Homemade Sauerkraut

Whoo! You know you want it.

Ingredients

• some green cabbage
• some salt
• some water
• jars

There's not much to this recipe. Slice as much cabbage as will fit in your jars/containers. Into an empty jar, put in one handful of cabbage, followed by one tsp kosher salt, followed by one handful cabbage, etc. until the jar is full. Fill it with water. Make sure that the cabbage is all beneath the water's surface.
Seal jars and keep on counter (or in a cabinet, away from the light) for 1.5 weeks. Then put in the fridge. Then eat.
You can add 1tsp of caraway seeds to make "Bavarian-style" sauerkraut. We haven't tried ours yet.

Thoughts: Well, looking over the original recipe that we took this from, I noticed that we may not have followed it QUITE right. I think you're supposed to let the kraut ferment for much longer than we did (one recipe says 5-6 weeks! Not 1.5 weeks!). But our stuff is great and salty and crunchy and it goes awesome on reubens. But it might not be real sauerkraut? It might just be pickled cabbage right now. So we're going to try again and actually follow the recipe and see if it yields more proper-looking sauerkraut. Stay tuned. But this stuff is delicious on its own. I just eat it out of the jar. NOM NOM KRAUT.

Disaster Index: 2/10

Herbed Spaetzle

Based on a Martha recipe

Ingredients

• 1 cup skim milk
• 1 tbs thyme leaves (we used dried)
• 1/4 cup packed parsley
• 3 eggs
• 1.5 cups all-purpose flour
• 1.5 tsp salt
  
• pepper
• olive oil

Put thyme leaves in a sachet or tea bag and tie shut. Put it in a saucepan with the milk and heat to a boil. Remove from heat and discard thyme.
Transfer milk to a blender; add parsley and eggs. Blend until combined.
Whisk flour and 1.5 tsp salt in a medium bowl.
Gradually whisk in milk mixture until smooth.
Bring a medium saucepan of salted water to a boil.
Put the "dough" in a plastic bag and snip off one of the corners. Make sure this is a pretty small hole.
Pipe the mixture slowly into the boiling water. Cook until the spaetzle float to the top, about 1-2 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to an ice-water bath. Drain.
Take half the spaetzle and put it in a pan with some olive oil. Cook until golden brown. Repeat with the other half of the spaetzle.
Garnish with more parsley and romano/parmesan cheese. Eat.

Thoughts: This was all right. The texture came out kind of funny and boiling the spaetzle in the water was pretty much a failure. The original recipe called for 1 cup of whole milk rather than 1 cup of skim. That could have accounted for the weird texture. Also, the original recipe called for cooking the spaetzle in butter rather than olive oil. Maybe there's something to be said for using full-fat ingredients. Also, the spaeztle totally stuck together after we took them out of the boiling water and drained them, so that was inconvenient. All in all, though, they tasted pretty good. If I were going to make this again, I would definitely use like, half skim and half whole milk, or something, and I would cook them in butter afterward rather than olive oil. Also, neither of us really know what spaetzle is supposed to taste like.

Disaster Index: 4-5/10. Edible.