My name is Alexandra Yefremova. I live and study in Marietta, Georgia. I was born and raised here. Since both of my parents are originally from Ukraine, I never fully identify myself as a “southerner” or American except when it came to food. I intensely watched my mom cooking every weekend and did not oppose trying other foods. I could tell the difference eating at home and school cafeteria. I could tell the difference when offered food at Ukrainian and American households. Also, at early age I could tell the difference between shopping at our regular chain stores and local farmers markets. I remember my mom always telling me about making healthy choices and I could not wrap my mind why are these healthy choices are not offered everywhere else until I started getting interested in other cuisines and cooking myself. Even though cooking was very interesting, especially from consumption point it view, it was never something that I could do for a living. My main line of interest lay in experimenting with the ways other cultures transformed cheap and left over materials into the healthiest food options and in ability to keep them in the cool placed for extended periods of time. Everything that would typically be trashed in American food industry is saved and turned into gold in other countries. This was the point when I started asking my mom questions about preservation, watching videos about fermentation, and finally experimenting myself. By now I learned how to preserve pork fat, ferment kimchi, and make real fermented kefir.
My summer project is to learn how to make homemade scoby that I eventually could turn into kombucha. My mom was jokingly calling me a food scientist when our house would smell of fermentation. I did not realize that people do this for a living until I came across a degree of a food scientist. I immediately placed it on my list of potential majors.
Our high school counselors gave us several online queries that might help us figure out what career path would be a better fit for our personalities. Mine took me to social worker, counselor, or any profession that would potentially help people which I always enjoyed doing. I learned sign language and Spanish at school to be able to communicate with broader audiences. I learned how to save people lives when working as a lifeguard. Now that I am going into my senior year, I feel like these two passions could lead me to my calling of helping people to explore food choices that would potentially help them to improve their daily living, to eliminate obesity, to feel energized, and to educate them about benefits of natural processes that bring scientifically positive health results.
Fermination 