Walkin around

This weekend I went on two lovely hikes and saw many flowers. Some of my favorites were the shooting stars.







Both hikes were much more like ambling around than hiking. I had time to notice little things like whether or not there were any four leaf clovers on the open oak savannah, how many different sounds the little streams made, how large the water droplets were on the pinky-nail sized leaves on mossy rocks next to waterfalls, and other such things.

Along with meandering at Mt. Pisgah and Silver Falls State Park, I'm pleased to say that my friends and I ate very indulgent pastrami sandwiches outside on the deck under the persimmon tree. It required a trip to the local butcher, the baker, the natural foods store, and the garden.

It's somewhat silly to provide a recipe for a pastrami sandwich, but there are several details of importance:

Good mustard

Sauerkraut (homemade? see below)

Thinly sliced warm pastrami. You can heat it in a cast iron skillet. (This will be heretical to some, but there's no reason you couldn't replace the meaty pastrami with grilled, marinated tempeh)

Toasted rye bread. The hippies at the natural food store almost tricked us into buying rye that had flax instead of caraway seeds. We figured it out and made the right choice. I got my favorite gluten free pumpernickel.

A side of horseradish if you're into that kind of thing. I am.

Swiss cheese is optional.

A salad of some kind on the side. We went with red potato, fresh garden arugula, sauteed onions, balsamic, salt and black pepper salad. Ok, I secretly admit there was bacon in it, but it's not a requirement.

Homemade sauerkraut

If you live in a giant co-op, have friends who are gardeners, or you just get over-zealous at the farmer's market, the problem of way too much cabbage can sneak up on you. Here's my solution:

Thinly slice the cabbage. Chop up some onion and a little garlic. Get a quart/half gallon jar and plenty of sea salt.

Put a little layer of cabbage/onion/garlic mix in the bottom of the jar, sprinkle a bunch of salt over it, then pummel it with your fist or some other implement until the salt macerates (pushes the water out) of the cabbage. Then add another layer of and repeat. Keep adding layers and pummeling until the jar is an inch or more from full and the fluid level is above the cabbage by at least half an inch. If the fluid is lower than that, just add a little water. Then, put something on top of the cabbage like a bowl with a rock or can on top of it to keep the cabbage under water. Cover it with cloth, leave it someplace dark and not too cold/not too hot and in several weeks it will be delicious sauerkraut. It shouldn't get moldy if it's salty enough, but mold can be ok as long as it's just the weird white salty mold on the top of the water, and not mold anywhere else. Check out this book about it: Wild Fermentation. I met this guy in Humboldt when he talked about fermenting a million different things in his co-op house.