In my quest to find mo-better preservation techniques for things that come from the garden I made my first batch of Kimchi today. I’m 12 hours into the first day of fermentation (preceded by a 12 hour salt water bath). Tomorrow morning I’ll vent the jars and move them into the fridge where they’ll remain for a month (or until I finish them off).
I checked on my lettuce and still only have two varieties growing, so I started several seeds in a growing medium to see if they were still good. I’m thinking no.
I got my little seed starter kit primed up and planted Jalapeno, Habanero, Cayenne, California Wonder (bell) and Banana Peppers. I’m going to wait a least a week before starting my tomatoes as they can quickly get out of hand when your growing 60 or so in the house.
All of the trees are now blooming. The apple trees did not flower, so I suppose that I’ll not get any fruit from them until next year (at the soonest). I did spray all of the trees and think I can get through this year without the wide-world of insects making their home (and having their lunch) in my trees.
This is what ‘self-quarantine’ is like on my little patch of the earth!
You forgot the one, most important, ingredient to any kimchi recipe: GARLIC. Lots of GARLIC.
Thanks John. I wanted to make some homemade kimchi but didn’t quite get to the full homemade experience. I went down to an Asian market to get the necessary ingredient and the Korean owner (who spoke fairly good English) kept telling me that I didn’t want to do that, and forced a bottle of kimchi mix into my hand. I put it back, walked over to where the fish sauce was and was looking at a bottle of that (one of the ingredients) and she took it out of my hand…placed it back on the shelf, and handed me the bottle of mix again.
What the hell, I bought it and left. Mixed it with the Napa lettuce and followed the remainder of the directions. It made almost two quarts. I guess that was less than a week ago and have less than half a quart left. I can’t leave the stuff alone! I’ve got to risk my life next week to go into town and pick up a few things; some of this mix is on my list. I’ll take a photo and post it so you can see what I’m writing about.
I’ve got garlic out the kazoo !
Garry