Sauerkraut Season

Making Sauerkraut photo by Rick Jackofsky

Sunday's gig at The Oceanside Library went great! We'd like to thank everyone who came out for the show as well as Eleanor and the rest of the library staff. I think the band played really well thanks, in part, to the large enthusiastic crowd and the acoustically friendly room . On the way home from the show we stopped at the local Stop & Shop to pick up twenty pounds of cabbage priced at 17 cents a pound in honor of good old St. Patrick. I spent all day Monday boiling sap to make maple syrup, then on Tuesday I set to shredding the cabbage. I started a 5 liter crock of sauerkraut along with 3 quarts of curtido. Curtido, a popular dish in El Salvador and other parts of Central America, is one of my favorite fermented foods. The best way to describe it would be, a Latin American version of kimchi, a spicy mix of lightly fermented cabbage, carrots, onions, garlic, and chili. I'll leave the sauerkraut bubbling away for about two months, but the curtido will be ready to eat in a week or so.