Let's make Kimchi!

So this is the first recipe I'm posting here, but it's essential. As you will soon find out, Kimchi can go in almost anything. Definitely in anything that needs spicy fermented cabbage. Koreans eat more than 40 pounds a year of the stuff on average, and if you scale this recipe up 20x, you can too!

You will need:
Hardware-
3-4 quart jars with lids and rings
A giant, non-reactive bowl or 3-4 big mixing bowls

Software (all of this stuff is kind of optional except for the cabbage, salt, and chili paste)-
-6 medium carrots
-1 bunch of scallions/green onions (probably around 7-8 total)
-1 giant Napa cabbage
-3 medium Bok Choy cabbage
-1 2-inch chunk of ginger
-Around a cup of kosher/sea salt
-2/3-1 cup of Sambal Oelek or Korean Chili paste (to taste)- generally comes in a clear jar with a green lid
-2-3 tbsp of sweetener (white sugar, cane sugar, honey, etc.)
-1 Habanero (certainly optional)
-1 cucumber (optional)
-5 cloves of garlic (optional)

So this recipe takes 4-5 days to make, but it's all baby steps.
Step One: Make a brine with the salt and 6 cups of water or so. I think this covered me, but you may wind up making more. The brine should be about as salty as the ocean.
Step Two: Cut and peel the carrots and ginger into matchsticks (this will be the longest job). Why so many carrots? Here's why: pickled carrots maintain their crunch and get sweeter the longer they ferment. Also, unlike Bok Choy, which, despite being the most popular green veggie on the planet can be expensive, carrots are super cheap. Drop all of those matchsticks into your brine (which will be in the big bowl/3-4 smaller bowls). Clean and wash the cabbage, and chop it into 1 inch pieces (I start with about 3/4 inch pieces towards the base  and get to 1.5 inch pieces in the leaves for the Bok Choy). Drop this into the bowl, and mix with your hands. Dice your habanero (very optional) and garlic (which will be good pickled, but sometimes turn a weird blue color), and add the to the mix. Add the cucumber too, if you want. I only add the cuke about half the time, because they really don't hold their texture too well. Anyway, mix all this with your hands or a spoon, put a heavy plate on the veggies so they stay submerged in the broth, and cover with plastic wrap. Leave in a cool dark place for 24 hours.

Pre-Kimchi soaking in Brine

 

Step Three: Put the salted vegetables in a colander and wash most of the salt off. The cabbage, in particular, will have absorbed enough to stay sufficiently salty. In a big bowl, mix the chili paste and sugar, and add the veggies. Chop your scallions into 1 inch pieces, and add them to the bowl. Mix with a spoon, add more chili paste or sugar to taste (spice level is according to your preference, and the Kimchi shouldn't be too sweet). Pack the Kimchi into cans (mine made 3 full quarts), and tighten the rings just enough to give the lids some space to move. When the Kimchi is fermenting over the next few days, you want to have a way for the air bubbles to escape. I generally let mine rest for 2 days, but anything up to a week is probably okay if you like it super funky. When it tastes how you want it to, tighten the rings and refrigerate. This will stop the fermentation. Enjoy! Taste great in fried rice, omelets/tofu scramble, and Kimchi pizza. The juice makes a lot of things taste better, too.

I kept losing more and more Kimchi in seeing if it was done

Hiking the Long Trail- "One Piece At a Time"



The middle chunk was last week's hike.
(Also from GMC's maps, Copyright 2010)

So one of the challenges with sectioning the Long Trail is that you have a car you have to come back to, which means that hiking tends to start and end in parking lots, and creativity is required in figuring out how much to hike. Hiking it piecemeal lets you try some different things, too. My beloved Vasques are kind of falling apart, so I brought along my runners and tried to up the pace a little bit.

One does not simply run through Vermont

The first section, a 1 mile scramble up to the Clarendon Shelter, was what we meant to do last week, and was not really suitable for running. It was fun, though, and the weather was a perfect 75 degrees, so I had no complaints.



Typical Lowland Maple/Beech/Birch Forest



The next section was a 3.3 mile hike over Bear Mountain (one of 11 Bear mtns in the state, and one of about 50 on the A.T.) and to the shelter my girlfriend and I stopped at going south last week. I got a little bit of running in here, but probably just 2 miles. The uphill was a lot of slick stone steps (it poured down rain the night before), the flat spots were similarly muddy, and the downhill consisted of switchbacks cut into the mountain (running down which would be like gunning a truck down Lombard street). Still a great time to clear my mind and enjoy the fleeting weather. I did not follow through with my plan to jump in a nearby river to cool off afterwards, however.





More Pictures:

Tiny King Boletus

Yeah. Eft you, pal!

GPS Routes:

103 to Clarendon Shelter

rt. 140 to Minerca Hinchey Shelter

Calvin Coolidge and a little hiking

The Bridge of Death!

My girlfriend came up to visit last week. This is an account of some of our adventures (not included: watching Hook, seeing Joseph Smith birthplace, driving around). The first day we were near Rutland visiting friends (and an adorable baby), so we were going to knock out that one mile from the Clarendon Shelter to rt. 103. I can't read a map and we wound up going in the other direction, over Clarendon gorge and to the Minvera Hinchey shelter (2.7 miles, ~'1000 feet). Getting over the gorge required going over a wobbly suspension bridge, which required the boyfriend rocking it back and forth, Temple of Doom-style ("Hang on lady, we going for a ride!"- Short Round).

We scrambled up the hill, watched some birds and planes fly around the Rutland airport, and kept hiking. Eventually I figured out that I'd made a mistake in my navigation, and we decided to keep going and go 5.2 miles.

We had a good day for being outside

The next day we decided to get our nerd on and go to the Calvin Coolidge State Historical Site. The big parking lot was so full that cars (from Tennessee, Arizona, California...) were parked in the grass. I don't feel quite that strongly about President Coolidge either way. I don't really know that much meaningful about him: his wife Grace basically masterminded his rise to power and he was sworn in by his father in Vermont after Harding was murdered by his wife. Also, his Vice President, Charles Dawes, won the Nobel Prize and had a son named Rufus Fearing Dawes, who drowned in a lake. We eschewed the crowded historical site for Plymouth Notch Cemetery, where Coolidge and his wife (and about 60 other Coolidges) are buried. I had heard good reviews of the place, and it lived up to its billing as a gorgeous old cemetery. We also overheard some older folks swapping stories about all of the presidential burial sites they'd seen. Apparently some people make a serious effort to see every site (and probably root for people like Jimmy Carter to "go ahead and die, already"). This seems like a worthwhile way to spend one's retirement.

On the way back from Plymouth, we went by Quechee Gorge. We walked about a mile across the bridge and then down under it. Then we drove home and ate some cake.

More Pictures: