I love to receive emails from readers who are excited to have succeeded in some aspects of Traditional Cooking. Perhaps they made a homemade batch of kefir for the first time or they are so proud that their kids raved about the soaked waffles.
While I love to read these emails, it is impossible for me to respond to them all for the simple reason that I spend a significant amount of time each day making delicious, traditional creations for my own family.
Time is finite and hungry kids won’t wait!
Frequently, the email success stories have an element of doubt at the end that goes something like this:
“I made a batch of beet kvass for the very first time, but there are some little white bubbles on top. Is everything ok? Â Can I still drink it or should I throw it out?”
This is where some folks struggle with adjusting to Traditional Cooking methods as the results are inconsistent and the inherent lack of uniformity bothers them a great deal.
Sometimes the kombucha batch is sweet and sometimes quite sour. Â Sometimes the liquid whey is cloudy and other times completely clear.
Little foamy bubbles on top of one of the mason jars of mango chutney and none on the others. Raw kefir that is thick and creamy one week and thin and liquidy the next.
If you are someone who is concerned by the frequently inconsistent results of Traditional Cooking, know that this is just a step in your journey back to what your Great Grandma experienced when she was slaving away in the kitchen day after day in the early 1900s.
The difference now is that you have a dishwasher and you can accomplish in an hour or two what it took her all day long to produce! Â Hurray for modern appliances! Â From her perspective, you are indeed living in cooking heaven.
Consistent Results are a Feature of Processed Foods
Inconsistent results are exactly why food manufacturers prefer denatured, devitalized foods jam-packed with all manner of chemicals and artificial flavors and colors – to achieve consistency for the consumer.
Food Marketing 101: A consumer that gets the same thing over and over again and is not surprised by different tastes and textures each time the desired product is purchased and consumed is more likely to be a repeat customer.
Once, when I ate at McDonald’s in Tokyo while traveling there years ago, I was amazed by how the burger and fries looked, tasted, and smelled exactly the same as here in America.
That’s the way it is with processed food my friends: Â dead, denatured, and usually chemicalized food yields extremely stable, consistent results!
Since you don’t want dead, denatured, and devitalized, learn to embrace and even enjoy the unique and variable results you will inevitably achieve on your Traditional Cooking adventure!
In this short video below, I demonstrate the inconsistency I experience with my cooking on an almost daily basis. Â Those of you who have been reading a while know that I make fish stock almost every week. Despite doing the exact same thing each time I make my pot of gold, as I like to call it, I get inconsistency in the amount of gelatin, flavor, and even the color of the broth!
So check out my weird batch of fish stock and take heart in knowing that inconsistency is fine and is, in fact, exactly what you are shooting for!
Inconsistent = REAL and IDEAL
I have a little mold on the top of the liquid of all three jars of my last batch of fermented pickles. This is the first time it has happened. The weather was pretty hot and I didn’t tighten the lids as much as I usually do while they were fermenting. They smell fine. I haven’t had the courage to eat them nor the heart to throw them away. Any suggestions?
I LOVED this post– being fairly new (a year now) to traditional cooking, I still get a little nervous I may make us sick if something came out wrong. (And might I add– you have been SO patient with me!) But this post really put me at ease. We are so conditioned to everything looking the same, that we question if something has gone bad if it looks or tastes a bit different. Well, we’ve never been sick! In fact… we are thriving over here in our household.
Hi Sarah,
I know this is off topic from your post, but I and new to traditional food cooking and have a question that has been nagging me and thought maybe you’d be so kind as to share your thoughts.
I am trying very hard to transition my family to traditional cooking, but it does take time and with 3 small toddlers hanging on my leg I just can’t seem to get it all done every day. So my question is….when I fail to achieve it all, which evil do I choose?. Example:
If I don’t have time to soak my wheat flour…am I better off eating white flour(which has no nutrients) or wheat(which is rough on digestion and blocks enzymes)?
If you don’t have time to soak your wheat and it’s only once in awhile, that’s fine. Perfection is not necessary to achieve vibrant health in most cases 🙂
If you consistently don’t have time to soak your flour and it becomes a habit, then best to not eat the wheat at all as a habitual consumption of improperly prepared wheat is going to damage your health over the long haul.
Thank you for getting back to me. So, if someone were to skip the soaking process long term…would you actually believe that eating white flour is better than unsoaked wheat?
Your the best ever!!
Hi there Sarah
Another great post. I would love to know how you use your fish stock as it is a strong taste. We love chicken , beef and lamb stock but are struggling alittle with fish stock.
Thanks again
Loved this post Sarah! Lack of consistency is also a sizable obstacle to getting the family to like real food cooking. The first few years of eating mainly home cooking in my house there were frequent complaints that dishes were not the same week to week like at a restaurant. It took awhile for it to sink in that that’s how home cooking is. Variations in ingredients, temps, the cooks attention 😉 all play into it.
Wow I must be out in left field because inconstitency is the LEAST of my challenges with traditional cooking. Number 1 would probably be the challenge of having quick snacks. This is from a mom of little ones, one has allergies, and trying to figure out snacks that don’t include dairy, nut butters or eggs drives me up a wall. I don’t want to overload them with fruit all the time but I am at a lose for much else. THAT is the biggest challenge for me. But an extremely close second is convenience. I KNOW, but I never thought about the real convenience that fast food and processed foods gave. Everything from scratch is no fun, I feel like we cannot ever enjoy group outings, having people over for dinner is difficult and last minute runs to the park or beach does not go so well when you have nothing pre-prepped. Then the thought of getting home AT dinnertime doesn’t make for an enjoyable evening. Again, young children means not much time for prep (like taking a day to pre-make things). Anyone have some advice on this I’d LOVE to hear it.
OMG!!! You ate Mc Donald’s. Lol.
Hahahaha! My thoughts exactly.
My mother does not enjoy cooking at all and I did a lot of fast food growing up unfortunately. the good news is that when I was little, McDonald’s fried their french fries in tallow so they were actually not unhealthy except for the fact that they were fried and eating fried foods alot even with a healthy oil is not a good idea.
I think what a lot of people are afraid of is crossing that fine line between healthy ferments, for example, and accidentally creating a bacteria or mold nursery in a pot that could really make someone sick. Something seems to be growing in your crock that wasn’t there last time? Lord only knows what it could be because most of us don’t have an “expert” handy to tell us what is going on. For example, incorrect canning can lead to botulism, but most of us don’t have Grandma handy to tell us if we are doing something that could have bad effects or, at the very least, make the food taste bad.
There is no worry as a ferment that goes bad would smell so horrible nothing would ever convince you to eat it! If it smells fine, it is fine in my experience!
By the way, I have had ONE, that’s right ONE ferment go bad in over ten years and that was a batch of kombucha that I brewed foolishly right next to the fruit bowl and it got mold on it.
Thanks again Sarah. No two stocks have ever come out the same for me and I’ve been making, chicken, fish and beef for several years now. Thank you for the reminder that they shouldn’t be exactly the same each time. Kinda like wine, right? 😉 The terroir and all. I will pass this on to my chapter when I do our hands on beet kvass workshop next month. I’ll let them know each jar will probably be different.