Friday, August 22, 2008

Confession...

I have been living a lie. I have to come clean. It's been bothering me for a month now.

Remember when I wrote about my sauerkraut?

I am ashamed to admit, my fermentation experiment failed.

Five times.

After the first time it failed, I tried again, which was when I wrote the original post. But that batch failed too. And the next. And the next.

What is worse, is that each time I made a new batch, I would make a slightly bigger batch, because I would think to myself "Well, *now* I know what needs to be done. This batch will work." Except that one would die too.

And the pattern was generally the same each time. The cabbage would happily bubble and ferment for about a week and a half. Then, it would stop. Just stop. I would be left with a big vat of slightly sour but mostly salty cabbage. We would leave the vat of it on the counter where I would look at it with the shame of a parent whose child turned out to be a serial killer dog molester.

After we had finally decided that it was, indeed, not ever going to turn into sauerkraut, Mr. H would take it out to the compost bin (which is now about 5 inches of non-fermenting decomposing cabbage). I have gone through approximately 40 pounds of cabbage over these few months. Thank goodness it is cheap.

I have one vat still sitting on my counter awaiting my final time of death. I think I'm giving up on this one for a while. I need to step away.

Turn on the funeral dirge.

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