Meaning of "for all my conviction" and "account for"?

Question

I'm reading The Fermented Man by Derek Dillinger. The author talks about how easy it is to ferment vegetables. You just need to cut the veggies and brine them. However, one day he discovered that Japanese people use rice bran to ferment vegetables. Then he says:> “**For all my conviction that fermenting vegetables is one of the> easiest things in the world, I had not accounted for the various ways> other cultures have found to ferment something.** It’s not always as> easy as shredding and cubing and plopping into a jar.”I’m confused about the sentence in bold. Firstly, it seems “conviction” has two basic definitions:1. an unshakable belief in something without need for proof or evidence2. The judgment of a jury or judge that a person is guilty of a crime as charged.Secondly, “account for” can have many different meanings:1. To keep a record of how money has been spent2. To know or find out where something or someone is3. To explain or justify something4. To form some proportion or amount of a larger whole or groupThirdly, “for all my” seems very simple and colloquial but also very vague to me.Can anybody tell me which definitions fit the context? And as a whole, what does this sentence mean?

Answer 1

The context ought to help you here. The first phrase, "for all my conviction that..." suggests that although the speaker believed something to be true, he was facing evidence to the contrary. The word "for" in that phrase means approximately "despite."

The second phrase can also be parsed with the help of context. "I hadn't accounted for (something)" means that it appeared or occurred as a bit of a surprise. It's synonymous with the phrase "it hadn't occurred to me that..."

Best wishes

Answer 2

Good work good work checking the dictionary for definitions!

For for all my conviction ... the best definition is the first one.

Account for ... the best definition is the third one.

The sentence basically means that he always believed or has been convinced of how easy it is to ferment vegetables but he had no idea how many different ways exist to do it.