There’s an eight quart stainless steel pot on my windowsill and my apartment smells like boiled vinegar.

Wait.

Let me back up.

I decided to try my hand at pickling this week. According to The Georgian Feast by Darra Goldstein, one of my* favorite cookbooks ever in the history of the world, a great place to start is with pickled cabbage. It takes four days from start to finish. Today was Day One.

Cabbage and beets are the main players

The mains get steeped with paprika, parsley, hot dried peppers, celery and black peppercorns.

Step one is to soften the cabbage by boiling it. A significant downside of this step is that afterward your apartment smells like boiled cabbage and, in case you don’t know, boiled cabbage smells awful.

However, Goldstein makes up for the smell when she poetically instructs you to unfold the leaves of the cabbage one by one like a giant rose. It takes a few tries to get the hang of it, but once you do the process is enjoyable and the cabbage does, in fact, look like a delicate flower.

While you’re peacefully pulling down leaves, all the other ingredients should be boiling in about six cups of red wine vinegar. The aroma of boiling vinegar will promptly replace the cabbage smell, causing you to gasp for air and cough and leave the room for a second.

Once you’ve secured your mustard gas mask, you pour the boiled vinegar mixture over your cabbage rose in a large stainless steel pot. Add some boiling water and a plate to keep the cabbage submerged and you’re done. With day one.

For the next three days that cabbage will sit in a corner of your living room, fermenting and developing pickley good flavor.

Stay tuned for the results.

*I use the term “my” here loosely. Sasha lent it to me years ago and I never returned it. For clarity, the Georgian Feast we’re talking about here takes place in Tbilisi, not Atlanta.