Purple Cabbage sad kraut

Sauerkraut. I never liked it anyway. But now it’s my new granola. Lacto fermentation is the most recent biggest thing to hit the slow food movement. It’s probiotic. It heals your gut, or so they say, and I am trying it. I have 3 autoimmune diseases and I will try just about anything right now to feel like a person. Waking up is like dragging myself out of the grave everyday. I feel like a sloth. I don’t act like a sloth. I work hard and long sometimes, but I don’t feel good and I haven’t for a long time. Doctors look at me like I have 3 heads. I look pretty healthy, except for a few middle age unmentionables. But they want to remove a few of my organs and I feel if I let them it won’t end there. My immune system has decided to attack me and I want to find a way to get it to stop. I started eating all kinds of lacto fermented food, but I needed to be sure it was raw-not pasteurized-and I have a lot of allergies to ingredients in some of the products on the market.

A green cabbage starts out a cool lime green color, and then gets blander as it ferments, ending up looking tan.  A purple cabbage starts out purple in the jar and becomes an amazing scarlet color when it is fermented.

So I grew a purple cabbage in my garden. I tried to grow more, but the seedlings didn’t survive,

so I bought one small flat at a farmers market, planted them, and one was beautiful. The one I planted on the farm. I nurtured it, I photographed it, I checked on it everyday. I planted 4 marigold plants around it to ward off bugs, and I harvested it just in time, before the bugs got too far in. It was small, but I sliced it thin, added the salt and massaged it until my hands were tired, purple and felt as bruised as they looked…until the pieces were soft and when I squeezed them they dripped purple water. I put it inside a Le Parfait wire bail jar. The kind with the rubber gasket and the wire that will snap open so the jar won’t explode if the pressure builds up.

Well I have made sauerkraut before(never from a cabbage I grew myself though) and I know that if the liquid doesn’t stay above the solids it turns a weird color on top. I guess it is still edible, but it doesn’t look appetizing. So I tried putting a glass inside the wire bail jar that would hold down the solid cabbage under its liquid. But when I put the top on, it sounded like I broke the glass. I looked and it was all in tact. Thank goodness.

The next day I opened the jar to check on it because there was a frothy white stuff developing on the top of the liquid. I took out the glass and scraped it off. No big deal it wasn’t mold and even if it was I’ve heard it said…no bid deal, just scrape it off. But when I pushed down the glass to hold the solids, under the liquid, and closed the top of the wire bail jar I heard that scraping glass sound again. This time I noticed the nick, in the edge of the top of the glass bail jar lid. Was there glass in my sauerkraut?

Was it possible this cabbage I had nurtured would have to go uneaten? Was my only last hope of healing my autoimmune diseases ruined? I couldn’t throw it out. I couldn’t let it go.

I started to search for the glass, knowing full well that it was dangerous to eat the sauerkraut now even if I found the glass pieces. But if it were one piece and it fit perfectly? I was massaging the cabbage again and I felt the sharp edge. It stabbed me and I almost cut myself. I found a piece of glass, but it wasn’t big enough to fill the nick. I continued anyway. I really couldn’t let it go. I grew that cabbage right outside in my garden.  Was I really not going to be able to eat any of it? Finding the piece had given me hope. I could find another.

Maybe some of the pieces had fallen out of the jar. I searched the table, the stove, the floor. Nothing.

I went through handful by handful and didn’t find any more glass. I strained the liquid. Still, no more glass. My boyfriend suggested a cookie sheet so I spread all the solids out on a big one and looked. Nothing. I started to go through handful by handful again, this time small ones massaging and dropping them onto the cookie sheet. I found another piece! I fit both into the nick and there were still two spaces. Even smaller than the pieces I had found. I knew this was not good. They would be hard to find. They may be shards.

The second piece I found by hearing it tink onto the metal. It was very sharp, a tiny razor shard. It could do serious damage to an esophagus. I tried to imagine swallowing it with sauerkraut. I thought to myself, "I could just eat it myself, but not serve it to anyone else." I then asked myself, “why would I eat something dangerous when I wouldn’t let anyone else?” I have eaten fire before. I was a circus performer for a while. But I had no desire to walk on or eat glass. Finding this piece and fitting it into the nick with the other gave me enough information to know that I still had at least 2 more pieces to find. I hoped, but realized, it could be hopeless.

I was still picking up small handfuls of one day to be fermented kraut and dropping them onto the cookie sheet. Examining them with my eyes and my fingers. I searched by feel and by sight and listened for the sound of fragments of glass falling onto the metal. I tried to stay present moment by moment and not space out. Even though I had found the other two pieces by chance, when I was spacing out. I started to ponder whether or not I should use my intuition or vigilance. I let go of the idea of eating the kraut and waited to see if the pieces would present themselves to me through the act of letting go. No deal.

I was now using a white bowl and taking even smaller finger-fulls, dropping them into the bowl and listening for another tink; watching for reflected light. Some of the smaller pieces of cabbage reflected the light just like glass…but they were soft. Some pieces felt slightly sharp. I realized that a tiny shard could be lodged in a larger piece of cabbage and I wondered what would happen after the cabbage was digested leaving the undigestible shard somewhere along the track of my intestines.

At this point I started to realize I was never going to eat this sauerkraut but I was obsessed with finishing. I searched again the entire amount finger-full by finger-full. I still could hope that I would find pieces that fit perfectly into the nick and I would be able to eat my kraut. I wasn’t paying attention but a glistening piece of something caught my eye on the side of the porcelain bowl. It was so tiny. It didn’t even fill one of the remaining spaces. Just like finding the other two pieces it made me simultaneously, realize I could never eat the kraut, and hope to find more pieces that would fill the entire nick.  Again I thought “I could eat it, take a chance, I just wouldn’t serve it.” Again, I asked myself, “why would I risk what I could not allow others to chance?”

I was still only half way through the third round of sorting cabbage and glass. I tried to refocus. I knew it was ridiculous to think about eating this, so why was I still sorting? Why didn’t I just throw the whole thing out when I first saw the nick in the glass? Because I cant let go. Because I cant just accept that I have a disease. Moment by moment I felt flaccid pieces of cabbage. It was drying out and wouldn’t have enough liquid to ferment anyway. The last piece was so small I could never trust that I had all the pieces even if I found more.

I finished anyway, the third round of looking at almost every piece of sliced cabbage.

I didn’t find any more pieces and although I did contemplate going through a 4^th time piece by piece, I didn’t. I knew I would never know if there were one teensy razor sharp flake that may not be fatal, but could cause more problems than I already have. I planted and raised that cabbage. I probably gave it more care than I have ever given myself, but recently I had grown to like sauerkraut because I thought it was good for me.

 I scooped the pieces into a new Le Parfait, not so parfait, wire bail jar and squished them down with the bottom of a glass-but removed it-and closed the lid. "I just want to see that beautiful scarlet color when it is fully fermented," I told myself…"and then I will take a picture, and compost it."

And I did.