Once More in Praise of Sauerkraut

[rinue]

I'm on another sauerkraut kick. It's perhaps not surprising that this is a perennial favorite, given my love for foods that are salty, tart, and acidic. (Also in this category: grapefruit, hot sauce.) Aside from eating it on its own, I've been adding it to grilled cheese sandwiches and to mashed potatoes, both of which are within the normal bounds of German cooking, but I've also found it improves beef teriyaki (an idea I tried based on the use of pickled seaweed in some Korean dishes). That little hit of cabbage and vinegar kicks the whole dish up a level. I realize pickling was invented many times by many people across many cultures, but I love all of them and would like to go around and shake their hands.

Despite one day being mostly indistinguishable from another right now (sit in front of computer; refine content), I have few routines. Most nights before going to sleep at 3 or 4, I check to see that the doors are all locked, which they usually aren't. When I go up to my office in the morning, I open the shades while the computer boots up. I close them later in the day, once the sun sets, currently around the time dinner ends. Sometime between 11am and 1pm, I make a large mug of one lemon's juice, low-sodium chicken broth, a little sriracha, and a dash of maggi sauce (basically a source of glutamate), heated in the microwave. It tastes the way the medicine in Neverending Story always did in my imagination. (Ciro independently arrived at the same reaction upon tasting it, without my saying anything about it.)

Comments

[knaveofstaves]

I'm in crazyland, these days, where it's financially feasible, but unworkable because I'm too important to my boss' gameplan or something. *sigh*

[rinue]

There are a lot of jobs that don't really work part-time (being on a film set, for instance), but I have to admit grocery stocking as an essential "one man, one job" occupation strikes me as fairly, as you say, crazyland.

[valancy_jane]

Useful is good! That's great to hear, even if not ideally what you want.