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Health News, Recipes

Don’t Eat Grocery Store Pickles – Make Your Own!

The HuffPost Dill Pickle taste test says Claussen Kosher Dill Spears are the best pickles for taste.
 
 
 
Claussen.
Great for taste but it
gets an “F” from foodfacts.com (recently upgraded to a D-)
 
Why?
 
 
 

Riva Greenberg wrote, “FoodFacts reviews more than 100,000 popular packaged, non-packaged and fast foods and 20,000 ingredients. Each product or food is graded from a head-of-the-class “A” to a failing “F” based on the quality of ingredients andwhether a food offers any nutritional value.”

Claussen’s great tasting Kosher Dills are, to be polite, cucumbers taking a nasty bath.

Ingredients:

Cucumber, water, vinegar, salt, peppers (refined salt, processed vinegar, and tap water aren’t too scary). Sodium benzoate, natural flavor, polysorbate, oleoresin turmeric.

The rest of the ingredients are what makes up the Pickle Nasty Bath.

Sodium benzoate – Preservative, may cause

  • Hives
  • Asthma and allergic reactions
  • Adverse affect on behavior, especially with ADHD children

Natural flavor – unknown source

  • Often acts like MSG, a neurotoxin

Polysorbate 80 – Emulsifier

  • Probably made from GMO Corn
  • Can cause digestive upset

Oleoresin – extractions

  • Chemicals like hexane and acetone are require to extract oleoresin

Calcium chloride – curing agent, mineral salt

There are a few good brands out there like Bubbies

Available at Whole Foods and other grocery stores.

For the best tasting, gut-healing pickles, make your own pickles that are raw and lactofermented.

 Make your own fabulous pickles

and enjoy a delicious way to add amazing probiotics, vitamins and enzymes to your body.

Fermented foods are more nutritious than the vegetables that you started with.

We are making pickles and sauerkraut the old fashioned way, without vinegar.

Fermented Cucumber Pickles
Fills one 1/2 gallon Mason jar

  • 1 quart purified water
  • 5 Tbsp. Mineral Salt or unrefined sea salt
  • 3 large sprigs fresh dill (or more, to taste)
  • 6 cloves garlic, sliced thin
  • 12 very fresh organic Kirby pickling cucumbers, blossom end trimmed away, cut into 1/2-inch thick slices
  • Mix water and salt and stir until dissolved.

In a half gallon Mason jar, layer 1/3 of the ingredients and repeat until the jar is full.

  1. Put one large sprig dill and 1/3 of the garlic slices in the bottom of the 1/2 gallon Mason jar.
  2. Layer in 1/3 of the cucumber slices, fitting them tightly together.
  3. Add two more layers, leaving 1 inch space at the top of the jar.
  4. Ladle salt water into the jar.
  5. Cover the cucumber slices, keeping 1 inch of space at the top of the jar.
  6. Screw the cap onto the jar.
  7. Let the jar remain on the counter, for about 3-5 days.
  8. Daily, open the jar to release the gases and begin tasting on day 2.

When the pickles taste good to you, put the jar in the refrigerator to stop fermentation.

Eat a little fermented cucumbers or sauerkraut with every meal.

The beneficial organisms produced promote healthy digestion.

Real Food heals.

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