Gut Instinct

"Rosakrone" pea flowers

Once upon a time there were no refrigerators. Not that long ago in the grand scheme of things.


People preserved meats by salting them and keeping them in cool dark places. Vegetables they kept for months through fermentation. The Scandinavians buried fish in the ground.

Pea plants are becoming a bit intimidating in the polytunnel

We have largely lost the knack of such things due to the omnipresence of the fridge in our cosseted First World lives. But cheap electricity may not be always with us. Maybe it's time we should reacquaint ourselves with some old-fashioned (self)-preservation techniques and give our guts a probiotic boost to boot.

I bought a couple of Kilner jars from the Co-op and a green cabbage.

Baby parsnip. Boy are they slow growing.

First step was to shred the cabbage with a kitchen knife. It wouldn't all fit in my bowl so I left some to cook up for a meal later.

Taking some salt I sprinkled a tablespoon over the shredded cabbage and mixed it all in.

Then I found a mashing implement (a wooden spoon) and began to mash. I could have done with one of those potato-masher utensils really. Bits of cabbage kept leaping out the side of the bowl and onto the floor but I carried on regardless.

Linseed plants begun to flower! I sowed them from the seed I usually sprinkle on my breakfast cereal

An interesting thing began to happen. The cabbage began to weep. Salty tears appeared at the base of my bowl. The volume of cabbage reduced by half or more as I pummeled it for ten minutes or so.

Into the jar it went, crushing it in, and only filling the jar by two-thirds. Enough juice had been released to cover the cabbage shreds, just about. I closed the jar and put it on a shelf.

That was Monday. I've opened it a couple of times since to push the cabbage down again because bits of it were above the surface, and my worry is the wrong kind of bacteria will develop on these bits.

Next Monday, one week after it was created, I'm going to taste my first homemade sauerkraut. If there's no more blogposts after this one you'll know why.