Adventures in Pickling

A year or two ago I picked up The Joy of Pickling at a book store clearance sale. I don't salivate at the thought of pickles, but I'm down with the cheapness. I'm looking for recipes that allow me to preserve food cheaply, with methods that are presumably more healthy and less damaging to the environment than store-bought processed foods. Fantasies of survivalism also motivate me, as they have since I was twelve and imagined what kind of bunker/home our family should build. If the economy tanks, or if Gamma World was a prediction instead of a game, or if oil production peaks and demand for oil skyrockets, or if for some mundane reason I just can't maintain my current level of income, then it may become not only healthy and green and cheap to preserve foods at home, but necessary.

My mom used to preserve strawberry-rhubarb jam, apple sauce, veggies, way back around 1982, probably before she started working, although I can't remember precisely. And there's a family legend about my father around age five or six threatening to run away from home and take all the green beans with him. He might have been talking about home-canned beans. (For my next trick I'll try to pencil a little tiny Mason Jar on my family crest.)

So I started off slowly and I've been picking up steam lately. (Pickling up steam?) I made a quart of sauerkraut about a year ago, but the process scared me so much that I never ate any of it. Do you realize how they make it? If you dump the right amount of salt on some sliced cabbage and let it sit in the right conditions, the cabbage will release some juice and begin to ferment. That's the "sauer" part. It's literally going sour, but the fermentation process somehow kills the bacteria that would give you food poisoning. As long as you know what point to stop the fermenting process, then you'll end up with something edible that will last a lot longer than fresh cabbage, while retaining a lot of vitamins. (You actually get higher levels of vitamin B from cabbage kimchi than from unfermented Chinese cabbage, according to The Joy of Pickling.)

The other weird thing is that you don't keep it tightly sealed in a container while it's fermenting. It produces bubbles which need to escape. So you keep some kind of weight on top of the cabbage. As long as it is submerged in the "brine" (the salty water), it will ferment properly. If some of it is sticking out of the brine and exposed to air, that part will rot within a few days. And sauerkraut takes up to four weeks before it's finished.

I don't care how many generations of Germans and others have survived on this stuff, leaving any food out for fourteen days sounds like something your mother warned you about. I ended up sealing it in a big quart jar and sticking it in the back of the fridge, where I never touched the stuff. I may have tasted just a tiny bit when it was "finished," but I can't remember. The idea of this stuff was even scarier than the 14 year old jar of peach preserves I opened and tasted (and survived).

I finally dumped out that untouched jar of sauerkraut last week, so I could try some other pickles in it. And I don't mean cucumbers. The word "pickle" in modern usage has come to mean a cucumber preserved in vinegar, but it originally applied to lots of different vegetables either soaked in vinegar or fermented through some process.

Why do so many people hate sauerkraut? I've noticed a few dishes that are hated almost universally, and this isn't just a matter of regionalism. I'm guessing that people started making sauerkraut because they could preserve the stuff longer, in times before refrigerators existed, or before refrigerators were common. Some people grew up on the stuff and developed a taste for it. The same goes for "lutefisk". Listen to Prairie Home Companion or any given Norwegian descendant for a while. Lutefisk is fish preserved in lye. Once it's preserved that way, you can stack them up on your porch like cordwood. No living creature or microscopic organism will bother them until you boil it for a few days, discarding the nasty water and adding fresh water occasionally. I hear it'll make your kitchen and your whole house stink in the process.

It made good sense back in the day when the only way to keep cabbage or fish or fresh vegetables from rotting was to soak it in vinegar or lye or let it ferment. But it's not a taste that anyone usually seeks, and nobody today with refrigeration and freezers and War-Malt on every corner needs to preserve foods in that way. So the only people who continue it are people who associate the taste with good old days, or kids who had the misfortune of growing up with those people who wanted to taste the good old days.

A few months ago, I learned about some audio files on the web of Vincent Price reading recipes, one of which was Pickled Mushrooms, and had to try it. After that, I dug out the pickling book for some other variations, and now's when you have to read my list of other recipes I've tried so far:

* Polish Pickled Mushrooms
* Pickled Mushrooms with Red Wine and Ginger
* Sweet Pickled Pumpkin
* Spicy Pickled Broccoli
* Russian Soured Cabbage
* Kimchi
* Zydeco Beans
* Kimuchi

The last two are recipes I've started but haven't tasted because they need to ferment or age a little longer. I canned three pints of Zydeco green beans. They're sealed fine and I trust that they won't spoil, but the recipe says not to open them for a month, so the hot peppers and peppercorns and garlic and mustard seed flavors will mingle adequately.

I've made some kimchi that turned out okay, although I think it was bok choy that I used instead of Napa cabbage (a.k.a. Chinese cabbage). The package I grabbed was wrapped in plastic on a cart of reduced price vegetables on the verge of going bad. Thirty cents for a pound of the stuff, but the label just said "Misc. Produce." I'm trying it again with Napa cabbage, which is currently soaking in saltwater. I have to take it out at midnight, mix in the other ingredients, and then let it ferment for three to six days.

Also at midnight, I have two pounds of salted cabbage that I'll try turning into Kimuchi, which is a Japanese variation on Kimchi.

The first fermented cabbage recipe I survived with enough confidence to try more was Russian Soured Cabbage. I chose that because it only has to sit out for three or four days, instead of six or twenty-eight. It's not a flavor I can imagine anyone wanting to make. I can be excused because I didn't know any better. Maybe leaving out the caraway seeds was a mistake.

But if I'm shivering in front of a jury-rigged fireplace next winter, after electricity and well-stocked grocery stores are nothing but fond memories, I'll gladly eat tons of Russian Soured Cabbage while my neighbors get scurvy from lack of fresh or preserved veggies. No, I'm not that heartless. I'll be selling them my home-preserved stuff. Maybe dandelion wine too. I suspect alcoholics will create plenty of demand for cheap homebrew if we have that kind of Long Emergency or deep depression.

Salty Fast Food

I thought I was doing good by finding meatless choices at fast food joints. I know fast food is processed food and it's worse for the environment, which is my whole purpose of cutting back on meat. But Melinda demands fast food a couple times a week, and I feel cheated if I can't get some.

So I had gotten down a sort of a pattern. At "Culver's" (a smaller chain that's expanding from Wisconsin across the northern Midwest), I get a grilled cheese kid's meal. They also have a lot of good side dishes and sometimes they'll have soups without meat in it. At Steak & Shake, I get cheese fries. At McD's I get a couple side salads. At Wendy's I get a baked potato and wish they had some meatless chili to dump on top of it. Burger King has veggie burgers, which aren't really good enough to seek out, especially when I've heard people working there say my "stinkburger" was ready.

But Taco Bell has several options that are filling, like a regular meal instead of a bunch of side items. Seven Layer burritos, bean burritos and cheesy bean and rice burritos have no meat. I used to alternate between them, knowing that the sour cream and guacamole make Seven Layers really fattening.

Last weekend, Melinda and I went to a place that offered KFC and Taco Bell. I ordered a cheesy bean and rice burrito from the Taco Bell menu, and an individual side order of green beans from the KFC menu. I grabbed some brochures off the wall showing nutritional info, feeling good about myself for finding satisfying vegetarian options at these places. And then I started to read.

One individual side order of green beans from KFC has about one quarter of the salt you should have in one day. 570 mg Sodium, 24% of the recommended daily dosage. It's just fucking green beans! One cheesy bean and rice burrito has 58% of the sodium you're supposed to have in one day. Putting them together, I was having 82% of all the sodium for my day in one sitting. If you ate two of those burritos in one day, you'd be 16% over the amount of salt you should have in one day.

So I'm pretty much done with fast food. The only thing I can figure that's still acceptable is baked potatoes from Wendy's, which they serve with nothing on them but a sprinkling of dried chives.

Here are some other stand-outs from the KFC nutrition guide:
Crispy BLT Salad without Dressing: 1130 mg Sodium, 47% daily value.
With KFC Creamy Parmesan Caesar Dressing and Parmesan Garlic Croutons on top, it would come to 1130+540+150 = 1820 mg Sodium, or 76% of the salt you're supposed to have for one day! It's also 71% of the fat you should have for the day. (The dressing by itself is 40% of your daily value of fat.)

Showing their jumbled priorities, the Hidden Valley Golden Italian Light Dressing is even higher in sodium, bringing the total with croutons to 1940 mg Sodium, or 81% of the salt you should have in one day.

Their other large salads all clock in around 35-47 percent of your daily value of salt, even before adding any dressing or cholesterol-encrusted croutons.

KFC's Snacker (R) is a sandwich that's small enough to price cheaply, so they can claim to have a "value menu", but they're also small enough that people order two or more for each meal. Each of them ranges from a quarter to more than a third of your day's salt. If you had a two-snacker combo, it would be half your day's salt in one meal, or up to two-thirds of your day's salt in one meal, even before you started on your drink or side item.

Judging by the values given for plain pieces of chicken, you'd think that nine or ten of the Colonel's eleven secret herbs and spices are just salt. A single original recipe chicken breast has 1020 mg Sodium, 43% of your salt for one day, and 32% of your fat for one day. Extra crispy has less sodium but more fat, clocking in at 42% of your day's fat in one breast.

Some of the most innocuous sounding items on the menu are still incredibly high in salt, like the green beans, seasoned rice or baked beans, providing 24-30% of the salt you should have in one day. But the toppers are Boneless Fiery Buffalo Wings with 94% Daily Value of sodium and KFC Famous Bowls (TM) - Mashed Potato with Gravy at 98% Daily Value of sodium.

Theoretically if you had just a Mashed Potato "Famous" Bowl, the only other side item you could have to not exceed your sodium intake for one day (all in one meal!) would be a 14 oz pepsi, diet pepsi, or Tropicana Fruit Punch. Then the rest of the day you'd have to eat raw foods with no sodium in them.

I had thought the beans and cheese used by Taco Bell were plain enough or natural enough, but reading their nutrition guide set me straight.

A 1/2 lb Cheesy Bean & Rice Burrito is almost half the salt you should have in one day. Bean Burrito and 7-Layer Burrito each give half the salt you should have in one day. A Beef Enchirito is more than half.

But wait. I've been reading it wrong. These values are only when you order the "Fresco" versions. When you say "Fresco," they replace the usual cheese and sauce with Fiesta Salsa, reducing the fat by 25% for most items. ("Fresco" actually translates as "fresh" and has nothing to do with lightness or fat or diet or health.)

The regular versions of all those are even higher in sodium. If you've been developed a salt deficiency and need to recover a lot of it in one meal, you could grab a Grilled Stuft Burrito ranging from 80-90% of one day's salt in each version. Border Bowls range from 64-88% of your day's salt (and that low figure is only if you skip the dressing). And the shocker for lots of soccer moms, the most fattening item on the menu is the Fiesta Taco Salad, 69% of your daily value of fat and 74% of sodium. Skipping the shell brings it down to 37% daily value of fat, but still a whopping 63% daily value of salt.

They print these fucking densely packed tables of info in tiny type, but at least they provide little alternating strips of blue so you can trace your finger across to the proper value. Another easy way to find the sodium count and % daily value of sodium is too look for the row of mostly four digit numbers. Many of the items are over 1000 mg Sodium, providing an easy visual cue to find that column, and the one nearby that usually shows % daily value of sodium.

I'm definitely going to start eating "Fresco," which is to say getting unprocessed vegetables and preparing them myself, not "Taco Bell Fresco" which apparently means popping a blood vessel while you watch your weight.