Mushrooms & Sauerkraut
OCTOBER 2025
Where is the salt?
In autumn, when the garden harvest is in, people start thinking about how to preserve what they’ve grown for the winter. This has been the case in Latvia for centuries – and many Latvians still continue this tradition today.
Preserving or fermenting cabbage, cucumbers, and other vegetables not only helps keep food through the colder months, but also gives dishes that familiar, Latvian “taste of home.” Today, it’s well known that fermented foods aren’t just traditional – they’re also beneficial for digestion and overall health. Apparently, our ancestors already knew this!
So this month, as autumn settles across the Northern Hemisphere, we’ll explore how Latvians around the world ferment cabbage, pickle and preserve cucumbers, and how they forage for mushrooms and prepare them for winter.
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A sauerkraut making workshop was held in the Latvian House in Melbourne on 26 July 2025. The workshop was organized and led by Arturs Landsbergs, and proceeds were donated to the organization of 3x3 camp. Video filmed and edited by Agnese Krūze.
Photos from the London Latvian School mushroom foraging trip in 1981. From the “Latvians Abroad – Museum and Research Centre” collection.
Every year, Kalvis Mikelšteins ferments cabbage, which he then sells at Latvian Christmas markets in the USA. Cabbage is almost his favorite vegetable — he enjoys eating it cold, adding fresh apple slices and sometimes freshly chopped onion.
Austra Muižniece tells where in Italy one can find the “right” cucumbers for pickling, and about her hunt for dill in Rome.
Iveta Leitase in Canberra, Australia, tells how she discovered her perfect “mushroom spot” — a pine forest near Canberra where many saffron milk caps grow. It turns out that in Australia, the worms don’t eat these mushrooms!
Nestors Refbergs was born in the Latvian colony Letonija in Brazil in 1933. He recalls how his mother made sauerkraut: she crushed the cabbage in a wooden dough trough and then transferred it into a special ceramic fermentation pot. After two or three days, the sauerkraut was ready!
Iveta Leitase in Canberra, Australia makes sauerkraut and lightly salted cucumbers.
Cabbage fermenting working bee in Bergen in the fall of 2025.
Austra Muižniece, who lives in Rome, talks about Latvian potatoes and airport security checks, about her comfort foods, and about what she always carries in her bag when returning to Italy from Latvia.
"When I was a little girl, my greatest joy in summer was going mushroom picking with my father in Latvia’s beautiful forests. Wandering around the world, I’ve seen many beautiful forests. I’ve walked through them, searching for the mushrooms of Latvia. I didn’t find them…”