KFG I hope you’ll try something. Lacto fermentation is so cool – and a quick and easy way to preserve foods. One nice thing is like Emily’s point on the salsa post, namely that you don’t need to wait until you have a huge batch of stuff. She just keeps a crock of brine going and throws in veggies. I imagine this is how things were several hundred years ago too – so simple to can when you don’t need to boil up a box of jars first!

The instructions say you have to do is:

- Soak about a cup of rye berries for 8 hours in filtered water in a glass jar.

- Drain, rinse, drain again and let the berries sprout.

- Then rinse again and fill the jar with two quarts of filtered water.

- Cap securely with a piece of cheesecloth and leave on the counter, away from direct sunlight, for a day or two.

- Strain and the rejuvelac is ready to drink. Keep it in the fridge. The rye berries can be reused a couple of times.

I did this and found the resulting drink quite nice. It looks like lemonade and tastes kind of plain, can’t describe it – it’s an ok taste, though.

However, soaking with water doesn’t address the phytic acid problem so now I’m adding whey to the first step and letting the rye berries soak for a full day.

All sites I checked say to discard the “spent” berries or feed them to chickens. I don’t have chickens and hate to throw food away so I just boiled the berries in a little water until tender, about 10 minutes, I think. Added butter, a bit of cream and raw honey off the heat. And, surprisingly, the hubby and I liked the new breakfast concoction.

Rye, wheat and quinoa produce the best results.

From Wiki: Rejuvelac contains eight of the B vitamins, vitamins E and K, and a variety of proteins, dextrines, carbohydrates, phosphates and amylases. It is rich in enzymes that assist in digestion.