Yes that’s right, we’re all going fermenting with Sandor Katz next February.

Join us for a rare chance to marinate in the stories, techniques and know-how of everything from kraut to kefirs to kombucha and back again, with the one and only Sandorkraut – we cannot wait! 

There is so, so much to get excited about when it comes to Sandor Katz. He is, quite simply, a Dude.

This man is a living library of fermentation techniques, as well as a delightful torch bearer for why the heck a good understanding of ferments is a darn fine idea to have in every Australian kitchen.

It’s about taking back control of our food, and our health with it. It’s about adding awesome flavours back into our diets, that we’ve pasteurised or extended-shelf-life-ed out of existence.

It’s about not bowing down to the idea that unless you bought it from the store, that it can’t be ‘safe’ to eat.

It’s also about food preservation, in times of need. What happens when the power goes off?

You ferment your food-stuffs, in simple yet effective ways. This is energy-efficiency at its finest.

This is how to build a power-down larder, full of amazing and nutritious things to eat.

Living foods are essential to our diets. Things as simple as yogurt and as complex as… well actually they’re all pretty simple, once you get the hang of it. They can all be made in your kitchen.

And they will make your family happier than they currently are.

No, I’m not going to go off on a treatise about the miracles of living foods curing everything including our new government’s inability to fund science or international aid properly.

But.

We have, as a society, lost our skills to ensure the awesome diversity in our diets that freshly made living foods bring into our home.

Because we don’t know how, or more importantly WHY, to make them anymore. And we need to get that knowledge back.

I’m talking about yogurt, I’m talking about pickles, and sauerkrauts, and kefirs, and country wines, and mead, and cheese, and sourdough, and all the rest.

I’m talking about reclaiming our kitchens, and about reclaiming our bodies’ ability to absorb more and different nutrients, just like we used to.

I’m talking about real food, that heals and that keeps our whole families healthy, in the face of craziness of many kinds. We need that knowledge back in our kitchens.

And then, if that’s not enough reason to come along, THEN there’s Human microbiome aspect of this conversation.

A microbiome is “the ecological community of commensal, symbiotic, and pathogenic microorganisms that literally share our body space.”

Simply put, we are a community of microbes, more than anything else. And when we do things that aid the health of that community, we are healthy humans. And when we don’t, we are not.

Making and adding ferments to your family’s daily diet is a simple and incredibly powerful way to keep your human microbiome rocking.

And you get to feast on yogurt cheese. And amazing pickles. And spicy sweet/sour drinks. And real bread. And don’t forget the wine.

So this is why we decided to take the leap of getting Sandor Katz out to Australia to share, in his eloquent, friendly and downright awesome way, his take the power of ferment.

We want to help to get Australia making and eating more ferments as an act of community building and of home-scale resilience. We need this knowledge and these skills back in every kitchen.

So we’re holding public talks and fermentation sessions with Sandor in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne. There’s also intimate workshops happening in Byron Bay and in Hobart. It’s all happening in February 2014.

And it’s going to be most excellent. More info here…