Ma femme says I should have called this "Brussels Kraut." That's pretty good.
On the left is the brine that I have used to start two batches of kimchi; I just keep straining it back into this 3-gallon carboy and reusing it. I'm telling myself that I'm saving salt and jumpstarting the fermentation. Maybe there's something to that. Maybe I'm going to die from it.
Moving on...
On the right is a mixture of cabbage, whole Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and green onions. Some people call them scallions, some folks call it a slingblade, some folks call it a kaiser knife. My current standard process is as follows: soak the vegetables in the brine for ~3 days, then repack and weight for ~ 2 weeks in a round gallon container, finally repack a third time for storage in Ball jars. At some point, forget about it and let it go way too long in one of the early/intermediate stages. For instance, my most recent batch of Kimchi has been weighted in a bucket since the end of February. It's a good thing this whole preservation-by-acidification-due-to-the-growth-of-facultative-anaerobes thing works, or I'd be dead.
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