I had a sugarloaf chicory on hand taking up a lot of refigerator space so I thought I would cram it all into a jar. Yep I did, but before that I massaged my chicory leaves with coarse salt, let it rest, rinsed it out, made the magic spicy sauce and then jammed it all into a mason jar, and sealed it shut.

I forgot about it for a day or two, checked in on it to see if it was alive, opened the lid and heard it wheeze, sealed it back shut again, and forgot about it for a week and a half in the fridge letting it ferment before I stuffed myself silly with it for the rest of the week that followed.

Call it an Asian (Korean) spicy sauerkraut if you like but it's kimchi. Kimchi is usually made with napa cabbage or daikon radish and is fermented. It goes through a lactofermentation process where all the natural bacteria feast on the sugar and starches in the food producing lactic acid. This creates an environment for the good bacteria to foster and preserves the food from the bad bacteria. The good bacteria known as probiotics are believed to help in digestive health. Kimchi is a great additional source of probiotics.

I consider myself a freshman in a Fermentaion 101 class so I often poke and look around in what I am fermenting, stick my nose in it and sniff about a hundred times before I ingest it. So far to date, it all tastes good to me and no belly aches!