Small Joys | A Cosmo with the Contessa | Recipe: Sauerkraut
Issue No. 36
In this week’s edition, readers share the people, places and things giving them joy amid the pandemic. Also, do you run a food business? Contribute to our Florida food resources guide! And stick around for Jackie’s guide to fermenting kraut.
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After 21 days of upheaval and alone time, I am deep into simple gifts mode. It's hard to face the big stuff — illnesses, isolation, uncertainty — so I’m filling up on small joys. It’s these olive branches shared by my community, a new recipe from Sharon or a spot-on lip sync from Danny or a silly dog from Micah, that are keeping me afloat.
These are strange times when the most heroic thing many of us can do is do nothing. Learning to cope with isolation is no easy feat. “As our health care system buckles under the strain of the virus, and citizens are isolated at home, self-care has never felt more urgent,” wrote Amanda Hess in a great piece for the NY Times about how wellness influencers are capitalizing on a need for control and using this crisis to be extra sleazy. While I’ll be skipping the moon juice, adaptogenic mushrooms, and Tom Brady-approved supplements, I feel deeply the desire to be as kind as possible to my brain and body.
Last week we asked readers to share what’s bringing them comfort and joy during this precarious moment in history. Your answers show how we all survive: By cooking, laughing, caring for one another, showering ourselves with love, dancing, drawing, doing whatever else we can to stay safe and stay sane.
Below is a crowdsourced guide for self-care. Share with us in the comments below or by email what’s bringing you the most joy right now.
Resources + Inspiration for Self-Care
🥒In the kitchen, John wants you to put kimchi in your grilled cheese sandwich. Jackie concurs. Matt finally has followed through on his New Year’s resolution, and is attempting to pickle everything in sight. Sally and Steve forage through TikTok for recipe inspiration (they replaced the chicken with tofu and eggplant). And have made their own quarantinis.
👩🌾Out in the garden, Jules says now is the perfect moment to start composting.
Caitlynne is also finding comfort communing with plant life.
“Working in and at and for the community gardens (as part of my job) has been a huge source of positive energy for me during this crisis. Gardening helps me remember that earth provides food no matter what is happening with banks and industry. It’s a touchstone of certainty about the future in a really uncertain time.”
😅For getting sweaty, Mimi is a devotee of Ryan Heffington’s dance workouts on Instagram. Jennifer loves to unwind with Yoga with Adriene.
🙏To quiet the monkey mind, I use the Calm meditation app daily. Julia recommends Hallow, a Catholic meditation app currently offering an extended free trial.
🎼If music is your relaxation tool of choice, Mimi is tuning in daily to Rufus Wainwright's Robe Recitals. Sasha’s listening to Yo-Yo Ma’s Songs of Comfort. Julia recommends these great albums: Little Women (Alexandre Desplat), Wood Works (the Danish String Quartet), and Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book. Micah’s been bopping around to this super fun playlist.
🎭Theater buffs should check out this great list of upcoming live-streamed performances of theater and opera shared by Lara. Esmeralda encourages you to try something more experimental.
And Hamilton fans, get read for a good cry. (Hat tip Dispatches from a Digital Life newsletter)
📡On the internet, Ketan turned us onto this virtual version of our favorite game, Settlers of Catan. Casey’s taking a Netflixcation to Schitt’s Creek. Sasha is learning to draw with Mo Willems Lunch Doodles drawing class.
🌈On the street, kids around the world are filling their windows with Rainbows. Esmeralda snapped these photos on her walks around London.
The idea of creating a crowd-sourced resource was inspired by my friend Sasha, who created this incredible Google doc for her loved ones, focused around mindfulness, exercise, music, and more.
love,
Jackie
Fill us with joy and click that share button ☺️
Get Involved!
Support local food businesses during the coronavirus crisis
At Sunshine + Microbes, we want to help food producers and their patrons weather the worst of the pandemic. We are compiling a directory of Florida (and elsewhere) food resources, so shoppers can buy directly from those businesses. We will share the buyers’ guide and map with the public.
If you would like to be included in the directory, please fill out this Google form. If you know of any food producers or food-adjacent businesses who would like to be included in the resource, share this link with them.
-Matt
Fresh links
🍹👩🍳Ina Garten’s Quarantine Playbook | The Atlantic
Celebrities, quarantined in their gigantic houses (that they own! no rent is due), have had a hard time relating to the regular people out there. Take for example, Gal Gadot’s cringeworthy “Imagine” singalong. However, Ina Garten — the cooking star known as the Barefoot Contessa — has used social media and food to resonate with the outside world with comforting empathy.
Just watch her glorious video where she banters while making an extra special isolation cosmopolitan.
Garten has “reoriented her posts, offering near-daily updates on what she’s making, how her pantry and freezer are stocked, and how she’s adapting old recipes to work with items she might have around the house. In the comments, she answers questions about what to do with forlorn ingredients and sends thanks and love.”
👙Getting Tipsy at Home in Your Underwear | NYTimes
A Finnish tradition known as “kalsarikännit” can help others loosen up during the quarantine. The word roughly translates to “pantsdrunk,” and there’s no better time to try it when self-isolating at home.
Finland’s residents spend a lot of time in cold and darkness — and they face those dire circumstances by imbibing in their undies. In those long days of isolation, Pantsdrunk is a great way to hang out alone:
While pantsdrunk may seem like just another excuse to drink at home, there are key differences. The person does not intend to go out afterward, so it is not a pre-gaming session. And the dress code is beyond lax. If swilling in sweatpants seems cozy, quaffing in underwear is an entirely other level of comfort.
👴🏻🏔️Tips From Someone With Nearly 50 Years Of Social Distancing Experience | NPR
For close to a half-century, naturalist billy barr (he prefers the lowercase) has lived alone in Gothic, Colo. inside an abandoned silver mine in the Rockies. By chance, he provided significant evidence of climate change after meticulously keeping track of data on snow depth, the arrival of animal species in the spring and more over the course of decades.
Now he’s here to help with another crisis. He told NPR’s Rae Ellen Bichell how he spends so much time alone.
His most germane piece of advice: Keep track of something. That can be birds outdoors or what’s missing at the grocery store or the citizen science project CoCoRaHS that tracks rainfall in the U.S.He also recommends celebrating stuff that matters, as opposed to the usual, and watching movies when feeling overwhelmed. barr has tracked 357 favorites — with Hugh Grant pictures, Bollywood films, and “The Princess Bride” topping his list.
Sauerkraut
I have two early childhood sense memories of kraut. The first is the bigos — a hearty Polish stew filled with kraut, potatoes, and all the meats — my nanny Alina used to cook for me. When I went to visit Alina in her tiny Polish village in my twenties, she welcomed me with a pot of bigos. The tears came as soon as I smelled it.
The second is the slightly less romantic smell of my mother microwaving Boar’s Head sauerkraut directly in the plastic bag to eat with hot dogs as a snack. Definitely two extremes of the olfactory spectrum.
I forgot that sauerkraut existed until a handsome brewer I worked adjacent to in London encouraged me to make some. It was an ordeal, involving pink-stained wooden floors, the bucket of kraut getting buried under snow for months, and bugs. Lots of bugs. But even that first fiasco produced an absolutely divine final product, and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve refined my technique so that bugs and overwintering are no longer involved. In fact, making kraut is a snap, and I know you’re gonna love it!
Ingredients
cabbage
salt
optional: any root veggies, apples, garlic, onions, herbs, spices
Special tools
fermenting vessel: half gallon mason jar of ceramic crock
weight: small plates, rocks, ceramic weights, or water-filled ziplock bag
vessel cover: lid, kitchen towel and string
Step-by-step
Weigh the cabbage and other veggies. Measure out 1.5 percent of the weight in salt. For example, if I had 1000 g cabbage, I would multiply 1000 x .015 to equal 15 g salt. Set salt aside.
Wash cabbage and chop by hand or grate in a food processor with a slicer attachment blade (do NOT use a grater attachment; it will turn the cabbage to mush). The cabbage can be almost translucent or be thick and crunchy. No rules! Set aside a few outer cabbage leaves for packing the vessel.
As you chop, place a handful or two of cabbage at a time in a mixing bowl and sprinkle a bit of the salt on it. Massage (squeeze and knead) the cabbage. As you continue to massage more cabbage and salt, liquid will begin to pool at the bottom of the bowl. The salt is drawing out the liquid, creating the all-important brine.* Mix in whatever else you like: Other veggies, spices, or herbs.
*This salty liquid brine creates the perfect anaerobic environment for fermentation to occur. The brine keeps out dangerous (rot and mold-causing) microorganisms while beneficial lactic acid bacteria flourish.
Put a handful of cabbage into the vessel and pack it down with your fist. Continue adding cabbage and packing it down tightly. The brine should begin to rise up over the cabbage. If this isn’t happening- spend more time massaging the cabbage.
Once the vessel is about 2/3 filled, place a whole cabbage leaf or two over the top. This keeps little bits of cabbage from floating upwards out of the brine.
Weigh down** all the cabbage so it remains fully submerged under the brine throughout the fermentation process. Loosely cover the vessel with a lid or a kitchen towel. Carbon dioxide produced during fermentation should be able to escape, but no dust or dog hair should be able to enter.
**There are many ways to weigh down a fermenting veggie under brine- really whatever you can find that’s the right size and shape and heavy enough to keep the veggies submerged. In a large mason jar, fill a smaller mason jar with water and press it into the top of the cabbage. Or find and clean some large rocks. Or buy fermentation weights. Anything that will weigh down the veggies.
Let the kraut ferment at room temperature for 10 days to many months. The total fermentation time will depend on the kitchen temperature of your kitchen and personal preference. Check up on it every once in a while. Make sure the cabbage remains fully submerged in the brine.
After about 10 days, give it a taste. It will develop a lovely tangy flavor that will continue to change and gain complexity the longer it ferments.. I like the flavor of mine around two weeks.
Once the flavor tastes pleasing, remove the weights and seal tightly. It will keep in the fridge indefinitely.
Flavor Ideas
Black kraut: apples, juniper berries, caraway seeds, and black peppercorns
Curry kraut: carrots, curry powder, fresh ginger and garlic
Chipotle kraut: chipotle powder, oregano, onions, garlic and a small handful of chopped fresh or dried pineapple
The Ground Floor Farm: garlic, rosemary, thyme, oregano, sage
Zaatar kraut: beets, zaatar, garlic
Mold + Yeast
Once in a blue moon, mold will grow on the surface of the kraut. This normally occurs because the veggies were not fully submerged in the brine. It’s no big deal. Just carefully skim it off the top, along with any tainted cabbage, and keep on fermenting.
When it’s very hot outside, the kraut might develop a layer of kahm yeast, which looks white and cloudy (but not fuzzy like mold) and smells cheesy. It’s harmless, but may lead to an overly cheesy-tasting kraut. At the first site of kahm, carefully skim off as much as possible and cut the fermentation time short.
You’re in quarantine. You’ve got 30 seconds. Watch this beautiful work of art until the end.
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Sunshine + Microbes team
Jackie Vitale is the current Chef-in-Residence at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and co-founder of the Florida Ferment Fest. Her newsletter explores the intersection of food, culture, environment and community.
Matt Levin is a freelance reporter based in Colombia. He edits Sunshine + Microbes and contributes other scraps to each issue.