Friday
A better day, thank goodness! Sweaty night and my pump woke me up a couple times but felt ok anyway. Went to New Seasons in the morning to take advantage of their 20% off produce sale. Bought blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, cabbage, a zucchini, two little eggplants, a bunch of beautiful carrots, a couple of red bell peppers, and some locally-grown tomatoes.
When I got home I made a pot of Kara-style ratatouille (onion, eggplant, zucchini, peppers, garlic, herbs) which will last me a couple of days. For dinner tonight I made a little pot of polenta to eat with it. Yum! Veggie goop!
After the shopping and cooking I was WORN OUT and fell asleep on the sofa. Slept for a couple hours and woke up refreshed instead of nap-groggy, so I felt good enough to start a batch of sauerkraut. It’s fermenting in a jar and will be ready to eat in a week or two! Very excited. I made a batch about 15 years ago and it was great and then I forgot all about it, but I recently remembered how easy it was and decided to make it again. There’s a lot more info online now so I’m certain that I’m doing it right and won’t poison anyone. It’s foolproof, really. There are many different recipes online but I like to go by weights so I did 800 grams of finely sliced cabbage to 16 grams of non-iodized salt. This will fill a big bowl and it seems impossible that it will fit into a jar, but it will! I used my stand mixer’s bowl and the dough hook (a tip I read online) to thrash it for a while, and it all fit neatly into a single quart-sized jar. Amazing. Another tip I read was to replace some of the cabbage with shredded carrot, so I’ll get another jar and try that too. Looking forward to fermented cucumber pickles when my garden gives me cukes!