SAUERKRAUT IN MY OATMEAL
Cindy Maddera
"Buddha bowl. #prasad #yogapearl"
Have you guys heard about this new food craze of eating fermented foods? I feel like my yoga and veggie magazines have had something to say about fermented foods in every issue for the past three months. They talk a lot about incorporating kimchi and sauerkraut into your diet, but I usually stop reading anything that has the word "kimchi" in it. Chris loved kimchi. He was half Thai and it was a staple in his house growing up. I, on the other hand, was never able to get past the smell of kimchi in order to eat it. It smells like hot boiled garbage vomit. There was a late night snack incident that happened once when we lived in a rent house in OKC. Chris was in the kitchen and I was sound asleep in the back bedroom with the door closed. Chris quickly opened the lid of a jar of kimchi, stabbed some onto a fork and then into his mouth before closing the lid of the jar. The whole process took seconds. The smell from the jar being open for those seconds was enough to wake me from a deep sleep rooms away.
I do like sauerkraut though. I'll eat it on a hotdog or a sandwich. There's a brand called Bubbies sauerkraut that is my favorite. It is crisp and fresh and delicious; probably because it only has three ingredients: cabbage, water and salt. That seems too easy. I might try making my own this summer. Any hoo...fermented foods in your diet. All the articles are saying that naturally fermented foods like sauerkraut are a really good source of Omega-3s, vitamin D and probiotics. Probiotics has become a buzz word all of it's very own, but there's some solid research out there that these microbes are beneficial to gut health. Then I found this article that says probiotics can change brain functions. Probiotics probably need to be a buzz word. You can take a pill form of probiotics, but I already have to swallow two fish oil pills, a multivitamin, an iron pill and my birth control pill every day. Sometimes I add in a vitamin D, but still, that's a lot of pill swallowing. I don't eat much yogurt either or much dairy at all. Every once in a while, I get a Noosa yogurt because it is the most delicious. Even the raspberry flavor that makes my lip swell (food allergy).
I like to diagnose myself and I've recently decided that my bloated belly is due to the fact that I don't get enough probiotics in my diet. I remember reading about ways to incorporate fermented foods and one way is to mix it in your oatmeal. I know. Sauerkraut and oatmeal just don't really sound like two things that go together. Well, the other morning, I was scraping my steel cut oats out of the rice cooker and decided to throw in a fork full of sauerkraut. I also added some honey and a banana. Sauerkraut and oatmeal should totally not go together, but some how they kind of do. No really! It's good. It's weird, but it's good. I've been a little put off with my steel cut oats because they're boring and then I'd be hungry two hours later. Now, I don't finish my bowl of oats and I'm not starving at ten o'clock and I like my steel cut oats again. I will not, however, try to mix kimchi into my oatmeal. Because I'm nutty, but I'm not crazy stupid nutty.
I've only been doing this for a couple of days, so I don't really know if it is making a difference in my bloated belly. I also can't tell you if it has made my brain happier. It has changed the way I think about mixing salty cabbage with honey and oats. That's got to be saying something about my brain function (good or bad).