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I'm blessed to remember fondly of my childhood where my grandmother, mom and aunties made kimchi altogether as a family, put them in large pots, men dug holes i

I'm blessed to remember fondly of my childhood where my grandmother, mom and aunties made kimchi altogether as a family, put them in large pots, men dug holes in the ground and put them in. Then, we took some out for tasting in a middle of cold snowy winter. The memory alone makes me salivate today.

sva_ 2y ago
I find this topic of fermented foods in different cultures pretty interesting. Surely they enabled people to survive a rough winter with food shortages. From an evolutionary perspective, it could be said that those peoples who didn't learn to produce fermented foods might've perished from starvation. It is an art that shouldn't be lost.
- vain 2y ago
  I really don't see the correlation with food shortages. Cabbage isn't nutritious at all. You'd need to eat 8 to 10 heads of cabbage to get 2000 Calories
  - shagmin 2y ago
    Calories conventionally come from grains. If you measure cabbage's nutrition by its minerals and vitamins it packs quite a punch.
    - glutamate 2y ago
      Apparently protein as well? I remember reading that cabbage is the highest yield protein per acre. It's just wrapped in a whole bunch of greens you have to munch through first.
      - gsbraitberg 2y ago
        Cabbage yields about 1000 lbs protein per acre, vs 3000 lbs protein per acre for soybeans.
  - marginalia_nu 2y ago
    As my sibling comment points out, it's full of micronutrients, which can be hard to come by when there isn't much growing. Having access to a decent source of electrolytes and vitamins really blunts the impact of having unreliable or inadequate food for a prolonged period.
  - MichaelRo 2y ago
    It's not the cabbage per-se, it's what you cook it with. Like mushrooms, they have very few calories raw, but are cooked with some form of fat and that's what delivers the calories. In Romania, pickled cabbage is a staple in the winter, cannot be that dissimilar to kimchi although I haven't tasted it. Particularly I like pickled cabbage juice straight from the barrel, some two months after they are prepared for fermentation. That's right around Christmas and it's the best thing to have after a hangover. There's also "drunkard's soup": cabbage juice soup, fatty and sour: https://www.bucataras.ro/uploads/modules/news/41634/656x440_ciorba-cu-carnat-afumat-si-zeama-de-varza-acra-zeama-de-moare-202737.jpg https://www.bucataras.ro/uploads/modules/news/41634/656x440_... Coming back to calories from cabbage, there's cabbage soup where cabbage is really, just for the flavor, like tea leaves in a tea you don't have to put a ton of them. That's one of the things I learned making my own soup, in the first one I put like a whole cabbage and turned out some yucky stew. And there's sauteed cabbage, which I usually make in the fat left from frying sausages. And it's eaten with the very sausages, plus milk sour cream and bread. So a ton of calories, the cabbage is just ... I dunno, "the delivery agent" :) But indeed it's not related to food shortages coze you don't have bread and cream and sausages when that happens. It's more like one of the several staples, coze although tasty, you can't eat potatoes all day, gotta vary.
- Loughla 2y ago
  The Amish near us grow an assload of Chinese cabbage, bury it, and use it as a store for winter. It's vaguely like sauerkraut, but infinitely worse. It's the definition of emergency food, because you have to be VERY hungry to want to eat it.
  - bradleyjg 2y ago
    Why not put in the little extra effort to make something that’s at least an acquired taste, like kimchi, instead of something universally reviled?
    - jareklupinski 2y ago
      you don't want to have to dig up your emergency reserves, only to find they've already been dug up and eaten at someone's wedding
  - more-nitor 2y ago
    ok so no salt? that's just cabbage gone bad...
    - Loughla 2y ago
      Correct. They do salt it, but not enough. It's gross. Really, really, really gross.

sva_ 2y ago

I find this topic of fermented foods in different cultures pretty interesting. Surely they enabled people to survive a rough winter with food shortages. From an evolutionary perspective, it could be said that those peoples who didn't learn to produce fermented foods might've perished from starvation. It is an art that shouldn't be lost.

vain 2y ago
I really don't see the correlation with food shortages. Cabbage isn't nutritious at all. You'd need to eat 8 to 10 heads of cabbage to get 2000 Calories
- shagmin 2y ago
  Calories conventionally come from grains. If you measure cabbage's nutrition by its minerals and vitamins it packs quite a punch.
  - glutamate 2y ago
    Apparently protein as well? I remember reading that cabbage is the highest yield protein per acre. It's just wrapped in a whole bunch of greens you have to munch through first.
    - gsbraitberg 2y ago
      Cabbage yields about 1000 lbs protein per acre, vs 3000 lbs protein per acre for soybeans.
- marginalia_nu 2y ago
  As my sibling comment points out, it's full of micronutrients, which can be hard to come by when there isn't much growing. Having access to a decent source of electrolytes and vitamins really blunts the impact of having unreliable or inadequate food for a prolonged period.
- MichaelRo 2y ago
  It's not the cabbage per-se, it's what you cook it with. Like mushrooms, they have very few calories raw, but are cooked with some form of fat and that's what delivers the calories. In Romania, pickled cabbage is a staple in the winter, cannot be that dissimilar to kimchi although I haven't tasted it. Particularly I like pickled cabbage juice straight from the barrel, some two months after they are prepared for fermentation. That's right around Christmas and it's the best thing to have after a hangover. There's also "drunkard's soup": cabbage juice soup, fatty and sour: https://www.bucataras.ro/uploads/modules/news/41634/656x440_ciorba-cu-carnat-afumat-si-zeama-de-varza-acra-zeama-de-moare-202737.jpg https://www.bucataras.ro/uploads/modules/news/41634/656x440_... Coming back to calories from cabbage, there's cabbage soup where cabbage is really, just for the flavor, like tea leaves in a tea you don't have to put a ton of them. That's one of the things I learned making my own soup, in the first one I put like a whole cabbage and turned out some yucky stew. And there's sauteed cabbage, which I usually make in the fat left from frying sausages. And it's eaten with the very sausages, plus milk sour cream and bread. So a ton of calories, the cabbage is just ... I dunno, "the delivery agent" :) But indeed it's not related to food shortages coze you don't have bread and cream and sausages when that happens. It's more like one of the several staples, coze although tasty, you can't eat potatoes all day, gotta vary.
Loughla 2y ago
The Amish near us grow an assload of Chinese cabbage, bury it, and use it as a store for winter. It's vaguely like sauerkraut, but infinitely worse. It's the definition of emergency food, because you have to be VERY hungry to want to eat it.
- bradleyjg 2y ago
  Why not put in the little extra effort to make something that’s at least an acquired taste, like kimchi, instead of something universally reviled?
  - jareklupinski 2y ago
    you don't want to have to dig up your emergency reserves, only to find they've already been dug up and eaten at someone's wedding
- more-nitor 2y ago
  ok so no salt? that's just cabbage gone bad...
  - Loughla 2y ago
    Correct. They do salt it, but not enough. It's gross. Really, really, really gross.