My hubby, Todd, and I are really into food. Todd cooks the meat (almost exclusively on our pellet grill and always nowadays it's grass-fed and/or organically raised) and I do most of the sides. Todd makes the fresh raw juice and raw fruit creams/sorbets, and I now officially make the ferments.
Fifteen days ago, I shredded cabbage and carrots and sliced celery to make our very first ferment babies. I nervously packed the shreds into a 2L glass jar, pushed it down as well as I could, and made some brine for it (since it was a little dry and didn't release enough juice on its own to cover all the veggies). I clamped the jar, inserted the airlock, wrapped the new baby in a "blanket" to protect it from UV light and put it a cool spot on a counter.
Several times throughout the next couple of weeks, I peeked nervously at our new ferment babies, hoping they were healthy and thriving, and saw things happening! Our babies were making bubbles! this was a very good sign that fermentation was happening. I saw no traces of kahm (a harmless yeast that can grow on ferments) or mold (which i don't ever want). I did have questions, though: "Does this look right?" "omg, the brine went below the top of the veggies; what do i do?!" "Do i open the jar? Do i NOT open the jar?" "Do i add more brine?!"
In desperation, I turned to Facebook fermentation groups. Everyone who responded had a different answer. Like, a very different answer. More on where i finally found solid answers later. For now, let's just sit here and luxuriate in the sour probiotic beauties that are our first ferment babies. The question that remains is, "How do I stop myself from eating them all in a day?!"