Sauerkraut, home fermented Sauerkraut, is a wonderful experience!
Early in August I started a batch of Sauerkraut in a one litre mason jar. A week or so ago we opened it up and WOW! It is amazing, soooo good. As an added bonus it was made with a cabbage right out of our garden in the back yard. We only grew two cabbages, so there are no more to make Sauerkraut with. We will buy some now though, and get a few batches bubbling, while cabbage is in season and fresh from an Ontario farm. I found it to be too high in sodium for regular consumption, but I can still have a wee bit as a treat now and again.
I am also fermenting Jalepeno Peppers, but they need more time, so we, mostly Attila in this particular we, haven’t tried them yet. They are looking good though, no sign of mold or any issues.
Today I cooked pinto beans in the Instant Pot, so easy to do. I kept one portion in a container in the refrigerator for soup, and filled two more containers that went into the freezer. I need to cook some garbanzo beans as well, for hummus, we love our hummus. But I think that will have to wait until tomorrow, I’ll add it to my to do list, along with cooking down tomatoes, making and freezing pizza sauce.
Tonight Attila and I are blanching and freezing more beans from the garden, and preparing more tomatoes to make pizza sauce. I am still thinking about what to do with all of the zucchini though, so many things to choose from… but my mind keeps wandering back to brownies.
The weather is still very warm, no need for even a sweater out there. This means the garden keeps offering up more bounty. Yesterday we even ate fresh strawberries from the hanging planter, in September, who would have thought!
Today I am making Taco Soup for supper. If there is any left by tomorrow, and I don’t hold out any hope of this, I will pressure can a few jars.
I treated myself to another basket of Ontario Peaches, the season is almost over, the offerings in the grocery store looking a little more ragged every week. But I love peaches, so into the cart they went. I did can some peach sauce, for a lovely summery topping on ice cream, on a cold winter’s night. My favourite way to eat a peach is to make a smoothie with 1% milk, just peaches and milk, oh so good! When I am feeling really adventurous, I wash the peaches thoroughly, then use both flesh and skin in the smoothie, which provides a more intense peach flavour.
I think I will feel a little bit lost when harvest season winds down completely, until I find another project to focus on! I am already thinking about a few sewing projects that I might tackle, and of course, my crocheting is always waiting for me, right beside my easy chair.
Worldly
Weather
17°C
Date: 2:00 PM EDT Tuesday 24 September 2019
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.0 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 17.2°C
Dew point: 10.1°C
Humidity: 63%
Wind: NNW 19 km/h
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Mountains inspire awe in any human person who has a soul. They remind us of our frailty, our unimportance, of the briefness of our span upon this earth. They touch the heavens, and sail serenely at an altitude beyond even the imaginings of a mere mortal.”
Elizabeth Aston
1948 – 2016
I’ll take your word on the sourkraut experience- soggy cabbage doesn’t turn me on at all
Your plot of land sounds like the garden that keeps on giving. It’s been a few years since I doc any veggie growing, I do miss it (even the small amount I did) but there was always that year when ‘you’ had a great crop everyone else did as well…..so there was no gifting of your oversupply because everyone else was trying to do the same thing!
Cathy, sauerkraut is definitely not to eveyone’s taste! Our homemade sauerkraut is a bit crunchy, very nice. I like it heated with chunks of apple, served with german sausage. But alas, the sodium and all the additives in the sausages will make me feel unwell, so no meals, just a bite here or there.
I remember what you describe, everyone’s garden yielding such abundance that people wanted to share, and I think it still happens in places. In our neighbourhood though, we are the ONLY property that has a vegetable garden, no one else is growing food. I miss that sharing though, very neighbourly, and it helps keep communities healthy in so many ways! Where we live people are trying to sell everything, from a single clothespin to an old cooking pot, for prices that are not reasonable. I am so very glad we have the garden (Attila’s department) and food preparation and preservation skills (my department). We will keep this up as long as we are able!
When we heard last weekend was going to be so nice we pulled things together and did an extra weekend trip to the cottage. It was really nice there. We even made it to the beach for a few minutes. Being late in the season, the water level was down and we finally had about 15 feet of usable beach.
Do you use a blender to make your smoothies? I would love to do things like that but I can never win with blenders, they’re hard to clean and once I take them apart for cleaning I can almost never get them back together again and sealed so they don’t leak.
Teri, your weekend at the beach sounds so peaceful and lovely!
Yes, I use a blender to make my smoothies. AttilaI has a wee one that was a real PITA to use, which is now relegated to making hot sauces, once it is used for hot sauce, the plastic parts retain the odour and flavour. Since Attila love his hot sauce, the wee blender still gets lots and lots of use. But the one I use for smoothies is a high end Ninja blender/food processor, and it does a great job. So far so good, but since it is used multiple times every day for various things, I wonder how many years I will be able to get out of it before it stops working as it should, it has been in use almost 10 months now, and the handle is beginning to rattle a bit, but it is still working as expected. Of course I use it to chop zucchini for relish, puree tomatoes for sauce, in large quantities, bushels, so this unit gets a workout. No leaking so far.
I immediately went to amazon to see what a Ninja blender looked like. Unfortunately, it still has the same kind of blade contraption at the bottom as my Sunbeam. It must be me, once I take it apart I just can’t get the rubber seal level or something so the silly thing will seal again.
Teri, given what you describe about the seals, I wonder if a small food processor might be a good fit for you, my Ninja food processor bowl snaps into place, no seal to worry about. That is what I would do anyway, I love the Ninja food processor bowl, really easy to use and clean, and you don’t have to worry at all about a seal.