I have a confession to make. I don’t really like salads much, particularly not in winter. Salad just seems so cold somehow. However, I am a big fan of what I like to call “winter salad” — a sort of cole slaw. Cabbage, red onion, carrot all shredded up and dressed with lime juice, salt, olive oil and some New Mexico chile. It’s crunchy and tart and goes with just about any sandwich or lunchtime quesadlila.

I made this one last week from one of my four savoy cabbages I grew this summer, and the onions and carrots also came from the garden. Raw cabbage is supposed to be really good for you, but mostly I just like this because it’s green and crunchy and goes with everything.

I also started a batch of sauerkraut last night. I used a clean, scrubbed kitchen pail since I don’t have a crock. I bought a monster cabbage grown locally by the Hutterites — it was a six pound cabbage. The recipe I went with is from Preserving Food without Freezing or Canning by the Gardeners and Farmers of Centre Terre Vivante. I love this book — it’s full of all sorts of very old world preservation techniques. I sliced up the cabbage and layered it with a couple of sliced onions, some bay leaves, cumin and coriander seeds. I sprinkled a big soup spoon of pickling salt over every layer. I then tamped it all down with a potato masher until it was wet, then covered the whole thing with a ginormous ziploc bag filled with enough water to form a seal. Then I set it in the pantry and we’ll see what transpires.