Homemade Saurkraut

I have always wanted one of these traditional German kraut crocks, but never found one that was reasonably priced.  Well, I finally found one.  I've made saurkraut before with mixed results. We'll see how this one goes with the right equipment.  Cabbage and sault; doesn't get much more basic.

 I shredded it by hand.  It didn't take but a few minutes.  It may be a little thicker than it's would be otherwise, but who cares.  The extra thickness may even keep it crunchier.

I bought three big heads.  They weighed in at about 10.5 lbs.  I used 6.25 tbs pickling salt, layered.

The crock comes in four pieces.  The main unit, two weights (so the brine always covers whatever you are pickling), and the lid.  The main unit has a deep well (after the lid is put on you fill the well with water) and the lid is slotted so that as fermentation occurs the gases will escape, but nothing can get in.

You can see the slots in the lid in this picture.  This is where the gases escape past the water in the well.

This is the whole crock full of cabbage before I beat it down (after the salt wilted it slightly).

Here it is beat down with the weights in place.  I will give it a few hours to produce as much brine on its own.  As the salt reacts with the cabbage, it will release water and make the brine.  If it doesn't make enought to cover all the cabbage and weights by at least an inch (which it probably won't), I will make enough brine to cover properly (1.5 tbl pickling salt per quart of water).

Of course I did another small batch of pickles today too.  We get way more cucumbers than we can eat each week, so whatever is left on Saturday get made into pickles.  I will be glad I did it in the winter.

Makin' Bacon

I love bacon.  Over the last few years I've also learned to love making bacon.  It's actually very easy and you get to be creative in the flavors you add.  I made a big batch of what I consider basic bacon a while back and my family loved it.  It's just a little bland for me.  It tastes great, but if you're going to go through the trouble of making bacon, shouldn't you make it special?  I think so.  With that in mind, I made a new batch today and went back to some of the bolder flavors I've used in the past.  In many ways the flavors in this batch of bacon will echo the best home made panchetta, without the juniper berry taste I don't care for.  The pork I'm using is a full slab of skin off belly from a Berkshire that was pasture raised in Iowa without hormones, antibiotics, etc.  

 This is half the slab, trimmed and ready for the cure.

 Same piece with the cut side showing.  It may not look like much meat, but wait

until this has cured and been smoked, then look at it and it will be the meatiest

bacon you have ever seen; certainly far meatier than store bought.
Look at some of the past posts and you can see thefinished product
 (I will also post pics of these when they are done).  It amazes

me how much meatier they look after the cure.

 This is the pink salt.  It's what makes cured meat taste like cured meat.  It's also 

what keeps the meat pink instead of grey and kills all the little nasty things.  It takes very 

little.  This is four teaspoons for 10 lbs of meat.  It, along with all the other flavors, are

rubbed over the meat and it cures for a week in the fridge.  After that it is rinsed very well
and air dried before smoking.

 This is the rest of the flavorings.  There is salt, brown sugar, molassas, 

lemon tyme, bay leaves, garlic and pepper.

 Mix it all into a paste and spread evenly over the meat.

 I use two gallon zip lock bags for the curing.  

It keeps everything clean and contained.

This is what it looks like after you have spread it all over.  

Off to the fridge for a week.

Odds and Ends

 So I thought I would just close the loop on a couple of things.  This is the final product

for the garlic.  They are nicely cured.  Below they are trimmed and ready to use.

I will eat most of this through the winter, but a good bit will go back to the 

garden in the fall for next years crop.

 They look and smell really good.  I'm glad I tried this.  I will grow galic from now on.

 There are about sixty heads in all.  Some bigger than others.

This is a new type pickle I'm trying.  It is not heated or cooked at all.  There are

oak leaves in the bottom to help keep the pickles crisp.  There is also chili flake,
mustard seed and dill.  The liquid is undiluted white wine vinegar (necessary

because it is not cooked or processed at all).  There is also a thin layer of

olive oil at the top that acts as a seal.  I will give them a couple of weeks and

see how it turns out.

Pickling

 I've never pickled ripe tomatos, but I saw a recipe for it so why not.  

I had more than enoughto spare a few for the experiment.  

"The Beast" tomato plant is the yellow pear, so I haveplenty.  

There are pepper corns, garlic and rosemary in it as well as the basic pickle liquid.  

I'll try them in a couple of weeks to see if it is worth doing more.

 These are the white Edmonton cucumbers I have been growing from saved seed 

for a few years now.It is a good, crisp pickling cucumber that is almost white, 

just a shade of very pale yellow or green,and has these hard little spurs on the ribs that 

brush away when you wash them.  

I have to thinkthat was some type of defense mechanisim.  

This is an old variety that I like a lot.  I don't grow anyother cucumber now.  

They are good fresh or pickled.

 These are beets.  There are three varieties mixed.  There are white, regular and the ones with

the concentric white and red stripes.  I just cut them up and mixed them all together.

I like onions in my pickled beets.  I don't add any of the spices that you see in a lot 

of recipes; spice pickles aren't my thing.

 More of the Edmonton's.  I just slices instead of spears for burgers, etc.  

You can see the dried dill floating around.  

I used fresh dill in the spears, but ran out.  Dry is fine.

 Here is the hedge with the new bracing.  The 8+ foot thing was about to be a two foot thing

after it fell down.  I have braced it several times and ways already.  I hope this one works.

This is the first large tomato out of the garden, picked this morning.  

It is an orange type and weighs about 1.5 pounds.

Mother Earth Products

Of course there is never anything that can beat fresh out of the garden, especially if it is out of my Urban garden. Growing is half the fun. There are plenty of times when fresh is not available though. If you find yourself in that position, check out this website. It is my brothers new site and I am just trying to help him promote it. Below is a post off of his home page. It also has many links in it back to his site. Check it out.

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The Edible Hedge

 The tomatos and cucumbers have formed a hedge about 7 feet tall and 4.5 feet wide (in spots).

 It's a pretty masive thing.  These pics were taken after several prunnings, so it

wouldn't take over the entire yard.

 I've had to brace and rebrace several tomato limbs.  I had to completely brace with

another iron pole the cucumbers because they were so heavy they had

tilted the brace about two feet and it was all about to fall down.

 We've just started eating tomatos this last week.  We've had cumcumbers

and squash for a couple of weeks now, beets for even longer.

 These guys don't get as much direct sun and the others, so they have been a little

slower to grow, but they are over six feet now.  The marigold are doing nicely too.

 I love the way the marigolds look, but they wouldn't be there if it weren't for the pest resistence.

Just this morning there was a large white fly swarm out at the garden, but I didn't see any on the plants.

 This is the new garden patch.  It is competely covered too.  Lots of good stuff.

 Bell peppers are larger than baseballs now.  I think I will pick them in about a week.

I made some beet pasta with the beets from the garden and put together a quick meal.

There are onions, patty pan squash, shitaki mushrooms and tomatos.

It was pretty good.