Naturopathic Source

There is a book called "Nourishing Traditions" (Author: Sally Fallon) that I have been meaning to get for a while now, but haven't. Yesterday someone lent it to me and it's very interesting.

First of all, there is a ton of information about food and diet. Fallon talks about tradition methods of preparing all kinds of different foods and why these methods make food much healthier and easier to digest. And apparently, delicious as well.

So, I thought while I tried these recipes out, I would chronicle my experiment here.

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I started things off last night with fermenting grains, or more specifically, spelt flour for my morning pancakes. Flour contains phytic acid, a component that inhibits the enzymes of digestion and thus makes flour somewhat difficult to digest. Fermenting flour causes this component to be broken down and the flour made much more digestible.

The flour needs to be fermented by soaking in buttermilk or yogurt or water and lemon juice (as well as a few other options). I chose the water and lemon juice because I didn't have any buttermilk and was worried about how flour soaked in yogurt would cook in a pancake. The flour needs to be soaked for 12 to 24 hours -- I didn't soak it early enough and only got in 9 hours. According to the book, as little as 7 hours deactivates most of the phytic acid, so I went for it anyways after 9 hours.

I kind of goofed: I used half whole spelt flour and half light spelt flour and accidentally added the whole quantity of lemon juice while only use 1/2 the quantity of flour and water. The next morning the flour mixture was runny. I made pancakes anyways, but they were pretty thin because the batter had too much liquid. Also, I should have just used whole spelt flour; the fermenting process softens the germ and bran of the flour so light flour isn't needed.

The pancakes, although thin, tasted pretty good. I'll try again tomorrow.

TC