We Made Our Own Sauerkraut!

I've kind of been on a fermenting kick right now.  I do that.  I get in kicks where I learn all I can about something, and then I jump in full force.  Right now, it's fermenting.  I read a book by Travis Stork (From "The Doctors").   He said one thing that is uber important is probiotics and digestive health in keeping your whole system running the way it needs to run.  He also said taking probiotics doesn't really do the trick.  Our bodies are designed to run on food, and the good gut bacteria is far more beneficial if it comes from food.  Fermented foods are the good gut bacteria producers.

One of those fermented foods is sauerkraut.  We love sauerkraut, so it only seemed natural that we should try making our own.  We did, and we love it!  I doubt we'll ever go back to buying it in the can.  (Besides that, the canning process kills those bacteria anyway.)

It's super-simple and cheap to make.  The only thing we had to buy for it (and we didn't have to, I just wanted to) was the sauerkraut crusher.  It's that wooden thing on the countertop. You slice up cabbage and sprinkle with with pickling salt.  Then you stir it up with your hands and wait.

They you crush it up, and wait a little longer.

Then you crush it and put it in the jar

Then you make sure all the cabbage is down below the cabbage water, put it in a dark, coolish place and wait.

Check it after a week or two.  We did, and it was delicious.  We took a jar down to Phoenix to eat on hot dogs at the dad's birthday when Eli was blessed.  It was tasty!

We waited a  couple more weeks, and tasted it again.

We snuck some into an Isotopes game so we could put it on our ballpark hot dogs!

A couple of weeks later, it was just to the sour-ness we like!  We put it in jars in the refrigerator to slow the fermentation process way down.  It will keep just fine in the refrigerator until we finish it.  In another week or two, we plan on starting another batch!

Milk kefir and water kefir are also fermented and highlty probiotic.  I've been working on making both kinds for a few weeks now.  We really like them!  We started getting our probiotics through food by buying and drinking milk kefir.  We liked it, but $3 a quart is too price.  We looked online and found how we can make our own, and it's much cheaper.  Milk here is $2.19 a gallon, so we can make a whole gallon of milk kefir for the price of a gallon of milk.  We drink it plain and it tastes like buttermilk.  We also make smoothies, salad dressing, and use it in cooking.  The dad can't drink milk becauuse of all the carbohydrates in it.  He can drink this, becausen the bacteria in the kefir grains eats all the lactose (milk sugar).  I can drink it because...  well, you know what lacose does to me!

The water kefir was a little trickier at first.  I made some pretty nasty stuff.  But now, I've gotten the hang of it!  It's naturally carbonated, and I've made some pretty cool-tasting stuff!

 

We also tried our hand at making Kimchi.  It actually turned out better than I thought it would.  We especially like to include it in stir-fry dishes. 

Kimchi doesn't take as long as the sauerkraut to ferment.  It's done after just a few days.