annoying facebook friend that I describe as my "crunchy granola friend." She gets very passionate about topics, and then she's always posting articles on facebook. Sometimes I would get curious enough to read the articles, but they usually seemed off the deep end. One of her articles was on the dangers of Splenda. It caught my attention because Atkins uses Splenda as a sugar substitute, and I realized that my husband and I were consuming a fair amount of it. One article led to another, and it slowly started changing my thinking, shopping, and meal planning. I laughed at myself when I realized that I was actually making homemade soaked granola and sharing articles about the benefits of raw milk. I had become my friend.

So here I am. I haven't bought "Nourishing Traditions" yet or joined my local chapter of Weston A. Price, but I'm committed to this journey. I still need to lose weight, but this time I want it to be the right way. I know I have a lot more to learn, but I'm convinced that the health of my family is worth it.

I really should thank my "crunchy granola" friend.