Sauerkraut Saga - Part 1 - How It Started

I have been intending to do a post about my experiment with homemade sauerkraut for some time.  I knew it would be a long post so I kept procrastinating;   waiting until I had a lot of free time.  As usual, that never really happened.   So rather than one long post,  I decided to make multiple short posts that I would find time to do.  Here is the first.
A few weeks ago one of my neighbors and I were discussing food.   She commented that she was interested in probiotic food and asked if I ate sauerkraut.  I commented that did eat it occasionally.
She than asked if I knew how to make it.   I told her I had never made any, but I did not think that it was difficult.   I suggested she try Goggling it.
Well now, you may ask how a lad of Scott heritage ever came to eat spoiled cabbage.   Like many a lad gone a stray, it was a lass that lead the way.   She was a cute, beautiful, fraulein that said "love me, love my sauerkraut".   I never quite got to the point of loving the sauerkraut, but I got as far as liking Reuben sandwiches.
A few days later my neighbor reappeared at my door with two heads of organic red cabbage.   She said "Here is the cabbage, go for the sauerkraut.   I want probiotic, lacto-fermented unpasteurized sauerkraut".
The first thing I had to do was look up the definition of these terms.