Day 24 - More Rain

I waited for the rain, but it never really came down all that hard, and then I decided that it was enough so that I didn't have to travel to the community garden. I fiddled around in the backyard instead. I monitored the cats while they loaded up on local grasses so they could have even better barf once they came inside.
For breakfast, I ate the usual potato, egg, cheese, greens (cooked in butter), toast and tea from partner Sean. I think I also set a record for the number of cups of tea made out of the same teabag.
For a morning snack, I enjoyed a taste of sauerkraut, some roasted squash seeds and a cup of the pea soup.
For lunch, I ate the rest of the vegetable soup with turkey, some newly-made granola (with cardamom from partner Matthew) and a grilled cheese sandwich.
For an afternoon snack I stopped by Trader Joe's and had a bit of salad, some tomato-ey pasta and a small cup of coffee.
For dinner, partner Tammy fed me. Lots of shrimp, raw carrots, cold-cut sandwiches with herbed mayo and some wonderfully warm decaf coffee with hazelnut creamer.
In the evening, I snacked on dehydrated apple slices, raisins and the last of the squash seeds, at least until I boot up another squash.

Day 3 - Kraut

This summer, my mother decluttered her home, including many family farm relics she could no longer use, not that she ever used them in the way they were intended anyway. My grandmother owned several tin kitchen storage containers marked "FLOUR" etc. but Mom stored plastic bags inside instead. There was another contraption she stored right alongside a giant iron coffee grinder that she used for a doorstop. We weren't sure what it was. I had thought all along it was an apple corer, but upon closer inspection, there was no central core. It looked like a 10-pound mini pizza cutter.
We called a local college with a thriving history museum, and an expert in local antiques came over to pick up the donations. We asked him about the apple corer and, surprisingly, it is a cabbage chopper. I had never heard of one of these, and haven't ever seen one on Ebay, either.
We forgot to give the old crock to the historian. It had been in one or another garage for about 70 years, and was cracked and repaired several times. We ended up throwing it outside by the mailbox with a "FREE" sign, hoping someone would rescue it.
With $1.50 today, I decided to "buy" some salt. Actually, I purchased a huge container of sea salt last week because I needed lots to make sauerkraut. I haven't eaten any of the salt until now. This morning I started a fresh batch of sauerkraut so I can enjoy some during this February challenge and also the Locavore Lite 2010 challenge.
It would have been really fun to make sauerkraut just like grandma probably did, with her cabbage chopper and her large pickling crock. I hope my kraut will be just as good as hers probably was.