Garden gathering

If you know gardeners, you know that there is never enough dirt to plant all the wonderful seeds available. In addition to my home garden, and now my hoop house, I have two community garden plots. As much trouble as I have had with theft the past two years, my spouse is asking me to give those up... and then what? Where will I plant my squash and potatoes and carrots and beets and turnips and cabbage.

And where would we be without cabbage? After losing more than a couple of heads of cabbage to theft one year, I investigated heirloom varieties and found what my sister-in-law fondly refers to as "Dr. Suess" cabbage.

Fildenkraut (from Annie's Heirloom Seeds website at http://www.anniesheirloomseeds.com) is this description: 90 day.  This is a German heirloom developed for sauerkraut.  It has a large pointed head.  This point is coreless, making it very easy to cut fine shreds for sauerkraut.  It is also very sweet, making for one of the best sauerkrauts I've tasted.

One - being German, I had to try it and two no one steals it because it doesn't ever look like it has a head. But being the farthest thing from the truth, Fildenkraut has huge and heavy heads and grows like a cold flame of crispy goodness. Even the tiny plants that I couldn't bear to throw away and planted them between the healthy ones grew up into substantial sized heads of cabbage. perfect for stirfry and perfect for cabbage rolls... and saurkraut.

It's funny how lacto-fermentation has become so popular as of late. In our house we have been fermenting and eating cabbage and pickles forever. It is said that the Germans ate those types of foods in opposition to the smoked meats and white flour dough foods of their food culture.

Making sauerkraut is fairly simple. Cabbage and salt... Ewiger Saatz - Everlasting Yeast has the old food culture recipes from the Germans from Russia... You can find the book on Amazon.com.

In the meantime, admire the Fildenkraut.

PS: if you have never tried homemade sauerkraut before, you don't know what you are missing. Winter is coming on and well... the best meals are roast and sauerkraut with knephla... that recipe is in the book also.