Easiest Sauerkraut Ever

Earlier over at my skincare and wellness coaching blog, I wrote that fermented foods are among the best things we can eat to achieve radiant health and clear skin. The natural probiotics in real fermented foods aid digestion and give powerful antioxidant protection. I see so many clients who struggle with treatment-resistant acne. These same clients tend to have poor digestion, low energy, allergies, and other signs of general low immune system health. One thing I always recommend is adding more raw, cultured nutrition to the daily diet. You can buy artisanal raw sauerkrauts at your local natural food store that are delicious, but it will cost you at least $9 for the real thing. Real raw sauerkraut is so easy and cheap to make, you may as well make your own. Here's how I do mine:

Real Raw Sauerkraut

Ingredients needed:

• ONE HEAD OF PURPLE OR GREEN CABBAGE, ORGANIC IF POSSIBLE

• 1 TABLESPOON HIGH-QUALITY SALT (I use pink Himalayan but Celtic sea salt is also mineral-rich and healthy.)

• 1TEASPOON CARAWAY SEED

Supplies needed:

• CUTTING BOARD

• A GOOD KNIFE

• MEASURING SPOONS

• A 1-QT WIDE-MOUTH MASON JAR 

Shred your cabbage. Chop it finely with knife and cutting board. It doesn't have to look perfect but be sure the pieces are small. You'll be squishing them into a jar.

Add the salt and put your cabbage into a large bowl. Squeeze and press the cabbage with your hands to get it nice and bruised and juicy.

Add the caraway seeds, then pack it all up into a quart-size wide-mouth mason jar. Important: Press the cabbage down firmly with a spoon or, if it fits, with your hand. The goal is to get all solid bits of cabbage submerged beneath the juices. This will prevent mold from growing on your sauerkraut. *

Keep your kraut-to-be at a nice, warm room temperature for at least a week. After that, taste it and see if you like it. If so you may refrigerate it at this point. For even better nutrient profile, let it ferment at least two weeks before throwing it in the fridge. I like a stronger taste and tons of good bacteria so two weeks works for me. Just be sure your cabbage-y bits have enough liquid in them to stay sunken until refrigeration.

Two 20-ounce jars and a mix of green and red cabbages. It's 5:32 somewhere.

* Optional:  In her wonderful and highly recommended book, Full Moon Feast, Jessica Prentice recommends weighing your sauerkraut down with a smaller jar, filled with water, to ensure that your mix stays under the liquid line. I don't and haven't ever done that; I just press my cabbage down below the liquid every day and have never had a mold problem.

Busy Kitchen Sunday

Yesterday I was completely grateful to a client who brought me a nice big cup of Starbucks during a long Saturday working afternoon, but otherwise it's been 100% Radical Dining-In for a week. This is the longest I have gone I've gone in a long time without visiting so much as a coffee shop-- much less a restaurant or two.  It is always odd to remember that that participating in public life without spending money is really, really hard. Earlier this week I had four hours free between work ending a a class starting, and being unable to stop into a cafe for a warm drink on a cold day was downright unpleasant. After spending an hour in a book store, an hour walking around, and another hour hanging out reading on a rooftop garden, having "nowhere to go" for another hour started to provoke a little anxiety. It made me feel for people who literally have nowhere to go and who can't just stop their little blogging experiment at any time to go back to their normal consumer lifestyles.

So I feel good and my body feels well and today the kitchen buzzing with good things to eat later on in the week. Better than that, my family is eating gorgeous, organic, pastured, grass-fed, grass-finished and totally home-made for somewhere around $8 per person, per day. That is what a bit of planning will do for you. (I realize that that number would be high for a family on a tighter budget than ours, but these things are relative and $8 is relatively dirt cheap compared to our usual cash spending on food. Before we started Radical Dining In my husband and I spent a combined $12 a day on breakfast alone.)

Anyway here's what's cooking:

• a huge batch of almond flour blueberry pancakes for breakfasts
• a 10" x 12" almond flour-apple sauce "cake" with raisins
• a giant egg casserole with spiced ground beef from our Marin Sun Farms CSA and spinach and arugula from the farmers market
• two quarts of raw sauerkraut
• one quart of raw milk yogurt
• tons of vegetables prepped and stored for the week
• crockpot chicken casserole simmering away
• chicken livers soaking for my truly knock-out pâté*
• gelatin for snacks and my kid's lunchtime treats**

eating our almond-blueberry pancakes a few Sundays ago

* because do you know how amazing organ meats are for our health? Here's a bit about liver from the really fantastic Primal website, Mark's Daily Apple: Possibly the most common organ meat consumed in the U.S., liver was once regarded as a meal for the affluent and was even named one of the Eight Delicacies in The Li-Chi, a handbook of rituals published during China’s Han era. So why should you be eating it? According to those in the know, liver is an excellent source of high quality protein; contains an abundance of vitamin A and several B vitamins; is an excellent source of folic acid and iron; is the number one food source of copper; and contains CoQ10, which is important for cardiovascular function.

**GELATIN?!! Yes, Gelatin. Believe it or not, a properly-made jello-mold is actually a tremendously tasty health food. I'll write about why tomorrow, and include a little recipe. For now, it's time for a cup of broth and a cup of tea.