Category: Fermentation

Tickets Are On Sale For The March 23 Good Food EXPO Trade Show!

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s 14th annual Good Food EXPO is coming up March 23-24 at Chicago’s UIC Forum. Make your plans now to attend the nation’s oldest trade and consumer event focused specifically on local and sustainable food. Tickets are on sale for the Friday, March 23 programming: The Good Food Trade Show: Production, Policy and Industry Exchange. These affordable tickets can be purchased on this linked page. The Good Food Festival, FamilyFarmed’s big annual public celebration of the fast-rising Good Food movement, will follow on Saturday, March 24.

Cultured Love

For Gut Health, A Whole Lotta Cultured Love

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Cultured Love, based in Holland, Michigan, produces healthy, probiotic sauerkrauts in a variety of traditional and innovative flavors. Jodie and Paul Krumpe founded the company in 2014 after family illness led them to deeply research the connections between food and health. They exhibited at FamilyFarmed’s Good Food EXPO in March 2017 and enjoyed record on-site sales, an experience that prompted them to apply and get accepted for the current fourth cohort of FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Accelerator.

Exhibiting Our Diversity at the Good Food Festival

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

FamilyFarmed’s Good Food Festival & Conference reflects the values of the Good Food movement: increasing access to food produced locally as possible using sustainable, humane and fair practices, to build a healthier, more sustainable and more economically dynamic food system. It also reflects the amazing diversity of this nation’s food and farm entrepreneurs, both demographically and in the types, styles and ethnic origins of food they produce.

Lifeway Kefir’s Julie Smolyansky: Refugee Childhood to Good Food Success

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Kefir is a probiotic fermented dairy drinkthat originated in Russia in the 19th century and only recently has developed a growing consumer market in the United States. The main catalyst for the rising interest in this product is Lifeway Kefir, started in 1986 by Soviet refugee Michael Smolyansky and today run by his children. Julie Smolyansky, the company’s CEO, writes here about the family’s gratitude to the United States; she will participate on a panel about Big Food’s Embrace of Good Food at FamilyFarmed’s Financing & Innovation Conference on March 16.

Something Will Be Brewing at Authors’ Good Food Festival Kombucha Workshop

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Family Farmed’s Good Food Festival on Saturday, March 26 is the big annual public celebration that will cap the three-day Good Food Festival & Conference. The Festival is all about hands-on workshops and learning. And we are excited to welcome book authors Hannah Crum and husband Alex LaGory who will be part of our Brew Your Own Kombucha workshop at 1:30 p.m. on March 26.

Food Business Centers Move Out of the Kitchen: Guest Column

Posted on by FamilyFarmed

Next to Wal-Mart on the edge of rural Viroqua, Wisconsin, a 100,000-square-foot abandoned industrial building is now bustling with new businesses and jobs from an unconventional source: The local food and farming sector.

Greg Wade of Publican Quality Bread

Chicago Baker Greg Wade: Making Interest in Good Bread Rise Naturally

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

by Bob Benenson, FamilyFarmed Bread, especially bread made with wheat flour, has come under scrutiny in recent years. Some nutritional experts and consumers have turned against it, viewing it as the root of a variety of health issues, from gluten sensitivity to weight gain. These sentiments spawned a rapid rise in interest in gluten-free bread Read more about Chicago Baker Greg Wade: Making Interest in Good Bread Rise Naturally[…]

Robert Birnecker and Sonat Birnecker Hart of Chicago's Koval Distillery

How Chicago’s Koval Distillery Launched a Local Craft Spirits Boom — and Its Own Competition

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

It was just seven years ago when the married couple of Sonat Birnecker Hart and Robert Birnecker decided to give up high-level professional careers in the Washington, D.C., area, and start up their Koval Distillery in Chicago. As recent as that seems, they did not join the craft spirits movement within the city of Chicago. They launched it.

Henry Schwartz of MobCraft brewery in Madison, Wisconsin

Crowdsourcing Ferments Financing — and Recipes — for Wisconsin’s MobCraft Brewery

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MobCraft, a start-up craft brewery in Madison, Wisconsin, has gotten some buzz lately because of their efforts at crowdfunding equity investment. But crowdsourcing has been integral to their operations — even their beer recipe development — since the get-go.

Viili heirloom yogurt

First Person: Fermenting Homemade Yogurt Made Easy

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

Branden Byers — who gave how-to presentations on the Good Food Commons at FamilyFarmed.org’s Good Food Festival last March — here explains how easy it is to make viili, an “heirloom” yogurt.

Fermented leek rings

First Person: Fermentation De-mystified by Branden Byers

Posted on by FamilyFarmed.org

Fermentation is everywhere. It’s a natural process, and humans, over the ages, have managed to control enough of the process in order to make a few delicious and healthy foods.