The big ceramic crock sat a dark corner of our crowded and dusty utility room. It was a mystery unsolved by my eight-year-old mind. I was forbidden to ever lift the lid and could only stare at it, imagining how it would sound and smell if I broke the rules and raised the top. What would I find inside? Would it be something good that my parents weren’t sharing with me? Or maybe it would be something bad — a tragic family secret long hidden away from prying eyes. I didn’t learn until many years later what exactly was in that crock.
I’m older now (wink, wink).
I know sauerkraut is made with
cabbage and salt and tastes best when cured in a ceramic crock in a damp, dark
place. The pieces of those long ago
summer days are falling into place.
 |
| Mom (left front) with her sister-in-law (The Aunts). |
As my
Mom and my aunts would chop endless heads of cabbage, us kids played outside –
where summertime kids belong. There was a shallow creek with a sandy bottom on the property
next door to our house. My brother and I and any number of first cousins would
walk up and down the creek. I made pies
for everyone out of sand, watched the little minnows swim and basically made an
annoyance out of myself.
My brother is two years older, and I was pest. Ask him. He’ll tell you. I
wanted to be a part of their games and their fun, but I couldn’t keep up. And when they didn’t include me because I was
too little, I found endless reasons to go tattle. Any minor infraction was made huge in my
mind. I would tell my Mom about it with indignation and authority and stand
by just waiting for them to get a spanking – they never (okay, rarely)
did.
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| Easter the year I turned 4 (pre-bigfoot days). That's me left front, Annette on the right, Mickey is in the back behind me. (You may remember Aunt Alice from another post, that's her carrying the basket and my cousin James just behind Annette. |
When my cousin Annette, who is older than Mickey, was at our
house, the two of them barely tolerated me at all. Mom would make them let me tag along so they
would begrudgingly take me on their walks around the neighborhood. When I became too much them to bear, their
fun really started.
Everyone would suddenly STOP! “Did you hear that?”
“What?” I would ask with my eyes big.
“Listen! Mickey, did
you hear it?”
“I heard it,” he would say looking all around like something
was going to jump out of the trees any second.
“What was it?”
“I don’t know, let’s look.”
I didn’t know what was going on. I would try to hold Mickey’s hand and then
Annette’s, but they would just shake me off.
They needed their hands free to solve this new mystery.
A big
production was made of searching around, looking in bushes, watching
the ground. “Oh No!” Mickey would suddenly say.
And as Annette and I came running, I would see it there on
the ground. “What is it?” I whispered.
“It’s a big foot track!
RUN!”
And off I would run as fast as eight-year-old
legs would take me. By then, the
shredded cabbage had been layered in the crock with salt. It had been pushed down as tight as possible
with a heavy plate and something of weight on top. No
clues to the mystery remained. Everything
was cleaned up in the kitchen with hot dogs and Kool-Aid waiting for
lunch.
When, about two weeks later, my
Mom and my Aunts were enjoying the fruits of their labor — Homemade Sauerkraut, I never linked it to the
mystery of the crock. Sauerkraut
stinks! As a child, I tried to stay as
far away from the stuff as possible.
These days, I love good sauerkraut, and homemade is the BEST. A few months
ago, we had an abundance of cabbage from the garden, so I recruited my Mom to
come over and show me how to make my own sauerkraut. I got to see all the secrets that crock
contained.
That's one mystery solved, but
I wonder if anyone ever found that Bigfoot creature?
Homemade Sauerkraut
5 heads shredded cabbage
6 tablespoons plain salt (not
iodized)
Large ceramic crock
Wash, core and shred
cabbage. As each 1 or 2 heads have
been shredded, mix the cabbage well with salt.
Layer the cabbage in the crock, a little at a time, pushing it down as
tightly as possible. When all cabbage is
in the crock, press it all down as tightly has possible. Cover it with a heavy plate, keeping it under
pressure while you add a weight on top (a gallon jug of water works well). Cover with a cloth then wrap with a band
or string to hold the cloth tight. Cover
it all well with plastic wrap and allow to sit for 10 to 14 days or
longer. (We generally do 14 days. But research shows that it can sit for as
long as 6 to 8 weeks. It depends, it
seems, on how long you can wait and your taste preference – the longer
it ferments, the more sour your sauerkraut.)
