Recently we were at the temple. In the middle of the afternoon I had the opportunity to go to the lunchroom to eat my boring lunch. I was blessed to sit with Sister Miller and others. The conversation came to fermented vegetables. Sister Miller told us all how to do it. I decided I would give it a try so when we got home I purchased a cabbage as we did not have one in the house.
A week and a half ago I went to North Carolina
for a week to stay with my sister for a wedding in her family. I knew it would take about two weeks for the vegetables to ferment so I decided to make some vegetable mixture up quick like a bunny so they would "work" while I was gone...making the waiting easier to handle
So...before I left on the Friday
before, I used my Cuisinart food processor and chopped up cabbage (half a
cabbage), some carrots and some celery. I mixed it with enough salt to
please my tongue and then put it into a 2-quart canning jar. I had squeezed the vegetables pretty hard with my hands so the juice would begin to extrude, a very important step in the process. When I had done as much as I could and put the vegetables in the 2-quart canning jar, the juice was more than halfway up the jar.
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| Fermenting vegetables! They need the dark and room temperature. |
On top of the vegetables I placed two or three of the outer tougher cabbage leaves to be a sort of cover for the vegetables and pushed the leaves down hard to be in contact with the chopped and salted vegetables. I
then filled the jar to the top with plain water, which covered the outer cabbage leaves.
If I had been home I would have checked every few days to see if I needed to top of the liquid with plain water. Dear One was not very committed to this project due to his rather mild interest in vegetables so I did not ask him to check while I was away!
Next I covered the top of the jar with a towel which I secured with a rubber band. I put a dark
towel around the bottom of the jar and secured that with another rubber band, then walked away and let it sit for 14 days on the kitchen counter.
When I
got home I saw that the liquid level was down a little bit so I added water
and let it continue percolating until it was the full 14 days. I could not wait
any longer!
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| Cabbage leaf cover still in place |
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| Covering cabbage leaves removed |
I have just now eaten a whole wheat tortilla
with some lettuce from our garden, a little bit of tuna and mayonnaise,
some of the percolated vegetables with sliced Vidalia onions on top. It
made a superior sandwich.
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| Tortilla sandwich loaded and ready to wrap. And eat! |
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| First use of fermented vegetables...the eating was ever so delicious1 |
Now I have put the actual cover on the jar and am storing it in the refrigerator. I will be able to eat it whenever I want. It is sort of like a mild sauercraut. I believe I could eat it plain as a side dish or on top of all kinds of things, like a baked potato, scrambled eggs, a Reuben sandwich, almost any savory thing.
