On Thursday morning I wasn’t moving too fast. I managed to get the kitchen cleaned up and a shower before my helper friend arrived at noon.
It had been raining all morning but wasn’t coming down much when he went out to get the cabbages out of the Big garden. One of them had split open weeks ago and another more recently. We were doing the split ones first.
The old split one wasn’t in too good a shape, but we managed to salvage 6.36 lbs from it.
It’s helpful to have increments of 5lbs to determine ingredients and what was salvaged came to 15.04 lbs. So I set up 3 sets of ingredients.
I weighed out the 5 lb lots into separate bowls but somehow we ended up with 1.2 lbs extra. I divided it between the bowls and hoped my generous ingredient measurements would take care of the .4 lb overage.
I had the caraway seed and got that bruised with the mortar and pestle. But my brother had used all the dill seed, and my dill seed in the garden was soaking wet, so my helper went to the co-op and got more dill seed. I’d forgotten I used dill seed in the sauerkraut or maybe I would have harvested mine before it rained.
It had been a gentle rain until my helper friend came back to the house. It was coming down in torrents when he came inside.
He had finished all the chopping before he left, so we got the dill seeds bruised and he mixed all the ingredients into the cabbage in my biggest bowl. Then he managed to pack all 15 lbs into the 2 jars.
The brine had started up the sides of the jar before he finished. We left it for 20 minutes and then there was enough brine to cover the weights. The jars will sit in the pantry for 3 or 4 days and then be decanted into quart jars for the fridge.
All the paprikas had ripened so he got them thinly sliced and into the dehydrator. Then we got the kitchen cleaned up.
He left early because I was so tired and hadn’t thought of anything else to do. I finished Big Bang Theory and then watched Robert Redford’s “The Natural”.
It continued to rain and I was in bed before 8PM.
On Friday my helper friend will be back at 8AM, the rain will stop, and we are planning to do 2 more cabbages. There’s 1 more split one and the rest are okay, so far. I’m hoping for 15 more lbs or so and to fill 2 more jars.
My #3 intern isn’t coming to move wood as he has his driver’s permit test in the morning. My son says a friend of his may come and do it.
In the afternoon I have an oldies event that runs into the evening with supper provided. It’s with the Senior Center.
So another busy day.