A Day of Cabbage

Yesterday’s task was to deal with the cabbage in its various forms. I had one crock of fermented sauerkraut that needed to be canned and processed, another couple of heads of white cabbage that need to be fermented into the next batch of sauerkraut, and a couple of heads of red cabbage that needed to be prepped for a batch of spiced red cabbage. (That recipe is in the Ball canning book.)

I love properly-fermented sauerkraut. It isn’t unpleasant at all. It smells wonderful and the taste is tangy without being overpowering. I moved the finished batch of sauerkraut to a stock pot, cleaned and scalded the crock, then filled it with the two shredded heads of cabbage I brought in from the garden. I added some of the brine from the previous batch to the fresh brine to jump-start the fermentation process. It all sits in a three-gallon crock on my counter while the bacteria do their thing. I’ve done cucumber pickles the same way.

After the second batch of sauerkraut was underway, I shredded and salted the red cabbage. It sat in a second crock overnight. This morning, I will drain and rinse it, after which it has to dry for about six hours. By the time I get home from town, it should be ready to mix with brine and spices and run through the canner.

My cabbage is lovely. The cabbage heads are large and tight and blissfully free of worms thanks to all the garter snakes on bug patrol in the garden.

Finally, I canned and processed the first batch of sauerkraut. I got five quarts.

Sauerkraut was running about $8 a jar last winter at the grocery store, so I just saved us $40. And mine is all organic.

Cooking is not my favorite activity, but we do eat well here.

Anna brought me some roasted blue kuri squash. I had some with lunch yesterday, topped with butter and salt. It’s very good. It tastes like a squash, LOL. I think I will forego growing butternut squash from now on and just grow buttercup and blue kuri.

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I turned on the serger again yesterday afternoon and finished the edges of some yardage that needed to be washed. When I was in Missoula last week to drop off my class samples at the store, I noticed they had some bolts of a hemp/silk blend of fabric. The colors weren’t great—a clay red and a muddy sky blue—but I bought two yards of the red anyway because I hadn’t seen this blend before. The fabric on the bolt was pretty stiff. I mentioned that I thought it would soften up when washed and the young woman helping me said no. She told me she had made a pair of pants out of it and didn’t think it would soften up enough for a top. I washed it yesterday and ran it through the dryer on hot. It still has some body to it, but it did soften considerably. The trick with those bast fibers—linen, hemp, ramie, etc.,—is to wash and dry them at high temps to get rid of the gumminess that makes them stiff.

I haven’t decided what it will be yet. It can marinate in the stash.

I also pulled out the Pattern Emporium On Repeat pattern to prep it for tracing. I am curious to see how this one compares to my self-drafted woven top pattern and the Scout Tee pattern, both of which I used quite heavily this summer. The sizing is comparable, but I can already see that I will have to lower the bust darts. I mean, really—I will be using the full bust adjusted pattern piece, and if my bustline were at the level that the pattern thinks it should be, I wouldn’t be able to see over my chest. I sometimes think that most indie pattern designers are young women who haven’t met gravity yet.