Winter is the time to ferment! The cooler temperatures are perfect for slowly-seasoned fermented vegetables. My roommate has a Harsch Crock - an amazing lactic fermentation vessel that is no longer being made! The key to this crock is a a water seal around the top that allows fermentation gases to escape but no mold/bacteria to get in (see pictures above and below). Luckily other companies are following suit and making similar vessesl, but the Harsch will always have a place in my heart. 

My friend and cofermentor Angela Davis of Nourishing Works recently did a fermentation workshop at Thirdroot. She has years of experience working in holistic health and fermentation. Her workshop - Sour Power! (great name right?) was held at Thirdroot last weekend. Angela gave me a jar of her lactofermented Tumeric Kimchi and I was inspired to make some sauerkraut with her recipe. I quadrupled the recipe for a 5 liter fermentation vessel, but you can use mason jars or whatever else to ferment the mixture. The fun part is adapting the ingredients to whatever your tastes are. I find that I sometimes use too much salt so I definitely measure that, but everything else I just kinda throw together: 

Ingredients:
1 large head (approx 2lbs) green or red cabbage, cored and finely shredded (I used 4 heads for a 5 liter crock and could have put in more)
1 large organic apple shredded
1 tablespoon caraway seeds (I always add more, love it!) 
1 teaspoon juniper berries (Hate them, but they make it taste better) 
4 teaspoons sea salt (per head of cabbage)

* Chop, shred or grate cabbage. Sprinkle salt on the cabbage in a bowl as you go. The salt pulls water out of the cabbage and makes the brine. Be patient, it takes 15-30 minutes of time/prodding (see below)
* Knead and squeeze the cabbage and salt for 5-10 min - the cabbage should be limp, translucent and release its juices easily. The brine should be a-flowing!
* Put the cabbage in your fermentation vessel - a crock, a mason jar, etc - a little bit at at a time, and pack it down with your hand or wooden spoon. This pushes out air bubbles and pushes the brine to the top of the jar. 
* Continue putting the cabbage in the vessel and you should see the level of brine increase. If you don't get enough brine, add salt water to bring the brine above the cabbage. I almost never have to do this. But if you do, add one tablespoon of salt to one cup non-chlorinated water (dissolved) and mix it in. 
*Leave at least 1-2 inches at the top of the vessel for the cabbage to expand
* Place a couple large outer leaves at the top to force the chopped cabbage below the brine
*Wipe away any loose cabbage and loosely close the top of the mason jar (so gases can still escape) or put the lid on your cool Harsch crock :) 
* Leave in a cool, dark place. Best temp is 65-68 degrees. Keep an eye on your baby, checking to make sure the brine is still above the cabbage (if mold forms, scrape it off, don't worry! it can't grow below the brine, it's too acidic) 
* You KNOW when something has gone bad with the fermentation process. It smells nasty and way different than good krawt. This has only happened to me once but I will remember it forever. Usually, everything goes fine! in 5-7 days you will have the beginnings of a sour krawt, but you can leave it more for more sourer-sourer stuff. 
*If brine evaporates - add salt water.
*When your krawt is a good sourness, take off the top big cabbage leaves and put it in the fridge - this slows the process.
*Enjoy! It will last about 6 months-1year in the fridge. 

You can see what my krawt looked like below: the brine is still a little low but the more I filled it the higher it got.

My favorite health benefits of lacto fermented foods:

* Increased digestibility, vitamin and enzyme content

* Supports a healthy immune system

* Adds lactic acid and beneficial bacteria


To your health! Email me if you have any questions about the fermentation process, and thanks to Angela at Norishingworks.com

I recently read the above book after seeing the Ted talk by the author, David Newman. The byline of the book is "What doctors don't know, don't tell you, and how truth can repair the patient-doctor breach." Another expose by some white male doctor into the crumbling allopathic care system? I've seen that before! However, this book goes beyond the basic -lets scare the shit out of you through telling you how screwed up the US medical system is- and tries to provide solutions to the real facts that allopathic care is getting worse at supporting health (they do a hell of a job at emergency care).

The main idea that I got out of this book is in regards to a big part of my practice (and something the care providers around me have taught me) which is intention. The intent of whatever you do, or make, or give can be where the healing is. 

I choose to elaborate on ideas he raised that matter to me as a massage therapist and herbalist (though of course, issues like how ineffective CPR is for the majority of people is important to me too) but I recommend reading the book in full

BACK PAIN
As someone who sees a lot of clients for back pain (and experience it myself) this bit hits close to home. 70% of humans experience severe back pain sometime in their lives.  However, what causes back pain is a mystery to modern science. The most common problems physicians see on MRI's that may contribute to back pain - herniated, ruptured, and bulging disks - also occur in the same frequency as people who are not experiencing pain. Perhaps the location of the injury is important? Science hasn't even gotten that far - they simply see an injury, see that you have back pain, and schedule surgery. Surgery on these injuries only has a 50% success rate. What's a skeptic to do, but just do yoga, get massage, take anti-inflammatory herbs, nervines, and anti-spasmodics, and talk with a osteopath or chiropractor? 

KNUCKLE CRACKING
Apparently, modern medicine has no idea what makes knuckles crack. No, I'm not joking, there are various theories, but nothing is proven. Despite numerous studies and meticulous data-collection, everyone has a different theory. This will be my new question to ask a care provider, to see if they make something up .. 

COUGH
Both over the counter and prescription cough medicines "none of [them] works any better than a placebo, and none ever has." Interesting .. this is starting to allude to the fact that a placebo must have other factors at play. When I give people wildcherry bark with honey and lemon, is it a placebo? Maybe, but there's something else in the medicine that can't be explained. 

MIGRAINES
Common prescription medicines for migraines don't work very well (for most people). What's a better option? (Note: this is a sideline, David Newman does not recommend herbs here) = Give them antiemetics (anti-nausea) medicine (try ginger tea or caps at the first sign of a headache) for acute migraines, plus pain medication. Apparently when you get rid of the nausea associated with migraines, it calms the body down enough to dull the pain. 

ANTIBIOTICS
Often cause more harm than good. Even when a bateria is present and patients are not mis-diagnosed or demand antibiotics even though their doctor tells them they don't need them. The amount of yeast infections, diarrea, severe allergies (1 in 400 antibiotic takers have an allergy) and other unnecessary side effects for unnecessary prescriptions causes Dr. Newman to devote an entire chapter on antibiotics. Herbal alternatives? Goldenseal, echinacea, garlic, honey and more herbs can help. Remember you can always take antibiotics later. 

PLACEBO & INTENTION
Often, placebo's work. Often better than their "active" counterparts. However, Dr. Newman goes a little deeper and describes the idea of a "meaning response" - we assign meaning to pills, treatments, diagnosis and rituals of healing. This is the reason why acupuncture (or any procedure) is less likely to work for you if you don't believe in it. A quote from the book that is long but important, and pissed me off a bit too = 

"It's been argued that some fields of alternative medicine depend largely - perhaps even entirely - on meaning responses. If so, are we to conclude that these methods don't heal? Speak to migraine sufferers who see an acupuncturist for their headaches. They neither know or care that a recent trial found acupuncture for migraines 'no better than a placebo.' In the trial, while acupuncture was not better than a placebo procedure, both were far better than being in the group assigned to the 'waiting list.' where patients never had any contact with acupuncturist. Many migrane sufferers, and many acupuncturists, have found that the headaches are reduced by acupuncture, and they believe in it strongly; therefore, they're right. Whether it is the ritual of administering the procedure or the biological impact of the acupuncture that provides relief is in many ways immaterial to the patients... for patients, speaking to the [practitioner] about what [ailment] is, where it comes from, and what to expect is a meaningful and healing act .. Though Hippocrates may not have known it, the meaning response was likely the core of his practice, and by all accounts his patients loved and revered him. He was a master healer." 

Perhaps it took me a while to realize this (as a beginning healer) but what I actually massage or herbalize my client with, doesn't actually matter as much as I thought it did. What seems to matter more is the relationship, the giving of hope, the act of listening and holding space for their pain. I might devise a stellar treatment plan, but without the "meaning response" my remedies are much less likely to be effective for my clients. 

Check the book out! Brooklyn Public Library has it, or you can purchase from Bluestockings Bookstore. 


  

I'm helping to facilitate a class - Level II herbal studies - with Jacoby of Third Root Community Health Center (where I spend a lot of my time). We took a field trip to the rare book room of the New York Academy of Medicine yesterday to look at herbals from the 15th Century to now. The librarian had set out crumbling texts that were held together with ribbon, that we carefully turned the pages of looking up our favorite plants. I spent a lot of time looking at early-American texts by Samuel Thompson, an early 19th century self-taught herbalist in the Northeast. His favorite plants were by far, lobelia and cayenne. They came first in his materia medica and had pages upon pages of uses. 

Datura also kept coming up in my browsing. You can find this plant growing in tree-pits around brooklyn this time of year - wild (or scattered by a moder-day Johnny-Datura?) and growing furiously in late summer. Many a night I've been out late and observed a few datura growing on my walk home through Clinton Hill. The seedpods are spikey and noticable -> and quite beautiful in this drawing. 

Datura, or Thorn Apple, is a notorious hallucinogen & dangerous. It's beautiful and the flowers open at night (why you see it in the late evening walking home) and has been co-evolving with humans for hundreds of years. Would I recomend you taking some? No - not unless you go to the rare book room at NYAM and read all the texts about this beautiful plant. The early American herbalists and botanists have a lot to say. I'm excited to say hello to this plant on the street - but will still stay my distance from ingesting it even after reading the herbals from 100 years ago.