Juniper Farm sauerkraut

KALE IS SO YESTERDAY. At least that’s what the smarty-pants people who purport to know these things are telling us.

The it vegetable of this past year is losing its lustre – it’s worn us down with its endlessly perfect properties. I do admit a fatigue with seeing kale salad (often requiring 68 chews per forkful) on every restaurant menu. So with any luck chefs are kaled out too.

But what in its place? Apparently, we are supposed to be ditching kale in favour of its cousin. Cabbage is the new sexy veg! Go figure… My grandmother would be laughing her head off. She hated the heads. But grew many every year and dutifully put down the cabbage crop in brine.

But did she ever think to mix it with beets? Or fennel? Or with salted shrimp and fish sauce and menacing little red chilis? If she had, I might have eaten it.

It was the uniformed chef of the Bank of Canada (who knew the Bank had its own chef?) I met while shopping at Seed to Sausage on Gladstone, who made me buy these three jars of Juniper Farm sauerkraut. He saw me examining them on the shelf, and insisted they were a fantastic product. Naturally lacto-fermented, he told me. He keeps many jars on hand and now puts the kimchi kraut on everything. Couldn’t say enough great things about them… And so I did as the Bank of Canada man instructed and can now report they are indeed jars of wonder. I am particularly fond of the beet version.

Pick some up for the holidays. Might be quite the thing to rev up turkey. And you can bore everyone at the Christmas table with clever tales of cabbage being The New Kale.

Available at Seed to Sausage, among other fine foods purveyors (including Red Apron and West End Well) or from Juniper Farm, in La Peche, north of Wakefield.