Quantity And Quality
Quantity and quality are not always mutually exclusive. These luscious meatsticks, which go on for miles, are a prime example.
As my friend and mentor, Dan Carlin, would quote some other dude, “quantity has a quality all its own.” Damned if that ain’t true. Let’s start on the kraut, because that’s where every good thing should.
Sauerkraut, by far the best thing about cabbage, could have only happened in a world abundant with the source material. Like most fermented goodness, no one discovered it on purpose. Someone jarred up a bunch of a high quantity autumn yield, got in a fight with their husband over how many jars were being stored in the basement. He thinks the basement should be used for fermenting beer, not saving tasteless cabbage. Herr Hans finds himself in a fit of rage and smashes as many cabbage jars as he can find. Blinded by drunkenness, he missed one. Forbidden to enter the cellar again, Hildegarde keeps her head down and understand that it is a woman’s job to serve a man. That is what God wants. She keeps her distance until one day she hears a ruckus from down the stairs. Hans had made clear his plans for the evening when he said, “I’m going to drink everything” and stormed downstairs. Hans had been struggling with anger issues, but in the Middle Ages mental health and substance abuse issues weren’t understood like today. Hans, seeking quantity over quality, drank everything he could find until he collapsed. Ever dutiful, Hildegarde rushed downstairs to find Hans hunched over, dead, deep in a recess of the basement. After her shock blackout ended, she moved to inspect the body. As she drew closer, some dull caught her eye. Dull, but not dead. Dull, but very much alive. Behind Hans, hidden, lay the sole surviving jar from Hilde’s shredded cabbage. She stepped right over the lump of meat that used to be her husband and picked up the jar. Perhaps it was her own form of revenge. A way to get back at Hans for destroying not only her cabbage harvest, but her life. Or maybe she was just hungry. But she took that jar of cabbage upstairs and opened the lid. Once she did, she knew that everything happens for a reason. The cabbage would never have been stored in the basement if she didn’t have too much of it. Her husband would have destroyed every last one if there were less of them. Hans would still be alive except for his over consumption. And sauerkraut would not have been born, if not for quantity. But now that quantity had yielded a new and wild taste, Hilde was set to make it again, and to make it perfect. Quantity had done its job, now it’s quality’s turn.
- KrautHammer
Quantity has a quality of its own. Our millennial obsession with “the small things”, with detail, with achieving the perfection of some ideal, only serves to stifle us. Just do the work, you silly bitches. Put your hours in, do it dirty, do it good, do it raw, grrrinddd it out. Some would even say “git ‘er done!” – not me, I wouldn’t ever say that, but some certainly would. Nike might say “Just Do It.” – I wonder if the nine-year old laborers working their factories are told to “just do it” when they complain that their finger tips are bleeding and their bones are sticking out. But I digress, this blog is about Sauerkraut after all, isn’t it… isn’t it? In terms of quantity, how many times do krautHammer and I need to specifically ask for extra kraut only to be served a single measly plastic ramekin three-quarters full of their ‘special recipe’? And in case you’re wondering, commandment numero uno of the krautHounds Manifesto reads: “Thou shalt not skimp out on a Hound’s kraut” (If thou dost skimpeth, said Hounds may elect to smote your ruin). So, pile it high regardless of any so-called quality – my gut doesn’t recognize quality, it just wants to be slathered in the ferment of kraut, literally eating what I eat after I eat it. Give me fifteen sloppy ounces of B-minus generic kraut over that sad-ass five ounces of Brooklyn hipster artisan chop-job bullshit – any day of the week. So hounds and houndettes, don’t let quality get in the way of your quantity – in anything. Eat kraut and be Sauer!
- Sauerpuss
