Reddit reviews Real Food Fermentation: Preserving Whole Fresh Food with Live Cultures in Your Home Kitchen

You are right, there is no mention of vinegar in the recipe I have linked to.

The vinegar is optional, it just lower the ph level of the brine more quickly, increasing the odds of getting crunchy pickle. I use the recipe in this book Real Food Fermentation, which suggest, as an optional ingredient, to add some pre-boiled apple cider vinegar or red wine vinegar.

Blogging and/or having a website that you update regularly is great:

• provides writing practice
  
• provides writing samples, if you ever need them
  
• serves the role of a diary (albeit a public one)
  
• helps you organize your thoughts
  
• helps you meet other people (bloggers and otherwise)
  
• builds your brand
  
• helps you market any other products and services you may have (books, edibles)
  
• makes it much easier to get a book contract
  
• if you have enough traffic, can earn you money
  
• can get you press passes to things
  
  I use Blogger. Many serious food bloggers use WordPress. WordPress gives you more tools for doing cool stuff, but it also requires way more care and feeding.
  
  At this point, most of my energy goes into offline stuff.
  
  I started as a blogger, at http://FeedMeLikeYouMeanIt.com/ .
  
  I have run lots of events, and will do more: http://FeedMeLikeYouMeanIt.com/events .
  
  Two and a half years ago, my book was published: Real Food Fermentation.
  
  (If you have questions, please ask!)