makin' sauerkraut

1. remove 1-2 outer leaves of cabbage carefully, set aside*. then shred your cabbage. this is one head of green cabbage. add salt - I use three tbsp salt for one head of cabbage.

2. work it, baby, work it. it just takes a minute or two if you put your weight into it - knead, squeeze and work it till it gets briney.

2a. the salt breaks the cells to release water.

3. pack it in a jar. this 2L beauty is from Michaels.

4. when it's all in, press down the solids so the brine is at the top.

5. take your reserved cabbage leaf and edge it in, stalk part first.

6. push it 1-2 inches below the surface.

7. now, carefully tuck in the whole leaf around the shredded cabbage, rotating the jar to make sure everything is evenly tucked in.

8. lift out any solids floating at the top, seal tightly, and let it ferment for a week or two, as you like it.

Other notes - you can add whatever vegetables you want. This is the plainest kind I have ever made.

You know it's working when you see fermentation gases lifting the vegetable matter - you need to push it down every few days, especially at first. After a few days you can put a small 125mL mason jar on the top of the cover leaf to help keep things down.

Fermentation builds pressure, so open and reclose the lid every few days to avoid cabbage explosions.

Sandor Katz is the man, so check out his instructions too.

*Using cabbage leaves to submerge the kraut rather than a glass or stone crock weight lid is a genius idea from Practical Paleo, all credit to the author.

fermentaholic!

Mojito wine (mint and citrus) working in the yeast in a 1-gallon pickle jar - still in the rapid integration phase, the yeast is the light bubbly stuff at the top.

GF toast and eggs for brekky.

We love crackers, and GF crackers are absurdly expensive, so I'm working again on a better cracker recipe. I first soaked this bean & lentil mix over night with water and a little rejuvelac, then cooked them, then used a hand blender to turn them into mush...

Like so! I also added some buckwheat flour, spices, and more rejuvelac. I'll let it hang out awhile, then once I've baked them I'll be sure to share how they turned out.

I am reading Orlean Puckett: Life of a Mountain Midwife, and having reached the part about how all the passers-by enjoyed sitting down to a bowl of her sauerkraut for a snack, I thought, hot damn, I need to make me some sauerkraut! Thank God for my food processor, which relatively quickly sliced & shredded 2 sweet potatoes, 2 onions, 3 carrots, 1 huge daikon, 1/2 head cabbage, 1 bunch kale, about 1/2 head garlic, and 3 apples. You can see the brine is coming along nicely. (More about sauerkraut here, from the master.)

The left is the wine - you can't see the airlock here but it's on and is bubbling away, at a rate of about one to three per minute (there's a second one also out of sight), the right is the sauerkraut of course, and in the forefront is my favourite fermentation book.

Glorious rainbow compost fodder!

I used a few Tattler lids to create a barrier to push the veggies below the brine. And while I have your attention, a reflection: I offered some free kraut on facebook, and while I was working on the shredding, I was thinking about how to pitch it, and I was thinking about the notion of something being an 'acquired taste'. Because in reality... all tastes are acquired tastes. Anybody who grows up with sour fermented foods, but not sugar cane, would perceive Western cake as 'an acquired taste'. It's not a real category written in stone.

There's something about summer...! I just want to ferment things like crazy. I also bought some Rise kombucha to grow a new SCOBY with, so it's hanging out in a wide-mouth jar on my island as well. It's supposed to be raw, so hopefully that will work. Failing that, a few of the members of the WAPF Montreal group on facebook, which I've recently joined and am enjoying daily (as opposed to several other groups I'm in, which I largely ignore), have offered to share SCOBYs with me. Hurrah!