The African Roots of Fermentation

Today a photo from a fermentation workshop I held a few years ago popped up on my FaceBook timeline. 

It made me a little sentimental. Teaching people new ideas and skills has been one of the most rewarding things about my career, a career which is taking a slight pause right now (thanks, COVID-19 pandemic). But this pause have given me time to reflect on a few things, and one of them is the inequities of the culinary world. The recent demonstrations about police brutality and the systemic racism that causes it are shining a light into some of the other areas of life that might need a little attention. One of those is the often-overlooked but very amazing and healthy foods that come from the cradle of civilization and the birthplace of humanity, Africa.

Step 1. Chop, add water and salt or sugar (depending)

Step 2. Let it sit for a few days or longer.

Step 3. Enjoy!

Fermentation helps break down elements in food that can be hard to digest, improves the nutrient profile and deepens the flavor of food. It also replenishes good bacteria in the digestive tract and boosts brain function and so many other processes in the body.

All cultures in the world ferment or fermented, before refrigerators made us lazy. In most places, around 30% of food was fermented. Due to the fact that human cultures originated in Africa, the way food was preserved also migrated with the precursor populations of the rest of the world. According to fermentation guru and award-winning author Sandor Katz, 60-70% of traditional Sudanese food is fermented. Of all places on earth, the place with the most insanely awesome fermentation culture is Sudan. One of my life goals is to go to south Sudan and learn more about the amazing cuisine, culture and people. Although Sudan has the richest tradition of delicious fermented foods, the people of west Africa also had a preference for deep flavors and spices, often using ginger, pepper, mustard and other spices introduced by Arab spice traders.

Let’s get a little bit more serious now.

During the transatlantic human trafficking and enslavement of Africans, so much of their ancestral food ways were lost to them, due to having to prepare the foods of their European captors to suit their uber-vanilla tastes (spicy food was considered crass due to the French being considered the classiest by the rest of colonizer culture and having a preference for balanced flavors over spiciness).  

Even though Africans had their culture and heritage taken from them, a taste for spicy and complex flavors led to new discoveries.

Hot sauce is a new world invention (peppers are a new world plant), first recorded in Jamaica in the 1700s, where indigenous Jamaican and African slaves were observed using it as medicine, mixing it in with the patient’s food.

Although the invention of hot sauce is often credited to a white slave owner named Edward McIlhenny, the likelihood of a rich white guy nearly a century later cooking seems far-fetched, given what we know about plantations. The whole idea on plantations was for black and indigenous people to do all the work and white people to get the credit. 

The contributions of Africa to the culinary world are substantial, and tell the collective story of humanity, no matter your ethnic heritage. It’s important that we know the history of our food, so that we can understand the world we live in and work to make it better. 

P.S.

Here’s a recipe I’ve been wanting to try. - https://www.africanbites.com/african-pepper-sauce/

Here’s a great article about the history of American hot sauce. - https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/food/how-did-hot-sauce-get-in-so-many-african-americans-bags-anyway/2016/04/21/63bebca0-07d2-11e6-b283-e79d81c63c1b_story.html

Here’s a link to Sandor Katz’s fermentation website. - https://www.wildfermentation.com

Apple-Ginger Shrub

"You had me at the words, 'drinking vinegar,'" I sad to my client, who had just told me about shrubs, the delicious combination of (usually) fruit, sugar and vinegar. this was about a month ago.
Fast-forward to COVID-19, social distancing, getting furloughed from my non-essential job and safer-at-home directives from local officials. A friend of mine was posting about the cocktails they made with shrub and I was like, "I know what I'm doing with my life now!" I remembered the fermented apples I had made back in December, just sitting in my fridge. Next, I read a few recipes.

They all seemed to pretty much say the same thing but in a slightly different order. Who knows if I'm even doing this right, but whatever, it tastes good. They all pretty much said you need equal parts water, sugar and vinegar, and the amount of fruit varied from about the same volume as one of the other parts to about twice the volume. It's my opinion that the make channels their inner Italian grandmother and just do what their intuition tells them to do, and to taste test often throughout the process.

Here's what I did:

• 4 apples
• 2-3 Tbsp ginger paste (you can also use ginger juice)
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup sugar
• a little extra honey I found in the cabinet and needed to use (~1 Tbsp.)
• 1 cup raw apple cider vinegar

1. Cut the apples up into 1/4 inch chunks. We need lots of surface area. 
2. Toss them in sugar and throw them into a mason jar
3. Wait 2-5 days. you'll notice the juices being pulled out of the apples and collecting in the jar. We want that to happen.
4. Drain off the syrup out of the mason jar and keep it. this is the tasty fruit infusion for your shrub! You can keep the apple chunks in the refrigerator and make something out of them later. Sometimes I'll just heat up some of the fermented apples and top them with coconut milk and cinnamon for a dessert.
5. Mix the ginger paste into the syrup
6. Mix the syrup with the vinegar and taste test it. If it tastes too sweet, add more vinegar. If it's too sour, add more sugar, or better yet use erythritol or monk fruit to keep the sugar content lower.
7. Bottle it up and keep it in the refrigerator. I have no idea how long to tell you it keeps for, but if you make a tasty cocktail with it on the reg, you'll use it before it goes bad! Honestly, it should keep pretty long, seeing that the acidity is high because of the vinegar.

How to drink shrubs

Not that I'm an expert on shrubs, but here's what I have learned. 

• Cocktails
• Mocktails
• Drizzle over ice cream
• Sip them

Easy Mocktail Recipe

• 2-3 Tbsp shrubs (Sometimes I mix 2 kinds, today was apple-ginger shrub with fennel shrub)
• 6-10 oz water (sparkling or still)
• Ice
• Garnish

Stuck-at-home workout

Hope your quarantine is going well. Mine is going well, thanks for asking! I've been getting a ton of house projects done, and keeping myself busy cooking, writing and making videos for my YouTube channel. So far, I just have a few videos up, but it's kind of fun to shoot and edit them. IT helps get my creative juices flowing. For example, I made a camera tripod out of a an upright vacuum cleaner and 2 bungee cords to keep my phone at the right angle for shooting my yoga video.

Most people have only minimal equipment for an at-home workout, so this is a workout that is bodyweight, with the option too add weight in the form of canned goods, bottles of cleaner or detergent, and the odd mop or broom handle.

The idea is to keep workouts simple and quick enough for most people to make time for. Scale it up with progressions for more advanced exercisers, or keep it the same if you like where you're at right now.

Workout #1

Warm-up 

• 1 min. knee touches
• stand tall keeping your abs tight
• raise one leg up and touch both hands to the thigh, knee, or shin
• you can add a squeeze to the shin touch to make it a little more of a stretch
• 1 min walking jacks
• stand tall with arms at sides
• step leg to the side and raise both arms overhead
• step back to starting position
• repeat on other side
• 1 min hip circles
• stand with feet hip width apart, hands on the hips
• draw a circle in one direction with your hips
• at the halfway point, switch directions
• 1 min knee circles
• feet together, bend hips and knees slightly
• draw a circle in one direction with your knees
• at the halfway point, switch directions
• 1 min shoulder shrugs
• stand tall with shoulders down the back
• draw shoulders up, down and back
• imagine ou are drawing circles with your shoulders

Foundational Movements

• 40 sec squats
• air squat - raise your arms to shoulder height as you sit your hips back and bend the knees
• ear tickler squat - fingertips behind the ear as you squat
• overhead squats - hold a broom or mop handle overhead with as you squat
• 20 sec recovery
• 40 sec bent reverse fly
• hinge at the hips, chest out
• arms in front of you, arms straight, thumbs out
• add canned goods here if you want more resistance
• bring arms out to the sides, framing the face
• 20 sec recovery
• 40 sec 1-leg RDL
• hinge at the hip 1 leg out behind, touch the knee
• increase range of motion to progress
• add weight to progress
• 20 sec recovery
• 40 sec plank to down dog
• Start in a plank position, hands under shoulders, feet or knees on the floor, belly tight
• raise hips up and back, make the shape of a capital A
• return to plank position
• add a push-up to progress

Stretches

• Be sure to stretch all major muscle groups, but especially these:
• chest
• hip flexor
• hamstring

Workout #2

Warm-up 

• 1 min. gate swing
• stand tall keeping your abs tight
• raise one knee up and bring it out to the side
• reverse what you just did
• repeat and then switch halfway through
• 1 min hip abduction
• stand tall with arms at sides, balancing on left foot
• raise right leg out to the side, leading with the heel
• lower the leg and return to single-leg balance
• keep going and halfway through, repeat on other side
• 1 min hip extension
• balancing on left foot, lean forward a little bit and brace your abs
• raise right leg behind you, leading with the heel
• lower the leg and return to single-leg balance
• keep going and halfway through, repeat on other side
• 1 min arm circles
• circle the arms one direction
• halfway through, switch
• 1 min  arm swings
• stand tall with shoulders down the back
• open arms wide and squeeze shoulder blades together
• cross the arms over each other in front of you and see if you can bring your fingers to the back of your opposite arm
• open back up and repeat
• speed up if you need more

Foundational Movements

• 40 sec good morning
• good morning - first two fingers on the hip crease, push your hips behind you, let your knees bend a little
• ear tickler good morning - fingertips behind the ear as you hinge
• split stance - take 1 leg forward and 1 leg back, keeping the knees (mostly) straight
• 20 sec recovery
• 40 sec Lunges
• increase range of motion to progress
• add weight to progress
• add a lunge matrix to progress (reverse lunge to side lunge, etc.)
• add plyo to progress
• 20 sec recovery
• 40 sec rotational plank
• Start in a plank position, hands under shoulders, feet or knees on the floor, belly tight
• rotate body to the side, raise arm up, look down at the base hand
• return to starting position
• repeat on the other side
• 20 sec recovery
• 40 sec bent cobra
• stand tall and hinge at the hips, pushing them behind you
• keep your chest out and shoulders back
• arms hang in front of you, elbows straight, palms facing toward you
• bring your arms back behind you, rotating externally, squeeze shoulder blades together
• return arms and repeat

Stretches

• Be sure to stretch all major muscle groups, but especially these:
• lats
• quads
• groin stretch

Elderberry syrup

Here’s a quick recipe.

1/3 cup dried elderberry
3/4 cup water
1/3 cup raw honey
1/2 tsp clove
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger

Simmer for an hour. Cool, then strain the liquid. Mix honey into the liquid. Throw away the pulp. You’re done.

Elderberry tonic

1-2 Tbsp elderberry syrup
12 oz sparkling water

Mix together. Add ice if you like.

Healthy Aging

Here are some good concepts to keep in mind as we get older. Having just been mistaken for a 20-something (by a 20-something) the other day, I feel well qualified to educate on healthy aging. Also, as a nutrition coach and trainer, it's literally what I do for a living every day.

There are 3 types of age:

• Chronological age
• Since time is linear, this doesn't change and there is nothing we can do about it.
• this is independent of variables. "It is what it is," as the old people say.
• Physiological age
• Change in physiological processes
• Dependent on lifestyle and behavioral choices
• Relative Age
• Extent to which you are experiencing physiological changes relative to other people the same age.

You can be an 80-year-old in a 20-year old's body. You could also look and feel years younger than your chronological age. It all depends on a few things.

Attitude

Keeping a positive attitude, continuing to learn and grow as you get older will also keep you younger for longer. Forgiveness, acceptance and self-love are crucial to keeping a positive attitude. Consider a gratitude practice to keep yourself in check. You don't want to be yelling at kids to get off your lawn one day, do ya?

Exercise

Moving your body frequently and well is key to mobility and vitality. Step 1 is to get moving. Step 2 is to make sure you have high-quality movement in your life, using proper form when lifting, running, stretching, etc. If you don't know something, get answers (and possibly training sessions) from a fitness professional!

Recovery

Healthy aging is not about living like a glass doll rolled in bubble wrap. It's about balance. For every hard workout or night of hard partying, do a recovery activity like getting a massage, sauna, cryotherapy, breathing exercises and other activities to turn down the stress response in the body. Acupuncture, regular chiropractic care, reiki, yoga and Pilates are some great places to start.

Sometimes recovery can be taking a walk with loved ones, spending time with friends, reading, or laughing at a funny movie. Just take time to unplug.

Put Effort In

Making sure you don't look homeless goes a long way toward helping you feel younger. When you feel good about yourself, you are less likely to be a grumpy old fart. It's just logic. You don't have to be a fashion icon, you just have to show yourself enough respect to look nice, whatever your style - from preppy to punk rock, as long as you try to look dope, you're going to feel dope. And feeling dope is feeling young.

Want to find out what your composite age is? The best way to know how is to do a consultation with me. I'll ask you a bunch of questions and then tell you how old or young I think you are. It's fun! Hit me up ...