Kimchi And Fermented Vegetables How To And Why

In your purse. You want it close at hand. Surely you could fit three or four jars in. What else do you need in there?

 

Lol, you should have seen my purse! It was like an extra piece of luggage. I could have held it in my hand I suppose, lol


My tummy is acting up because I was dumb and didn't eat any this week.

I'm leaving for vacation again, tonight.

I'll have more room on this trip.

I think I'll pack some!

 

Okay, I'm eating some now.

I'll eat some at lunch.

I'll eat some at dinner and

I've got the small jars out to pack.

Thanks for the encouragement, Lucy!

 

lol I can just see it, suitcases full of kimchi instead of clothes and toiletries. The customs officials would be scratching their heads. You might get detained as they search the jars on the suspicion of illegal substances.

Just string one up with a chain and wear it around your neck as a pendant. You might start a trend.

I know what you mean about not eating any for a while. I don't get stomach problems but I do feel a general malaise. I was busy the last several days and on an odd schedule and actually forgot to eat some and I could tell the difference.

 

My mixed veggies were a bust. Soft and slimy and smelled and tasted bad. Two big jars down the drain (well, in the green waste bin). :-( Must be that some of the veggies weren't good since I made two separate jars and both were bad. The cukes and kohlrabi turned out good and so did all the cabbages. The organic cabbage (just tried the first jar the other day) was outstanding. Much better taste than the regular cabbage I've used. I hope I can get more of them.

 

That really seems to make a significant difference; doesn't it?

 

And it's not even that the vegetables are old, sometimes they seem fresh, but it must be that they're harbouring questionable bacteria that ruins the ferment. It's a luck of the draw sometimes.

 

I guess that's actually it.

 

I fermented a small jar of golden beets. They had some at the farmers stand so I thought I'd grab them. They don't have them too often. They also had garlic scapes, so I threw those in too. We'll see how the combo turns out.

 

I've been such a bad girl this Summer - being off the ferment and on the sugar.

I've eaten my fermented cabbage for a couple of days in a row and I can tell the good guys are in there fighting with the bad guys because it's giving me IBS symptoms that it never has before.

Never mind. I just remembered that I had raw onions. That explains it.

It was not my friend the fermented cabbage!

 

I've definitely had too much ice cream in this hot and humid weather. I've reeled myself in this week. I think I may be going through sugar withdrawal. lol

I made a few more jars today. I'm out of pickles! So I made two more jars today. And another jar of hot yellow peppers since they had them at the store.

 

I'll be eating a little fermented cabbage when my sugar craving hits tonight!

 

Make it hot peppers. It'll burn the craving out of you. :-D

 

I did a slew of fermenting today. I ran out of jars so couldn't do the striped and golden beets. I may actually use them in a recipe instead.

My shelf was almost empty, so I got lots of veggies this week. The cabbages were huge and it only took 1-1/2 heads instead of the usually 3 smaller heads to fill 3 jars. I bought a basket of pickling cukes because they didn't have any loose ones and used most of them in two large jars. And a couple of jars of dill kohlrabi.

 

That's inspiring work, Lucy!

 

Thanks. I was determined. lol I didn't tell you my sad story about my previous batches. Last week I had to throw out 3 jars! The two jars of cukes and one large jar of kohlrabi were full of mold. This hasn't happened before and they were from different batches. When I went to unscrew the kohlrabi jar, it was loose. I usually have a hard time getting the lids off, they're so tight. I have a strong suspicion that someone here knocked them over and isn't telling. The cabbage and hot peppers were okay at least, and the golden beets, the ones with the garlic scapes. I wouldn't use garlic scapes with them again. I usually make the beets plain and find they're the best that way. The scapes didn't go well with these beets

 

Well, you're on your way to having your stock back up.

 

So do they stay crisp? I've made pickles before and always have had problems with them going soft.

 

Were they fermented or regular vinegar pickles? We had a discussion here a while ago about how sometimes vegetables (fermented) turn out crisp and other times the same type are soft or mushy. We deduced it was because of the state of the vegetable to begin with. The fresher the better (and getting them in jars as soon as possible) and you never know what bacteria is sitting on them already. Cukes I find come out good if you can get them fresh, like at the farmer's market during harvest time. The ones in the store are always a gamble. Sometimes mine come out crisp, other times soft, sometimes just plain bad!

 

Interesting tidbit about my latest batch. The jars of pickles were such a mishmash of results. Some of them were soft and mushy, so much so that I had to toss them. But others (in the very same jar) were nice and crisp. Really crisp. I think that holds with our observations that it depends on how fresh the produce is. There were obviously cukes from different plants, and possibly different harvesting times, in the basket I bought.

The kohlrabi is another anomaly. The pieces were quite soft, but taste really good. The funny thing is I was short on dill so I put a lot less in the jars this time. Yet the kohlrabi has a stronger dill taste than the ones where I've stuffed the jars with dill. Beats me.