Unstuffed: Localise it!

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Localise it!

I thought I'd give you an update on how my sauerkraut is progressing.

This is what it looked liked freshly chopped and salted.

The cabbage has been fermenting in a salty brine for a little over two weeks.

And here is how it looks now!

I sampled some and it tastes just like sauerkraut is supposed to! But because the cabbage is from last year's harvest and has a lower moisture content, and the temperature is quite cool in my place, the fermentation process is happening more slowly. This means the texture of the kraut is still quite crunchy, so I'm going to continue letting it ferment for another week or so.

I couldn't resist taking out two cups though, to make this delicious sauerkraut soup, which cooked the crunchy kraut to a perfect texture.

I brought the soup to my monthly locavore potluck meeting.

Oooh! Which reminds me, I've been attending once monthly potlucks for locavores! Last night was my second meeting and it was just as fun and informative as the first.

Everyone brings a dish made with as many locally sourced ingredients as possible, we enjoy a lovely meal together, drink tea and share our stories, information, goals, plans and advice for local eating.

Last night one of the attendees explained her various methods for sprouting seeds and I also learned that Bread and Sons Bakery in Ottawa, sources their ingredients locally and organically when available. I will definitely be stopping by when I am next in their neighbourhood.

6 comments:

Jerry said...: awww man, its got a big rock in it!!!!; March 31, 2009 at 12:34 PM
Amber said...: I tried eating it, but I chipped my tooth, and besides, rocks don't ferment very well! ;); March 31, 2009 at 2:44 PM
Rachel said...: The spelt bread from Bread and Sons is awesome. So are their pizzas and their date squares (which I think are flourless).; March 31, 2009 at 5:53 PM
Martha C said...: Hey Ambucks,
The magazine Canadian Living has an article about a family that unstuffed for a month. Is it entering mainstream consciousness?
http://www.canadianliving.com/life/green_living/living_with_no_more_stuff.php; April 1, 2009 at 10:34 AM
Amber said...: Hi Martha!

That's so funny, another friend sent me this article too! Mainstream indeed.

I imagine it's harder for a family of four to unstuff, but I think it's also funny that they make such a big deal out of how hard they imagine it will be to last for a whole 30 days!

But I'm down with the overall message and glad to see it going mainstream!; April 2, 2009 at 1:54 PM
Ruth Donnelly said...: I'm happy to have discovered your blog! We just bought an old crock that looks a lot like yours, and were also planning to make sauerkraut. We had the same questions about possible lead in the glaze. My husband went ahead and cut up the cabbage and started the process, but we're going to do a lead test before we eat it. Thanks for sharing your experience.; May 3, 2009 at 8:47 PM

Raison d'etre

In 2008 I didn't buy anything new for the whole year. Food and basic toiletries (but not toilet paper) were the obvious exceptions (twice I broke my own rule). Used items were allowed, but I tried really hard to reduce consumption as much as possible.

I finished my year successfully, and along the way learned a lot about how much the world consumes, the waste we produce, sustainability, voluntary simplicity, climate change, peak oil, resource depletion, the water crisis, the food crisis, voting with your dollar, voting with your fork....

Now, I've transformed into a slightly nutty, very passionate, gardening, preserving, DIYing, simple living, nature loving, weed eating, backyard medicine making, urban homesteader, and I still don't use toilet paper!

With the help of the Awesomedudeguy (ADG), I'm continuing my exploration of living lightly and frugally, while increasing my self-sufficiency and resiliency, staying debt free, and preparing for a climate changed, resource depleted world, in uncertain economic times.

My nothing new restriction is lifted, but I continue to be a gentle, local consumer as much as possible.

My hope is that some of the information and resources I post about here will be helpful to others. Thanks so much for stopping by !

Yours in unstuffing,
Amber

"Forgive me if I never visit. I am from the fields, you know, and while quite at home with dandelion, make a sorry figure for the drawing room" ~Emily Dickinson

"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like covetousness, as that.... I might be master at last of a small house and a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to the culture of them and the study of nature." ~Abraham Cowley

"The laws of nature are under no obligation to cater to our culture’s emotionally charged fantasies of perpetual progress and limitless growth." ~John Michael Greer

"Sometimes we think we are too small to make a difference in this big world. Our actions seem insignificant in comparison to global issues such as climate change and population growth. However, the reality is that action on an individual level is exactly how big changes are made. Without individual and family sustainability, there’s no community sustainability. And without community sustainability, there’s no global sustainability. In fact, earth-wide change is absolutely impossible without individual change.
It really does come down to you and me."
~From Living Sustainably: It's Your Choice

"The universal conspiracy of the silent-assertion lie is hard at work always and everywhere, and always in the interest of a stupidity or a sham, never in the interest of a thing fine or respectable. Is it the most timid and shabby of all lies? It seems to have the look of it. For ages and ages it has mutely laboured in the interest of despotisms and aristocracies and chattel slaveries, and military slaveries, and religious slaveries, and has kept them alive; keeps them alive yet, here and there and yonder, all about the globe; and will go on keeping them alive until the silent-assertion lie retires from business--the silent assertion that nothing is going on which fair and intelligent men and women are aware of and are engaged by their duty to try to stop." ~Mark Twain

"It is not enough simply to abstain from theft...We must remember that nothing in this world really belongs to us. At best, we are merely borrowers. It is our duty, therefore, to borrow no more from the world than we absolutely need, and to make full and proper use of it. Taking more than we need, and wasting it, is a form of stealing from the rest of humankind."
~Commentary on Sutra 30 The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali