A quick update…

Tallinn, Estonia is a nice little town. Actually it’s not so little by Estonia standards, but still…



There may be a lot more to the town than I was able to see in the day that I was there, but I mostly wandered around the Old Town area. I didn’t get a chance to go to the Baltic Sea and dunk a toe, or watch the ferries coming from and going to Finland. I think it’s only about an hour or so by ferry, so it’s really pretty close.



The people were very nice, and for the most part spoke English. I was with two other guys the first night, and wandered around solo a little bit the next morning before my flight back to Germany. It was a fun trip, and I wish I had stayed in Tallinn for at least one more day…





… but I had to get home and make some Kimchi (since my supply was running dangerously low)…

Last weekend I was a pickling fool (and not just pickling my liver either!). I put up a double batch of Kimchi. Well, it was only my third attempt, and each time prior I had just made one head of cabbage. So doubling the batch is not really as extreme as it sounds.

So I salted two quartered heads of Napa cabbage. Here’s a little hint… if you have a lot of vegetables to cut up, don’t soak your cabbage in the sink. I had to keep running to the bathroom to wash my knife and cutting board in the tub.



Then I cut up a bunch of vegetables, mixed them with some rice flour, water, little bitty shrimps, fish sauce, and a bunch of red pepper.



I then smeared a bit of this hell broth between each leaf of cabbage, rolled them up and placed them into a bucket.



I decided to put what I had remaining of the previous batch on top of this one. I thought it would help to kick off the fermentation. Now it's kind of a sour mash Kimchi.



I had to go to the farmers market to get the cabbage and other Kimchi makings. While there I saw a lot of other little vegetable that were just crying out for some pickling. So I picked up some small cucumbers, some small zucchinis, a couple of little yellow squashes, some radishes, some onions, and some fresh garlic. I mixed a couple of gallons of a 5% brine solution, with some other spices, and put everything up in these purty lil’ pickle crocks…



I also added in some grape leaves that I absconded with from the vineyard across the road. The tannins in the grape leaves are supposed to help the pickles stay crunchy.

I sampled the Kimchi Thursday evening, and some of the pickles today. While neither is a sour as I would like them to be, they are both pretty damn good. I’m gnawing on a pickled cuc’ and drinking a dunkel hefeweizen as a write this. In other words both were a success.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Kosovo for a week, and will spend next weekend in Ljubljana, Slovenia on the way back. Why Slovenia you ask? Well that’s where we were scheduled to change planes, and I’ve never been there. So I get to add two more countries to my list next week.