Fiacré's spade: Sauerkraut

Last week’s blog featured stiff goldenrod. I cut off an inflorescence to identify and stuck it in a vase just for grins. It turned out to be a pretty good cut flower. It lasted well for several days. Most surprisingly (to me) was that bubbles developed on the underside of the leaves. These were different bubbles than the ones that formed as the water warmed up and the gasses came out of solution. I think it was oxygen from photosynthesis, although I’m not sure how they would get carbon dioxide. I tested the hypothesis by putting the plant in sunlight to see if I could ramp up the bubble production. The results were inconclusive.

Bubbles on the underside of the stiff goldenrod leaves underwater in a vase. Oxygen?

One of Hilda’s experiments this year was growing ginger. She ordered two ginger rhizomes and two turmeric rhizomes. Only one ginger plant came up of the four. She kept it in the greenhouse at first. When it got bigger and the weather was warmer, she moved it to the shade of the garage. As summer ended, it came into the living room. To our amazement, it started blooming. The white “petals” on the top developed first. I was puzzled because I could not see any reproductive parts. Some days later, I found the real flowers underneath the deceptive white leaves.

Ginger flowers underneath modified white leaves

Sunday was sauerkraut day. Pat and Nancy came over in the afternoon. We had to stoop to buying cabbage from a local farmstand because of all the flooding in our garden. The heads were a bit looser, which made the slicing go faster. Nancy cleaned and quartered the cabbages. I did the slicing, wearing my wire glove.

Slicing cabbaage

The looseness of the heads meant that a lot of the leaves escaped the slicer. Hilda worked on slicing those thinly.

Hilda slicing the leaves that fell off the cabbage

Pat weight the sliced cabbage a half a pound at a time. When she had 2.5 pounds in the bowl, she added 1/8 c of salt and mixed it up. She then put it in a crock and pushed it down with a potato masher.We were just about done in an hour. Record time! I tried to get a picture of everyone working. This is the first one. Note that we can’t see Nancy packing the sauerkraut.

Nancy mashes down the salted cabbage (which you can't see) while Pat weighs the shredded cabbage and Hilda slices

I tried to frame the shot better. I told Hilda to keep chopping. I should have told her to pretend to keep chopping. So chop she did as I took a few more pictures. Eventually, she mentioned that the cabbage was now minced. Which we all found quite funny. This was my last attempt at capturing all the activity, and we still can’t see what Nancy was doing.

Everyone cracking up over the minced cabbage

Jane joined us later. Hilda made shrimp etouffee for supper. I made a raspberry pie at Pat’s request for her birthday. This is the pie when I finished putting on the whipped cream and decorative raspberries.