Kimchi

Fall is my favorite season of the year. It's also make-enough-kimchi-to-hold-you-over-through-the-winter season. By default {my sister has a new babe and my brother is dangerous in the kitchen} I am the one that gets to help my mom make mounds of kimchi {two boxes of napa cabbage and one box of radishes worth} to store in her ginormous kimchi fridge. I think it's funny that Koreans have kimchi fridges. I laugh now but I will probably covet one in the next five years. Anyway, my responsibilities start with scouring the weekly sales at three major Korean markets in Flushing and include all of the washing, salting, chopping, mixing, and stuffing that comes with kimchi making. I have no idea how much of what goes into what and what needs to be added to make kimchi more/less salty/spicy/sweet. Is kimchi making a dying craft? Should I be more involved and learning all of this? A part of me still believes that I'm somehow going to gain my mom's cooking skills through osmosis or something. Yep. Osmosis.