Sauerkraut and other Fermented Foods: Part 2

   To close up the fermentation subject, I wanted to mention a few more experimentations and finish the sauerkraut.
   I packed up the sauerkraut  last week, and I realized that again I hadn't put the dates down when I started.Those were good intentions of mine, intending to document my fermented food research, thus proving  that I am really into this for the fun stuff like tasting, photos, blog writing, getting out of other more meaningful tasks, like laundry.
   But, I did actually like my scum solution, which was to lay a (very clean) cloth under the pressing plate and weight. When I went to remove the kraut I simply pulled the bottom cloth up carefully, removing almost all the scum and plate at once. And yes, that sauerkraut had better flavor and crunch. I yielded up 17 quarts from my  #3 and #2 crock. And a gallon and 1/2 from the gallon jar batch. Note on doing this in jars: I had trouble skimming, naturally the smaller the jar the worse the effort. Here is where putting a cloth under the weight will be the most beneficial.

  One of my other projects was green tomato pickles. This is something my family has always done. And the recipe is not much more than thinly sliced very green tomatoes (any ripeness turns to mush), hot colored peppers, and salt. I'm not sure if I was just overextended (NO!) and had to many irons in the fire but I wasn't happy with the results this time. I think I had to learn the hard way on degrees of ripeness in the tomato. Some of the tomatoes were a nice green outside and pinking inside- very pretty but gross  after the pickling attempt. Then, I didn't want to "ruin" my fermentation process by the 5 minute hot water bath, so who knows. I packed them up and stuffed them into the extra fridge, hoping that they don't crawl out when I get the courage to check on my stuff. Better luck next time maybe.

     Then I made kim-chee. This was a grocery store produce project. My first attempt was beautiful and delicious, but  after setting it out to ferment according to instructions for 7 days the cucumbers disintegrated. The flavor was perfect at 3 days and I wish I had refrigerated it then. After that time it all smelled so much like my compost bucket I lost heart. Gladly we let the goats eat the rest.  Later my friend told me of her recipe for cucumber kim-chi and it sets for one day only, ooooh, too late.
  Attempt #2 was so much better, and we are still working on it, it keeps well in the fridge. I can't eat it like I'd like, there's so much garlic in it, I don't need something else to scare people away! I will make this again, yet this winter. Paprika is what gives the red color it has in the store. My reading material on this was Wild Fermentation, the book, I haven't looked at the site, the fellow is a bit to much for me, but his book is interesting.