Yes, it has finally happened. When you are leaping into the unknown and most everything you do on a daily basis is a new skill, you're going to fail....and fail big! Well, that's what happened to me this weekend.
So far the gardening has been a pretty big success. We've had more yield than we ever dreamed possible. And the canning has progressed without too much of a hitch. The learning curve has been somewhat long, but I'm feeling more like an old pro now. And the rows of pretty canned foods on the new shelves Joel built have given me the courage to continue on.
But then there was the cabbage. Yes, the 8-10 heads we harvested way back when and I shredded and salted and "worked" until the juices flowed from the shredded beauties. And the whole lovely mess was put to bed in the crock and the weights put on top to hold the cabbage down into it's juices. And I thought all I had to do was wait.
Well, this weekend I thought it was about time I canned it all, so I took the lid off and..........blech! The stench was horrible. The little white crawly things creeped me out. And now I know the little fruit flies were not being brought into the kitchen by the masses of tomatoes I've been canning the last few weeks. Gross. Me. Out.
Um, yeah, I reread several more recipes for sauerkraut and noticed something new. I was supposed to skim the slime (it was supposed to make slime?) off the top of the liquid DAILY. Really? Um, I seriously missed that point when I started this whole experiment weeks ago. Needless to say, the whole nasty mess got dumped down in the woods to rot on it's own. And then I scrubbed and scrubbed the crock, weights and lid to make sure I eliminated any traces of the whole stinkin' mess.
Do I have to explain things any further? I didn't think so. Amen. And now I'm going outside to breath in some fresh air. We three had a really good laugh about the Great Sauerkraut Failure of 2014. Let's hope it never gets repeated. Ugh.
That's all I'm gonna say,
Debbie
