Hello, regular readers. Perhaps you thought that my time as a fermentation blogger had come to a close. I know I’ve never left a gap quite so long on this blog before, and I’m sorry about that.
I didn’t stop fermenting. I didn’t stop wanting to share my ferments with you. I did lose a computer to an unknown illness during an unprecedented period of craziness in my life. And that is why you haven’t heard from me.
Normally, a computorial death wouldn’t be that big of an issue. Everything I do is backed up. This, however, was a Mercury in retrograde-style confluence of events.
My Apple AirPort just stopped working a while ago. My husband is a programmer and Apple guru, and even he couldn’t get it to sync. His computer still backs up fine, but mine just blatantly would not sync. No worries, I thought. I save everything important on Dropbox anyway.
I also started a new blogging system. It was something I’d been wanting to do for while and I finally did it! I spent 10 consecutive days testing recipes, developing new ones and taking the photos of the ones that were complete. It wasn’t all I did in those 10 days, but it was most of it, and I was excited to see how this alternate scheduling could help me out. Everything would have been immediately moved to Dropbox under normal circumstances, but since I had so many photos from doing my shoots this way, I needed to select the good ones and give them a simple crop before I moved them to Dropbox. My computer died before I did that. For any of them.
I also got incredibly busy with another work project, traveled a bit to promote Ferment Your Vegetables and also had some stuff going on in my non-fermenty, non-work-related life. Also, I couldn’t face having lost so much work, especially after finally starting the blogging schedule I’d wanted for so long, especially after Apple told me my computer was perma dead, and what was on it was gone forever.
So. I kinda shut down at the thought of all that lost work and I lost my Phickle gumption for a moment.
You’ll eventually see the blog posts that I had worked on during that time, but I’m not sure when. I’m sure I’ll have the desire to redo all of those photos at some point, but for now, I’m calling it a loss and moving on to new things to share with you.
Despite all of the above, I’ve been busy fermenting and doing loads of other stuff. Here are a few things I’ve done since last we spoke:
Travel:
- I went to Los Angeles for IACP. I ate a lot of ferments. I hung out with some culinary heroes. I went to the Hollywood Farmers’ Market and got really sad when I realized I’d completely blocked out how amazing California farmers’ markets can be since I moved to Philly.
- I ate at the excellent and sooo fermenty LA restaurant Baroo with my friend Camille.
- I learned about North Korean-style kimchi (including some interesting new techniques!) and ate a lot of Korean food on a tour of K-Town.
- I spent some time with fellow preserver Sean Timberlake of Punk Domestics.
- I went to Chicago to hang with my college bestie and ate lots of injera at Demera and so many tasty things at Cellar Door Provisions.
- I went to the microbiome exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History.
Teaching:
- I did a very fun kvass demo in New York for NYC Ferments.
- I taught my own fermentation classes on Kvass, Kefir, Yogurt, Kombucha, Water Kefir and Pickles.
- I taught basic pickling at Philly Farm and Food Fest.
Media:
- I got filmed a lot for WHYY’s James Beard Award-Winning Friday Arts (my episode will be airing this summer and I could not be more excited)!
- I was on “Middays with Michelle Dawn Mooney” on WPG, talking about my pickle love.
- I was a guest on two different podcasts. (Full Belly Laughs and 2 Weird Hungry Girls)
Free Time:
- I made some crazy beer (with some wonderful chef friends) and hopefully I’ll be writing about that soon, whether or not it turned out.
- I spent time reading and making stuff from Tenaya’s, Marisa’s and Allyson’s new books. (And you should, too!)
- I made A TON OF FERMENTS.
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