We were up in Whistler for the weekend in order to take in our first Nourish, Whistler’s wellness festival. This is a month of seminars, sessions, workshops, workouts, and overall mindful practices. Seeing as we are self proclaimed foodies, we focused on the food related events that would help teach us more responsible ways to look at food, our health, and things we can do to improve both heart and gut health.
We attended two such events. The first was the The Art of Fermentation. Held in a pop up dome at the top of the majestic Whistler Mountain. This was an intimate hands-on workshop, where ticket holders are able to discover the quiet, living magic within fermented foods. Presented by Astrid Cameron Kent, who led us through a sampling of fermented products then taught us how to make our own.
We started with the history of fermentation, looking at a variety of cultured food from every civilization, the most common being the culturing of cheeses, the natural fermentation of vegetables like beets, and kombucha which is made with black tea with SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast).
New to me was water kefir. This is a bubbly, dairy-free, fermented beverage packed with live probiotics. It is made by fermenting grains to produce a tangy, refreshing, and gut friendly soda or yogurt alternative. All these cultures need sugar to activate, which is then eaten up during the fermentation process.
Today we would be working with such living organisms and yeast, with molding that causes the fermentation process. The best example of this is that we can’t drink spoiled milk, but we can have cultured milk. And tell is that if it tastes like ammonia it is inedible.
On top of cultures, fermentation is dependent on temperature, time, light, and even emotions. The latter is something we would put into practice as we made our own sauerkraut.
We made our own jar of sauerkraut to take home, and also took with us the ability to recreate more of it at home. This was surprisingly such an easy thing to do, that does require much, yet we pay so much for a small bottle of sauerkraut at the grocery store. Between chopping, salting, pounding, squeezing, and stuffing; it took 30 minutes to complete. Just be warned, it does get messy and if using purple cabbage like we did, there is a chance that things may be dyed.
My largest take away was the ease of maintaining good gut health, you need not specialty yogurts or vitamins, just altering your diet a little can achieve this. By having a scoop of our homemade sauerkraut a day, or drinking a cup of kefir daily.
And in order to have both perform at their peak we can eat prebiotic food that help to activate the probiotics as their fuel. Real dark cocoa, real raw food, red wine, dark beans and legumes, green and black beans, whole grains, sourdough, and fruit and vegetables with their skins in tact.
As for the seminar itself it was a little hard to follow, with our host reading right off the pages of a book, as private conversations broke out between participants. As a learner I wish the presentation was a bit more dynamic and engaging. But overall, a really enjoyable and informative seminar, and I now look forward to more and future Nourish sessions.
