quergus 's review for:

Wild Fermentation: A Do-It-Yourself Guide to Cultural Manipulation by Sandor Ellix Katz

5.0

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I use Libby to read everything for free by renting audiobooks/Kindle books from my local library. I've just finished this and I need to have a physical copy. I've been having such romanticized daydreams of me holding this book (heavily annotated and dog-eared) in one hand while making beer and wine and sharing it with my friends, making the kind of kimchi I miss so very much having grown up in South Korea with ubiquitous access to fresh kimchi, making our own tempeh instead of buying the 2-layer plastic-wrapped ones from Publix, and leaning over a crock and stirring fermenting coconuts to make tuba, like my uncles in the Philippines used to do to get drunk on long boat trips. The book emphasizes being connected to locally, sustainably, and ethically produced food -- and in turn, connected to the different cultures (bacterial and human, hyuk!) that give rise to them. I'm a feminist for the 99% and have also worked in the field of microbiology for the past two years, so this dude has really just sunk his teeth into me with this book. I'm not gonna compost my own waste, though. No, thank you. I'm good.