http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/ny...ss-the-us.html

Shes the Johnny Appleseed of Pickling
Spreading the Gospel of Food Preservation Across the U.S.

By RACHEL WHARTONJAN. 30, 2015

If you find yourself wandering near Whale Creek, in an industrial
stretch of Long Island City, Queens, and you come across a dilapidated
1986 International Harvester school bus emitting a faint smell of decay,
no need to call the authorities.

Its the 40-foot mobile office of Tara Whitsitt, 29, a nomadic
evangelist for fermented foods who is camping out in Queens for the winter.

A soft-spoken Texas native who refers to her cross-country travels as
Fermentation on Wheels, Ms. Whitsitt has spent the past 18 months
motoring around the United States in the bus, a former Michigan State
Police vehicle outfitted with a kitchen and a wood stove and laden with
five-gallon jugs of mint-lemon balm wine, jars of radish-turmeric
sauerkraut and plenty of sourdough starter. Ms. Whitsitt earns a living
largely by holding workshops in which she teaches old-fashioned methods
of food preservation.

Capitalizing on the growing popularity of probiotic foods €” which some
studies have shown may help benefit digestive and immune systems €” Ms.
Whitsitt had originally planned to teach these bygone techniques to the
small cooperative community in Oregon where she moved in 2012.

She discovered, though, that nobody there needed the instruction.
€œFermentation was like old news,€� Ms. Whitsitt said. €œEveryone does that
€” no mystery here.€� She had an epiphany: She would go on the road in a
$6,000 bus and become the Johnny Appleseed of traditional pickling.

Working off a list of cities where she found parties interested in her
techniques, Ms. Whitsitt has made stops in places as varied as Jackson,
Miss., Scottsdale, Ariz., Trenton and New York, where she plans to stay
until departing for the Midwest in late March.

Ms. Whitsitt adapts her outreach to her environs, often hosting €œopen
bus€� days with hand-drawn posters that offer €œfree culture for all€� €”
get it? €” or €œa taste bud dance party.€�

She occasionally finds farmers who let her park on their property for a
night, bartering lessons for raw materials. €œMy favorite trades,€� she
said, €œare education for veggies.€�

On Feb. 7 and 8 €” at Judson Memorial Church in the West Village in
Manhattan and a home-brew store called Bitter & Esters in Prospect
Heights, Brooklyn €” she is to give lectures on the proper care of
sourdough cultures and on the thick, fermented dairy drink called kefir,
whose sour tang is admired in foodie circles.

In January, Ms. Whitsitt gave a sold-out, $25-a-head class in a Brooklyn
coffee shop on how to make tempeh €” a fermented soybean cake that dates
to 12th-century Indonesia €” that came with a guide she illustrated.
Those who stayed for dinner tossed around the scientific names for
edible molds over a family-style meal that included her kohlrabi kimchi
and fig cider.

A self-professed introvert who typically travels only with a
slate-colored cat named Franklin, Ms. Whitsitt became a fermentation
expert by accident.

In 2011, she was living in Brooklyn and handling logistics for companies
in the fashion and entertainment industries. A friend persuaded her to
make the fermented tea called kombucha and a batch of sauerkraut. From
there, she moved on to other fermentation projects until her interest in
the practice became, she said, an obsession. When her kitchen finally
began to resemble a chemistry laboratory, she headed to a commune in the
woods, 50 miles west of Eugene, Ore., looking for more space and
like-minded fermenters. Besides, she said, €œId done the whole New York
thing long enough.€�

Now she is back and trying to park her bus in legal spots €” thankfully
abundant in the streets near Whale Creek €” and staying at a friends
place in the neighborhood. €œI sleep on his couch most nights,€� she said,
€œand I dominate his kitchen.€� The accommodations are a far cry from her
place in Oregon, which included land to grow vegetables. But while Ms.
Whitsitt has less room to ferment in New York, she said she had been
welcomed by the citys thriving scene of probiotic fanatics.

Many belong to NYC Ferments, a Meetup group with more than 450 members
that was begun in 2012 by Angela Davis, 42, and Michaela Hayes, 43, an
Inwood resident who teaches classes and sells fermented vegetables under
the name Crock & Jar. Each month, the group picks a theme, Ms. Hayes
said €” Japanese pickles, for instance, or mead €” and then discusses
recipes and results over samples in the back room of an East Village bar.

€œWe have people who have been fermenting for three decades,€� Ms. Hayes
said. €œAnd we have people who havent even done it but are there because
they heard about the health benefits or because its a food trend.€�

Ms. Hayes, who ran the €œpickle program€� at the Manhattan restaurant
Gramercy Tavern, said the group had been such a success that Meetup.com
invited her to speak to its staff. Many of the Meetup employees, she
said, were a little wary of her focus on what she called €œweird pickles€�
like Japanese nukazuke, which are made by fermenting vegetables in a bed
of mashed and roasted rice bran.

Even with items like kombucha and kimchi appearing on supermarket
shelves, fermenters €” who often live among pungent jars, tubs and crocks
and rely on friends to €œfeed€� their sourdough starters with flour and
water while on vacation €” are still considered outside the mainstream.

€œIts so misunderstood,€� said Cheryl Paswater, 36, a Prospect-Lefferts
Gardens resident who has attended Ms. Whitsitts workshops and teaches
fermentation classes under the monikers Dr. Delicious and Contraband
Ferments.

€œGod bless their souls, my roommates have never complained,€� said Ms.
Paswater, who keeps a stash of Japanese miso fermenting under her bed.

Last summer, Ms. Paswater traveled with Ms. Whitsitt to Vermont to help
run an event. €œHer projects special,€� Ms. Paswater said. €œAnybody
thats willing to be that adventurous and go out and talk about their
passion, those are the people who are magic. They are the unicorns.€�

Mythical beasts aside, home fermentation raises some legitimate
food-safety concerns. Robert Tauxe, the deputy director of the division
of food-borne, waterborne and environmental diseases for the Centers for
Disease Control, said that fermented foods have a long, established
history. As one of the earliest culinary techniques, Mr. Tauxe said,
fermentation has changed little over centuries: Naturally occurring
microbes like yeasts and bacteria break down cabbage, soybeans or grape
juice into sauerkraut, miso or wine.

€œWhere people have gotten into trouble,€� he said, €œis striking out on
their own and mixing and matching.€�

Though the C.D.C. encounters fermentation-related problems only rarely,
Mr. Tauxe offered a few hair-raising anecdotes, including two cases of
botulism in Queens from home-fermented tofu (it is known as stinky tofu
and can be found on Chinese menus). Then, he said, there is the prison
beverage known as €œpruno,€� made by inmates who put fruit or vegetable
juice in €œa plastic bag under their armpit until it is fermented and
filter it through a sock.€�

€œThat,€� he said, €œis real freelance fermenting.€�

In the city, learning about fermenting is now easier thanks to people
like Ms. Paswater and members of NYC Ferments, which hosted Ms. Whitsitt
for a kimchi-making demonstration. €œI love the idea of her journey,€�
said Ms. Davis of NYC Ferments, who is also the education manager for a
city nonprofit called Just Food, where Ms. Whitsitt is scheduled to
teach a fermentation workshop on March 15.

€œI think its wonderful, what shes doing,€� Ms. Hayes said, noting the
increase in interest among students, those who wish to buy fermented
foods or even organizations that want to host their own fermentation
classes.

Attendance has also grown at the annual Ferment! Ferment! €” a spring
fermentation €œpotluck-meets-party-meets-informal tasting€� held by a
Crown Heights resident, Zachary Schulman, 34, for the past eight years.

What started as a dozen or so people in Mr. Schulmans living room has
swelled to a crowd of 250 that gathers over samples of pear cider or
Russian beet kvass at the Brooklyn Free School in Clinton Hill.

Mr. Schulman said he hoped to have Ms. Whitsitt speak at the ninth
annual gathering in March. He has long admired what he said was her
openhearted approach to sharing her knowledge, and her ability to curate
a well-stocked pantry of foods that can require as much care as pets.

€œIts pretty spectacular not just to keep them alive,€� Mr. Schulman
said, €œbut to keep them alive traveling on a bus.€�

Of course, not everyone is a fan of Ms. Whitsitts pink and
yellow-striped behemoth, most notably the Long Island City resident who
banged on her door threatening to take action about the proximity of the
buss front bumper to another car.

Ms. Whitsitt said she was less concerned about parking rules than about
simply sitting still. Though New York is full of friends, she said,
€œthis is the longest Ive stayed in one place on this trip.€�

On Sat, 31 Jan 2015 17:29:47 -0500, Travis McGee >
wrote:

>http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/01/ny...ss-the-us.html
>
>She’s the Johnny Appleseed of Pickling
>Spreading the Gospel of Food Preservation Across the U.S.
>
snippage

I usually have a ferment or two going all the time. I have water kefir
going all the time. Now I have some cabbage with carrot and red onion
fermenting in the bottom cupboard, should be ready in a few days.
I have homemade kimchi in the fridge.

koko

--

Food is our common ground, a universal experience
James Beard