a tale of two mason jars

This weekend I have been playing at opposites in my kitchen. I thawed and cooked a turkey to make more room in the freezer, and then my friendly neighbor gave me a cabbage. I spent a night, gently simmering the carcass of that bird to make a lovely golden bone broth turkey stock. The next morning I cut one and a half cabbages, two large onions, and four ignored apples into thin slivers, tossed them with lots of Celtic Sea Salt and caraway seeds. I broke open a new case of quart jars and got to work.

The cabbage mixture would make a fine sauerkraut. I love small batch fermenting in mason jars, the small batches make experimenting with flavor and ferment times a breeze. I have never made an apple sauerkraut before. When I first learned of wild fermentation, I had a dear friend send over a batch of her first sauerkraut experiments while I was recovering from a stomach bug. What a revelation! Her first attempts at cabbage alchemy tasted like ambrosia to my beleaguered palate and I was an immediate zealot! One of those original taste tests had contained apples and I have always wanted to experiment with them. This weekend the stars and ingredients aligned and I tried it. I crammed three quart jars tightly packed until the cabbage juice spilled over the top of the jar lips every time I pressed down. The beautiful swirling greens of the cabbage with streaks of the red apple skin were pressed firmly into the jars so no air bubbles could be seen. I loosely capped the jars and set them on the counter on a folded cloth to bubble and burp and dribble for two or three days. The Lactobacilli that naturally occur on the cabbage leaves begin their work of digesting the sugars and fibers of the vegetable matter and transform it into a nutritional sum greater than its parts.

In the mean time, I filled three quart jars with a clear golden broth. I loosely capped the jars and started thinking very different thoughts and making very different plans. In order to make this soup shelf stable I would need to sterilize it and get it to vacuum seal so that absolutely no bacteria can grow in the precious liquid. The only safe way to preserve low acid foods like broth is to freeze or pressure can. Since I had already claimed the space vacated by the whole turkey, I decided to pressure can the broth. As the jars rattled and steamed in the pressure canner at 10 lbs pressure for 25 minutes I mused about how the canner- with its guage and intimidating screw down top, its warning stickers and serious disposition seemed like an autoclave for a laboratory and less like the tool of an ancient alewife.

For a brief moment, all six jars sat on the counter and bubbled at each other. The broth bubbled a little (that one might not have sealed properly- we will use it first) as it cooled from its ordeal in the pressure canner, and the kraut bubbled back at it as it farted and fermented its way to a high enough acidity to preserve itself.

All those jars will nourish my family and me. The broth, thick with collagen and minerals with be soothing to our gut and nourishing to our brains and ease bronchial congestion. The sauerkraut will be flavorful, will help feed and replenish the beneficial micro-flora in our gut, will feed our cells with its antioxidants and aid our digestion with its enzymes. All this natural homemade food will help keep us healthy with resilient immune systems. I can use both as “medicine” to treat my family through colds and flu. Even the strictest scientist must admit to the healing power of placebo effect brought on by comfort food and nurturing care. Though the products required very different actions, the motivation was the same and the results were the same. Good Food that nourishes is worth every effort.