So I decided to talk about something a little less serious. How about sauerkraut? That is what I am making. It is sitting on my kitchen island right now, in a big glass container. I never thought in my entire life that I would be making my own sauerkraut.
When I went to the DAN! conference in San Diego I had the pleasure of attending a cooking demonstration by Julie Matthews and one of her favorite things to make is naturally fermented sauerkraut. Natural fermentation produces wonderful, natural probiotics and sauerkraut is an easy way to grow your own. When I heard her mention that we should ferment our our sauerkraut I leaned over to the woman sitting next to me and said, “Like we are going to be making our own sauerkraut, right!”. But as she continued to talk and describe the vast benefits of naturally fermented foods I began to realize that maybe I would do this.
This weekend my husband set up my new food processor. My mother-in-law heard me talking about wanting one and decided she would get us an early, or is it late, anniversary gift. So it was the perfect time to try the slicer attachment out. I shredded a head of cabbage and then covered it with salt, weighted it down and covered the top with cheese cloth. After six hours I didn’t have enough water formed to cover all the cabbage with at least a 1.5 inch layer of water so I added a couple of cups of salt water.
It is now sitting on my counter growing more, shall we say fragrant? I can’t wait to see if this works, and I keep praying that I don’t poison my family while trying to cure them instead.
My next thing I will attempt to produce is my own coconut milk keffir. I’m quite intrigued by this prospect and can’t wait to do it soon. I’ll be posting on this soon.
Much love everyone.
Oh the goods of sauerkraut, it helps our son so much and he even loves it. Leyt us know how it turns out, it sounds easy how you do it. I always imagine a big barrel filled with tons of sauerkraut ;o)
I hope I don’t end up killing all of us in the process! So far it has been really easy. It is just sitting on our kitchen counter in a clear glass container. The container is huge because I needed one large enough to fit a plate to hold down all the cabbage! If it turns out well I’ll be making bigger batches at a time.