Sunday, October 28, 2012

Gonna get cold tonight!


Just look at these beautiful veggies! It might freeze tonight, so I went out and picked all the little squash and zucchini. I already had the green beans and radishes and carrots picked. And I went today to the Chattanooga market and found a pretty green cauliflower. Also got a handful of grape leaves and a whole head of garlic and some dill seeds. Opened up my handy Wild Fermentation book and found my recipe for Sour Cucumbers. That is the best way to make pickled cucumbers and it's so easy. The recipe says to add any veggies, so I did.


                                                                                                                                                                                                   
                                                                                     I can't figure this darn computer out, so there's no telling where all this will be when I'm done. So I started with a layer of garlic cloves then the grape leaves. Then 4 T of dill seeds. It took the whole little container of seeds. Then started layering the veggies.Green beans, radishes, carrots, zucchini, squash, then the cauliflower. That's the only thing I didn't grow here.

I'm supposed to let it sit about a week with the cheesecloth on. I have to check for any strange looking stuff on the top and skim it off. I have never seen that before though. But different times of the year do different things. Forgot to say I then added 6 T sea salt to a half gallon of water and stirred til the salt was dissolved. Then poured that over the veggies til covered.

Hopefully in a week or so, we'll be eating yummy fermented veggies. And I can add new veggies as the jar gets emptied.

 The grape leaves are supposed to keep the veggies crunchy. And they really do.

Has anyone else done this? I love this book and use it a lot. The author was here in Chattanooga a few months ago and I was going to go but something came up and I missed him. He has a new book out now that I want.

 I hope y'all try this with your fall veggies soon.



3 comments:

SweetLand Farm said...

Nope. Never tried fermented veggies. I'm assuming that they are like pickles...I'm wondering how a pickled carrot would taste.
I've heard about the grape leaves keeping pickles firm...after I was done canning them. I'm going to be trying that next year, so I would love to hear if it really works. I hate soft pickles:(

Kris said...

This is so good! I especially like the cauliflower. Everything is really good and still crunchy, even the radishes and beans.

Abby said...

I want to try some...