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Customer Review
Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2011
This is simply the most profound cookbook I've ever read. While most people will buy this cookbook mainly for its many wonderful recipes for wholesome fermented foods like seaweed sauerkraut, fruit kimchi, miso soup, kombucha, and sunflower sour cream, what I enjoyed most about this book were the wise and beautifully written stories in between the recipes. As a fellow HIV/AIDS survivor, I was especially moved by the final chapter in which Sandor Ellix Katz writes about fermentation in the larger cycles of life, soil fertility, and social change. To quote the book: "Fermentation is a force that cannot be stopped. It recycles life, renews hope, and goes on and on. Your life and my life and everyone's lives and deaths are part of the endless biological cycle of life and death and fermentation. Wild fermentation is going on everywhere, always. Embrace it." I assure you that you will never look at your cup of yogurt the same way again after reading this book. I also really enjoyed reading about his life at Short Mountain Sanctuary, a radical faerie commune in the wooded hills of Tennnessee. If you're interested in food politics, I'd also highly recommend his other amazing book, " The Revolution Will Not Be Microwaved". Thank you Sandor Ellix Katz for your healing, nourishing words. Reading your books makes me hungry, not just for challah bread and sour pickles, but for life and transformation!
