You might be – a cabbage, or broccoli, or maybe a cauliflower.
The entire Cruciferae family is crazy about winter. The moment the temperatures drop and the rain begins to knock on our windows, a smile spreads on their faces, and they stretch and seem happier than ever. Drops of rain on their flowerbuds complement their coiffure and the mud pleasantly smothers them. This is, of course, different than the summer which sucks the life out of them, literally – the lettuce begins to signal distress and grows a flowering pillar, the cabbage and broccolilook as if they have had better days and the pests crawl all over them when it is warm and pleasant outside. In short, Cruciferae is a family of winter.
In Central and Eastern Europe, where cabbage leisurely grows and fattens, it is used in a variety of dishes. As they say, when what you have in your hand is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. So when you have a cabbage in your hand, the whole world looks like… a recipe with cabbage. You can cook it, fry it, stuff it, make sauerkraut (see later on) and also make pastries with it (and if you have not tasted piroshki with cabbage, you are definitely missing out.)
The Cruciferae is also a very united family. Each of its members can help pollenate the other members. They are all proud descendants of the wild cabbage (Brassica oleracea) – broccoli, kale, kohlrabi, cabbage and cauliflower. The broccoli, by the way, was discovered in Israel only in the 80's, and even then this wonder arrived to Israel only frozen. If you do not feel like adding it to your dinner, you are in the same opinion as the late George W. Bush, who at the time declared that he saw no reason to eat that vegetable which he was forced to finish as a child. The American Farmers' Union thought it would be amusing to send him 10 tons of this wonderful vegetable which, happily, his wife liked.
What is better than organic cabbage? Pickled organic cabbage, aka sauerkraut! If you happen to be considering a change of profession to engage in robbery and piracy (those who sail at sea tend to have poor public relations regarding eye patches, wooden legs, and hooks instead of hands), you should start learning how to prepare sauerkraut, as it will be one of the only food sources that can provide you with the essential vitamins you need to avoid diseases that were once in fashion, such as scurvy. Alternatively, the workers who built the Great Wall of China were also fed a lot of sauerkraut for almost the same reasons. Even if you do not want to spend most of your time on a shaky deck in the middle of the sea looking for trouble, it is good advice. Prepare and eat sauerkraut at home.
The sauerkraut sold in stores is likely to be pasteurized, so it lacks all of those superb probiotic bacteria that bring joy and ease to our digestive system.
To differentiate, when you open the jar of your pickled cabbage you will find fermentation inside. That is great! The process of creating probiotic bacteria was successful.
Although cabbage survives at least two weeks in the refrigerator, it shouldn't be left to wait. A delicious organic cabbage begins losing its sweet taste and crunchy characteristic over time. The white cabbage is slightly sharper than the red cabbage, which is actually purple. The color is given by the anthocyanin pigment, which is a very strong antioxidant, and also an effective component for testing the acidity of a solution. It is used in experiments in chemistry classes at school.
If you feel like trying a very simple recipe that is a bit unusual ,Here is one for a cabbage steak.
To health!
Yours,
Maggie and the garden team
Forecast for this week:
Organic vegetable baskets:
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Spinach
Lettuce
Avocado
Spinach
Kohkrabi
Potatoes
Carrot
Celery
Parsley
Large organic vegetable baskets:
Onion
Sweet potato
Coriander
Organic fruit baskets:
Oranges
Clementine
Carambola
Bananas
Large Organic fruit baskets:
Apples
Grapefruit
Carambola
You can choose off course to mix and match your own order in our website.
If you are around, we are now opened on Sundays, from 1PM.
