Sauerkraut for Christmas

Ninna gave needful things to her friends for Christmas.

Needful things were always items that were useful and had been made by Ninna herself:  embroidered tea towels and hand made aprons, apple butter, jars of blackberry jam, fancy crocheted doilies, gingerbread, and occasionally she would give one of her truly wonderful apple stack cakes.

Like working an assembly line, I helped Ninna fill the the big brown paper sacks; an apron for Aunt Maggie, a tea towel for Aunt Kate, a jar of jam for Cousin Jane, and so it went. Most of the time I was sent to the cellar to get the canned goods while Ninna selected the hand stitched items and most of the time I was the one who placed a jar in each of the bags, deciding who would get what, all by myself.  Ninna told me to choose small pint jars because they traveled better than the big ones.  I always did as I was told.

All went well, until the winter of sauerkraut.

I'm not sure there is a child among us who will happily eat sauerkraut. I was no exception.  We must have had quite the successful cabbage harvest that year because we not only had cabbage at every meal it seemed, but we made crocks and crocks of sauerkraut. I know, because I was the stomper and the keeper of the rock.

Sauerkraut. It's that weird pickling thing we do with cabbage to preserve it forever. It doesn't matter what kind of cabbage is pickled, the end results benefit us because sauerkraut is one of our healthiest foods. It's the pickling process that's most important. Seems that with fermentation, enzymes are produced and those enzymes are the miracle workers.  Let's take a close look:

Sauerkraut is very low in saturated fat, low in cholesterol and is a good source of calcium, magnesium, dietary fiber, Vitamins K and B, iron and potassium.  It gives the immune system a huge boost. It is a cancer prohibitor, and it protects the balance of bacteria in our digestive systems. In addition to all that, it's a flu fighter.

I love sauerkraut now, but during the years I was packing Ninna's brown paper sacks full of needful things for her friends, I had no love at all for it. Helping to make it was one of my chores and though my part in the process was minimal, it's one job I truly hated.

Heads of cabbage were finely shredded and placed layer by layer into a crock. Between each layer of cabbage, salt was added. When the crock was full, the stomper was gently pounded into the cabbage to bruise it, pounding it down and creating juice from its leaves.  Stomping was my job and the stomper was a rounded piece of wood about the size of a large coffee cup on the end of a long wooden handle.  Sometimes I'd get tired and leaned my entire weight on that stomper, trying to get the juice out of the cabbage.  Once there was enough juice to cover the cabbage, a plate was placed upside down over it and a rock was placed on the plate to hold the cabbage down. At that point, the juice would completely cover the plate. 

The crock was then covered with tea towels and set in a cool place for about 24 hours. Once the time was up, the rock and plate were removed and the bit of scum in the juice was spooned out, then the rinsed plate and rock were again placed on top of the cabbage to hold it down.  The process was repeated about every day for a couple of weeks, always making sure the juice covered the plate when the rock was back in place. When Ninna was satisfied with the pickled flavor, only then did she fill the jars with kraut; large jars, small jars, it didn't matter the size, as long as they were Mason fruit jars. Then they were given a heat bath and sealed. Finally, when all the cabbages had been successfully pickled, the stomper and the rock were given to me to clean and store till next time.  Somebody else cleaned the crock and the plate.

The year of the sauerkraut Christmas Ninna sent me to the cellar to gather the pint sized Mason jars of needful things that would be her gifts to her friends.  It seemed that cans of sauerkraut filled our cellar; row upon row of it all lined up on the shelves.  I truly hated sauerkraut and there was much more sauerkraut than there were jams or jellies or applebutter, all of which I loved.  Since every adult I knew ate sauerkraut, and since we had so much of it, I thought it would make the very best gift for Ninna's old lady friends.  The more they got, the less I had to eat. I gathered up every small jar of sauerkraut that I could reach and took it upstairs. Ninna was out of the kitchen, so I placed a Mason pint jar of sauerkraut in all ten of those brown paper sacks.  I was very happy to make that delivery with Ninna that year. I had wiped out a vast portion of our winter supply of sauerkraut.

When Christmas was over, Ninna began receiving Thank-you letters.

"Dear Susan, what a surprise it was to receive the gift of your sauerkraut this year. It is delicious, but I sure miss your apple butter."

"Dear Susan, the sauerkraut was good, but I miss your blackberry jam on my morning biscuits."

My mother became more than a little upset with me when I kept insisting that sauerkraut was a needful thing, but Ninna was a little gentler than my mother.  She said that most people can grow their own cabbage, but not all of them had an apple tree or a blackberry patch in their backyards.  They both said I had greatly diminished our winter's supply of sauerkraut.

After their lectures, I felt a little diminished myself.

The stomper and the crock are long gone, but I still have that old pickled rock along with a lot of other needful things that Ninna gave me.

~*~

Wishing you happy gifts all filled with needful things!