Home fermentation.

So, like last month I started a batch of homemade sauerkraut, with some onion and some dill and some corn kernels all mixed in, like a (Romanian) colleague had told me aeons ago that his grandmother used to make, and that I had tried out and then adapted as my standard way to make sauerkraut, when I can get fresh corn and dill.

Anyhow, I honestly think that this is my first batch of homemade sauerkraut that I've made since the pandemic, somehow I let it go during then.

It's really so exciting to just walk by this big glass jar, and it's just sitting there bubbling and belching on your kitchen counter, there's something so weird and dangerous about it.

I use a big glass jar that I fit a glass bowl into to weigh the sauerkraut down, and then I usually pour cheap olive oil around the bowl on top of the liquid, to create an extra seal against air, in case a cabbage piece floats to the surface, since you don't want it exposed to the air, since bad bacteria could land on it and start to multiply and it could form a "bridge" down to below where through that single piece all that bad bacteria would spread and multiply and ruin the rest of the submerged cabbage.

I mean, it works, though usually all the bubbles push the olive oil up and over into the bowl, so like once or twice or even three times a day when it really gets going, I have to push the bowl down so that it presses the cabbage down and releases bubbles from down in there, and then after a bit I let the bowl back up back to its normal position and I take a turkey baster and scoop up the olive oil that got pushed into it and I squirt it back around the sides of the bowl, so that it's sitting on the liquid and forming a protective layer again.

Often, I think about getting glass marbles, like you see around flowers in some elegant vases. If they were non-toxic and sterile, they almost seem like they'd be the best way to weigh cabbage down. Enough of them on top of it, and no way any cabbage could float up, ever.

Anyhow, I was telling my one (chubby) (Thai) coworker about this, and it inspired her to start up a batch of (Thai) honey-fermented garlic.

She said she'd bring some in so I could try, when it's ready.