An Edible Kick-Butt-er.

If my sandwich and your sandwich got in a fight...my sandwich would totally kick your sandwich's butt. If a sandwich had a butt, which it wouldn't...unless it was maybe some sort of roast something or other type sandwich. That'll turn you off of meat in a hurry, here's a nice bit of shredded pig butt between two slices of bread.
Life is weird eh? Some times I feel that odd waffling sensation of falling into the category of being a vegetarian. (dairy loving, fine with fish, vegetarian if any)
But we have not fallen yet, who needs a label, we just generally don't eat a lot of meat save for seafood and in all honestly that's not so very often as we'd like. (Mostly because we have the combined patience level of a 2 by 4 and if the fish guy isn't at the counter within 3.7 seconds of us arriving, then we're on to bigger and better things, like pasilla peppers.) Maybe it's good to only be passionate about things like coffee and ice cream and port and whole wheat bread, that way you don't cause a lot of ripples in your social life at family Bar-B-Q's and buffet style all you can eat fried one of every animal part you can imagine type suppers. We get the best of both worlds, a satisfying and filling dinner of shredded beef enchiladas with the in-laws and a satisfying mostly veggies and occasionally fish meals at home.
I'm often amused at how little effort it takes, or more accurately NO effort at all to not eat meat. We just rarely get it any more. I don't know when it happened. It started with just buying the boneless, skinless chicken breasts and ground buffalo and the very very rare (as in occurrence not cookedness) t-bone steak. Our meals were occasionally punctuated with a tasty buffalo burger or chicken something or other. Then I started using less punctuation.....it just happened. We reached for garbanzo beans, black beans, refried beans and pinto beans a hell of a lot faster then meat. Cheese is our constant companion. We walked by the meat sections of the grocery store with out even slowing down.
Can you understand that?
We just didn't even THINK of buying it, so it wasn't some big moral/dietary lifestyle change, we just kept forgetting to buy and pretty soon it was months and months since the last big meat at home moment! I double checked myself here to make sure I'm not inadvertently perpetrating some big fat juicy lie and I am pretty sure the last time we bought meaty meat for our household was back in March or maybe April of last year. The last time I blogged, showing off my super delicious Bar-B-Q buffalo burgers was March 28 last year. If we bought meat after that it was only once or twice or maybe even not at all. Occasionally we've bought a frozen pizza that had salami on it, or had meat dishes at other people's homes but it's been on the very very rare occasion.
Why is it so easy for us to start forgetting to buy meat and and eat it? Why start leaning on meals that are almost considered vegetarian. I'll tell you why. Have you ever ate a bit of meat, a roast, a sandwich or what ever and felt something in your mouth that didn't belong? Some bit of something extra that got included with the meat, like gristle, bone or some other equally icky bit of God knows what? It's the little bit of something that quickly, with a speed that's terrifying, reminds you that what you're eating isn't a fillet, a steak, a t-bone or burger. It was an animal, with bits and pieces I don't care ever pass through my lips ever! Now, we got a bit tired of Russian Roulette with meat. The nasty bit extra every once in a blue moon is a nasty surprise we can do with out, it's an uncomfortable reminder of what it is you're actually ingesting. A salad...a salad starts tasting pretty damn amazing after that. A salad never let me down by including a bit of carrot guts..see the beauty of that? Carrots don't have nasty bits, heck you can eat the green tops, the whole dang thing!
Soon you find you're enjoying all your favorite foods and not missing the meat at all, perhaps there's even a little relief, no more poking the steak to see if it bleeds, no more yanking the chicken apart to see if it's raw and will make you sick. Nope, don't miss it. Though like I said we're not fanatical about it, we can chow down on a fully loaded pizza with the best of them.
It's just been quite strange though. Becoming aware of our meatless diet. I have one lonely, pathetic boneless, skinless, chicken breast in the freezer that I have yet to throw out (even though I try damn hard not to waste food, and it's a zillion days past expiration and is so completely encased with nasty freezer ice it's like my own little ice age prehistoric creature) the thing is meat has so sneakily and completely slipped from my recipes that I can't even remember to throw it in the garbage.
So we're not meat snobs, or firm veggy lovers, or against meat, what we are is forgetful, and happily so, about the former bad experiences with meat we've had. We're some how easily satisfied with the lack of it in our lives. It could be interesting to point out that my husband is a former Vegan, so maybe he's been slowly brainwashing me these past years into converting to a completely animal product free lifestyle.............hahahaha ( first off that's impossible...we have cats) Actually if he was weaving a master plan of dietary lifestyle around me it's completely balanced and counteracted by my addicting him to frozen dairy food of the *oh la la* kind, coffee and any home baked bit of goodness I pull from my oven. So...vegans we shall not be. Plus if I recall correctly cheese is made of milk and milk comes from an animal...sooooooo...if there's such thing as cheese-a-holics we're it. Cheese is like our second family, it's always always invited to dinner.
But all of this meandering down the meatless path of our meals has distracted me from my amazing sandwich that is so flavorful and amazing it does that mouth squirt thing when you go to take a bite. You know what I mean right? Your taste buds are so geared up for the tongue-blowing phenomenon about to be unleashed upon their wee little pink existence and some how your mouth squirts saliva like you're a wee fountain in a park. No one is ever gonna eat with us again are they..? *sigh*
But this sandwich is a thing of beauty, no photo will ever do it justice. It's consistently the tastiest thing you can make in a few minutes that is filling and satisfies all your cravings. It's creaminess balances out the sourness, the greens offsets it's richness. It's hearty and full of crunch and chew and oh good golly...you just KNOW what I'm going to go make for supper as soon as I'm through here.
So here's my sandwich:

• Two thin slices of homemade 100% whole wheat bread.
• Slathered with praise and a good dollop of vegenaise on each slice. Vegenaise is the most amazing mayonnaise type spread I have ever met. It's so good I swear you could use it by it's self as a dip.
  
• Dotted with little splotches of good mustard, in this particular case I used grey poupon.
• Then one slice (usually the mustard/vegenaise side if you're particular about such things) is sprinkled with chopped red onion.
• Next, the cheese of the day, and on this day it was an aged Vermont cheddar is cut up in to wee slices. Not extravagantly big slices, wouldn't want to over power the entire sandwich, this isn't a cheese sandwich after all.
• Then, the star of the sandwich, a nice big heap of homemade sauerkraut, icy cold from the fridge. So dang flavorful that I can't even begin to appreciate the miracle that is aged, fermented cabbage with a bit of salt.
• On top of that I place a healthy handful of chopped red lettuce.
• THEN......the other slice of vegenaise slathered bread, joining all the parts to complete the whole, the sandwich that can kick your sandwich's ass.
• Slice, take outside for a quick picture or two, hope the neighbors aren't peering at you through their blinds wondering why you always walk your lunch around the patio before taking it back inside to devour.

I think I need an official name for this sandwich, so that I can refer to it snootily as something people should be in the know about. Like the "Hammer" or the "Kick-Butter". You know, something catchy and elegant, what do ya think?

p.s. this sandwich originally developed as a wrap, it's equally delicious be it whole wheat bread or whole wheat tortilla wrapped around the glorious delights within.

Rotten Cabbage????

(innocent organic cabbages awaiting their transformation into sauerkraut!)

If you used to think sauerkraut was just a fancy way of saying rotten cabbage and that it was better off polluting some other poor sap's meal than your own but now you're a sauerkraut fiend then...wow.....cause seriously that's almost exactly what happened to me!(hacking up the cabbage into food processor sized bits)

Sauerkraut used to be a lot like New Zealand for me. I knew it was out there but knew next to zip about it and wasn't too concerned about my lack of knowledge. I still know zip about New Zealand BUT sauerkraut....oh mama......who knew that it was a gastronomical delight?

(shredding organic cabbage in my big fancy food processor)

Seriously now, who can I blame for my lack of sauerkraut knowledge? There has to be somebody! I've been missing out on one of the most fabulously tasty not to mention HEALTHY things that humans have discovered, and this went on for yeeeeeeeaaaaaaars.

(loose, shredded cabbage with sea salt in glass container)

Other people were out there gobbling up great vats of sauerkraut while I was suffering, unbeknownst to me. Oh sure I didn't know about how yummy it was so I can't miss what I don't know of right? WRONG! I ache for every year, every minute every tick tocking second of my past sauerkraut stupidity. That's 852037002 seconds of life I was deprived of sauerkraut. Of course I'm calculating based on discovering sauerkraut as a yummalicious food and not a weapon of mass destruction a couple of years ago. How long I've know about HOMEMADE sauerkraut as the fricking easiest, cheapest of all mega fabulistic foods is more like 15778463 seconds. Which is not long enough if you ask me.
Well lets just let bygones be bygones and not place the blame of my lack of culinary education squarely on the shoulders of all the adults in the life of me as a youngin, lets move past the horrible betrayal of said adults keeping yummy sauerkraut a secret for their own nefarious needs and not cling to silly past wrongs of those again, previously mentioned adults, severely depriving me of tasty sauerkraut. I'm past that..........I think........

(adding sea salt to shredded cabbage, it will bring the juices out of the cabbage and make its own brine)

Alan and I discovered we could make sauerkraut in our very own home after reading about it in a super fabulous book called wild fermentation. Ooodles of interesting recipes and things in there.

(packed down cabbage)

All we needed was salt, cabbage (organic of course) and a big old thingy-ma-jig to store it in, plus some super heavy stuff to weight it down with. They'll sell you sauerkraut making crocks online for a hundred bucks, We bought a gigantic glass cookie jar type container for 15 bucks at the local department store.
Can I get an "oh yeah" for the thrifty people in the house?

So here's how ridiculously simple sauerkraut is....are you ready? Shred a fricking boatload of cabbage, add about 3 tablespoons of sea salt for every 5 pounds of cabbage, weight the whole mess down in an appropriate container....and......you wait....THAT'S IT????? Hell yeah that's it.(bottled sauerkraut, to be kept in the fridge as it's preservative free)

I know, I know I'm as shocked as you but that's seriously it. There's no cooking no sauteing no fancy herbs or oils, vinegars, HA no way and spices don't need em. REAL sauerkraut is just salt and cabbage and time. Ingenious really.
It does take a wee bit more time then the average home maker is perhaps used to...like 3 to 4 weeks BUT if you think about it that's a lot less time then it would take to seriously lay a whoop ass down on the people responsible for your lack of homemade sauerkraut knowledge.

(our homemade sauerkraut is featured here in a feast of homemade Russian black bread, German potato salad, galric-y rapini greens, a pasilla and onion pepper medley and homemade pork sausage patties.....ohGodhelpmeIwantitnow...)

Homemade sauerkraut is zesty, delicious, crunchy, cool and full of all kinds of microscopic probiotic doolies that are good for your insides. Considering that in a way it's alive, it's sort of like a really boring pet you can eat....eww, strike that comparison from your brains please.