Happy Friday everyone! I hope all is well as you make plans for your long Memorial Day Weekend. I will be spending the majority of my time editing photos and playing catch up on my nutrition homework. June 26th is so close, yet so far away!
So, in the midst of my never-ending to-do list, I am honored to host an AWESOME GIVEAWAY to all my nutrition nerds and fermentation foodies out there!
Farmhouse Culture Kraut has noticed my obsession with their raw, probiotic-filled fermented foods, so they sent me some pretty fun stuff to give to several of my readers who might enjoy keeping their gut flora happy + healthy as much I do!
We hear about how we should be taking probiotics, but what they heck are they and why do we need them? And why kraut? I thought only Germans ate that kind of stuff!
Check out this well-explained excerpt from Farmhouse Culture’s site:
Kraut is a classic culinary treasure that suffered greatly from the industrialization of the food system.
As people turned away from small-batch fermentation in their homes or purchasing straight from a local producer’s barrel, sauerkraut turned from a flavorful, healthful way to enjoy vegetables through a long cold winter to a pale shadow of its former vibrancy.
Pasteurization, while an important and even necessary “kill step” for many foods, has done more harm than good to sauerkraut. A shelf-stable (pasteurized) product is certainly easier to manage than our refrigerated krauts but the price is high for the convenience. Both vitamin C and the probiotic Lactobacillus bacteria found in kraut are killed during pasteurization. We think the texture and flavor also suffer greatly. What’s more un-pasteurized, raw kraut is perfectly safe and will last for more than a year if kept refrigerated.
Farmhouse Culture infuses Old World fermentation traditions with innovative New World flavors and lets nature do the preserving. Here’s what we’ve put back into your kraut:
Flavor. Cooked kraut loses its snap and vibrancy when cooked. We’ve all smelled the sulfurous scent of over-boiled cabbage; the range of delicate flavors are lost when the leaves are cooked. Never sour or stinky, our raw krauts are delightfully tart and pungent.
Texture. We like kraut that snaps instead of sags, another reason we happily chose to keep our kraut raw. Raw kraut delivers a crisp, tooth-satisfying crunch that you’ll never you find in a can.
Health. It’s not just the flavor and texture that makes raw kraut superior – it’s also much healthier. The process of lacto-fermentation fills kraut up with live lactobacilli and beneficial microbes, which die when kraut is pasteurized. When you eat raw kraut like ours, however, this happy, thriving microflora goes on living in your gut, improving digestion, helping promote the growth of a healthy Microbiome, and protecting against many diseases.
In terms of nutrients, kraut’s got it good: believe it or not, fermentation makes the kraut even more nutritious than the original cabbage. That’s because the process actually increases the bioavailability of the nutrients in the plant, so cabbage – already a great source of calcium, magnesium, dietary fiber, folate, iron, potassium, copper, manganese and vitamins C, B, and K –gets even more awesome when we turn it into kraut.
From your taste buds to your toes, your whole body will thank you when you feed it raw, living krauts!
So, how the heck are you supposed to eat this stuff? Think of it like a condiment! You don’t need to sit down to a huge bowl of it in order to get your daily probiotics in. A little bit goes a long way.
What’s my favorite way to eat Farmhouse Culture Kraut? At the best meal of the day!
Breakfast, DUH.
Ok, ok get to the giveaway already.
Starting NOW until Sunday evening (May 24th, at 8pm CST) you and 2 friends will get the chance to win a coupon for some FREE KRAUT! (Due to refrigeration requirements, we can’t actually give away the real thing…sorry! :-/) Hop on over to my @bewellbymadison Instagram and do the following!
- Follow me on Instagram @bewellbymadison
- Follow Farmhouse Culture on Instagram @farmhousekraut
- Tag 2 friends in the comments section of my “Farmhouse Culture Giveaway” photo
Easy, peasy lemon squeezy!
If you are local to Midland, Texas, you can pick up your kraut at Natural Grocers or Living 360 Organics.
Now, I’m curious, what’s your favorite way to eat this awesome fermented food?
