Homemade Sauerkraut

This weekend brought a visit from Alycia's folks who came down to run errands and celebrate Alycia's Dad's birthday in the big city.  I'll be discrete and not tell you how old he is, but suffice to say he is retirement and Social Security eligible.  During the gardening season, and especially in late Summer and early Fall they always bring us gifts of extra produce from their gardens or their friends gardens when they visit.

This trip they brought green and red cabbage as well a large sack of apples.  We quickly turned the apples into a large pan of apple crisp, which pairs perfectly with my morning cup(s) of coffee.   The cabbage got sliced up, crunched into a crock, and is currently fermenting in the basement with the hope that it will soon become sauerkraut.

These are the good looking cabbages that Alycia's parents brought us.

I just chopped up the cabbage with a knife, though having a mandolin or more chopping patience could have yielded smaller grain of cabbage or more consistent size, but that's fine with me.

Making sauerkraut has always been on my list of things to try, but fear of the unknown and my hesitation to try fermentation (oh yeah I just rhymed), kept me from experimenting.  But sauerkraut is incredibly simple; just chop up the cabbage, put it in a crock, add salt, wait a few weeks.  Super easy. We'll know in another couple of weeks how it turned out, I'm looking forward to having a big jug of homemade sauerkraut sitting in the fridge all winter.