I love fermented food because time does most of the work. My go-to book is Sandor Katz’s Wild Fermentation, and these two recipes are adapted from it.

Sauerkraut

Sauerkraut is cabbage and salt, plus time. Two weeks ago I shredded some red cabbage and carrots, added a bunch of salt as I went, packed it all into a crock, covered it with a plate that would fit snugly inside the crock, and some heavy objects (to squeeze the water out), covered the whole thing with a dish towel to keep dust out, and let it sit. For the first day, I pushed down on the plate occasionally, squeezing more water out of the vegetables. But once the cabbage was submerged in brine, my work was done. Over the next two weeks, I tasted the kraut every couple days as it got tangier, until yesterday when I declared it done, transferred it to a jar and put it in the fridge. Honestly, it could have kept fermenting for months.

Unlike the canned variety, fresh sauerkraut keeps a nice crunch. You can use cabbage, carrots, turnips, rutabagas, and a lot of other vegetables. Katz recommends around 3 Tbsp salt per 5 lbs of vegetables. As long as the salt level of the brine is around 10% and the cabbage is fully submerged in the brine, it’s a pretty foolproof process. But there is one thing that may be alarming if you’re not expecting it: surface mold!

It’s harmless, it’s very likely to develop, it looks disgusting, and it probably keeps a lot of people from making their own kraut. Just skim it off, and don’t worry if you can’t get rid of all of it. If the kraut really has gone bad, you will know because it will stink up your entire house.

Ginger beer

This also takes a few weeks to make, but it’s one of the most refreshing drinks I’ve ever tasted. It’s non-alcoholic and it never cloys like supermarket ginger ale. It has a nice light fizz. You will need:

• A one-gallon glass jug, with a tight fitting top (a screw-top apple juice jug is perfect)
• Cheesecloth & a rubber band
• 1½ cups + a few teaspoons sugar
• a big piece of ginger root
• two lemons

First, make a starter ferment in a small jar. Start with a cup of cold water, 2 tsp sugar, and 2 tsp coarsely grated ginger in a jar. Stir to dissolve the sugar, cover with cheesecloth and a rubber band, and leave in a warm corner of the room.

Every day, add another 2 tsp ginger and 2 tsp sugar and stir it up. Within 2-5 days, you should see small bubbles on the ginger itself or along the inside of the jar. The whole thing will get slightly fizzy. That’s when you know it’s ready for the next step.

Bring 2 quarts water to the boil, add 2-6 inches of grated ginger (more ginger will make it stronger) and 1½ cups sugar. Boil for 15 minutes and let cool to room temperature.

Strain the cooled mixture and the starter ferment, combine them and add the juice of two lemons. Stir and add this to your gallon jug, along with enough water to fill the jug (leaving a little headspace). Let sit for two weeks in the same warm corner. Cool, open carefully, and serve!

I think Danny Hillis came up with this.

1. You start with an image of the goal—you have some idea of what you’re looking for.
2. You go through a transition from being yourself in your ordinary life into being a pilgrim on a magical quest
3. At some point your encounter the labyrinth. You get lost, disoriented, scared. But you must go through it in order to reach reintegration
4. The draw—at your lowest point of despair, you hear a faint beacon…
5. The payoff—you finally reach your goal. And there is a secret, unexpected payoff as well.
6. The return, where you assimilate what you’ve learned
7. And the memento—something you keep afterward

I started knitting in December, because it makes me feel like a Norwegian sailor. The other day I decided to knit an iPhone cover because I don’t like the rubberized covers that snap or slip onto the phone itself, but I needed something to put it in.

This is the first knitting pattern I’ve designed, and my first item that uses a magic cast-on so it can be knit from the bottom up, in the round. All you will need is No. 7 DPNs and worsted weight yarn. I used a 50/50 nylon/acrylic because it is very durable. Here’s how to do it:

1. Cast on 24 stitches using this technique (here’s a video demo). It won’t look like much after the cast-on, but just start knitting in the round, in earnest, and you will see that a pocket starts to form.
2. Knit 25 rounds.
3. Rounds 26-33: k2p2 around
4. Cast off!

If you want, you can knit an icord and attach that to the top, but I opted to keep my iPhone cover sleek and minimal.

A couple days ago I made Bittman’s parmesean cream crackers, and they were good, not great, but for my first attempt at crackers I did okay. Today, my mom came back with animal crackers, adapted from a recipe she found online. They contain oat and barley flour, which she milled herself from groats and barley, of course. My mom loves her grain mill.

Long story short, her crackers beat my crackers. The crumb has a great consistency, grainier than animal crackers in a good way, and the oat flavor was awesome. Must experiment more with oat flour, I see big potential here.

The recipe:

• 1 c. oat flour
• 1 c. barley flour
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1/4 c. quick oats
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 6 Tbsp. unsalted butter
• 1/8 c. honey
• 1/8 c. half & half or water

Preheat oven to 325° and line a couple baking sheets with parchment paper. Combine flours, oats, sugar, and salt in a food processor or large bowl, add butter and cut it in until the mixture resembles coarse meal. Add the honey, then the half & half slowly, using only enough to form a cohesive ball of dough.

Divide dough into two equal portions, roll them out to at least 1/4” thickness and up to 1/16” if you like really thin crackers. Transfer to the pan, and score the crackers with a sharp knife into whatever shape you like (or use animal cookie cutters if you have lots of time on your hands). Bake 20 minutes or until lightly browned, and cool on a rack. Makes two sheets worth of crackers.