Sauerkraut

This has been our first successful garden ever, that I can remember. We have planted plenty of gardens in our married years together. We always start off strong. Lots of hard work and sweat goes into planting and mulching or weeding. The years that we lived close to my Mom and Dad they were indispensable when it came to the garden. Dad has tilled gardens for us and provided poles for beans to climb up. Mom planted, mulched, planted and mulched many, many times! The seedlings and the seeds go in the ground, we water and weed and wait. Then we water and weed some more. Then we forget about the excitement of getting those seedlings in the ground. We get busy and the weeding doesn't get done. The weather gets realy hot and we don't want to go out into the garden. Somehow, every year we lose focus and don't really harvest or use what we planted in the first place.

NOT THIS YEAR!

I am happy to report that we have had a great garden. Right now it is rather weedy. but we have harvested, and we will keep harvesting as long as there is food out there and the Lord is willing!

So what do you do with twenty-two heads of cabbage that are all ready at the same time?? You eat a LOT of cabbage, and then you try to make sauerkraut! I am new to making sauerkraut, maybe you are too. This is the process.

1. Select and thoroughly clean the appropriate vessel.

2. Remove the outer leaves of the cabbage. Wash and drain.


3. Quarter cabbage and remove the cores. Weigh out five pounds. Finely slice and sprinkle with 3TBS of pickling salt. Wait a few minutes till the cabbage wilts a bit.




4. Layer the wilted cabbage in the crock. Repeat steps #3 and #4 till the cabbage comes within four or five inches of the top of the crock.



5. Press firmly down on the salted cabbage till the liquid brine covers it. Weight it down so it stays covered in brine.

6. Wait for six weeks. Hopefully we will have turned 15lbs of cabbage into lots of homemade sauerkraut instead of a crock full of mold!! I'll keep you updated!