throwing the baby out with the bathwater

It's the 1st of September and this is my 100th post.

Is this significant?

(If you're me - not particularly).

Or does the theory of coincidence rely on selectively noticing stuff, 

because you happened to notice something else the other day?

(If you're me - probably).

But sometimes the cosmic latticework does start to twitch,

and things that seem unrelated start to come together.

Okay - so I know you're thinking 

'Enough already with the pickling!!!'

I promise this is it for a while….

(fridge now groaning with fermented delights)*

I genuinely started all this pickling malarkey from the basis of:

• grow cucumbers in hotbed at work every year
• end up with so many that you can't even give them away
• love brine pickled cukes
• am expected to research/experiment with traditional food growing/storage techniques
• pickle some - it's a no-brainer, right?

But as soon as I started reading up on what to do, I stumbled into the world of the new 'hottest thing in nutrition' - lacto-fermentation. This has nothing to do with dairy by the way, the 'lacto' bit refers to the lactobacillus which proliferate during the fermentation of the veggies. The finished products are alive, unlike the store bought ones, which have been pasteurised for shelf life at room temperature. This is pro-biotics but without the expensive branded yoghurt drinky things.

So far, so what?

I know - the last hottest thing was cupcakes and minted pea puree!

But there is a whole pile of research being done into links between gut health and immune responses - including out of control immune responses like allergies. Better brains than mine are applying themselves to this and I'm not saying that it's a retro fix if you've already got severe allergies. But it does seem to make sense that biodiversity is a good thing when it comes to your guts as well as your garden. Inclusion of bacteria rather than exclusion, especially in early life, is being preached…

Now, I've always been in favour of what I would regard as a normal amount of sluttishness in the housekeeping department, and am a long time believer in 'Eat dirt, it's good for you!' (Having said that, I've just been scrubbing the crap off from round the back of the kitchen taps - but that's mostly displacement activity because I'm supposed to be filling in my tax return). Nobody wants to live in squalor, but maybe in our quest for a hyper-clean, pasteurised life we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater…

...glass of bathwater anyone?

* lacto-fermented radishes might just be my new favourite thing in the world ever. All the deep savouriness of a good runny cheese combined with a delicate vegetable pickle. Umami, huh? Who knew?