Lacto fermented sauerkraut Part 1, and some sweet memories…

I am part of an amazing group now. We are a part of a Natural food co-op and I am soooo excited. It is helping me instill the healthy habits that I am working sooo hard towards. I’ll share a little more of that with you in the future. Here’s a little bit of the bounty. It is all wonderfully delicious and I am able to create some healthful meals for my family.

One thing I am exited about is lacto-fermented sauerkraut. I’ve made this several times in the past. It is wonderful! It makes me sad that I haven’t made it in so long.
I can’t dwell on what I haven’t done though… I just have to be excited at what we ARE doing and the progress that IS being made. Right? Right!

Here’s our cabbage. I am running it through the food processor, because it makes the work fast! I really like cutting it like I did when I was the ‘slaw maker’ at Nannie Red’s house when I was a little girl. I always wanted to help in the kitchen, and so I got dubbed the slaw maker. 😉 I used one of these…

Like I said… the food processor made it much faster work.
After I shredded each head of cabbage, I added these ingredients.
1 tablespoon of sea salt

1 tablespoon caraway seed

4 tablespoons of whey

You can make as little or as much as you like, I ended up using 4 heads of cabbage, and after each head, I added the ingredients above.

Once I finished I laid my weights inside and pressed down. The weights are part of what comes with a crock like this.

Second weight goes in…

Press down til juice comes up and is about an inch over the weights.

Place the lid over the crock

Now, pour some water around the lid in the lip of the crock. This is so great. It allows air to get out, but no air to get in!

This is called a Harsch Crock made specifically for fermenting veggies. I got it from amazon, it’s a 10 Liter. If I had more cabbage, I would have used quite a bit more. It can make a LOT!!!

Now, this is only part 1 of this series. I have to let it sit out for a couple of days and then I have to put it somewhere cool and dark for about 3 weeks to let it get all fermented and ripe. I will post about this again when it is ready.

So here is our old school pics that are from about 6 years ago.

Preciousness!

These are from my OLD, OLD blog. Aren’t they precious?

Look at all those whispy curly curls. Awww

Some of our efforts from that day, so long ago.

Another time we made kraut… incorporating the food processor.

How my babes have grown.

I need a tissue.

More yummy kraut.

I hope you give making your own kraut a try and even more than that… get your kids in there with you and make memories. These are treasures that I will never get tired of.

Blessings!