Gwiddern Tree Website

This was requested by various beloved NECTR participants, so I will comply. You too can make the Gwiddern Tree Beet Kimchi. You can eat it fresh or ferment it and eat it to live forever. You can strain the liquid off and make the dirtiest martini available.

Beets are not part of traditional Korean kim chi but they have many desirable properties including lignan fibers to escort unbound iron (kills you) out of your body and GABA precursor compounds that will encourage you to use the excess glutamate which you are almost certainly producing for good instead of evil.

Being a fermented food, kim chi is a good way to eat something that is still alive, but without the screaming and mess. “So spit in the devil’s eye and claim eternity for mankind with GWIDDERN TREE BEET KIM CHI today”

First you will need these ingredients:

PRODUCE:

6-8 pounds of napa cabbage (about whole 4 american sized napa cabbage heads)

2 medium-big onions

4 medium carrots

1-2 daikon radishes or else a nice bunch of western radishes

7-10 green onions that are also called “scallions”

24 cloves of garlic that you will mince if no one has done that for you

a big hunk of ginger root that you will also mince

a slightly smaller hunk of turmeric root that you will also mince

a nice big fat red beet or two medium ones

SPICES AND EXOTIC ADMIXTURES

A big box of kosher salt for salting the cabbage.

1-4 oz of ‘korean chili flakes’, also called ‘gochugaru’. If you don’t have a korean grocery near you, you may need to source this on the internet. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES USE the regular American chili flakes such as might be found in a shaker bottle at a pizza restaurant next to the parmesan cheese, doing this will make the kim chi bad, and wrong.

a jar of what is called ‘salty fermented shrimp paste’. See same disclaimer re: internet sourcing as above. You can substitute anchovy paste here, or leave it out entirely if you have forbidden yourself from consuming such delights.

1 cup of Fish Sauce. This is non negotiable but in an absolute end of the world worst case scenario you can use soy sauce instead.

8-16 oz of oyster meats, fresh, frozen, or canned (optional)

YOU WILL SALT THE CABBAGE NOW

Remove any brown or otherwise nasty outer leaves from the cabbage. Then, with a knife of your choice, cut a nice little cross through the base like shown here:

As you can see, I have cut straight through the base of the cabbage, then rotated it 90 degrees and done it again. This allows me to shove my thumbs in the hole and pull the cabbage into halves, as shown below at an awkward angle:

The result is two half cabbages:

Do this with all of your cabbages.

Time to salt the cabbages. Find a basin large enough to hold all the cabbage halves, or several basins if necessary.

Take your big box of kosher salt and liberally salt these cabbages. You will gently peel each leaf from the next, starting with the center leaf, and shake a bunch of salt in between the leaves. You will do this until there is a significant coating of salt between each leaf on each cabbage. You will make the cabbages very salty. You cannot over-salt the cabbages. Ultimately this will all be rinsed away, so just really go to town here.

Once all the cabbages have been salted, you can stack them on top of each other in whatever basins you have. Mine look like this for example:

Salty cabbages in bowls. The cabbages must sit in their salt for 2-3 hours. Every 30-40 minutes you can flip them over. They will be dripping salty cabbage water. You can pour this salty cabbage water back over them from the bottoms of the basins like you are basting them. After two or three hours, a lot of water and foul vegetable anti-nutrient will be extracted from the cabbages and they will be way floppier.

WHILE THE CABBAGES ARE SALTING YOU WILL PREPARE THE KIM CHI PASTE

If you have a Cuisinart with one of those shredder attachments, this is a very easy job. If not, you will use advanced knife skills to JULIENNE the following vegetables:

Carrots, beets, and radishes. Here are mine all shredded up good in a big pot:

Slice the onions also and add them to the vegetables.

A small dog will now begin to bark at you. It hates the Cuisinart. Mollify this dog by whatever means you deem appropriate (DO NOT HARM THE DOG).

Now add the 24 cloves of minced garlic, the minced ginger, and the minced turmeric root, then please dump in a bottle (approximately 1 cup) of fish sauce:

Add the Korean chili flakes. You can use 1/2-2 cups depending on taste and availability. I have used only 1 cup in this recipe because that’s all I have left from the last time I bought a bunch of it.

Add a big spoonful of salty fermented shrimp or anchovy paste (optional), 8-16 ounces of chopped up oyster meats (optional), and now you will vigorously stir this mixture:

Add chopped green onions also why not.

All this time you have been remembering to TURN the cabbages every half hour or so, but it probably didn’t take you two hours to make the paste mixture, so now you might have to wait until the cabbages are fully salted. Engage in whatever behaviors you choose, but DO NOT SIN. After two or three hours of turning the cabbages over every 30-40 minutes and basting them in the salty liquid that drips off, you can now chop up the cabbage.

First, make the halves into quarters by pulling the cabbages apart from the base, starting at the cuts you made back at the beginning.

See how easy they come apart? So easy.

Next, wash the cabbage. I like to fill a big basin with water and just submerge and dunk them until all the salt has been washed from between the leaves. They will be all floppy and wet and drippy now.

Finally, chop them up, starting at the tips, I cut with a knife about 3/4 inch sections all the way down to the base, which I discard.

Now mix the cabbage with the vegetable/spice/seafood paste. You will MIX AND STIR WITH VIGOR.

NOW YOU WILL PUT THE KIM CHI INTO SEALED RECEPTACLES SO THAT IT MAY FERMENT

All of the salting of the cabbages and the salt content of the fish sauce have created an inhospitable environment for most of the evil influences present in the American home (the powers and principalities of the AIR), but left a welcoming environment for our beloved lactobacillus bacteria (benevolent cthonic spirits). We can now safely fill jars or other containers with this fresh kim chi and over the next days and weeks it will ferment into the end product that we desire.

I most like to use quart or gallon mason jars. There is also a traditional korean clay jar that is used for this purpose. You can use anything with a lid really.

I like to leave an inch or two of space in the jars, because after a day or so, this stuff will be pretty excited, and if it is filled to the brim, when you open it up, it might overflow and cause a mess.

LEAVE THE KIM CHI OUT

The kimchi will stay out on the counter at least overnight, and indeed for perhaps 18 to 36 hours. Depending on temperature and other inscrutable factors, after 8-36 hours the kimchi will begin to ferment. Signs of fermentation include:

• Audible gas release when the lid is removed
• Bubbles running to the top when gently pressed with a spoon.
• Liquid pouring explosively from the container when the lid is removed, spilling all the hell over the place.
• You might also begin to notice a sour smell.

Once signs of fermentation begin to appear, you can refrigerate the kim chi. In the refrigerator it will continue to ferment, but at a slower pace. What I like to do is put about three quarters in the fridge, and leave the rest out to ferment at a faster pace.

The kimchi is delicious after just a few days of fermentation, but best after 2-4 weeks. The batch I brought to NECTR was about a month old. It will last under refrigeration for a very long time.

Thank you for reading and please let me know how your own kimchi turned out by leaving a comment on this website or emailing me at gwodder@gmail.com.

It is the year of the Rusted Ox, and a time of seizing and groaning.

I am in the woods of Pennsylvania with an eye on Vermont.

It’s autumn and with the change of seasons comes exciting developments in the WORLD OF BIRDS. (all data in the PENNSYLVANIA BIRD REPORT collected from the general vicinity of PA State Game Lands #180)

• There were SEVERAL TURKEYS spotted while I walked the dogs. At least EIGHT. They are not afraid of dogs. Several of them are big enough to roast. None were engaged in LEWD ACTS, but turkeys are not like you and me – they’ll do that stuff right in front of the children.

• A VERY LARGE CROW came within easy shooting distance of the author with a shotgun on the Saturday before NECTR, and was not shot despite the GENERAL LEGALITY of such an action. Crows are like DOLPHINS or ELEPHANTS – only to be eaten in a life or death emergency

• NO EAGLES have been sighted for MONTHS here.

• MANY SMALL BIRDS EXIST but I must consult the Audubon guide before making a more detailed report.

It is the year of the Corroded Rat, and a time of falling and wailing.

Which double-bind manufactured by the enemies of humanity did you reform your entire personality and political position around this year in order to avoid expulsion by the social group you’re a part of?

I’m out on the Western Slope of Colorado and it’s just me and my dogs now. My guts and soul remain undefeated at maneuvering me into survivable positions without telling me why ahead of time.

It’s almost summer and with the change of seasons comes exciting developments in THE WORLD OF BIRDS
(all data in the COLORADO BIRD REPORT was gathered from the square half-mile around my house)

* There was a MAGPIE on my street.  Your basic, central casting magpie.  Sighted on the neighbors fence and then flying away from it.  Notably the first magpie I have seen in Delta County since 2017.  What does it mean?

* There was a large CORVID (either a big crow or a raven) on a telephone pole.  He was croaking.  He flew away in the same general direction as the magpie.  What does it mean?

* My neighbor across the way knocked down a shed, extending my line of sight from the road where I walk the dogs, revealing PHEASANTS and GROUSE.  They are big and fancy with a bunch of colors.  

* The same neighbor’s PEACOCKS had babies.  There are all-white peacock babies and ‘regular color’ peacock babies.  There is even a half-white, half-regular color peacock baby.  I think that means that the white peacocks are not albino.  My elementary school bird education taught me that male peacocks are fancy and female peacocks are plain looking.  This is not the case.  Female peacocks are also very fancy as far as I am concerned.

* Rich’s sharecropper (i think that’s the right term for that relationship) cut down the first alfalfa on Saturday, destroying several acres of cover for small mammals.  SMALL OWLS and HAWKS could be seen helping themselves to the population of newly exposed and fleeing field mice for a day or so.  They make it look easy, and maybe it is, for them.

* A MORNINGDOVE has made a nest on top of the swamp cooler around back of the building.  I do not know if she will be disturbed by the HVAC TECHNICIAN when he comes to turn all that on.  The dove projects an aura that is somehow equal parts terrified and unintimidated when you walk by it, and makes the normal dove noises from TV and movies.