SAUERKRAUT June 16, 2015

SAUERKRAUT – June 15, 2015
You may be wondering if I am on a long holiday or if I just quit sharing, but neither is the case. I am still cooking and baking and gardening, in fact it seems I am never finding the time to work at the computer. That is because I am not too happy with my new computer and as well because I seem to need help with all the changes in upgrading. Sorry! I do hope to get going and sharing oftener.

This morning I just new it was time to comment & share something so I will print the document and add it to the website on the old computer even though it isn’t the best.

Last week I picked up a few heads of cabbage on sale and decided to make another batch of sauerkraut. I now have 3 sealers in the fridge and we are enjoying a small portion every day, either at lunch or supper.

I know how important it is to eat some fermented food every day, but because I realize we don’t get enough in food, we still take 2 probiotics each morning before breakfast with our lemon juice. That way we are hopefully getting a good amount of healthy bacteria into our stomach and digestive system every day.

This is how I made it and how long it took to ferment.

5 pounds cabbage
1 pound celery
½ teaspoon sea salt

Save a few outer leaves from the cabbage head.
Shred the cabbage on the fine setting disc & set aside. Puree the celery with 1 cup of pure water in a blender.
Work with about 5 cups of shredded cabbage and a half cup of the puree at a time. Put this into a bowl and mash with a potato masher or maybe a wooden masher until it becomes juicy. Set aside and continue to do this with the rest. Sprinkle a few shakes of sea salt on as you mash.
Press this all into a glass gallon sealer. It will be about full. Press again with the tool you are using until there is juice at the top and throughout the cabbage. Cover the top with the cabbage leaves. For weight I placed 4 glass sealer lids at the top with another overlapping at the centre. I then put a jar of water in the centre to press down so the juice will remain at the top.
Cover with a towel and leave on the counter for as long as it takes to ferment.
Our room was a bit over 70 degrees F. and it took 5 days. I then removed and discarded the 2 leaves and a little of the cabbage that looked darker around the top edge.

Place the cabbage with juice into 3 clean sealers, again seeing that there is enough juice to cover. Top with a lid and place in the fridge.

When I started tasting the cabbage by about day 3 to see it was fermented, I used a clean fork each time so I wouldn’t add any germs into the cabbage. As well each time we remove some from the jars, we use a clean utensil.

We are trying to eat some of the cabbage each day without cooking it as we realize some of the nutrients do get lost in heating. Sometimes we just put a half cup of cold sauerkraut on to our plate as a salad and other times I stir a quarter cup into a bowl of soup, chili or other casserole.
But then there are times when we do eat it cooked as we enjoy it with ribs, ham or sausage as well.

CABBAGE PLANTS
The cabbage plants are growing nicely in the garden. I planted onions next to them, so there are no bugs coming yet.

POTATOES & POTATO BUGS
I just hilled all of the potatoes for the third time. That is when I decided to come in and rest at the computer. I will hill them once again when they start to bloom. The extra loose ground around each plant seems to fill with plenty of big potatoes so I get a good crop.
If we get a huge rain, the potatoes are high enough up and can’t easily rote.

Oh yes, I just picked off 8 potato bugs from the 120 plants and burned them in the pit. The onion plants seem to keep them away, but I still get a few and remove them as soon as I see them.

Hope you are getting the needed rains and sunshine for your garden as well. For more gardening ideas, hints and recipes, check out WINNING WAYS cookbook.
Sincerely Winnie