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11
SNOW MOON
Our stores are full
Our medicines are strong
Our weapons are worn
Our spirits are glad
Kitche Manitou has been kind.
—From an Anishnabeg (Ojibway) thanksgiving for autumn,
translated from the Anishnabeg

W hen autumn is becoming winter, we move into the

lunar cycle called the Snow Moon in sixteenth-century
England. Northern dwellers could expect their first
snowfall, and waterways and reservoirs might start to freeze. For many
peoples, this was the last opportunity to preserve food and ensure that
there would be stores of necessities to last through the winter.
Nowadays we take for granted our ability to freeze and chill food in
our own kitchens. But the mechanical refrigerator is an extremely
modern invention. The first practical domestic refrigerator was sold in
the United States in 1918, so for most of human history cold storage has
ranged from elusive, to seasonal, to almost constant, depending on the
local climate. Cold needed to be found and used where it was—like a
root cellar dug deep in the cool ground. My father-in-law grew up in the
1920s on a Texas farm equipped with a cistern—an underground reser-
voir for water collected during the rains, used like a well. Dairy products
and meat that needed to be kept cold would be lowered in a bucket into
the cistern, so that the bucket was just immersed—but not sub-
merged—in the cool underground water. That was their refrigeration.

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FULL MOON FEAST

Some people, of course, didn’t need to look far for a source of refrig-
eration. The Inuit could store their food simply by burying it in the
snow or ice. But other peoples often went to great lengths to harvest ice
and create the conditions for natural refrigeration. The ancient Romans
had snow brought down from the Alps to be used for keeping perishable
foods cold. In places where there were cold winters and warm sum-
mers, ice would be harvested before the first thaw and stored in insu-
lated icehouses. The icehouse would then be used to preserve food
throughout the warm months until the return of the Snow Moon.

The challenges of refrigeration were one of the reasons that our

ancestors developed such a wide range of technologies to preserve
food. We have a tendency to think that indigenous people ate their
food fresh from the forest, farm, or garden, and that processed foods
are a modern invention. This misimpression is based on our notion
that processed foods means factory-processed foods: chips and other
snack foods, cookies and sweets, boxed cold cereals, and everything
that falls into the category of junk food. But the staple foods of many
traditional diets were actually often quite processed, in the sense that
they were taken through a process—sometimes an elaborate series of
processes—before they were eaten. The difference lies in how they
were processed. While our food processing is mostly done in factories
using heavy machinery, traditionally foods were processed on a rela-
tively small-scale basis (what we would now call artisanal), and gener-
ally in the context of community.
One example of this is chuño, which is eaten in the Andes and relies
on the ingenious use of the freezing temperatures at night. Although
freeze-drying may strike us as one of the most newfangled ways of
preserving food, in chuño we see its ancient origins. This is how indige-
nous people in what is now Peru have been processing their potatoes
for millennia:

The freshly lifted potatoes are washed clean without dam-

aging the skins and laid out on soft turf or straw padding

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SNOW MOON

to be exposed to severe night frost. As soon as they have

thawed in the morning they are trodden with bare feet so
that the skin remains intact but the fluid resulting from
cell rupture is extruded. On the first pressing over 30% of
the fluid may be lost. They are left in position and dried by
the sun and wind. The process is repeated for five succes-
sive days. From the sixth day onwards no further pressing
takes place and they are straw-covered to a sufficient
depth to prevent further freezing at night. Once dried
they are as hard as stone and can be stored indefinitely,
and even a minor degree of damp does not seem to
damage them unduly. This product is called chuño.

The Andeans would travel with a ration of chuño and charqui (llama
jerky), and then reconstitute both by simmering them into a stew on
their journeys—a practice that probably contributed to the great Incan
migrations throughout South America.
There were many reasons that traditional peoples processed their
foods. They preserved them for easy transportation, as in the case of
both chuño and charqui, or because a foodstuff was only available sea-
sonally, or both. Maple sap, for example, was processed into maple
sugar both to make it transportable and because it could then be used
throughout the rest of the year and traded. Processing food can also
increase its nutritional value. While modern factory processing usually
dramatically decreases nutrition, traditional processing often greatly
enhanced the nutrient density or the accessibility of nutrients in a food.
The way grains were processed by soaking, souring, sprouting, or fer-
mentation is one example. This extra step took time, but meant that
the grains could be a primary source of nourishment for the commu-
nity. Similarly, lacto-fermented beverages such as the Waorani tepae
were full of electrolytes and minerals that increased energy and
stamina. In some cases processing was used to increase inebriating, psy-
choactive, or medicinal properties, or to decrease the poisonous effects
of certain foods. And last but not least, foods were processed to create
wonderful new flavors. Think about the difference in taste between a
glass of fresh milk and a hunk of blue cheese and you’ll get the point.

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For many of us, the notion of preserving food conjures images of

our grandmothers or great-grandmothers filling jar upon steaming jar
of tomatoes, corn, peaches, or green beans and then lining them up on
pantry shelves. But canning is a recent development, its popularity
dating back only to the beginning of the nineteenth century when it
was considered a great innovation. Some heat bottling had been prac-
ticed previously, but it was not in widespread use until it was patented
in 1810 and popularized soon after. Traditional and indigenous food
preservation rarely involved high heat. While heat processing kills the
enzymes in raw foods and often reduces its nutritional content, tradi-
tional approaches actually maximized enzyme and vitamin content.

In Old Europe and northern Asia, the annual ritual of food preserva-
tion that took place in the fall centered on the process of pickling.
While we think of pickles as cucumbers canned in a vinegary brine,
traditional pickling techniques did not use vinegar or heat pro-
cessing. Rather, a wide range of vegetables (and sometimes fruits,
animal products, nuts, seeds, and other ingredients as well) were
lacto-fermented using salt (usually), temperature, and a controlled
environment for a period of time to create myriad delicacies with
complex flavors. Perhaps the most familiar of these to modern
Americans is sauerkraut—the German version of cabbage that has
been salted and lacto-fermented over a period of weeks into a deli-
cious condiment and side vegetable. Sauerkraut was a crucial part of
the winter diet of Europeans, and there are variations in Russia,
France, Italy, Hungary, and every other European country. Rich in
vitamin C and full of active enzymes, it also appears to have potent
anticarcinogenic properties.
In Korea the celebrated kimchi is made in a similar way. Cabbage,
other vegetables, and sometimes fruits and seafood are fermented into
complex and flavorful condiments that accompany every meal.
Making kimchi is still a very important part of the seasonal cycle. Food
writer Hi Soo Shin Hepinstall describes the importance of this tradi-
tion in Korean life:

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SNOW MOON

Each year, as the month of November approaches, the

bustling markets in Korea become even busier than usual,
thrown into a frenzy of activity by kimjang ch’ol, the
kimchi-making season. This traditional culinary event falls
between Ipdong, the first day of winter, and Sosol, the day
of the first snowfall. Kimchi is made at other times of year
for immediate use (known as “instant kimchi” or “summer
kimchi”), but kimjang kimchi will sustain a family through
the three long months of the harsh Korean winter.
Kimjang ch’ol is a serious national concern; it is reported on
daily, along with current national and international news,
supplemented by bulletins on commodity prices, money
saving tips, and endless “how to” advice for consumers and
suppliers alike. Typically, Korean housewives will
exchange daily greetings of “Are you getting ready for kim-
jang?” or “Are you done with your kimjang?”

Kimchi is a major part of the Korean diet, and was even more
important in the past, as this same writer asserts: “In the days of my
childhood, kimchi made up virtually half the daily diet.” Similar to
sauerkraut, kimchi is the result of a slow, cool fermentation process.
The ideal environment for aging both sauerkraut and kimchi is an
earthenware crock in a cool place. Hepinstall explains how this was
achieved in Korea in times past:

Our ancestors came up with a sagacious method to max-

imize kimchi’s flavor and longevity: in winter they buried
the kimchi crocks underground, and in summer placed
them in cold caves or in wells. In my childhood home,
besides our backyard cave, we had a two-room storage
house near the kitchen. In one room, kimchi jars were
cemented in the floor, with only their necks and covers
showing. In the countryside, most folks built temporary
straw shelters over their buried kimchi jars. Nowadays,
most Korean homes have medium-size refrigerators spe-
cially designed for kimchi only.

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A Culture’s Culture
Thirteen traditional lacto-
fermented vegetables and
fruits:
1. Sauerkraut (German
cultured cabbage)
2. Kimchi (Korean cultured
cabbage and other
vegetables)
3. Gundruk (Nepalese
preserved greens)
4. Doqq (Moroccan
preserved lemons)
5. Nuka-zuke ( Japanese rice
bran pickles)
6. Achaar (Indian pickles)
7. Kawal (Sudanese
preserved cassia leaf )
8. Cortido (Mexican
cultured cabbage)
9. Poi (Hawaiian and
Polynesian fermented
taro)
10. Rosel (Eastern European
Jewish fermented beets)
11. Umeboshi ( Japanese
pickled plums)
12. Kosher dill pickles
(Eastern European Jewish
pickled cucumbers)
13. Sauerrüben (German
cultured turnips)
topped with pickled relish, or to serve cornichons with pâté. The rich-
ness of one and the vibrancy and acidity of the other make a combina-
tion both delicious and nourishing.
Other cuisines also abound with lacto-fermented vegetables and
FULL MOON FEAST
Northeastern Europeans had a very sim-
ilar approach in making sauerkraut. While
cabbage is the classic main ingredient in
both kimchi and Eastern European sauer-
kraut, both traditions make use of other
late-autumn produce as well. Radishes,
Asian pears, winter greens, nuts, and seeds
are commonly included in kimchi, as are
seasonings such as red pepper, ginger, garlic,
and green onion. In Eastern European tradi-
tion, turnips, beets, carrots, onions, apples,
juniper seeds, and caraway seeds are often
added to sauerkraut. Additionally, turnips
were lacto-fermented to make sauerrüben,
and beets were similarly processed. Both
Koreans and Eastern Europeans also lacto-
ferment cucumbers with seasonings to
make pickles. In Korea these pickles are
simply another kind of kimchi.
All of these traditions serve an impor-
tant nutritional function. They assure that
there will be a supply of vegetables through
the frozen winter that are rich not only in
vitamins but also in lactic acid—a potent
digestive—as well as teeming with active
enzymes and beneficial bacteria. Both the
Korean and the Eastern European diets rely
heavily on stewed meats rich with fat.
Probiotic lacto-fermented vegetables help
the body to digest these heavy foods. This
is why it is traditional to pair sausage and
sauerkraut, or to eat your frankfurter
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SNOW MOON RECiPES

Sauerkraut and Rot Kohl

Making sauerkraut is an artisanal process—it is both extremely easy and endlessly
subtle. Just sprinkling salt on cabbage and crushing it will begin to release juices and
culture the cabbage. You can make cultured cabbage that is just a few days old, or
sauerkraut that has been culturing for six weeks, and all of it will taste delicious—
although its flavor will change dramatically over time. My favorite sauerkraut to make
is rot kohl—substituting red cabbage for green yields a beautiful dark red kraut.

Quick Kraut
Makes about 3 cups
4 cups (tightly packed) shredded 1 tablespoon sea salt
cabbage 1 teaspoon caraway seeds

1. Put the cabbage in a bowl and
sprinkle the salt over it. Using your
hands, begin to squeeze and mas-
sage the cabbage to release the
juices.
2. Once it is thoroughly wet, add the
caraway seeds.
3. Pack the cabbage into a 1-quart,
widemouthed mason jar, pressing
down with your hand to release the
juices.
4. Fill a 1-pint, narrow jar (or any jar
that has a bottom narrow enough to
fit in the mouth of the 1-quart jar)
with water and screw the lid on.
Place this second jar into the mouth
of the 1-quart jar and push on it
until the liquid from the cabbage
rises above the vegetable matter
inside.
5. Set this on the counter, with one jar
nestled inside the other, and drape a
cloth napkin over the top. Keep at
room temperature for about a week,
pressing down on the weight jar at
least once a day and making sure
that the liquid stays above the veg-
etable matter.
6. After a week of fermenting, taste
and see if you like it. At this point
you can remove the weight jar,
screw a lid onto the kraut jar, and
transfer it to the refrigerator. You
can also experiment with fermenting
it for longer as long as you keep a
close eye on the liquid level. If too
much water has evaporated, mix ½
teaspoon of salt with ⅓ cup filtered
water and pour this into the jar.

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