Sauerkraut day

Here’s a funny story. A few weeks ago, my brother, his wife, and a friend of theirs came to lunch. I made a bacon and tomato pie with a recipe I got from Sara Molton’s Weeknight Meals. Anything to use up tomatoes at this point in time. Well, the only way it could have been made on a weeknight was if you had the crust made in advance. In any case, I read that recipe six times. Every time I read it, I thought, “Huh. Isn’t it funny that you don’t sauté the onions before you put them in the pie? I guess if they are sliced thin enough, they cook in the pie.”

The crust was all butter and difficult to work with. It split all over, and I had to piece it together to get it to cover the pie pan.

I layered the bacon, the onions, and the tomatoes in two layers before pouring on the eggs and cream. I glanced at the recipe once more to see how long to bake it. And there it was: “sauté the onions in the bacon fat.” Too late.

But the onions did cook in the baking, which was 25 minutes longer than the 35 minutes the recipe said.

Because the recipe made twice as much crust as I needed for one pie, I had another crust in the freezer. I let it warm up a little more when I made the second pie last Friday. It was, consequently, easier to roll out. I sautéed the onions in bacon fat as instructed, but really there didn’t seem to be much difference in the outcome.

Bacon and tomato pie

Saturday was sauerkraut day. Hilda and I harvested the cabbage in the morning. Pat and Nancy came for lunch at noon bearing gifts from Nebraska, where there apparently is a Chick Day festival. Hilda and I posed with our new blingy T-shirts.

Hilda and I in our new T-shirts

We got to work right after lunch. At least we intended to get right to work after lunch. The sauerkraut slicer wasn’t where I thought it should be in the root cellar. All four of us searched the root cellar, the store room, Hilda’s pantry closets, the garage—nothing. Hilda and I have between us four regular sized mandolins, so I got out one of mine. It worked nearly as well. It just wasn’t as wide.

Nancy and Hilda cleaned the cabbage and cut the heads in half.

Nancy and Hilda clean the cabbages

I sliced, wearing my special protective glove.

I slice cabbage on a regular mandolin

Pat weighed the sliced cabbage, mixed every 2.5 pounds with 1/8 cup pickling sauce, and packed it into crocks.

Pat weighs the sliced sauerkraut

And packs it into the crocks after mixing it with salt

We were all done by 2:30. That left us half an hour to rest before our other guest arrived for game night. My contribution to the meal was a cherry tomato salad. I’d read the recipe the night before in Saveur and thought it would be a nice accompaniment to Hilda’s braised chicken and mashed potatoes. I tossed the halved Sun Gold tomatoes and sliced shallots in vinegar and oil. I spread them over sliced tomatoes and added basil chiffonade to the top. I will miss tomatoes when they are gone.

Cherry tomato salad