It is hot - way too hot to do anything. However, the garden is calling us. Summer Squash and green beans (we grow the small french variety) are ready for harvest. The weeds require our attention as always. The corn is tasseling - can't wait for that wonderful sweet corn. The tomatoes are beginning to fill out and will be turning red soon. We are picking banana peppers and expect the bell peppers to ripen soon. And, planting is not over. This week, we are planting sweet potatoes, sorghum, and our recently seeded malabar spinach is breaking through the ground where the snow peas have finished and wilted. We had the most fun this week with our cabbages and plums. First - the cabbage. I decided to make homemade sauerkraut! The folks in Ackley would be proud of me. I grew up in a little town in north central Iowa called Ackley. You can learn more about this quaint little community at http://www.ackleyiowa.net/ . When you enter Ackley, the welcome sign announces that you are entering the "Home of Sauerkraut Days". When I was a kid, Sauerkraut Days was three days of bliss in the middle of a summer that otherwise was centered around the town's swimming pool, brief visits with my grandmother 'Mom', and the little 9 hole golf course (which I would play over and over sometimes 36 holes per day). There was nothing else to do. After all, we had a total of three TV channels, no computers, few radio stations, and lots of corn and pigs.
Don't get me wrong here. It was not a bad place to grow up. It was safe and pleasant - no drive by shootings, muggings, terrorist attacks, environmental disasters, etc. There was something comforting about knowing everyone you met every day. ( It was much later in my life living in LA that I learned the value and the price of anonymity.) But - Sauerkraut Days were the most! The whole uptown (uhm-two blocks long) was closed off to traffic. The carnival came to town with a ferris wheel (we could see our house from the top), scrambler, some kind of freak show, and lots of 'games of chance'. We also had a big parade, a kiddie parade, and music programs in the band shell. The culmination of all of the activities was free wieners and sauerkraut for everyone! I hated sauerkraut then but might have eaten a wiener if there were no vestiges of sauerkraut near it. So, that part was not too meaningful to me. According to the website, they gave out free sauerkraut and wieners on Friday, June 4th this year. I missed it!
At any rate, I both grew up, and grew to like sauerkraut very much. But - I was never around anyone who knew how to make it and never dreamed of making my own. That is, until our cabbage matured and we wondered what to do with it all. I came across some internet sites touting the advantage of making your own sauerkraut. I gathered a wonderful recipe from friend Christie and another German recipe from the internet and harvested 8 heads of cabbage for processing into sauerkraut. It took a while to shred 8 full heads of cabbage and my kitchen is a mess as a result. However, there are now 10 quarts of cabbage sitting on our kitchen counter waiting to do their fermenting magic. I guess they will bubble and overflow and make a gooey mess in the pans. The only drawback is that I neglected to read all of the recipe instructions. This is the middle of summer in the Ozarks and, as I said at the outset, it is hot here. We are experiencing outside daytime temperatures in the mid 90s. Normally, our air conditioning system would be set no lower than 78 degrees. The recipes all require that the fermenting sauerkraut be maintained at temps ranging from 65 to 72 degrees for at least two weeks. So much for our electric bill this month! Needless to say the sauerkraut has taken precedence and the programmable thermostat has been adjusted to care for our sauerkraut process properly. In the future, the making of sauerkraut will be reserved for the fall growing season. I have soooo much to learn.
Now - for the Plums... Until this Spring, we did not even know that we owned a traditional plum tree. We have lots of native plums which produce fruit for the birds and deer but not for us. This year, we discovered that we have a wonderful traditional plum tree. We are experiencing the perfect spring for fruit and we have apples, pears, plums, and cherries. The plum tree is loaded. Jerry, who is a big jam and jelly fan, is ecstatic. He has been watching and reporting on the development of the plums for weeks. Today, we made the first jam from the plums and tried to make leather from the fruit with our new Excalibur dehydrator. The jam came out fine but the leathers are a little too tart. The fruit really needs another few days; hopefully the Japanese Beetles will let us have some of the ripe ones.
Meanwhile, we will hope that the cabbage makes its transitional voyage from leaf to kraut! May the bubbling begin!
No comments:
Post a Comment