Drew Shonka
Kickapoo Kimchi is a Wisconsin treatment of the fermented Korean condiment.
As you sit down for dinner tonight, you’re likely sharing the table with thousands of microscopic bacteria. They’re abundant in your cheese, your bread, your beverages and even your desserts.
You may not have knowingly invited them, but these bacteria, as it turns out, are very generous houseguests. They’re the product of fermentation, the millennia-old metabolic process that transforms fruit into wine, cabbage into sauerkraut and (perhaps most importantly) fresh ingredients into staples with much longer shelf lives. Once consumed, the bacteria or yeast responsible for the ferment goes to work in the gut, reinforcing the immune system, improving digestive health and providing essential nutrients and enzymes, according to Faith Anacker, owner of Fizzeology Foods of Viroqua.
Fizzeology makes five fermented products, all variations on sauerkraut or fermented slaws, which it sells in glass jars.
Since purchasing Fizzeology from founder Mike Bieser in 2013, Anacker has been promoting fermented foods and sustainable food production. Many people can benefit from integrating more fermented foods (especially those made with locally grown, plant-based ingredients) into their diet, says Anacker. “There’s no turning back after you start realizing how powerful your gut bacteria is — it influences everything about your health.”
Anacker works closely with area growers to produce the company’s five veggie blends. There’s Naked, a straightforward fermented cabbage, made with organic cabbage from the Driftless region. “German” is a traditional sauerkraut with cabbage, caraway seeds, juniper berries and salt.
Kickapoo Kimchi is a local take on the spicy Korean condiment, with cabbage, carrots, onions, red pepper, black Spanish radish, daikon, parsnips, burdock, ginger, garlic and salt.
Kickapoo Cordito, described as “Latin-style kraut,” is a Wisconsin version of the traditional Central American curtido, a lightly fermented slaw made with cabbage, carrots, red peppers, onions, oregano, cilantro, lime juice and red chili peppers.
Finally, there’s a rotating “seasonal ferment” that in the past has incorporated vegetables as varied as golden beets, butternut squash, rutabaga, sunchokes and garlic scapes, and wild ingredients including milkweed buds, purslane, burdock, wild parsnip and cattails – not all in the same product, of course.
Anacker previously worked with the Coulee Region Herbal Institute and, with her husband, hand-built her own home. Her passion for fermentation grew out of her interest in sustainability and living off the land. When she took over Fizzeology, she tweaked existing recipes, expanding the seasonal blends and adding more flavor and ingredients. Increasing the use of burdock, a root that Anacker touts as “nature’s most powerful blood purifier and kidney tonic,” reinforced her goal of promoting food as medicine.
Anacker also teaches classes in hands-on fermentation and “healthy lifestyle on a budget,” among other topics. She taught basic lacto-fermentation at last year’s Fermentation Fest. This year, she’ll return to the Reedsburg festival (running Oct. 2-11) to teach Vegetable Lactofermentation Basics: Hands On! on Oct. 3 and Creating Culture: Show and Tell on Oct. 4.
While most Americans see sauerkraut and its brethren as side dishes or condiments, Anacker recommends eating several tablespoons of a probiotic-rich fermented food “a couple times a day,” although she acknowledges that’s a lifestyle change that takes time to become routine.
But Anacker thinks that the audience for fermented foods is growing. Recently, she’s noticed people “that you usually see with Mountain Dew” express interest in healthy fermented foods. “You have to celebrate the little changes.”
Fizzeology products are carried at both Willy St. Co-op locations, Hy-Vee’s Whitney Way and the Conscious Carnivore and will be for sale during Fermentation Fest, as well as through the company’s website.
