Wild Alive

Wild Alive partners with local area farmers to preserve fruit and vegetables throughout the seasons and utilize the immunities in the community’s local soil. Produce seconds that would otherwise be composted or thrown out are utilized to create nutrient rich products like sauerkraut, kimchi, pickles and condiments like hot sauce, pesto, bruschetta topping and mayo. The process stays the same but the produce varies by what is locally available in each month of the harvest season. A wild fermentation process is used to create these zippy products, no vinegar or starter cultures found here, only salt and the bacteria that is naturally occurring on the produce. This process creates a probiotic rich environment that allows nutrients to become more readily available for the body’s absorption.

OUR STORY!

Sarah and Savannah, although living 7 hours apart, both grew up showing much interest in food. Along with loving to eat, they played "chef" and "restaurant" in their back yards, and occasionally made their families sample the creations. (Thanks Family)

Their adult lives spiraled together as they searched for not only satisfaction in the food they were eating, but also in seeking bettering their health through the healing properties of food. Traveling to different country's made them realize that food could taste incredible and nourish them, simultaneously.

Within the last few years, they both became interested in fermented foods, purchasing kombucha, krauts, and raw pickles from the health food store. After reading the ingredients, the simplicity of these intoxicating foods became clear.

Savannah had been experimenting with fermenting her own foods at home and brought her knowledge to the gym she worked at; the same gym Sarah was a member of. Sarah was the first to join in the ferments class and from there a friendship and food preservation frenzy developed!

“If cooking is an art, and baking a science, then fermentation must be akin to magic.”
-Mary Karlin Author, Cooking Teacher, Food Writer

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What is fermentation?

Scientific Definition: A metabolic process that converts sugar to acids, gases, and/or alcohol. It takes place anaerobically and becomes the cell's primary means of ATP (energy) production.

Simple definition: Big things are broken down into smaller things. In the case of food fermentation, carbohydrates are broken down into simpler molecules such as an acid or alcohol.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?!

Fermentation makes foods easier to digest, nutrients readily available for absorption, increases vitamin content (B and C vitamins especially), and provides probiotic bacteria to make your belly happy. It is also actually safer than raw or canned foods as pathogenic bacteria such as e-coli, salmonella, and c. botulinum (botulism). Hooray!

Fermented foods are already a huge part of your life, but you may not even know it.

Bread, beer, wine, yoghurt, cheese, coffee, chocolate, and pickles are common examples of fermented foods but they go beyond that! Kraut, kimchi, kombucha, kvass, mead, miso, kefir, and even ketchup are also made through the fermentation process. Unfortunately in our country, these living and probiotic rich super foods are often pasteurized, leaving them void of their beneficial nutrients.

" It's the microbes that will have the last word"
--Louis Pasteur, inventor of pasteurization

Local*Ferment*Kulture
#lfk