If You Can Keep It You Can Eat It: Part 1

Reader Contribution by Anneli Carter Sundqvist
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I’m in the midst of the second big push of the gardening year; the processing. All those plants I worked so hard to raise and plant and make grow have indeed been growing and just as the hostel season wrapped up, I thought I’d have a break when the cabbages, broccoli and all of it started to call for attention. Since my ambition is to eat year round from a garden covered in snow and frost for a good part of the year, not only do I need to make sure I grow enough, I better figure out how to keep it too. I have no interest in selling my own produce in August, only to go buying the same product from Canada or California in March. We don’t have a freezer, so learning how to keep our food through the whole year has been the key element in our journey towards the high level of food self sufficiency we’re at now.

Out of the various means of food preservation, fermentation has become my preference. It’s the oldest known way humans have preserved food and beverage, starting a millennia ago with mead (honey wine). All across the globe people have used the ever existing live culture yeast and micro organism to preserve vegetables, cheese, grain and meat and to produce wine, coffee and chocolate. I got my first sauerkraut lesson many years ago and it was as simple as shredding the cabbage and adding salt. How much salt? Just sprinkle it as you go. Crush the cabbage with your hand to draw out liquid, pack it snuggly in a vessel and keep it submerged. Add ginger and hot pepper and it’s South Korean KimChi. Wait a few days and eat it. The probably most well known source for information about fermenting food is “Wild Fermentation” by Sandor Ellix Katz who also has authored “The Art of Fermentation”, for those who really want to geek out.

Today I grow hundreds of heads of cabbage, many of which we store fresh but many are turned in to kraut, say around 30 gallons per year. Once we get going, we eat almost one gallon a week, along with the 80-100 quarts of fermented beans, cuces, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. I also squeeze onions, garlic and salsa into my well stocked cellar. Fermented food is delicious and super healthy and I’m convinced that all these past years of not a single day in bed being sick is largely due to the constant supply of live fermented food.

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