Getting stressed about eating healthy isn't healthy

I'm in the middle of making sage cupcakes right now, so I'm hoping to keep this short. But this has been on my mind for a bit now and I think I'm really starting to grasp it.

I'll start here: I love food. You may or may not have guessed this about me. Less goes onto this blog than I think goes on it, but I think about posting about food ALL the time.

I'll go on to say: I also like being healthy.  I like feeling good and strong and energetic. And since what I eat affects my health more than anything else I do, I therefore like eating healthy.

But I like eating yummy too. And when healthy and yummy coincide, that's the ultimate bomb-diggity, I tell you.

There's a strange myth out there that healthy food isn't yummy food. But I guess it depends on how you define healthy food and I'm thinking that it's because people get healthy food mixed up with "health food." There's actually a BIG difference between the two.

Health food is soy protein, "candy" vitamins, wheat grass juice, spirulina* and cardboard "fiber" cereal that most people I've met have independently nick-named "twigs and stones." Yuck.  Yes, I agree, health food is grody!

Healthy food, however. Ahh, the goodness... don't even get me started on this. Okay, too late.

Real butter, fresh fruit and vegetables, homemade whole wheat sourdough bread, homemade pierogies with homemade sauerkraut. Homemade mayonnaise, ketchup, pickles, oh oh oh. I want to go eat something.

You're seeing a theme here: homemade = good. And it's true.

Of course, just cause it's made at home doesn't actually mean its healthy, but it's no doubt better than not homemade counterparts. I will never claim that my homemade marshmallows are "healthy" but they certainly are yummier than the jet puffed kind...

And you see, this is generally my motivation when it comes to food. I love making good food at home with real ingredients and, since I don't add superfluous sugar, chemicals or food-colourings, I really thought I was doing well. I was happy and felt healthy due to all this good food.

But then I read the first 70 pages of Nourishing Traditions. And I'd recommend you do it too, but I warn you: you will get freaked out. 

My first feeling was fear, then despair. I thought I had been eating healthy.

But no, I hadn't been soaking my grains, the milk I was using to make my homemade yogurt was nasty and full of trouble, my eggs weren't free-range and therefore hardly beneficial and I may as well be inviting hardened arteries and many other deadly diseases into my home by buying canola oil. And the fact that I was using white sugar? Forget it.

Oh what, those vegetables you buy aren't organic? You are dead, sister, or as good as.

I was scared. I was depressed. I was in complete distress. I thought I had been doing everything right! I mean, yeah, we still ate sugary laden treats every now and then, but I generally reduced the sugar... That's not good enough? Any amount of white sugar in my diet is going to kill me, wow, I had no idea.

So then I started wildly making changes. I soaked my flours for bread, biscuits, muffins. If I couldn't figure out how to make it without soaking the flour first I didn't make it.  And if  I had a whim to make something but hadn't thought of soaking, or if I had forgotten? Well, it simply didn't happen. I also did my utmost to stop using sugar.

Unsweetened oatmeal? gag it down baby, it's healthy and I remembered to soak it the night before. Mushy, flat banana muffins. What? You don't like them? Well, too bad, they're healthy so EAT THEM.

My good, delicious and nurtured baking skills and cooking talents went bye-bye for a while as I attempted to make things HEALTHY.

John did not complain. (much) He did mention the banana muffins "weren't particularly good" and he added his own sugar to his oatmeal (much to my alarm.)

But when I started trying to convince him of all the more money we'd have to start spending so that our food would be healthy... Well, he laid down the law. (Sort of.)

I had to calm down. Yes, spending boatloads of money on "organic" produce did kind of seem like a gigantic leap. Since our decision to to start saving money to buy a house we've tightened our belts, so to speak, on spending. Not that we spent a lot before, but I had decided I'd try to keep our monthly food bills under $130 a month. Then suddenly, I wanted to buy raw milk, organic vegetables, free-range eggs. These things are considerably more pricy than what we normally bought. My own mind's voice of reason yelled at me to calm down, and John's calm voice of reason calmly told me to calm down.

I was getting stressed out and feeling bummed about my non-organic potatoes in my gnocchi and at breakfast, I was cringing as I ate battery-raised chicken eggs. But I was also gagging as I ate unsweetened oatmeal and I was longing for a rich chocolatey sugar laden BROWNIE.  I had to think of my health!

Then it occurred to me. What's the point of food if it doesn't taste good? Yeah, yeah, I'll choke down some wild-caught salmon if someone else is paying, but really? I don't like the taste of fish. But it's healthy, and if someone else is paying, then I'm gonna get me some omega-3s down, baby! But when everything is gross because it's "healthy"? Um, no. I can't do it.

After all, I had to think of my health. Enjoyment of food is so very important to me that, I'm much more willing to eat something that's a little sub-par of the perfect health food every now and then, if it's yummier.

So I never figured out how to soak flour and get a good cookie out of it. No way am I giving up cookies! Right, yes, limit cookies, yes, yes. But give up sugar all together? No.

So I've drawn the line. Some things are more delicious when it's healthier, like homemade bread being a trillion times tastier than store-bought bread. And when you add whole-wheaty goodness? Yes! Oh and sourdrough bread? My gosh, I'm drooling and it's way more nutritious than regular old bread. And I was in on sourdough way before Sally Fallon approved of it.

Raw milk? TOTALLY worth the price for it's goodness and it's entirely more yummy than pasteurized, homogenized milk. My husband agreed and we've made that step. But some times you really do just need a little bit of sugar in your porridge, and if I forgot to soak flour before dinner, well, the non-soaked biscuits ain't gonna kill me. And dang it, I'm going to enjoy this peanut-butter chocolate chip cookie even if it IS slowly killing me due to non-organic peanuts and the fact that chocolate has caffeine and it has WHITE death sugar in it.

Obviously, real butter is better than margarine because it tastes better. Also happens to be healthier. And olive oil really does taste better than canola, so even if it's a bit pricier, I'll switch to using it all the time instead of just when the taste will make a difference.

Plus, John is happier. And by default, I am too. A healthy marriage is also an important key to being healthy, you know?

And fermented foods are FANTASTIC and healthier. And guess what, Sally Fallon? I discovered and liked fermented foods before I read your book. So there. *raspberry*

Okay, but actually, her book does have valuable information and I say "read it if you dare." But pick and choose your battles, because you can't win them all. I've even read some things saying that a certain amount of phytates (what I'm trying to get rid of by soaking my flour) are actually beneficial. So whats up with that? And while I, personally, never drink soda and find it absolutely disgusting, I don't think I would go so far as to call it "the veritable drink of the devil" as she does. And I also prefer my cook books to let me choose my own flours and not "allow" unbleached white flour in certain recipes. You don't allow me anything, sister! I make my own choices.

I'm so empowered and free now. Now that I figured out that stressing out about eating healthy isn't healthy.

And now I'm going to finish making my sage cupcakes and I'm going to put brown butter frosting on top that's CHOCK FULL of SUGAR.

But don't worry, they're soaked and made with sourdough, so it's not too bad.

*I actually like spirulina, but don't tell anyone.

Real milk

For my birthday John has given me raw milk. He said I can buy 6 gallons (over a period of time, not all at once, of course). I've already bought one.

The good stuff.

I'm not sure he realized it cost 9 dollars a gallon when he pulled the arbitrary number of "six" out of his head. It seems a bit pricey for a birthday present....(Hey, we're cheap, what can I say?)

 But after we bought it he seemed to think that 9 dollars every other week or so actually wasn't too pricey for something so good.

I think it tastes amazing. John thinks it tastes "basically the same" as store milk.

It comes from a farm about 55 miles from our town. That makes me happy!

And as soon as possible I made a batch of raw milk yogurt. Cream top and everything  baby. YEAH. Take that Stonyfields. *angry face* (As a side note, I still haven't written to them, I need to get on that.)

Sally Fallon in Nourishing Traditions says not to heat the milk past 110 degrees when making yogurt from raw milk so you don't kill the enzymes. Last time I was at the store, I meant to buy a candy thermometer so I could keep track of such a thing, but I forgot.

So I decided I'd try using my regular human temp-taking thermometer. I washed it. Then I put it in my milk as it was warming up. When the temperature reached 109.3 I pulled the milk off the stove and put the thermometer down. It started beeping frantically, more loud and urgent than I had ever heard it before. 

Poor thing. It probably thought I was about to spontaneously combust with the worst fever of all time. 

Make yogurt, not fevers.

But the yogurt turned out good.

Sally Fallon is making me paranoid: a milk rant.

About two weeks ago, I used our inter-library loan system to check out Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. I had heard the book mentioned a few times by bloggers I liked so I thought I'd take a look. I figured it probably had a great selection of fermented food recipes and maybe some other interesting stuff.

Scary but fascinating

What I did not expect was to be scared out of my whits concerning nearly everything I eat on a regular basis. And we eat fairly healthy compared to the standard American diet. I make my own bread and every baked item we eat. I use whole wheat flour the majority of the time. I'm always reducing sugar in recipes if I can get away with it.

When shopping, I read labels and ingredients carefully. If a food item has more than ONE ingredient, I scrutinize it closely. The only product with high-fructose corn syrup that I allow into my house is ketchup (although, not anymore. I'll do a post on my homemade ketchup soon). If I can't pronounce an ingredient I put the item back on the shelf.

As I've mentioned before, I don't buy organic in general because of the cost. But we eat primarily vegetables and whole grains and if I'm going to buy meat I usually will splurge on that to make sure it's actually good (i.e hormone free). I do buy free-range eggs for when we eat eggs, but I still use the cheap store-brand ones for baking purposes. I even drink whole milk, because separating all the fat from milk just sounds nasty and wrong.

But even though I felt good about the fact that I love olive oil, real butter and whole milk, I soon became panicked. I used regular non-extra virgin olive oil for cooking (saving my good stuff for when I'm not going to be heating it up) but the way they process olives after they get the first press causes the resulting second pressed olive oil to be rancid and unhealthy. I learned that my butter was missing valuable nutrients because it came from cows who possibly never saw the light of day and have been fed soy-products (among other nasties). And not only was I putting undo stress on my digestive system because my milk is pasteurized, but I was also endangering my heart by the tiny fact that my milk is homogenized.

What the-!? I didn't even know what homogenizing was!

Turns out, it's when they blast the fat particles of milk into tiny pores so they stay suspended through out the milk instead of condensing at the top. Sounds clever, right? You don't have to shake your milk...or whatever it is they do when people drink real milk.

But because it changes the chemical make up of the milk - making the fat particles tiny, as opposed to the large fat molecules they used to be - the fat is no longer healthy. Now, rather than hanging in the gut and intestines and drawing in toxins to help your body clean out, the teeny, teeming fat molecules go into your blood stream and contribute to hardening of arteries.

See why I'm so scared?

Added to the fact that since my milk is from cows who are fed GMO soy, corn and other crap (like other cows and their waste, no kidding), crammed into tiny space, given hormones to produce far more milk than any cow should be able to - even if I were to get this milk raw, unpasteurized, non-homogenized, it still wouldn't be a beneficial food product.

And I've been drinking this stuff for a good five years now!

So what do I do? One thing is certain, I cannot not have milk in my house. John - a milk addict - would go on strike, riot, rampage, foam at the mouth....

Okay, I'm joking. He actually understood fairly well when I explained my terrors to him. The alternative, however, is finding a local farm and buying fresh raw milk. Um delicious, and I wish wish wish, I could. But it's so expensive. And one day I'd like to own my own milk cows and live off that, but that dream waits until we have some land.

At least turning my milk into yogurt arms it with beneficial bacteria and enzymes to promote healthy digestion. But it doesn't solve the homogenized problem. Even Stonyfield Farms, who I used to love and trust, started homogenizing their whole milk yogurt. It didn't occur to me to be mad about this until recently. In fact, I didn't even realize that the reason that their amazing, most-delicious-yogurt-on-the-face-of-the-planet cream top yogurt was non-homogenized until after it wasn't anymore. I just noticed that they stopped doing the cream top thing and started crying. (Well, not really.)

Then when I started making my own yogurt (and I've got a batch going right now) I thought, "I want to try to make that cream top kind. How did they do that??" so I looked it up. That's when I found out they started homogenizing it, much to the dismay of many people. But apparently it cuts their costs so they won't change (though I'm still going to write them to let them know my displeasure. You should too, if you care.) That said, I'll never buy anything from Stonyfield again. And that makes me sad because they're based in my state, a forty minute drive from my apartment, and I used to love them.

So local farmers it is. I asked John if we could start buying local raw milk and he said... Well actually we had a really long conversation about it and it involved many other things, but what it summed up to was "maybe."  The thought process went something like this: continue to buy gross cheap milk now and save enough money to buy a house quickly, buy our own cows (or goats), never spend a cent on milk again (other than upkeep costs) and drink the best milk we can imagine in the future. Or, buy expensive good milk now,  buy a house one day, and then buy cows (or goats) and cut costs on milk then by drinking our own (and possibly make money on it by selling some too.)

Course, let's be realistic here. I know nothing. Zilch, nada, zip, about cows. Or goats, for that matter. And increasing our food budget to pay five or six dollars per gallon of milk rather than $2.50, isn't going to set us back that much. Seriously.

I'm trying to think of it in this way (and convince John to as well): Local raw milk (hormone and antibotic free, but I'm not worried if they aren't certified organic because that certification is just dang ridiculous.) Is not actually expensive. It that mass produced, hormone filled, pasteurized, homogenized, cattle farm milk that's cheap. Way cheaper than milk should be. I should look at the price of that milk on the shelf and think "Okay, why's it so cheap? What's the catch here?" And well, now I know what the catch is.

Taking care of cows, even on a small scale, can be expensive (probably). But I want to support local farmers, small scale farms and real people making a living on growing real food.

It's the culmination of several things, this new attitude and revelation. I've always approved of small farms and eating as local as possible, but, except for when I grow and forage my own food, I've never really done it myself. Then I read The Omnivore's Dilemma and I realized just how bad the food industry really was. But I still didn't do anything about it. And now I'm reading Nourishing Traditions, and then one of my favourite bloggers wrote this article, and I felt very convicted.

I've known it all along.

It's time to make some changes. I've been slowly getting around to it with my fermented foods kick, which has given me a new appreciation for what I can do with what I normally buy. But I need to change what I buy, too. So maybe we'll be drinking (homemade) almond milk for awhile until I find some local milk. And then we'll start small. We'll just have to cut back on our milk intake for awhile. A gallon every two weeks instead of one a week, whatever, no big deal. It's a sacrifice I'm willing to make.

Because even though I'm just one person, I think I can make a difference. Even if it's just a tiny one

In which I eat my friend's Christmas tree

I should have posted about this a couple months ago... Actually, I should have done this a couple months ago. But it happened that a couple months ago I was in Florida and don't forget that I'm a bit of a procrastinator. It's worth the wait, however, as its awesome. Like foraging from your living room!

My own Christmas tree

Next Christmas, if you find yourself feeling rather sad about paying money to cut down a tree to be a temporary decoration in your house and then feel sad about throwing it away a month later, then here is something you might want to consider:

Pine is edible.

And it's actually pretty yummy. It tastes a lot like it smells, on the astringent side, and with a dash of bitter. It may be an acquired taste, but I find myself liking a lot of strange-ish things.

If the taste doesn't suit you, here's something else to consider:

Pine is antiseptic, antibacterial, high in vitamin C and other nutritious minerals. You can use your Christmas tree to make health elixirs, cough and cold remedies or even as an excellent cleaner if nothing else interests you. I've read from Susun Weed that pine vinegar can even clear up a lung infection. This is some good stuff, folks. Seriously!

And if one doesn't suit your fancy, try another variety. The taste can really vary, so don't give up if you try one that isn't so yummy.

This year my friend* had a beautiful Christmas tree of a variety I had never seen before. It's needles were long and wide. They reminded me of rosemary. I asked her if I could taste it. Heh heh. Thankfully, my friend is used to me and my weird ways and told me to have a go if I really wanted.

Well I did, and it was actually quite pleasing to the palette. Up until now, the best tasting pine I've been able to find is White Pine. Her pine tree (and I might have this wrong but I think she said it was called a Scotch Balsam) was lemony, slightly minty, spicy and (of course) piney. It delighted me. I asked her if I could have it when she was done using it as her temporary decoration.

She happily obliged me, saying "I'm glad my super expensive Christmas tree is getting more uses than one!" And then I had a large bag of pine branches hanging about my  house for about a month before I finally got around to turning them into things.

Pine vinegar, pine simple syrup and a jar of pine needles

So far, what I've made is: Pine simple syrup, for flavoring beverages and maybe even making candy.. (I think it might be fun to make pine lemonade, though John thinks it'll taste like cleaner....) Pine vinegar, which I intend to use in cooking as one would use balsamic vinegar. And pine soda.

Yup! Pine flavoured soda. It's kinda wild tasting. I carbonated it using a fermented wild yeast starter that I learned to make here at Learning Herbs. Instead of flavoring my soda with blueberries, as in the linked recipe, I made a sugary pine decoction and turned that into soda. Good stuff!

I also stripped most of the left over branches of their needles and intend to use them as an herb in cooking, the way one uses rosemary. But I could also put it in tea and blend it with other flavors. I'm thinking of chopping up the remaining needle-less branches and slow steeping them in olive oil for some piney oil. Which has many uses in and of itself! Salves, salads, wood polish...

I love that I can eat my cleaners and skin care. No toxins here!

For the simple syrup, I combined 2 cups sugar and 1 cup water in a pot. I added a bunch up pine needles and some of the smaller branches and stirred and let simmer under a lid for about 15 minutes. I probably could have let it go longer. The more pine you use, the more piney it will taste, (obviously). I thought mine was a little too sweet and not as piney as I hoped. I was following the Simple Syrup recipe in Joy of Cooking, but next time I think I'll use less sugar and more pine.

For the vinegar, take a glass jar and pack it with pine needles and branches then fill the jar with apple cider vinegar. Put the lid on (if it's a metal lid, place something like wax paper or several layers of plastic between the jar and lid because vinegar really corrodes metal) label it with the date and wait 4-6 weeks. Then you can strain it (or not) and use as you please, on food, or your toilet! You might want to make two jars, one for each, you know, so nothing cross-contaminates, eh...

So next time you have a Christmas tree, or someone you know does, try it out. Not all of them taste as good as others, but they're all edible and useful in so many ways. I was particularly delighted to find a tree that tasted so dern yummy, but there's loads to do with even the not-so-yummy varieties. You can even just go out to your closest woods and bring home some pine today if you can't wait till Christmas. Go ahead and try it!

I wonder if pine ice cream would be any good...

* I didn't actually get to use my own Christmas tree this year for a couple reasons - it was not nearly as tasty as my friend's and I didn't want a pine overload in my house, and we actually forgot to water it most of the time we had it, so by the time we got to taking it down there wasn't much left to it.  Don't let this happen to you!

I made yogurt

You'd better believe it, bucko.

In my recycled storage container. Resourceful, eh?

 Isn't it beautiful?

And it's yummy too. And cheap! Now I can eat yogurt on a more regular basis and not feel guilty at how much money I'm currently eating.
You see, I buy (or used, to, hehehe) Stonyfield's delicious whole organic yogurt. I love that they are organic (and honestly, I don't buy a lot of organic because it's very pricey, but this was one of my few exceptions) They have live cultures and are delicious. But at $3.69 a quart, they were one of the most expensive things on my receipts every shopping trip (unless I happened to buy meat, that time 'round). A gallon of (non-organic) milk is $2.49. So.... a gallon of milk can make me 4 quarts of yogurt for 2.49. That's a lot cheaper! I might even be able to justify buying organic milk for my yogurt making processes at a price like that! But we'll see about that.

You know, we're kinda trying to save money to buy a house right now.

I'm not going to go into super detail about how I made it, because there's quite a few picture by picture directions on the internet. The one I followed is here, with a few back up researches just to make sure I had everything in a row. But it was so easy and successful I could explain it to you in, like, three sentences.

Ready? Here goes.

Take yer milk (and you wanna go whole, because it's the best, you know? I heart fat) put it in your crock pot, heat on low for 2.5 hours. Turn your crock pot off and let sit 2-3 hours. (The directions say 3, I did 2, because I was impatient, I think you mainly want it warm but not TOO warm) Add a little yogurt (I read the ratio was generally 2 tablespoons of yogurt per cup of milk) stir it up, replace the lid on your crockpot and cover with a towel to keep things warm. Let it sit for 8-12 hours. I went to sleep and in the morning: amazing! Yogurt!

Well, maybe that was a few more than 3 sentences, I wanted to put my own spin on it, you see?

I also chilled mine before stirring it or disturbing it at all, because I read that it can help make it thicker. Not sure if this is true or not, though, because I never tried not doing it. But it's only my first batch, so maybe we'll try some right away and see if this is so...

Some good things to remember:
*save a half a cup or so of your yogurt so that you can use your homemade kind to start your next batch. *I've read that it lasts 7-10 days in your refrigerator, so only make as much as you can eat at a time. I have a feeling it will probably last longer, and if I find out, I'll let you know. But just in case, I only made 3 pints. One of which is already gone....and I just finished it yesterday!

Even though I now have a method that works, I'm kind of curious to know the how behind it all. Why heat it up and let it sit? Why not just heat to the temp you need first and then add your yogurt? What happens in the milk that makes this step necessary? I'm kind of food-scientist in this area. I love just doing things that work, but I really love knowing why it works. Then I can change things all I want, so long as I know the rules.'

So if I find out, I'll post about it!

I also bottled my first batch of komboucha a few days ago.  Sometime around lunch I'm going to break one open and taste it. I'm SO excited about it. I'll update you on that too, sometime soon.

tehe, love the empty vodka bottle.

Meantime, I want to give a little shout-out to one of my favourite blogger's new blogs. Even though she has no idea who I am (I'm not much of a commenter, see?), I've been a pretty regular reader of Kathleen's previous blog for about a year now. She just launched a new one that sounds sooooo interesting. So check it out at Becoming Peculiar. If you're interested in Christianity, being kind of radical, or just like reading new ideas or new spins on old ideas, you'll probably find something that catches your fancy. I'm eating it up right now.

Year of the Fermented Food

First things first. Pretty much everyone who knows me personally knows this by now so the world wide web may as well know too:
I'm pregnant!
Approximately half way through, too.
Here's a cute belly photo:

21 weeks, 2 days

You can use this as an excuse for my absence if you like (but in reality I'm just lazy about blogging.)  Now lets get on to the good stuff!

I hereby dub the year of our Lord two-thousand-and-twelve The Year of the Fermented Food. Let it be known through out the land that everyone should get on this fermented food bacteria probiotic bandwagon with me!

 I've always been pretty interested in getting good bacteria in my life but only recently has it occurred to me that I could make it... Sometime in January I made my first attempt at a naturally fermented batch of sauerkraut. Would you like to see a photo?

It wasn't successful, I'm sad to say. It was actually really gross. Like seriously nasty. It tasted like really salty old people...I told you it was gross.

 But I'm not one to give up easily; It was the beginning of many a fermented food experiment! And most of them have been successful!

Since that fateful day that I have revisited my sauerkraut desires, following this recipe/guide and this time I was quite pleased with the turn out.

That being a marvelous triumph I turned my hand to other naturally fermented things. When I say "naturally fermented" I mostly mean by use of wild yeast. Though I have turned to my bakers yeast when things seemed a little slow or inactive.

A little note on why: Fermented foods are crazy healthy and good for you. They fill your body with good bacteria that fight off the bad stuff. They improve digestion and keep your intestines flowing smoothly (sorry if that gives anyone a bad visual.)  Obviously, I want some of this goodness in my diet! It's easy to get a probiotic boost from things like storebought keifer or yogurt or even straight up "probiotic health supplement". But those kinds of things tend to be pricy, especially when you want to eat them up as much as I do. And while I could afford such things if I wanted to, it's times like these that cause me to wonder: "Could I make it at home for less than it costs to buy?" And the answer is generally Yes.

Which begs the question "Why buy when you can make!"

 Actually, that was an exclamation.

So, friends, that is what I did. A head of cabbage with the outer leaves intact, a tablespoon or so of salt and a little effort and waiting time and voila! Really healthy, teeming with good bacteria, very inexpensive and not to mention yummy sauerkraut! Tastes good and is good for you! And is cheap! It's a win, win, win.

So I mentioned that I've tried a few other things too. Let me tell you about them.

Have you heard of komboucha? Man is it good stuff. Basically, it's fermented sweet tea, but it's not very sweet once it's done fermenting. Because the yeast eats the sugar, and that's how it gets big and strong. It eats sugar so I don't have to! Wait...I like sugar. Nevermind....

The thing with komboucha is that you need a "mother" or a "scoby" to start your own process. Once you've got one, you can reuse it and reuse it, plus it procreates so you can give ones to friends. But where do you get one to start? Tee, hee. Oh the cleverness of me.

Actually, the cleverness of google searches. Or the cleverness of me to use google searching... Anyway....

First, I tried "where to get a komboucha scoby" and found places selling them: "I'll ship you a great komboucha scoby for the small price of $15.99 plus shipping!"  Uh huh, no thanks. I'm trying to save money here. Then I tried, "How to make a komboucha scoby" Ahhhh, much better. It did involve a monetary investment, but a much smaller one. And no shipping needed. Did you know that you can buy raw komboucha at healthfood stores? It's not quite a mother komboucha, but it has the potential to become one!

I went to natural foods store and found in their refrigerated section a 12 oz bottle of GT's raw komboucha, citrus flavoured for $3.50 (this is why I don't buy this stuff on a regular basis). Back at home, I brewed a couple cups of green tea, sweetened it about 1 tablespoon of sugar per cup and then let it cool to room temperature. I put it into a quart sized mason jar and proceeded to dump the entire contents of my bottle of komboucha into the jar. I covered it with a muslin cloth and rubberbanded it. Then I shoved it into a darkish corner of my kitchen (all corners of my kitchen are dark, actually.) and left it for about 10 days. Depending on the coolness of your house, the time can vary.  When I checked back, there it was: a slimy skin about half a centimeter thick floating on the top of my jar. Yum. My own scoby.

I'm currently working on my first real batch of komboucha, I kind of don't know what I'm doing. Just following various tutorials on the internet. You too, can do this.... If you want. But I would recommend finding someone who knows what they're doing and has done it multiple times to learn from.  Here's a pic of my experimentation:

Note the scoby slime on top, which I accidentally disrupted while trying to get a photo

I'll let you know how it turns out in a couple weeks. Komboucha brewing is similar to beer brewing. It has a primary fermentation in the carboy (or in this case, the half gallon pitcher) and then a second fermentation in the bottle, where you add a bit of sugar in some form to prime it. Course, there's lots of differences too. Komboucha likes and needs lots of oxygen to stay alive, and for priming "sugar" most people use fruit juice, while beer needs to be kept in a completely airtight environment while it ferments and then needs some real, simple sugar (such as corn sugar) to get that secondary fermentation carbonation kick.

Please note John's beer in airlocked carboy. I'm really excited about this one:

It's a maple pale ale.  He used maple sap instead of water for brewing it and he's going to use maple syrup instead of corn sugar to prime it. Nomsy. Can't wait for this baby to be born so I can get back to alcohol!

Just kidding. Sort of.

I kind of do miss beer, though.

And now that it's warm and springy dandelions will be popping their merry little blooms up and John and I are intending to go big on the dandelion wine making this year. A five gallon batch!

Isn't fermentation fun?

There's other stuff I'll be telling you about, I've got two sourdough starters going now. One is on the older side, it has the most pleasing aroma but I've noticed it's rising power is weak. While I want to fix that, I also thought I'd try a second one, for the heck of it.

left is my older, very yummy one, right is the newbie who is already bubbly and promising

I'm making my own apple cider vinegar:

Put those apple cores to use, baby!

  And I made soda which is carbonated naturally by fermentation, and I plan to make yogurt sometime in the next couple weeks too. Maybe this blog will get a little love and you'll hear about it.