Fermentation, Salivation

This year I am experimenting with fermenting foods for storage. The two I would like to attempt are sauerkraut and cucumber pickles. When I was growing up we made our own sauerkraut and it was completely delicious! We most frequently had it with kielbasa and beans and it brings up some nice memories. 
Here I am, with far too much toy choy on my hands and nothing to do with it.

Something had to be done, so I went on the web to find ways of preserving bak choy. I found two choices, either blanch and dehydrate them for future soups, or, to my surprise, kimchi. Now, I have had bad experiences with kimchi, as my daughter will tell you (see my old bento blog, I sent her in with some in her bento.. not a great plan). It smells awful to me, and I am not fond of things being too spicy because spicy hates my insides terribly. Still, this looked intriguing, if I made my own kimchi, I could flavor it as I like, but could you make it with bok choy? I am skeptical. Regardless, I decided to give it a try. If it works out, there will be a post on how to do it, if not... well, maybe I will have pictures of my "OMG why is this in my mouth?" face.

Here is it right now, in my kitchen. Even my husband thought that it is incredibly pretty and he doesn't generally think like that about food.

I have already learned a lesson about fermenting though. Put a plate under the jar. I woke up this morning, and the fermenting must have started because there was considerable water on the counter. The vegetables are giving up their waters and the fermentation made bubbles that pushed the liquid up and over. No damage though, and lesson learned!

The same day I also made more Victorian BBQ (which will be in another post) and radish relish. The relish is so pretty! Again, I will post more if it is palatable, but it must set for a week to meld the flavors.

Since my town is being kind enough to replace the nasty, lead lined water pipes on my street, I ended up at home because I couldn't make it out of the driveway. So, I spent the time (today) trying to finish clearing the corn bed. So many roots, just so many. I may have nightmares about the ones that got away.

Before

Before

After

The top two are the areas before the clearing. I believe I did a post on this, so I won't get in to details, but I did want to show the rest of what I did today. That is the after picture, at the bottom. I only have a small bit to do, but it was 90 degrees at high noon, so I thought it was a good idea to stop. There is nothing like taking a shower when you are actually dirty. Refreshing!