 I have been fascinated lately by probiotics. They are so very important to overall health and I can’t seem to get enough of them. I hate spending $10 on the really good, fresh, organic kimchi and sauerkraut when I’ve been eating some with every meal. It breaks the budget. I began looking into my own fermented veggie recipes and I’m pleased to announce success in both kimchi and sauerkraut. The kraut is much easier to make, so I’ve included that recipe below.
What’s the deal with probiotics?
Our gut is filled with living bacteria. In a perfect world, we eat well and they thrive by breaking down our food into easily absorbable nutrition. Our friendly gut microflora also kill harmful infections, and produce beneficial vitamins and chemicals that keep us healthy. It’s a beautiful symbiotic relationship as nature intended. These microflora (gut bacteria) are also known as probiotic. They are “for life.”
As we live our lives, external pollution, toxins, poor food choices, and antibiotics (“against life”), can harm our friendly microflora. When the good bacteria dies, it leaves plenty of open housing for the hostile bacteria. When the hostile bacteria outnumber the friendly bacteria, we experience problems like poor digestion, constipation, gas, bloating, and lack of nutritional assimilation. It’s bad, people. Bad.
I’ve been eating some form of probiotic before every meal — or at least once a day — for the past month and I notice a difference. I’ve been experimenting with recipes and have developed a really simple herbed sauerkraut recipe that is delicious and can be tailored to anyone’s taste. Enjoy!
Herbed Sauerkraut
Head of Cabbage, about 3 pounds (can be Napa, green, red… or a combination of any) 1-2 Tablespoons sea salt
Fresh or dried herbs or spices to taste
Sealable jar (I used a porcelain jar with a rubber gasket)
A bit of cheesecloth and an elastic, or a thin cloth. Something permeable to air, but not dust.
 When fermenting, everything must be super clean. Think canning kind of clean. We don’t want any foreign bacteria outside of the good ones present. Wash the containers, the cabbage, and the herbs.
Grind the cabbage. I used my manual food processor. You can use whatever machine you want, or just a knife. I have an approximation of the size of the cabbage bits in the picture. Smaller pieces saturate faster. Kimchi uses larger cabbage pieces and takes a bit longer to ferment.
I put all my ground cabbage into a big bowl. The bigger the better. We’re going to play in the cabbage with our hands before we transfer it into the fermenting jar. To the pile of cabbage, add the sea salt. Make sure your hands are super clean, then dig in and massage, squeeze, and knead the salt into the cabbage. You can be rough. The cabbage will start to go limp — keep kneading! The cabbage will start to produce its own water — keep kneading! It’s about 5-10 minutes. I put on some good music and had a blast.
The goal is to have enough water produced that it will cover the cabbage in the jar. If you feel you don’t have enough, add more sea salt and keep kneading!
When you have achieved well-soaked cabbage, add in your herbs and/or spices. In my picture, I used some fresh oregano from my deck. It’s really tasty. I can’t think of any herb or spice that wouldn’t work. I’m thinking of a curry kraut for autumn. Experiment, have fun! There are no measurements here, just add until you think it will be enough flavor. I probably threw in a good handful of fresh oregano.
 Pack your beautifully flavored cabbage into your jar. Tamp down the cabbage until the water covers it. I laid cheesecloth over the top and secured it with a rubber band. Put the jar in a corner of the counter where it won’t be disturbed, yet has plenty of airflow.
Every day for the next 3-5 days, lift the cheesecloth and tamp down the cabbage. By day 3 or 5, you should see bubbles. It’s fermenting! I waited a full 5 days before taking off the cheesecloth, locking down the actual jar cover, and putting it in the back of the fridge. I left it there for an additional 5-7 days. When I took it out a week later, it was sauerkraut!
It’s pretty simple. Since I want to keep myself in probiotic veggies, I have been starting a new batch every other week. By the time one of my jars is free, I’m ready to make more. I keep the kraut in the fridge and just pull from the big jar. Be sure to always use a clean utensil in the big jar so you don’t introduce harmful bacteria to the main batch.
It’s fun to make, it’s tasty to eat, and it’s good for me! Win, win, win!
Breathe deeply,
Laugh with abandon,
Love wholly,
Eat well.
MiLady Carol
I have a little hand citrus squeezer that is fine to use for one or two limes/lemons, yet I tend to buy a bunch of citrus and squeeze it into juice to fill a container for easy use during the week. When I have to process a dozen or so fruits, I pull my big, heavy, industrial Citrus Squeezer out of the Storage Room.
 While it’s not the most often used kitchen gadget I own, I am immensely grateful to have it! Since I’ve been cutting all the weird chemicals out of my world, I don’t buy bottled juice anymore. Now I bike to the local market and buy a dozen or so lemons or limes, wash them, and juice them into a bottle in the fridge. I buy just enough for a week or two. If I had to use the hand squeezer for 12 limes, that’s 24 hand-cramping squeezes to pull all the juice from the fruit. I pull my industrial Citrus Squeezer off the shelf every couple weeks, rinse it off, and the machine does all the hard work for me. No more hand cramps! It’s easy to clean, and really extracts all the juice in one squeeze. I love it!
While a big Citrus Squeezer like this is a bit of an extravagance, I am so grateful to have it when I need it. It saves time and energy for a Kitchen Artist who chooses to do everything from scratch with whole foods. Tools really make the efforts easier. The quality of the food is totally worth every expense in time and money, so any tools that make me happier and more efficient are a blessing!
Breathe deeply,
Laugh with abandon,
Love wholly,
Eat well.
MiLady Carol
When last we traveled to Vietnam, I fell deeply in love with a tea set. My husband recognizes and has come to terms with this affair of the heart — after all, he is served delicious tea in said set.
It all began with a typhoon.
Our visit to Vietnam in November, 2013 happened to intersect with a typhoon that hit both the Philippines and Vietnam. We scrapped our initial plans to visit HoiAn and retreated up the mountains to Dalat for a week instead. When we returned to Ho Chi Minh City, we heard the danger of the typhoon had passed and we reset our plan for HoiAn. While there, we met with heavy rains and resulting flooding that created new and amazing adventures in touristry.
We spent our first day walking around the quaint town despite the pouring tropical rain. We kept ducking into shops and cafés to escape the continuing deluge. It was during one of these heavier rains that we found a delightful tea salon. I was drawn in by the tranquil robin’s egg blue walls and the sight of teapots lining a bookshelf on the wall. The shop, Reaching Out Tea House, is staffed by the deaf and/or mute. The tables are set with visual ways of communicating with them and they were absolutely amazing. I learned that all the cups, teapots, linens, and other decor was created by the Reaching Out program and was invited to peruse their retail shop one street over for souvenirs.
 The retail shop houses their array of ceramics, metalsmithed items, and quilted silks. Behind the storefront, I was invited to view one of their workshop spaces. The staff are all disabled in some respect. People without limbs, deformed parts, speech and auditory impediments, anything that may prevent them from earning a living in many jobs, have developed their skills in the fine arts. As a jeweler, ceramic, and fiber artist, I have done many of the activities I saw, so I have a great appreciation of their skill. Plus, knowing that 100% of all purchases go directly to them to further build this venture, I felt it my duty to purchase from the shop.
This retail shop is where I saw my celadon tea set. There are six cups and the teapot, all in the gorgeous celadon glaze that brings joy to my heart. I walked by it over and over while picking out gifts for loved ones, choosing some of the tea they sold, and enjoying being surrounded by hand-crafted wonderfulness. Eventually, I had to make this set mine. I love it and amazing tea is made and served in it. Next time you come by, sit and share a pot of Vietnamese tea in this hand-made tea set with me.
Breathe deeply,
Laugh with abandon,
Love wholly,
Eat well.
MiLady Carol
I love going to my local Farmer’s Markets! There is something about seeing, smelling, and touching all the foods of the season — freshly picked and brought to this festival of the senses — that really grounds me in the present. For this moment, and this moment alone, this particular vegetable is at its peak. It is at its most flavorful, most juicy, most sweet… and for the rest of the year, I’ll remember that taste and anticipate next year when I can have it again.
While I’m far from perfect, I do try to eat seasonally. There are many foods I just won’t buy out of season. Even though our local markets go through the trouble to import watermelons all year, I won’t buy them. They just never taste right unless it’s fresh off the vine and full of seeds. I’m not willing to sacrifice the taste for the sub-par experience of off-season watermelon. Plus, it gives me something to anticipate. This year, when I first saw watermelons at Market, I exuded such an ecstatic squeal, a woman standing nearby gave me a standing ovation and told me I made her day by my enthusiasm.
The other great part about Market is being visually stimulated into the seasonal shifts. Last week, I began to experience pumpkins, squash, an even greater abundance of mushrooms, and lots of root veggies. Right then, I began to gear my mind toward stews and curries. The weather has now shifted to match the season and I am grateful for warm, thick, foods full of autumn colors. I couldn’t wait to get home and turn all these orange, red, and umber colored foods into a gently bubbling cauldron of yumminess.
The first stew of the season ended in a bit of tragedy when my beautiful stoneware pot broke. Luckily, it was early on and I started over in my old 4-quart stainless steel pot. When I returned from Seattle, my amazing hubby had bought a 6.5-quart French Oven in blazing hot red! I have a new cauldron, Ladies and Gentlemen! It’s French double glazed cast iron and huge! Isn’t she beautiful! He even made me a curry in it so I’d have something to eat when I returned from a long day on the train. See, amazing husband, right?
This is my first curry in the cauldron, an autumn symphony of succulence! Since I’m horrible at ever measuring anything, I’ll just list most of the ingredients:
pumpkin, sweet potato, potato, celery, capsicum, onion, garlic, lemon juice, salt, stevia leaves, home-made hemp nut milk, and a palm-sized ball of curry paste.
 Since I’m deathly allergic to cinnamon, I make my own curry. Over the years, I’ve cultivated quite a collection of herbs and spices in my pantry, so it’s no trouble to make my own. Plus, after a cooking class in Malaysia along with a visit to their local market where I witnessed an amazing woman making custom curry pastes for sale, and a purchase of a really big stone mortar and pestle, there’s not much I can’t pull together. My paste for this curry was just a basic curry, not specific to any region or ethnicity. I included curry leaves, turmeric, coriander, cumin, clove, paprika, peppercorns, mustard seeds, celery seeds, garden stevia, garden rosemary, garden Vietnamese coriander, and maybe more that I’m not remembering, all ground together and bound by olive oil into a paste.
The end result, when served with a dark, leafy green freshly tossed into my bowl and chili spice to the individual’s taste, is delicious. I made it Wednesday afternoon and didn’t bother serving it until Thursday. By then, the flavors had mingled into something spectacular. Plus, the extra 2.5-quart space in the new French oven left me plenty of room to stir and cook down. I was constantly running into space issues in the 4-quart pot. Yay new cookware! And, I’m going to Market today to buy another pumpkin and some more kale. Yay autumn!
Breathe deeply,
Laugh with abandon,
Love wholly,
Eat well.
MiLady Carol
I’m a visual reader. For me, this means I truly see the action unfold in my mind as my eyes read the words on the page. I’m a slow reader, I read only a little faster than I do aloud. For me, though, that time is truly captivating. I am the characters, I paint the scenery, I see the people — usually in great detail. Perhaps it was a misspent youth reading too much Longfellow, Wordsworth, and ancient Mediterranean mythology. Maybe it’s just the way I’m wired. Whatever it is, it is. It’s who I am, how I read, and how I choose to escape.
When I see a movie, I apply the same instinct to see myself in the characters, in that universe. When that movie is based on a book I’ve read, there is a 90% chance the visuals of the movie will supplant the one’s I’ve created in my mind. As clear a vision as I had for Gandalf in my mind for years of reading Tolkien before Peter Jackson’s movies, Ian McKellen is now the face I see when re-reading the books.
Is this a bad thing? Not always. I’m really good at suspending disbelief to enjoy a movie, however, there are exceptions that break my brain. For example:
- When the script is vastly different from the book.
- When three plot-point intensive characters are melded into one actor.
- When the ending is changed to fill the departing crowd with happy summer feelings rather than the intended perspective-shifting, soul-wrenching ending of the book.
These instances are liable to induce nano-hemorrhages in my brain — a medical condition that either leaves me stunned and speechless or brings forth a veritable cascade of spluttering rant. While the former may be a welcome break, the latter is usually painful to all those within earshot. It’s far better for me to respect my marriage and friendships by just reading the book first.
Am I the only one who needs to read the book before seeing the movie? What’s your take?
Breathe deeply,
Laugh with abandon,
Love wholly,
Eat well.
MiLady Carol
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