As far as fermentation, I don’t even recall what prompted me now. I mostly watch the All feed so I catch what most of Lemmy is doing. It may have been… in fact… I think it was something I was discussing with my offline AI. That is not a valid primary reference source, but searching online helped. That lead to asking questions here, and resulted in more confidence.
On my Beehaw account and their food community I asked about how people cook rice back when I was developing my recipe and working on ways of altering cooked grain texture. Someone there mentioned making a sauce for topping fried rice using spicy mayo and teriyaki sauces. That one was a game changer for me and really pushed me into playing with sauces. That got me thinking about fermented sauces because adding Worcestershire sauce to that spicy mayo/teriyaki blend makes it even better. This is what I am exploring now. I want to play with unique flavors by wild exploration.
That is just how my intuitively driven mind works. I attribute inspiration to a root fork in my thinking, but I don’t really “follow” anything. I haven’t cooked something with a recipe and measuring in 10 years or more. It is the motivation to explore an new space, and just enough reinforcing motivation to help me take action that I value. I didn’t expect a place this small to have many people experienced in fermentation, but I was pleasantly surprised. In other words, my investment into engaging paid off even in a relatively small niche subject.