Lacto-fermented Foods

......like sauerkraut, yogurt, kimchi, kefir, pickled corn, half & full sour pickles, and who knows what else would fall into this category.

This is new to me (kinda), I never knew the technical term for it till recently, when I began to research how to duplicate a 'half sour' cucumber pickle that Ted's Montana Grill, that specializes in Bison, serves as appetizers over in Lexington. Those 'half sour' pickles are the best I've ever had, and I want to make my own, so I've been doing some research on them, which has led into a whole big 'nother world'. Anyone on board ever made any 'half sours'?

These are supposed to be very healthy foods to eat. Are there any 'experts' on board that do this sort of old/ancient food preparation/preservation? From what I read there really is an art to it, one of the goals being to make the product using the absolute bare minimum amount of salt required and no vinegar.

I have fond memory from growing up of the fantastic pickled corn made by a neighbor woman. Not only was it delicious, it had a translucent quality to it, and was not in the least bit salty tasting. I've never seen such pickled corn since. Anybody have a pickled corn recipe like that?

Years ago when the wife and I raised big gardens we used a kraut recipe out of Rodale's 'Stocking Up'. It consisted of packing fresh shredded cabbage into quart jars, adding 1 tbsp salt & 1 tsp honey (I think that's right) at the top, add boiling water, hand tighten the lids, and letting it ferment ( for about 4-6 weeks). It was very good crisp kraut, not at all salty, we never cooked it but ate it raw, and we usually ate it all before it needed to be processed in the canner (which makes it limp). Anybody have any 'kraut secrets'?

Back to the 'half sours'. That's what I'm really after right now. I jumped in with both feet and (erroneously) followed a recipe that used vinegar (Walmart had a batch of fresh pickling cucumbers that I took advantage of), and I never had any grape leaves to add to them (tannic acid in grape leaves keeps the pickles crisp), and produced a [barely] edible pickle that was not at all crisp. Unacceptable. Any of you ladies have a good 'half sour' recipe?