Coleslaw Sauerkraut
Scrunching it up
Sweetie Jars of Sauerkraut
Photo by Jane Clitheroe
Today we said goodbye to our lovely clinical psychologist ( retiring) who has accompanied us on this roller-coaster journey even pre-diagnosis - for the last nearly three years. We didn’t see him that often but his exquisite listening and compassion, depth of insight and ability to contain us in all our grief and rage and confusion has felt like a cord of hope in the murk of these long long days.....
He’s right when he says it’s not an ending as he hands us over to his colleague who is much younger and less experienced, but a beginning of travelling with someone else’s fresh input.....
But I feel the loss of him.....it is an ending for me....another change to adapt to.....
In the bright light of the kitchen this afternoon I did something I’ve never done before. My sister showed my how to make sauerkraut. We grated and chopped kilos and kilos of sweetheart and savoy cabbage, carrots and apples and celery, scrunched them all up in a washing up bowl with our hands, added a sprinkling of sea salt to bring out the juice and then packed the whole lot into an old fashioned sweetie jar, the top weighed down with plastic bag of water to keep the air out and to let the juice come to the top.
It looked so pretty - pale greens and orange flecked with the red apple skins - we made another deep pink version with beetroot - and smelled so fresh and clean that I wanted to eat it straight away. But you have to leave it a few days or longer for it to turn into a raw fermented pickle which is really nutritious as well as delicious....I never thought I’d rather dip my hand into a jar of homemade sauerkraut than a jar of Quality Street Chocolates....
Another change that happened without me really noticing it.....on the other hand a jar of Green and Black’s dark chocolate could easily tempt me....
You can find out about homemade sauerkraut from Sandor Ellix Katz’s book Wild Fermentation and at
No comments:
Post a Comment