💾 Archived View for thrig.me › blog › 2023 › 03 › 08 › kraut.gmi captured on 2023-03-20 at 17:54:59. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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The smol internet (as supported by the current global system) perhaps pairs well with slow food (as supported by the current global system). And unto this age came Cabbage, destined to bear the salty crown of aqualonia upon a troubled brow. Doubtless it is easier to buy jars of the stuff at a store, given how much beating and chopping and weighing and making a general mess of the kitchen is involved. On the other hand such jars can range from being too expensive, too spicy, too salty, or to simply not being available in a food desert. Probably food deserts have neither cabbage nor kraut.
What I make is probably not sauerkraut given the Asian cabbage (big, inexpensive, available), and is simply 2% salt by weight of cabbage, the cabbage beaten and chopped, and maybe some extra water if the cabbage was too dry to submerge itself in a nice jar with an airlock in the lid. Anything weird (caraway, fish sauce, etc) is added at the other end. A major complication here is weighing the cabbage; about 300g of cabbage is the most I can weigh, so one needs to calculate 2% of 261.1 288.5 264.9 268.2 286.7 minus 23.9 five times to remove the weight of the container from each load, and not all of that can then be mixed at once in the big glass bowl before going into the jar. Most of this could be automated and industrialized, for better or worse, maybe one could have a cabbage machine that sits next to the bread machine? But I also mix bread with a bowl, flour, salt, yeast, water, and a digital kitchen scale for a nod to the current system.
P.S. the "troubled brow" nonesense was adapted from "Conan the Barbarian" (1982) which has a rather wonderful soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVx4LafsvSU
P.P.S. and of course a computer is involved, as one may want a simple command that given an optional container weight value (a tare to remove from each number) and a list of numbers will produce the correct amount of salt to use. A slide rule could also work here.
$ mathu kraut -p 0.02 -t 23.9 261.1 288.5 264.9 268.2 286.7
25.0
/blog/2022/11/16/ultima-ratio-coquorum.gmi