dragonlady7

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So I did the Tortured one in the previous ask so I can just explain Sauerkraut here. That one is nonfiction and a collaboration, and I’ve only just remembered that I didn’t actually contribute any writing to it! I did some formatting, and then I did the materials acquisition part of the project. (Not the cabbage, but all the fermentation paraphernalia, since we ewre doing it up nicely.) That was my dude and I making a birthday gift for MM, the friend I quarantined with whose husband was playing Witcher 3 for our delectation.

So Dude has taught himself how to do basic lactofermentation, mostly during quarantine though he actually started last summer before it was trendy, and MM has an abiding love of sauerkraut, and so he wrote a basic manual on how to pickle things in brine. It’s in my WIP folder because I formatted and printed it, and i was going to excerpt the part I wrote but I only just realized I didn’t write any of this one. It’s a WIP because MM has reported back with unusable results so it needs some tweaking to make it foolproof. (You have to pack the cabbage tightly into the fermentation vessel!! she may not have chopped it finely enough. Must readjust wording.)

Here is a snippet, but the credit is not mine, it’s Dude’s writing, and this is how he writes everything, from Christmas cards to emails to the comments on the code he produces professionally. I actually would like to write a series of recipe books with him because he genuinely does produce better copy than I do, and more succinctly, LOL.

First you need lactic acid bacteria (LAB), which is literally everywhere.

Secondly, you need a head of cabbage. It’s okay if it’s a little bit wilty. Wash it thoroughly, but don’t cook it or otherwise sterilize it - cabbage is covered in LAB and you don’t want to disturb them. Finely shred the cabbage and maybe a carrot too, if you like, into a nonmetallic bowl. (A mandoline makes this easier, but beware: they crave human flesh.)

I’m helping one of my sisters put together a cocktail manual to sell in the gift shop of a museum she’s a volunteer for, and it’s got me thinking of selfpubbed recipe zines, I think it’d be fun to make those, so that may be the ultimate destination of this little piece.