A Kitchen Mystery

For a number of weeks, people have often asked inquired about the large bucket in the corner of our kitchen.  In July, it held held sour cherries that I bought in bulk from a place in Michigan, but no longer.  Any guesses?

Sauerkraut!  One week Mary and I received two huge heads of cabbage in our CSA share.  What to do when you have more vegetables than you can deal with in one week? Preserve it, of course!  The question was how.

I'd previously seen a reference somewhere to making sauerkraut at home, and after a little internet research, became convinced that it's actually very easy.  And so it was!  We chopped up all the cabbage, layered it with salt, packed it down, poured on some extra salt water to make sure the cabbage was totally immersed, covered with cheesecloth, weighted it down with two ziploc bags filled with water, and let it sit undisturbed!  Read all about what exactly happens in the process here (something called lacto-fermentation).

Four weeks later (At least? Maybe more? I can't recall when we started this), here's the result.

 We had its inaugural eating with some bratwursts before the football game last weekend.  Yum!