January 2022 - Be a Smart Woman

Fermented Foods

By Paige Sparkman | January 28, 2022

We at Be A Smart Woman are so excited to partner with Meg Chamberlain of Fermenti Foods to share the wealth of knowledge and positive effects that Meg has found with the addition of fermented foods into her diet. If you haven’t already, go check out the first two parts of our ongoing series with…

Homemade Dog Food

By Paige Sparkman | January 28, 2022

2 lb Ground Turkey, Chicken, Lamb or Beef 1 lb Sweet Potatoes 1 lb Carrots ½ Cauliflower Head 1 lb Broccoli which includes the florets and the stalks 1 Bunch of Kale Water for cooking vegetables 1/3 of pan size 1 ½ cups White Rice or Quinoa 2 ¼ cups Vegetable Stock Quart or Gallon…

Be A Smart Woman

The Be A Smart Woman podcast is presented by Be A Smart Woman Founder and President, Claire Faithfull. In this podcast Claire talks to women about their life and personal journeys. It is the hope that through the sharing of stories, women everywhere will be empowered to be the best that they can be!

Today the Be A Smart Woman podcast welcomes a very special guest in part 2 of our series on fermented foods. Her name is Meg Chamberlain and she is the founder of Fermenti Foods. We will be talking in more detail about how fermented foods can help you. The many gifts that consuming this wonderful food group can bring into your life.

This episode will be packed full of great information so you might want to get a pen and paper for this one. Highlighting and discussing all the in’s and our’s of fermented foods. Why you should consider including such a dynamic health food into your daily diet, how to do this in a balanced way. Especially if you are a new-be at this.

We will talk about lots of recipe ideas and share some great tips on how to get your young children excited about eating these wonderful foods.

We will be answering questions on this today in away you may have never heard it explained before. By the time we finish our 2 part series you are going to be looking at these little powerhouses of foods in a totally different light.

We also discuss in more detail how eating fermented foods and fasting intermittently supported Meg in loosing over 200 pounds,

Please keep in mind that we are sharing personal stories, we are not doctors nor do we play one here on the internet so make sure you check with your doctor for any health concerns you might have and weather using fermented foods would be beneficial for your health and well-being

After the show we would love to invite you to join us with Meg in our Private online forum for further conversations around these podcasts.

To learn more about Meg and her wonderful company Fermenti foods you can visit her web sit at

www.fermenti.biz and

www.wncfermentingfestival.com

Facebook, instagram, twitter @ fermentifoods

and on their free YouTube Channel Fermenti Mountain

Quotes:

There are four things that you really want to have, you want to touch on in regards to fermented food and consumption. The first one is when you go to incorporate these realistically into your everyday diet, again, diversity is key. Obviously picking a ferment that you are going to want to consume is very important. I know a lot of people will buy something because it’s good for them, but then they don’t eat it and that’s not good for them…(04:10 to 04:50)

You can even use the brine from ferments as like a salad dressing. So then that’s another application is probiotic rich salad dressings. You just replace the vinegar with the brine. That’s probiotic rich. (09:44 to 09:56)

One of the things that I find so fascinating specifically at markets at my booth is kids will come up and they will want to try something. And more often than not, a parent will come up and be like, “Oh, you don’t like that. You don’t want that.” (25:22 to 25:41)

Yeah. It’s like even animals, like dogs will come to my booth and I always have a little dog dish where I put some sauerkraut. (26:46 to 26:52)

Links mentioned in todays show:

www.fermenti.biz

uncfermentingfestival.com

www.beasmartwoman.com

Connect with Us

To learn more about Claire Faithful and the Be a Smart Woman movement visit us at: https://beasmartwoman.com

Or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter

Also listen to this podcast on: iTunes, Spotify. Utube and at BeASmartWoman.com

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Claire F.: (00:00) Welcome to the Be A Smart Woman podcast. Everyone has their own story to tell and you never know what impact your story might have on someone else’s life. This is the foundation of the Be A Smart Woman movement. Our movement seeks to empower women through the sharing of their journeys with other women. Sometimes we don’t even realize the lessons that our stories hold until we share them with others. I am Claire Faithfull, founder of Be A Smart Woman, and it is my hope and dream that this podcast will illuminate personal lessons for you the way listening to other women’s stories has inspired me for years. We are so glad you are here. Let’s enjoy this journey together.

Claire F.: (00:52) We are here today for round two of our fermented foods discussion with Meg Chamberlain, owner of Fermented Foods. You’ll definitely want to grab pen and paper for this one as it’s packed full of information. We’ll be discussing the best ways to add these fabulous foods into your diet. A little hint, it is different than you might expect. Listen in. First we talk recipe ideas and share some great tips for getting even your pickiest eaters to love them. Meg talks about her personal journey of losing nearly 200 pounds by healing her gut with ferments and intermittent fasting. Please keep in mind that we are sharing personal stories. We are not doctors nor do we play one here on the internet, so make sure you check with your doctor for any health concerns you might have. After the show, we’d love to invite you to join us with Meg in our private online forum for further conversations around this podcast. You can find the link of our website or simply do a Facebook search for Be A Smart Woman online community.

Claire F.: (02:28) Wow, everyone. Welcome back to our fabulous show. I am so excited that we are going to be doing a part two with the wonderful Meg Chamberlain because I feel like we just touched the surface, and I was so excited about our first podcast. I felt like I just had to pull her right back in. And let’s get some more questions answered, and let’s understand on a deeper level because I got such amazing response from you guys and you all were asking about more and understanding more. So here we are. We have the wonderful Meg Chamberlain.

Claire F.: (03:06) Hey Meg. Welcome to our show again. I am super excited that you’re here because after our first podcast together, I just felt that there were… I felt like we just touched the surface and there were so many questions that I had and I feel like even this one is just going to be a bit more of that because there’s so much I’m realizing to gut health and to our general wellbeing and where fermented food plays a role in that. So I guess my question to you would be on another level or a slightly deeper level, what is it that we need to know about fermented foods? How can we add this into our diet? Are there simple techniques we can add fermented foods into our diet? Now in the last podcast we talked about where we could buy different fermented foods and the types, but I just wondered if you could talk a little bit more about that.

Meg Chamberlain: (04:09) Yes, actually there’s, and thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure. There are four things that you really want to have, you want to touch on in regards to fermented food and consumption. The first one is when you go to incorporate these realistically into your everyday diet, again, diversity is key. Obviously picking a ferment that you are going to want to consume is very important. I know a lot of people will buy something because it’s good for them, but then they don’t eat it and that’s not good for them because they’re…

Claire F.: (04:51) Yeah, that’s me. I go, oh, I’m going to try that. And then I taste one little one at home and I go, yeah, no. And then I don’t do it.

Meg Chamberlain: (04:57) And you’re in very good company. There’s lots of us that do that, myself included sometimes. So the first of the four things that I recommend when you are looking at adapting your diet with fermented foods is you want to double your servings of fermented foods to start. So in the first podcast we talked about the initial four to six weeks and how as when you start to consume them regularly, the soluble fiber takes the lactic bacteria down into your large and small intestines, and they will attach themselves to the impactions. Like if you have leaky gut or ulcerative colitis or Crohn’s, it will attach to the impactions. And layer by layer, the soluble fiber is really the vehicle that helps remove those impactions from your system. So to start, if you’re craving or your initial idea is to eat maybe a palm full, maybe initially have two palm fulls.

Claire F.: (06:07) Oh, so you’re talking about like the palm of our hand. You take a palm full of fermented food. Like we were talking about sauerkraut because I guess that’s what everyone knows the name of, sauerkraut. But so you’d put that in the palm of your hand, but you would do two to start?

Meg Chamberlain: (06:24) Yes.

Claire F.: (06:25) So you’d actually have more in the beginning?

Meg Chamberlain: (06:26) A little bit more in the beginning. So that’s anywhere from an eighth to a quarter of a cup. So you might be choosing to eat a half a cup or so with every meal to, start for four to six weeks. I do recommend that you’re aware that you can overdo it. Like if you were to sit down, because I have people that are like, “Oh my gosh, your kimchi is so delicious. I just sat down and I ate a whole jar. Help. Am I going to be okay?” And the answer is yes, you’re going to be just fine. But you might have a little diarrhea the next day because of the amount that you’ve consumed.

Meg Chamberlain: (07:10) So I do recommend to try to eat maybe only half a jar if you have that compulsion. But again, I always above all recommend to follow your gut because our guts are never wrong.

Claire F.: (07:25) Well, I just love that saying. Follow your gut, listen to your gut. And we’re talking about the gut and healing the gut. And yet we have to listen to it in the context of even how much fermented food we put in our gut.

Meg Chamberlain: (07:36) Yes. And also giving yourself permission to let go of our minds because our egos and our brains very much think that they know what’s best. And if we give ourselves permission to deepen into our physical beings, that is really how we go with our true intuition and our gut. So a lot of people when they’re like, “Oh, I just intuitively did it.” No, they put together a series of logical fallacies that led them to do something that might, yeah.

Claire F.: (08:09) Well, it’s just making me think about how people say to us, “Listen to your gut for your like intuition or your guidance.” But I guess if your gut isn’t healthy, then maybe you’re not going to be able to listen to your gut so well.

Meg Chamberlain: (08:26) And that’s part of the healing journey that we are all on in this day and age. And it is a give and take. There is a back and forth. But over time you will learn to understand what is your ego based, I’m going to do what Maggie wants to do, versus Maggie’s gut being like, girl, we need this.

Claire F.: (08:50) I know. And that’s the thing is how do we know what we need and how much do we… Well you’re saying how much we should take to start with. And how does that go on? Like do we take half a cup of say fermented foods in the beginning, but how do we take it for a week, two weeks? I mean…

Meg Chamberlain: (09:12) Again, I recommend the four to six week period is a pretty good guideline.

Claire F.: (09:14) Four to six weeks you do that. With every single meal?

Meg Chamberlain: (09:17) I do. I also recommend that you consume cruciferous vegetables, living, raw at the same time.

Claire F.: (09:24) Raw vegetables. I mean you’re talking about like raw broccoli or cauliflower, carrots.

Meg Chamberlain: (09:30) Lettuces.

Claire F.: (09:30) Oh, you can have lettuces, salads.

Meg Chamberlain: (09:33) You can have all sorts of leafy greens.

Claire F.: (09:35) I love kale. I love making fabulous kale salads.

Meg Chamberlain: (09:42) That sounds delicious.

Claire F.: (09:42) With a little lemon, a little olive oil on it. And black pepper. One of my favorites.

Meg Chamberlain: (09:44) You can even use the brine from ferments as like a salad dressing. So then that’s another application is probiotic rich salad dressings. You just replace the vinegar with the brine. That’s probiotic rich.

Claire F.: (09:57) Oh, I’m going to do that.

Meg Chamberlain: (10:00) And we’ll get more into that in a minute. But when you consume the plant fiber with the fermented food, it helps go in and release those impactions over time, layers and layers. But you want to eat at least two times the volume of fresh to ferment. So if you’re having a salad, maybe you can press the leaves to two handfuls of salad leaves or greens and then one handful of ferment.

Claire F.: (10:37) Oh wow. So they say two cups of vegetables, one cup of ferment?

Meg Chamberlain: (10:45) Yes. And then on top of that, the last thing to remember is as you are, because ideally what you’re trying to do here is to clean up your system, correct?

Claire F.: (10:54) Right.

Meg Chamberlain: (10:55) You’re trying to undo a lot of a lifetime’s worth of quote unquote damage or dis-ease that’s within our system. So to do that, and I know this might seem really impossible and it feels like it at times, but to achieve optimal results, you ideally would remove sugars, like refined sugars and refined processed wheats in flours from your diet as well.

Claire F.: (11:24) So in other words, if we really want to heal our gut…

Meg Chamberlain: (11:28) You have to stop doing the bad things that got you where you are. Which is eating the refined sugars and flours. Yeah.

Claire F.: (11:35) Right. And in a way, let’s think about that. I mean like we kind of all are becoming aware now that refined sugars and flours and things that are white are not great for us.

Meg Chamberlain: (11:47) Agreed. And they tend to cause inflammation, which is another concern of leaky gut is your tissue is inflamed. So if you remove the factors that are causing the inflammation, healing can take place much, much more effectively. So you’re not continuingly causing a problem while you’re trying to fix the problem.

Claire F.: (12:11) Right. So, in other words, you could be taking the fermented foods, which will be helping you, but then if you’re eating tons of sugar, well you’re kind of going to be counter… It’s like not really going to fully help you, is it? It might do a little bit of good, but it’s not really going to help you heal.

Meg Chamberlain: (12:25) It’s not going to get you where you really want to be. And then on top of that, just experientially, after the birth of my daughter, postpartum hit me like a brick. So I emotionally ate and went from 165 to 345 pounds.

Claire F.: (12:48) Wow. That’s hard to imagine everyone as I’m sitting in front of her and she’s just like this very smelt, beautiful woman. But I can’t even imagine. But I’m going to take it. I’m going to take what you’re saying as truth, but she looks amazing everyone.

Meg Chamberlain: (13:07) Thank you. And I mean I do have photos because I don’t even believe it, but the exciting thing about that is in my life I learned it was part of my healing journey was I had to go to that point to then pull back from that point because one day I looked in the mirror and I looked at my beautiful daughter and I was like, I’m pre-diabetic. I’m probably inflaming my Crohn’s. Every tissue in my body’s inflamed. I’m unhappy with myself. I’m being jaded in my daily interactions because I’m unhappy with myself, because I don’t have the love I need inside of myself for myself, obviously because I wasn’t taking care of myself.

Meg Chamberlain: (13:54) I can’t have that love then for my daughter or my family. So I had a really big moment where I had to make a decision to heal. And in doing that, I revisited the fermented foods because by that time, we had been fermenting on the homestead, and I had been eating kimchi and stuff off and on. But it wasn’t something that I really took seriously in a way to change my reality. And I changed my reality over 18 to 22 months. It didn’t happen overnight and it’s not supposed to, but what…

Claire F.: (14:32) Oh, so this is a process? It takes time.

Meg Chamberlain: (14:35) And be patient with yourself and you have to be loving with yourself because it’s not easy. But through intermittent fasting, which was choosing to eat within a four hour period every day. I didn’t eat before that four hours or after. I could consume beverages. Like I didn’t do just a water fast in between. Like I would have coffee or I would go to jail because I would get in trouble. So I gave myself my caffeine, and I would have teas and things like that, but I restricted the consumption of the food that I was eating within that four hour period. And the ideology behind that is to give your system a break.

Claire F.: (15:20) Yeah, I’ve heard about that. I have actually listened to other people talking about this concept of fasting where you eat… What I’ve heard is maybe you eat for like an eight hour period or a seven hour period or six hours. I haven’t heard four hours. This is the first time I’ve heard four hours.

Meg Chamberlain: (15:39) And that’s a little extreme.

Claire F.: (15:40) Yeah. But so maybe not everyone in the audience could fathom only eating for four hours. So could you stretch it like a little bit longer?

Meg Chamberlain: (15:50) You can. Six hours can work, but I find for me and for my physiology, four hours was the most effective. And if you think about it, a lot of us are so busy running around doing our day that we forget to eat lunch anyway.

Claire F.: (16:04) No, I do that. I do that a lot where all of a sudden I’ll go, oh my God, it’s 3:30 in the afternoon. I’ve had my, I don’t drink coffee, but I’ve had my tea and maybe I’ve grabbed like a little tiny couple of strawberries or something or half a food bar, but I haven’t really eaten. Because I didn’t actually call that eating. That’s just, and that’s it. And I go, oh my God. And all of a sudden I get to five o’clock and I think, I have to eat now. Like I can feel that my sugar level is starting to drop. So I’ll make myself food. But honestly, you’re right. After I’ve eaten this fabulous meal, I don’t think about food again. If I can get to the 3:30, but I have to be busy because if I’m not, if I’m having a quiet day, that’s when I kind of think, oh, let me make breakfast and oh let me have some lunch because I have time.

Meg Chamberlain: (16:55) Yes. Then you’re taking the food into more of a activity versus sustenance. Now I will say that something that did help me considerably was as I, and and it didn’t happen overnight. I started at six hours and then went down to four eventually. But one of the things that helped me was I would get these horrible hunger pains and I was like, oh my God, I’m going to die if I don’t eat right now, I need to eat right now. And I would make myself stop, and I would really drop into my body and think about it and be like, okay Meg, are you tired? Are you really hungry or are you just thirsty? So then I would drink water. I’d drink eight to 16 ounces of water. And nine times out of 10, I wouldn’t think about it again. So I found that a lot of the times when I think that I’m hungry, I’m truly dehydrated or that it’s my body’s way of telling me to consume some sort of liquid.

Claire F.: (17:58) Wow, that’s great information.

Meg Chamberlain: (18:00) And that’s just again experiential data. But that’s what I’ve learned. And then I paired this fasting technique with fermented foods. So during that four hours, I would eat an eighth of a cup of kimchi and a quarter cup of salsa that’s fermented and a few dilly beans that were fermented. And then a few preserved lemon peels on top of a salad that I was eating, and I would consume ultimately the right amount. But I did it through diversity, through choosing to consume them more as condiments versus setting down a jar of sauerkraut on the table and being like, mentally, I have to consume half of this to dah, dah, dah.

Claire F.: (18:45) Yeah, that doesn’t sound like fun. I can’t imagine many people wanting to do that.

Meg Chamberlain: (18:49) I make it for a living and I don’t even want to do that. So you don’t have to make this torturous. The point of food, I believe, is to enjoy life and enjoy the flavors and spice and creativity of life. So you’re not here to punish yourself. And that’s why I think a lot of diets quote unquote fail, is because you come from the perspective of, oh, I’ve been bad, I have to punish myself to be good. And that is not sustainable.

Claire F.: (19:16) No, it’s not. I agree with you.

Meg Chamberlain: (19:18) And who wants to be punished?

Claire F.: (19:20) No one. But I think as individuals it’s very easy for us to self punish. I think that’s one of the things I see, especially for women that we do a lot where we beat ourselves up.

Meg Chamberlain: (19:32) Well culturally we’re ashamed and we’re taught to shame each other. It was a way that we kept each other in check as women. And I believe if we are going to be smart women and take care of one another as we’re meant to do, we can’t fall into that shaming category because again, we’re not only just shaming somebody else, but we are hurting ourselves by perpetuating these outdated social tools to keep us quote unquote with our legs crossed and our mouths shut. We as women are not meant in my belief to be hobbled like that.

Claire F.: (20:16) Oh, I love that word. Yeah.

Meg Chamberlain: (20:19) There’s a saying, and please forgive me, the source is alluding me. But it’s when women wake up, mountains move. And being here in the mountains and being around so many women that wake up, stuff’s moving. Like we are making an effective change. And when we stand up and we make the conscious choice and give ourselves permission to be the change we want to see and thusly support the women around us be the change they want to see, that’s when community comes together and we can stand together as women.

Claire F.: (20:54) I know. And that, I mean this is a little side note everyone, but that is really what for me Be A Smart Woman is all about, is bringing women together in community to share together. Like we’re sharing about fermented foods, and this is giving me so much personal, helpful information. It’s like you have this gift and now you’re sharing it with me of which now we get to personally, the two of us, share it with all the people that choose to listen to this fabulous podcast. And then they can share that with their friends and their women friends, and this is how this can spread and then we get healthier. So we can be, because I think women are powerhouses.

Claire F.: (21:40) I think we can move mountains. But we also need our strength and our health. And I think that’s one of, even for me with this project, I realize I have to go to bed a little earlier. I’m getting up earlier. I have to be more mindful of how I’m feeding my body because I need the energy to do all the things that it takes to put this podcast on, which is a lot. And it’s fun, but I realize I need the energy. I just can’t be doing some of the things that I used to do before. And so I think the fermented foods is and healing your gut, because I think isn’t your gut about your energy? Because if I think about it from color, it’s the center, it’s the core. And I guess if that’s healthy then we have more vibrance.

Meg Chamberlain: (22:29) Agreed. And there’s a lot of data that’s being brought out now in the scientific community about how the gut is our second mind, and it’s even being argued that it is our primary mind and that our intellectual brain is not really as smart as we like to think that it is. In that getting back to the visceral nature because as a species, before we cultivized or civilized everything around us, we would have an altercation let’s say with a wild boar and we would run for our lives. Well, physiologically we would have to then shake that off like a deer in the wild. They’ll shake things off. And through becoming civilized, we don’t allow ourselves to do the things we need to let go of emotional traumas.

Meg Chamberlain: (23:30) And as women in particular, we tend to push things down into our solar plexus and our womb areas. And that can cause a lot of dis-ease again. And so a lot of it for me has been yes, fermented food and yes, intermittent fasting, but also giving myself permission to take the conscious choice to go into those things that I have been told and allowed myself to be told. And that’s another thing is that we allow ourselves to be coerced and then pulling these things up and looking them and seeing if they serve me well.

Claire F.: (24:10) No. And I think now the time is a lot that’s what women are really doing is looking at where we’ve been kind of suppressed and sort of shut down that we have to live in this certain way and this is how it is. And I think now we’re starting to go, well maybe I just don’t want to do that. And it’s not about feminism and this whole women’s lib thing, “burn your bras” of the 60s. Maybe that was the beginning of that movement. I think now we’re in a different time. It’s about women really being empowered and being smart and going, how do I take care of myself? How do I take care of my health? How do I take care of my family? Or how do I take care of my friendships?

Claire F.: (24:48) How do I nurture healthy friendships in life where we care about each other as women instead of attacking each other, which was the [inaudible 00:24:57]. And I feel like that was the set in the culture too. But that’s another topic. But it did make me think about something which is, okay, so we have our little children. How do we introduce fermented foods to young children? Because you know how picky they can be. And I’m figuring it would be good for children to have fermented foods too.

Meg Chamberlain: (25:22) It is. And one of the things that I find so fascinating specifically at markets at my booth is kids will come up and they will want to try something. And more often than not, a parent will come up and be like, “Oh, you don’t like that. You don’t want that.”

Claire F.: (25:42) Oh really?

Meg Chamberlain: (25:43) Yeah. And so…

Claire F.: (25:45) So the child may be intrigued or interested.

Meg Chamberlain: (25:49) Because natural curiosity. And nine times out of 10, through behavioral patterning, we help our kids be picky, a lot of times. So it’s so interesting when I find a parent that is willing to let their child consume anything. And of course I always ask permission. You always ask permission, but these kids, they’ll eat the beets or they’ll eat the kimchi or they’ll eat… I even had one eat the hot sauce. Our pickles are a huge hit with kids of all ages. And it’s so fascinating because these children, and in fact at market, some of the other market kids will every week come to my booth, “I want pickle juice, I want pickle juice, I want pickles. Can I have some?”

Claire F.: (26:39) So something about them that innately, they know this is good for them.

Meg Chamberlain: (26:43) Yes.

Claire F.: (26:44) So they’re drawn to it.

Meg Chamberlain: (26:46) Yeah. It’s like even animals, like dogs will come to my booth and I always have a little dog dish where I put some sauerkraut.

Claire F.: (26:53) So you can give this to animals too?

Meg Chamberlain: (26:56) Yes.

Claire F.: (26:56) Woo hoo! I’m going to give this to my dog. Oh, yay. Oh yay. Cool Monte.

Meg Chamberlain: (26:59) His quality of life will improve.

Claire F.: (27:01) Oh yes. I’m so excited.

Meg Chamberlain: (27:03) It is exciting. And so what’s so neat is that when we don’t have those filters, so many of us do gravitate. And it’s really funny even with the adults that are very much in those patterns of restriction, self restriction, they’ll come to my booth and I’ve gotten quite good at being like, don’t come to my booth and bring that here. Just try it. Look, I got a spit bucket. I don’t look. If you don’t like it, no harm, no foul, but give it a shot.

Meg Chamberlain: (27:35) It’s free to try. And nine times out of 10, people will try it and they’ll be like, “Oh, well I actually like that.”

Claire F.: (27:45) They weren’t expecting it.

Meg Chamberlain: (27:46) Yeah, they had a preconceived idea.

Claire F.: (27:49) I actually did have that when I came to your booth all those years ago. And who would’ve thought we’d be doing this podcast together years later? But that’s really what happened to me. I came on, my husband was saying, “You’ve got to come and meet this lady, Meg, she’s awesome.” And I went, oh, but I don’t like that stuff. I literally was like that. Oh, I don’t know. And I went, okay, I’ll come and look. And I remember I’m sure saying to you, I really don’t like that stuff.

Meg Chamberlain: (28:14) Oh, you were very clear.

Claire F.: (28:14) I was very clear. And then you said, “But I have this one that I think you might like. Would you be willing to try it?” And I was like, okay, I’ll try it. And I have to say, I did, everyone, I got this little cup and I put a little bit in my mouth and I went, oh, that’s not so bad. And you know what? I thought it was going to taste like pickles. Like you know when you go to restaurants and you get the burger and the French fries and they always have to give you all of these big horrible old pickles? I just think they’re so disgusting. So I always had that picture in my mind that that’s what fermented foods was, and I was so wrong everyone. It’s completely different.

Meg Chamberlain: (28:58) And that’s where I’d like to get into speaking really quickly about how to eat fermented foods because they’re not always what we conceive them to be. And their application is wide and diverse. I have the incredibly talented chef, Jay Medford at Dope Donuts in Asheville. He is a donut genius, and he has agreed to work with me and we play.

Claire F.: (29:22) You mean could eat donuts?

Meg Chamberlain: (29:24) Yes, you can.

Claire F.: (29:24) Oh my god! Okay, everyone. Now we’re reaching a whole new level here. Donuts with fermented foods. Oh yay.

Meg Chamberlain: (29:32) So on one note, again, you’re not supposed to eat the weight in sugar, but on the realistic note, if I can have a donut, know I’m getting some probiotics, I’m rocking that. So it was a life goal for me to be able to marry the two. And he has agreed to play with, I’ll make all kinds of fermented things like dragon fruit or preserved lemons or he’ll take hot sauce that I make or pumpkin that’s been fermented, and he makes these probiotic rich glazes for the donuts.

Claire F.: (30:04) Oh my God, how wonderful.

Meg Chamberlain: (30:05) It is. And I’ve also been working with Hop Ice Cream. They’ve made probiotic rich ice cream, not just regular ice cream but vegan ice cream. So the application process…

Claire F.: (30:18) And this is something that then I guess you can give your kids.

Meg Chamberlain: (30:22) Yes. So here you go, Timmy or Mary, you may have this probiotic rich donut. And yeah, it’s your one donut week treat thing, but you know at least they’re getting something of value within it.

Claire F.: (30:36) And can you give kids, like say for instance when they have their dinner, because kids don’t always eat the same as us, especially when they’re young. They’re pretty fussy. But could you just give them a little bit of the fermented food on their plate and recommend that they eat that?

Meg Chamberlain: (30:54) I do that with my daughter. I always put a little bit and I’ll sneak it places. I do this game where I say find the ferment, and so I’ve done things where like I’ve put sauerkraut in tuna salad or egg salad or chicken salad or tofu salad, whatever the medium is. I’ve also taken, like we do probiotic rich dehydrated seasonings and kraut flours. I will either take those or brines and instead of making water with my hummus, I’ll put brines. And so you can have probiotic rich hummus or guacamole. I like to also, like for my daughter’s birthday, I have a lot of health conscious mama friends. And so for the cupcake, what I like to do is I will take a cup of sauerkraut and put it in the cupcake mix because yes, I am human and I use a cupcake mix.

Claire F.: (31:56) Yeah, I know because that’s the thing. But we’re all going to have sometimes yummy things, and I think that’s the point here as well. It’s that we can be healthy and we can eat like good foods, but at the same time we can still have some of our yummy treats. Because I think in life we have to have a little bit of yummy too. I think all food is yummy personally, but sometimes there’s nothing like having, I don’t know, a great cupcake.

Meg Chamberlain: (32:24) And if you don’t have that yummy, your overall dedication to being healthy is not going to be sustainable. I mean realistically. Like maybe once a month you need that cupcake or that doughnut, but you can put kraut in the batter. And yes, when it’s baked it loses the probiotics, but you’re still getting that soluble fiber and vitamins and minerals. Now to get the probiotics, I take the brine from the beets and ginger and I mix it in the icing. And I put that on the cupcake.

Meg Chamberlain: (32:55) So from beginning to end, top to bottom, you have fermented foods acting in an everyday item that you wouldn’t normally perceive them in. A lot of people will put of course, obviously ferments as a topping to a sandwich, like a ruben or kimchi on a grilled cheese or salad topping with the beets and ginger. Those are all pretty obvious applications. A lot of times I like to use the brines in things like smoothies or the hot sauce in things like bloody Mary’s. If you’re going to have a bloody Mary, you can take fermented hot sauce and put it right in. You can put fermented tomatoes as the base.

Meg Chamberlain: (33:43) I do a preserved lemon where a friend of mine, like every month she has a get together with her friends and she’ll take my preserved lemons and puree them up with tequila and ice and she makes frozen fermented lemon margaritas.

Claire F.: (33:57) Oh my God, that sounds amazing.

Meg Chamberlain: (33:59) So the application is as diverse as you want to take it and as much fun as you want to have culinarily. So it can be anything from just putting a little kimchi on pan fried potatoes next to your filet mignon, or it can be a freaking cupcake.

Claire F.: (34:16) Wow. Now I know that none of us knew any of this. Now do you have like a book or anything yet that we can find out some of these ideas? Because I mean obviously it sounds very simple, but I know how we all are girls. We like to have something that we can look at, a recipe or something visual so that we can be told, do A, B, C and D, and this is what you can do to create it. I know that I would like that.

Meg Chamberlain: (34:46) Well right now I am working on a recipe book. It is about a third done. I just have to find 36 hours in 24, but but it is in the works ladies. It is coming. In the meantime, I do have a free YouTube channel at Fermenty Mountain where I talk about mostly how to make, but I will be branching this summer into how to consume realistically these foods like serving suggestions. And then sometimes on my Instagram or Facebook, I’ll throw things out like, hey, I just had this to eat and look how I used it.

Claire F.: (35:25) Okay. So there’s ways that we can find out more about some of your different ideas and creative ways of eating like basically fun foods which have healthy aspect to them even though they’re fun. Because I really like that. I think that in this day and age, not everyone wants to be 100% healthy, like vegetables and fruit and nothing else.

Meg Chamberlain: (35:52) Well life is short. And you should enjoy it. But again, there’s ways to do both. Like last night we had some strawberries left in our garden and I sliced them and I put a teaspoon of our hot sauce and mixed it in. And then I pan fried some tempeh, which is a fermented.

Claire F.: (36:12) Yeah, I love tempeh.

Meg Chamberlain: (36:13) And I put the, the hot sauce berries on top, on a bed of beet greens and it was insanely delicious.

Claire F.: (36:21) Wow. Oh that sounds like a good, oh I’m going to try that one. Oh my God, there is so much. I mean I just am so excited. But I think now we have to wrap it up. We’ve come to the end of our podcast today, but maybe Meg will come back again another day and grace us with her female tips of some ideas. Because I just feel like this is like something so important for us as women to really know for ourselves and for our children and for our significant other or how that is in our walls. Anyway, I just think you are so awesome and thank you so much for coming back on our show and sharing some more of your wisdom. I mean I love it.

Meg Chamberlain: (37:08) I appreciate you having me and I’ll leave you with a final quote. Fermenters Do it longer.

Claire F.: (37:15) All right. Bye everyone. Meg, you are so inspiring. I could continue picking your brain for hours, and I just might. We are thrilled to announce that Meg will be our very first podcast guest that we feature on our brand new Facebook online community. We do hope you’ll join us there. The link to that group and to all Meg’s contact information is on our website, beasmartwoman.com. Thank you for tuning in today. And remember when women wake up, mountains move. Women are powerhouses and the Be A Smart woman team is committed to sharing stories like these that all support us all along our journey.

Claire F.: (38:15) That wraps up our be a smart woman podcast for today. I hope that you discovered something about yourself during today’s podcast as I truly believe we can learn something from everyone we meet. If you like what you heard today, I invite you to subscribe and leave a review. We’d love to have you in our Be A Smart Woman family. You can also follow and like us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. If you’ve got questions or think you have a story to share, you can find our contact information at beasmartwoman.com. Thank you for listening and see you next time.

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