Sour foods really appealed to Alex Hozven as she battled brutal pregnancy-induced nausea with her first son.

Nothing unusual there, right? Millions of women crave pickles to combat morning (or all-day) sickness. But Hozven’s obsession with fermented foods didn’t end once her baby was born.

Instead, she set out to master making naturally fermented foods (no vinegar, water, or heat) like sauerkraut, kim chee, and kombucha with a locavore sensibility and seasonal twist –  and built a thriving business that now supports a family of four.

Self-taught Hozven and her husband, Kevin Farley, run Cultured Pickle Shop, a small store in West Berkeley dedicated to preserving pickling traditions from around the globe, though the two profess to a particular fondness for Japanese methods.

For years the two peddled their pickled produce at farmers’ markets around the Bay Area, before settling on selling at two Berkeley farmers’ markets and setting up their mom-and-pop shop about four years ago.

The tiny store-front boasts a spiffy commercial kitchen — complete with a fermentation cave, where large steel tanks sit filled to the brim with pickling vegetables for, on average, about six to eight weeks. (Pickling, it turns out, is the ultimate slow food). The pair package their products and teach classes on canning and pickling here as well.

And we’re not talking plain ol’ dill pickles. Hozven’s specialty line includes innovative spins on familiar foods such as seaweed sauerkraut, kim chee with mustard greens and red spring onions, and carrot kombucha (a fermented drink prized for its active cultures, called probiotics, said to have a host of health benefits). Seasonal pickles include rhubarb with spring onions and oregano and beets with fennel. Cultured uses about 2,000 pounds of organic produce a week (mostly sourced from Riverdog Farm) for its raw products.

There is renewed interest in the Bay Area and beyond with old-fashioned food preservation techniques such as canning and pickling, as people turn to traditional methods of putting up produce at home. Cultured recently received a coveted nod from Food & Wine as a “best new shop for obsessive foodies,” kudos in the Berkeley Bites column from Revival chef Amy Murray, and is featured on a CHOW video, where you can watch Hozven wax wondrous about all manner of pickling matters.

The couple, both 39, live in South Berkeley with their two school-age sons. I spoke with the passionate picklers while they tended 5-gallon glass vats filled with jelly-fish like cultures and jarred mulit-colored krauts at the store.

What did you think when Alex announced she wanted to start a fermented food business?

Kevin: I thought she was crazy. But she did it. And then in 1997 she asked me to quit my job and join her, because she was so busy, and we haven’t stopped working since.

What’s good about owning a food company in this town?

Alex: We have a good audience who don’t balk at the idea of spending a large part of their income on food. The average price for our products is about $8.

And they have a good base level of knowledge about food. I’m not sure I could run such a specialized food business anywhere else in the country.

Are there challenges running a small business in Berkeley?

Alex: The city bureaucracy is time consuming, expensive, and not very small-business friendly.  It cost us hundreds of dollars and took eight weeks just to get a little sign in front of our store approved. But I never thought of setting up shop anywhere else. We live here and we love the Berkeley Farmers’ Markets.

Can you explain why you like selling fermented foods in particular?

Alex: I like telling people about how naturally fermented foods are their own food group, part of a time-honored tradition in many cultures, and they benefit digestion. They’re vibrant, alive, and they add that zing, zest, or, pow on the plate — they’re a great flavor addition to the diet.

How is it working with your spouse all day?

Alex: I love hanging out with Kevin. That part has always been easy. It’s not like we separate our personal life from our work life, it’s just one big life at this point. Ninety-nine percent of the time we get along great.

Kevin: I couldn’t imagine having totally separate lives, as other couples do. We’ve always just been together, we like learning things together, whether at home or at work. I sometimes wonder how other couples maintain their relationship, when they hardly spend any time in the same place.

Is there anything tricky about combining your personal and work life?

Alex: For that one percent of time when we’re not getting along…it can be trying.

Kevin: If we’ve had a fight it can be uncomfortable…a bit like a cold war…but it doesn’t last long.

You’ve been doing this gig for over a dozen years. Your thoughts on that?

Kevin: I’m super proud of us. We started a business, we’ve survived, we’ve been able to buy a house, open a store, and we make a product we feel really good about. And that’s all because of Alex.  I provide a set of muscles, a sound work ethic, and I’m good with the kids. Alex brings energy, an amazing palate that she’s honed over the years, and a great business sense to the table.

It’s definitely her business, if Alex were to decide tomorrow she didn’t want to continue with Cultured that would be it.

Alex: I work six days a week and spend 70 hours a week thinking about what I do. It’s just a huge part of who I am and I can’t imagine doing anything else.

Cultured Pickle Shop: 800 Bancroft Way (entrance on Fifth Street), 540-5185 Store hours: 9 a.m.-4p.m. weekdays; all products available at Tuesday and Saturday Berkeley farmers’ markets. Cultured sauerkrauts also sold at local natural foods markets such as Whole Foods and Berkeley Bowl.

Photo of the couple: Marian Acquistapace, Photo of cukes & shop sign: Courtesy of Cultured Pickle Shop

This post also appears on Berkeleyside, as part of the Berkeley Bites food-focused profiles each Friday.

To read previous Berkeley Bites click here.

Canning is hot and sticky (sometimes salty) work. Your fingers go pruny, you get sugar rushes (if you’re making jam) and salt dehydration (if you’re canning savory). Like everything that’s hot, sticky, exhausting, and a little risky, it’s way more fun with friends. Canning has historically been a community venture, with folks pitching in when the fruit and vegetables are abundant. But times have changed, Americans have been taught to be afraid of their own canned foods, “botulsim”, “contamination”, “microorganisms” are the words that come to mind when you mention home canning to most people instead of evoking the joyous sticky deliciousness of homemade jam.

I first started canning tomatoes, and noticed that every thing I made with them tasted better than the canned tomatoes I bought in the store. Next up were pickled peppers packed in olive oil, then I got heavily into apricot jam, then refrigerator pickles made from beets, cauliflower, or carrots. In my work, I face the constant struggle of figuring out how to produce better food for a cost that is within shouting distance of the cost of industrial mass-produced food. This spring I was working on a project that got me thinking more about this challenge, and I considered simply scaling up the same tools that I use to make sustainable locally-produced food affordable in my own life. First up: canning. How do you make organic local handmade jam affordable? Make it yourself. Yes We Can Food grew out of this thought process – figuring out how to make good food in large quantities affordable. And, along the way (and not incidentally), share the fun and exhilaration of doing it yourself.

Here’s the overview: 80 people pitch in to buy fruit, jars, and all the incidentals you need to make your product. 60 of those people pay approximately 85% of the cost of the inputs, and 20 of those people pay the remaining 15% but also contribute 4 hours of their labor to actually process and pack the product. The process is facilitated by the company I direct, Live Culture Co, which also provided umbrella liability insurance, storage, and a few other key contributions for the project. Yes We Can Food is run at break-even – we did not build profit into the model – with the goal of making the products as affordable as possible. The end result is $3 a jar jam (8 oz.), $3 a jar pickles (16 oz), and $3 a jar tomatoes (32 oz). So far, we have produced 700 jars of apricot halves in syrup and apricot jam and 700 jars of bread and butter and whole dill pickles. Next up, close to 900 jars of tomatoes and fresh tomato sauce scheduled for production on September 19. The canning sessions are truly work sessions – not canning lessons. Participants learn how to get their hands dirty and are given an overview of everything that’s happening, but are really contributing their labor to produce the product.

I hope that Yes We Can Food will provide a model and inspiration for others to develop and lead innovative programs to provide the know-how and infrastructure to make simple local canned foods more affordable and accessible. At the end of the project, Live Culture Co will share an overview of the recipes, cost model, and promotion strategy to facilitate the replication of this model. Next year, we will develop a new version of Yes We Can Food, probably in collaboration with a set group of local farms working to process any overflow of excess they have in order to make the products even more affordable.

To round out the Yes We Can 2009 season, we’re hosting a canning competition and home-canned foods exchange at this year’s Eat Real Festival as well as leading a canning program to jar up jam from locally-sourced fruit for one of San Francisco’s soup kitchens this fall. Stay tuned on our Facebook page for more info, and feel free to get in touch with questions, ideas, and thoughts.

Even though supermarkets have made canning and preserving unnecessary, there is still something wonderfully fulfilling about preserving food yourself (and the results are MUCH tastier than anything you can buy in a grocery store.)

When my husband’s grandmother, Marcia, a great cook and remarkable woman who I loved, passed away a few years ago, I inherited her preserving cookbook, Putting Food By.

I treasure this worn book, not because the recipes are anything special, but because it is speckled by years of use and it includes her notes. Marcia kept a detailed record of everything she “put by” in its blank end pages.

Her notes include where she picked the fruits or vegetables (the names of farms and orchards which must have been near her home in Grafton, VT sprinkle the pages — Dutton’s, Warren’s, Harlow’s, Allen Brothers, and Lake Warren), comments on the crop (“good yield” or “small onions”), how much of each thing she made, as well as a few recipes, including one for homemade breakfast sausage. Marcia was a prolific canner — rhubarb, peas, applesauce, apple butter, tomatoes, onions, strawberry jam, blueberry jam, etc. She actually had to tape in a few extra pages to keep track of all her canning harvests.

Inspired by Marcia’s passion and armed with her annotated copy of Putting Food By, I have made a few forays into the world of canning. Though it may seem a little daunting at first (any endeavor that could result in botchulism probably seems a little daunting), it’s not particularly complicated or difficult. By and large, my efforts have been successful. Canning does require spending a lot of time over a very hot stove, but there is something incredibly rewarding about opening a jar of bright red tomato sauce or a pint of sweet golden peach halves in the dead of winter. The tastes of summer brighten the short, dark days of winter (no matter what coast you live on.)

In order to avoid poisoning your family and friends, you will need to follow a recipe closely. If this is something you are interested in, I’d strongly suggest buying or borrowing a canning and preserving cookbook (see below for some suggestions.) However, there are some basic steps that will be the same regardless of what you’re making. Hopefully, this little overview will help to make canning clearer and less intimidating.

Equipment

• Canner (basically a big pot – I use the boiling water method, though there is also something called “pressure canning” that uses a pressure cooker)
• Canning rack (a rack that holds the jars in the canner)
• Funnel (for pouring hot liquids into the jars)
• Jar lifter (tool you use to grab the hot jars and lift them out of and into the boiling water in the canner)
• Jar wrench (tool you use to tighten the lids)
• Jars, tops, and lids (size will depend on what you’re canning and how you want to preserve it)
• Clean dishtowel or two

Method

Although the cooking times and packing instructions will vary depending on what you are making, there are some basic guidelines you’ll need to follow, no matter what you’re preserving.

1. Sterilization. You must sterilize your jars and lids by boiling them (though some recipes also suggest sterilizing them in a dishwasher) for 15 minutes before filling them. As long as the glass jars are not cracked, scratched, or compromised in any way, it’s fine to re-use them, however, the tops and lids cannot be used more than once – you must use new ones each time you can.

2. Get Your Food HOT. It’s important to pack the jars hot. The jars should be hot from the boiling you just did to sterilize them and in most recipes, the food, itself (applesauce, tomato sauce, jam, etc.) should be bubbling hot on the stove when you pour it into the sterilized jars. Or, if you’re making something like dill pickles which you pack into the jars cold, the pickling liquid you’re using to fill the jars, should be boiling hot.

3. Acidity Levels. One of the keys to successful canning (meaning that whatever you make will NOT kill anyone!) is to follow the recipe/directions closely. In addition to all the boiling, the thing that will preserve the food you’re making is the amount of acid in the recipe. Some foods are naturally acidic and others are not. High-acid foods are easier to work with, while low-acid foods require longer cooking times (and possibly the use of a pressure canner which will cook them at a higher temperature than the hot water bath canner I use.) So it is important to follow the recipe and use the exact amount of the exact ingredients and cook at the exact temperature for the exact length of time.

4. Boiling Times. Boiling the filled jars for the appropriate amount of time is also important to ensure that no bacteria survive. The jars should be sealed tightly and you must leave enough headroom (usually half an inch though this may vary by recipe) to ensure that the food has room to expand in the heat without denting the jar tops and lids (and therefore destroying the seal). You must have enough water in the canner to cover the tops of the jars by two inches.

5. Slow, Even Cooling. Once you’ve boiled for the specified amount of time, you should remove the jars, and place them on a clean towel with enough space between them to allow air to circulate. All the recipes I’ve read say that they must be in a draft-free place. I believe this may be due to fears that a cold breeze could cause the hot jars to crack (but I am not 100% sure). Regardless, it’s easy enough, so just do it!

6. The Proof is in the “Pop”. As the jars cool, the lids should be sucked down by the contracting air in the bottle, resulting in a delightful popping noise as the jar seals. If the tops do not pop down, the seal has failed for some reason. But, as disheartening as it can be when a lid fails to pop, all is not lost, just eat the contents of that jar right away and keep it in the fridge.

7. Storage. Once the jars have cooled completely (let them cool overnight) and the lids have popped down, store them in a cool, dry, dark place. This will help keep the colors of the canned good from fading and help prevent the contents from spoiling.

8. Don’t Eat Anything Suspect. If any of the jar lids look misshapen or pushed up or if you notice mold, bubbles, cloudiness, bad smells, or oddly discolored food when you open the jars, do not eat them! Throw the contents (and the jar lids and tops) away.

Cookbooks

1. Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving – you gotta figure that the makers of the glass jars know a thing or two about canning. I haven’t used this but it got rave reviews on Amazon.
2. Farm Journal’s Freezing and Canning Cookbook – I have not used this but it looks to be one of the more popular options on Amazon.

Suggestions for other cookbooks are very welcome! Please just add them in the comments field.

Last year we built a fortress, created to deter deer, raccoons, skunks, squirrels, and wild pigs from our own little slice of edible possibility. Today we are in the middle of planting our spring garden in this enclosure, now just a blank, dark dirt slate of bumpy rows and discarded piles of weeds. Shaping the earth is like frosting a chocolate cake, at least to this baker’s mind, and has inspired my next birthday party creation. Right now, though, it is time to focus on what plants will grow. 

Dave spent at least the last month researching, sorting, and picking out seeds, some from his own collection and some from rare seed catalogues and websites. So far, we have some old standbys such as carrots, beets, lettuces, radishes, turnips and an unintended sugar-snap pea hybrid from saved seed; and some new editions like asparagus, fenugreek, cumin, and a cilantro from Oaxaca. Dave enjoys the excitement of the seed selection process in much the same way some of us might find joy in the finest Parisian patisserie (there I go again with the baked goods). To say the least, we now have a ridiculously large stock of potential food, awaiting the elements to bring life. No matter what we actually choose though, it is always a wild card what will actually grow, flourish, and become. Some winter squash seeds from a few years ago became a hybrid this last season, morphing from a basic butternut (or what we thought was basic) to an interesting and delicious mystery.

The newness of spring also brings new ideas of what we will soon eat, and projects of how to make these gems last as long as they can. Will we finally start our homemade grapefruit bitters for cocktails? How about more preserved Meyer lemons with some interesting herbs? Or maybe just classic pickled beets with a touch of clove? But right there lays the nexus of a problem I find myself grappling with time and again. After the harvest, the glean, the washing and prep, the brining and boiling and sealing and storing, I can’t bring myself to actually EAT what I have made. It is too special. I find myself saving it for the ultimate occasion and then before I know it, another season has arrived along with another cratefull of the very same produce that is caged within my mason jars. Some could compare this self-inflicted issue to saving a nice bottle of wine too long, year after year for that one perfect moment, instead of enjoying it at its recommended prime. Fellow Civil Eats contributor and environment editor Aaron French recently touched upon this issue, citing a Harvard Business Review article about “how people place an unreasonably high value on products they made or assembled themselves” via “The IKEA Effect”. The lesson for me is to start treating every day like it’s worthy of jam, no matter how rare or involved or alone or hurried things may be.

So here is a recipe for preserves that I am entitling “Jam for NOW”. Write that in thick black Sharpie on the top of your canning lids and follow the command. Use the finest fruit you can get your hands on, and even if you only get enough to make a couple of jars, listen to your deepest inner voice when it declares, “I want blackberry jam on my toast today!”

Jam for NOW

(Makes about 4 pints)

9 cups fresh blackberries (or any other berry or combination)
6 cups sugar
Juice of 2 lemons

Wash the berries, making sure to remove any with signs of mold, and place in a large, non-aluminum saucepan. Crush the berries (or blend with an immersion blender). Add sugar and lemon juice. Bring slowly to a boil, stirring occasionally until sugar is dissolved. Cook until desired thickness is achieved, stirring to prevent burning. Remove from heat and fill hot jam into hot, sterile jars, leaving ¼-inch space from the top. Wipe rims of jars with a dampened, clean towel before securing each with a two-piece canning lid. Process the jars for about 10 minutes in boiling water to seal. Remove from water with tongs and let sit on a countertop to cool before storing.