Hello 🙂

I’m Fleur and welcome to Fleurmentation.

(a name coined by my friends when I began fermenting everything in sight).

Welcome to this little corner of the internet where I share food, recipes + resources around fermentation, gut health, hormone health, herbalism + foraging.

This became a focus after an autoimmune diagnosis in late 2020, as I began to prioritise natural healing and holistic living

If you like eating, cooking + playing around in the kitchen or are interested in any of the above, then you are in the right place ❤️

BACKSTORY

What led me to start fermenting everything in sight was due to health reasons, the same reasons I think a lot of people enter into the world of nutrition and holisitic health.

During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was diagnosed with vitiligo. After a few months of video calls with doctors brushing off my expanding pigment loss as a fungal infection, I saw a dermatologist who was able to properly diagnosed my symptoms. I was told “it may get better, or it may get worse,” and prescribed a steroid cream that I was warned to use cautiously as it would eventually thin my skin.

I did a little internet digging on alternative ways to heal. I took the vitiligo as a sign that my body wasn’t happy and fell into a deep online rabbit hole of blogs, documentaries, podcasts books and reddit feeds of people who had found ways to reverse their auto-immune issues through diet. Some had their pigment return and were able to reverse some of their vitiligo symptoms through changing what they ate.

The more I dug into the science behind nutrition, the more it made sense and I fell in love with the theory that what we consume—inside and out—can either cause harm or heal.

Gut health became my new obsession. I decided to take control and start to nourish and nurture my body with the care I hadn’t really given it before. I cut out any inflammatory foods and embarked on a journey to heal my gut and hopefully in turn the vitiligo.

Slowly, I reintroduced certain foods one by one, taking note of each new experience. Organic vegetables, fresh fruits, wild-caught fish, and grass-fed meat became the foundation – with the addition of organ meats, healthy fats, and an abundance of fermented foods.

And then, just two weeks in, I noticed tiny signs of re-pigmentation—little spots of colour returning to my skin. It felt like a tiny miracle, but more than that, it was a confirmation that I was on the right path.

Sometimes new small patches pop up, most of the time after long periods of stress – eating and living a certain way is a work in progress, like life.

But, it’s a progress that has brought so much more than just a change in my skin. It’s transformed how I feel—calmer, clearer, more centred. My mind feels more balanced, my hormones more stable, and my outlook on life is brighter than it was before. The gut-brain connection at work, doing it’s thing behind the scenes.

At the time I was diagnosed (mid pandemic) it was hard to find fresh, unpasteurised fermented products in the local shops – so I began making them at home. It became my new favourite thing to do – if you want to find me these days, I’m probably in the kitchen chopping vegetables or putting something in brine.

FERMENTATION LOVE

Fermentation is such a fascinating topic – there is so much history behind it and every culture and family has their own way of fermenting and preserving foods that have been passed down over thousands of years.

It’s such a beautiful way of preserving food and also a delicious step towards a more sustainable lifestyle – if I have excess veg in the fridge, I know exactly what to do with it.

It’s also just so easy. I used to be intimidated by fermentation — it sounded so technical! But really, it’s just raw ingredients left to sit and do their thing, growing all the good bacteria our gut thrives on.

I now like to think of fermenting a bit like gardening – all we do is simply mix vegetables with salt or sugar (like sowing seeds into the earth) and then let nature take its course.

Ferments are constantly changing in flavour profiles, what might taste a certain way one week will taste different the next. There are so many different flavour combinations to try – the possibilities are endless and always fun to play with. My kitchen is now full of bubbling jars of fermented experiments and I’m always wondering what to ferment next.

There is also just something so incredibly soothing about making your own ferment from scratch – using your hands to chop the raw ingredients from the ground and then watching them change over time, day by day, as the microbes play.

It made me realise there’s so much more happening in the world around us than what we can see with the naked eye.

I don’t believe fermentation is the cure all (I am now an advocate for a holistic lifestyle approach to health), but rather a way to make our meals tastier, add in more bio-available nutrients (thanks to the fermentation process breaking down the cell walls) and a way to increase the good microbes in our gut. A little delicious condiment to accompany any meal.

The more I study, the more I fall in love with cooking and fermenting. There’s something intimate about the act of preparing food for ourselves and the ones we love. Good food nourishes not just the body, but the soul too.

So here we are, a space to share creations, successful recipes and experiments as I continue on this fermentation + recipe + auto-immune-recovery journey 🙂

If you feel called to join as I explore recipes, herbalism, foraging, and all the ways we can heal ourselves from the inside out, I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s dive in, together.

Fleur xx

---