Diary of My Country Life-May 23rd, 2026

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

05/23/2026 Saturday 51-55F Drizzle

It is drizzling.

Since I can’t sun-dry the peony petals which I harvested last evening anyway, I decide to make black tea with them.

When I open the door of my sunroom where I keep the petals, the air is filled with a sweet peony aroma. There are a lot of petals so I have to divide them into two batches so I can do my “massage” well on them.

This is my second time making peony black tea. This Tuesday I did my first try and videoed the whole procedure. The video will be posted in our YouTube channel (@lotusandmichael) early June. But today, since I have many more petals, and the petals are naturally firmer than last time’s, I subconsciously change the way to massage them: I knead them first so each petal can curl or fold to reduce its size; then I rub them to make the petals slightly wet which can help the fermentation later on. Perhaps because I knead and rub harder this time, it takes me less time than the Tuesday. But, due to the lower temperature, I plan to ferment them for a longer time. So far, I have a quite positive feeling that this batch of black tea should be tastier 💪🏻. 

Home-made things are blessings. Since we planted our own tomatoes, we never buy tomatoes from the market; since we made our own gnocchi, we never give a look to the gnocchi displayed on the store shelf; since we made our own herbal shampoo, our hair feels fluffier, cleaner, and healthier (though the shampoo is less lathery)… 

This February I made my first batch of sauerkraut. In spite of the fact that the crock is European, the way I made the sauerkraut was more Chinese, actually the North-Eastern Chinese type. The differences between the typical European method I found on YouTube and the Chinese are: 

1- The top favorite vegetable of sauerkraut to Europeans is round cabbage, while North-Eastern Chinese like napa cabbage the most;

2- Europeans and Americans use to shred the cabbages first, while Chinese usually keep the napas either as a whole piece or cut the bigger ones into two;

3- Europeans brine the shredded cabbages directly, while Chinese like blanching them first before putting them into the fermenting vessel.

But anyway, my sauerkraut was a big success! It was crunchy, bity, umami and so useful! I could use it to cook with almost everything: Chop it up and mix with meat, it will be perfect filling for dumplings, rice dumplings, and buns; braise it with meat or seafood, it can go with pasta, gnocchi, noodles seamlessly; or just simply eat it raw with salad or bread, it will brighten all the flavors.

We love our sauerkraut so much that we finished it, the entire amount of six big nappas, within one month. And we purchased another crock and made round cabbage sauerkraut in the same way. While the round ones took about sixty days to be really tasty, despite the fact that the weather had become warmer and I brined my round cabbages by cutting each in half. I suppose they are more tightly built than napa so demand a longer time to get penetrated? 

The advantage of making round cabbage sauerkraut is that we can buy round cabbages everywhere, usually they are fresh and cheap; while good napas are not that easy to find--they seem to be more seasonal and have a limited supply, though we prefer napa sauerkraut to the round cabbage one.

Now even my round cabbage sauerkraut is going to run out. I don’t plan to make more until autumn when the weather cools down (since the sauerkraut made in summer tend to be sourer and less flavorful due to the high activities of the fermenting bacteria). However, we pickled some cucumbers yesterday. And this afternoon, we will pickle some garlic. Why not? We have plenty of fermenting crocks and pickling jars to use; plus, there’s nothing wrong to add a little sourness into our daily lives 😅.