Kitchen Chemistry: Kombucha!

This is my 2nd installment of Cheap, Green & Probably-Won't-Cause-Death: the Kombucha experiment.

I've had a bad kombucha tea habit for about 5 years now. I classify it as a vice because each 12oz. bottle runs about $4.50 and can only be found with certain dealers, shady organizations such as Whole Foods & Wild Oats. It's a fermented tea drink and depending upon which corner of the internet you ask, it's either going to cure cancer or possibly kill you because it's fermented & unpasteurized. As in most things I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. It's a low-calorie, refreshing drink with pro-biotics that while much healthier than soda probably will not cure cancer. As for its raw, unpasteurized nature, it behooves you to be mindful of cleanliness should you endeavor to make your own, as I have.

Meet Velma Mayweather "Mother"

Step 1: Procure SCOBY
Scoby, sometimes referred to as the kombucha mushroom, or yeast mother, stands for Symbiotic Colony of Bacteria and Yeasts. I named mine Velma Mayweather. Gifted to me by a kombucha brewing co-worker, I know she came from a good home. You can buy a SCOBY online, or you can start your own simply by purchasing a bottle of raw, unpasteurized Kombucha (Google the directions if you try that one.)

Step 2: Procure large glass or lead-free ceramic jug
I found a green ceramic 1.5 gallon jug with a spicket. It's perfect. If you get a glass jug you will need to keep your kombucha in a dark, warm place, like a closet or in a cabinet. Ceramic you can leave on the counter.


Step 3: Make sweet tea. 
Black or Green Tea, any flavor, even Lipton. I use 12 tea bags & 2 cups of sugar for 1.5 gallons. There are thousands of recipes out there, so look around. I brew the tea, add the sugar and pour it in my jug adding cold water until it's full. Cold water also brings the tea close to room temperature which is where you want it before adding your SCOBY. When sweet tea is room temperature just add your SCOBY in with the tea that is in the packaging. It might sink, it might swim. Doesn't really matter either way. Don't pour the kombucha from your SCOBY mother into the sink, that tea will help start your batch. Cover your jug with a tea towel NOT A LID. Your SCOBY needs to breathe. I secure the tea towel with an elastic ribbon. Rubber bands are popular for this purpose as well.

Go on vacation. She'll be fine.

Step 4: Go away
Leave your mother alone. Go on vacation if you like. You can start tasting your kombucha around the 1 week mark. You can leave it to ferment for 2 weeks, depending on the flavor you prefer. It's sweeter at 1 week, more tart & wine-like after 2 weeks. The warmer it is, the faster it ferments.


NOTE: Contamination can occur. Should you be unlucky enough to grow mold on your SCOBY throw it out. Start over. There is no saving it.


Step 5: You might be finished
While you were off skiing, learning Mandarin, on a 7-day bender or snorkeling in the Maldives your mother produced a daughter. The daughter SCOBY will form at the top of your jug and will be an 1/8 to a 1/4 inch thick. Now you have two! This happens every time. Feel free to share or retire your mother to a jar in the fridge as a back-up.


If you like how it tastes, drink up! Strain it into containers and store it in the fridge. Start your new batch by brewing more sweet tea, adding your daughter SCOBY and about a cup of the kombucha you just made.


Step 6: You are an overachiever
There is a process called secondary fermentation, of which I am a big fan. This last batch I ventured into grape flavored kombucha, which is so delicious. I used pint mason jars, poured about an inch of grape juice in the bottom of the jar & then filled it up with kombucha and secured the lids. Then you set the jars in a dark place for a day or two and then pop them in the fridge until you're ready to drink them. The secondary fermentation also adds fizz.


THE END

Grape Kombucha & a couple unflavored

Is it dangerous? Am I going to poison myself? Was I taught nothing about food safety as a child?! This unfortunate American fear of natural foods is something that I have been working through for a few years. I grew up drinking unpasteurized milk, straight from the barn to the table. I now make my own cheese. Many delicious foods are fermented or "spoiled" - sour cream, bread, vinegar, wine, yogurt, cheese, beer, cider, on & on. I find comfort in knowing that these foods have been made for thousands of years in places without antibacterial soap, running water or electricity and still, the human race survived. Plus, they didn't have Google. I'm feeling pretty good about my odds.

Poltergeist Lived in the Basement

When I was growing up our neighbor on Maple St. had a pet raccoon. He lived in the basement. The raccoon, not the neighbor. You can imagine how pissed I was to discover that our basement did not also come with a raccoon. I begged. I pleaded. Instead of a raccoon I received lectures about the dangers of wild animals and how they belong in nature and that they probably have rabies and/or lice and while they may LOOK cute, they actually want to kill you and eat your face. I'm paraphrasing.

During summer evenings the neighbor would sit on his front porch, drinking beer out of a can while his raccoon scampered around the porch and into the front yard. Poltergeist, the raccoon, would pick up sticks and walnuts from the yard with his prehensile raccoon hands and redistribute the items in what seemed to be a thoughtful manner. I don't remember the raccoon's name, it was probably Bandit, but if I had a pet raccoon I'd name him Poltergeist, because that is a far better name for a pet raccoon that lives in the basement.

On those summer evenings when Poltergeist was redistributing yard waste in what was probably an alphabetical manner, I'd sneak over and sit on the grass cross legged and wait for him to wander over and smell me, sometimes placing his little black raccoon paw on my arm. The neighbor man had seen me creep over, winked at me and then pretended to look the other way. He tolerated me petting his bristly head (again, the raccoon, not the neighbor) and stared at me with implacable eyes. In retrospect, he was probably trying to figure out how best to dismember me so I'd be more easily alphabetized.

I only got to visit Poltergeist a few times in stolen moments when I wasn't being closely watched, which was very irresponsible parenting because it was the 80's and according to all adults everywhere, kids were being stolen left and right, probably by single men living alone who kept pet raccoons in their basement.

It's a miracle I ever survived to adulthood.

Creative Directoring My Way Into People's Hearts

Earlier today:
"What do you mean you didn't realize it was that soon? June comes before July. May comes before June. That's how calendars work."

Cheap, pimple-free & not autistic

I read the recent autism study that reports 1 in 60 boys are born with autism. I'm not making this up, stuff I make up is far more believable than that. Read it for yourself at the CDC site: http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/features/counting-autism.html

This is not happening in other countries. This is an unprecedented increase of about a bajillion percent. Bajillion is too a number. It has to be something we're eating, or breathing, or rubbing on our skin. That or radioactive mosquito escapees from a government lab that did not get the memo about the war on women and are confusedly attacking the wrong sex. Radioactive mosquitos are really stupid that way and are about twice as likely to attack male fetuses than female fetuses.

In seriousness, it's scary shit and no one knows why it's happening. I think we can all agree that the immunization theory has been thoroughly debunked, leaving us exactly nowhere. For me, I know that I eat a lot of things from questionable origins, probably sprayed with toxic chemicals that some agency somewhere decided is "safe". The same agencies that have assured us time and again that the seafood coming out of the Gulf (post BP oil spill) is totally safe despite the deformities and mutations in about 10% of specimens studied! Shrimp without eyes? Delicious! Crab without claws? Convenient! Fish with tumors? More meaty!

This isn't of immediate concern to me, as I've decided to breed at the last possible moment, if at all. Picture Beulah, my last viable egg, shriveled, dehydrated, rheumatic, pouring one out for her fallen homies when I call her up on her mobile. Beulah answers, expecting meals on wheels or maybe a term life insurance agent or perhaps she'd been investigating a reverse mortgage and instead she has to hurry home and tidy up and make some tea because about a million sperm are on their way over.

Anyway, might breed, someday. In thinking of that, as well as being incredibly cheap, I've been investigating ways to introduce less potential autism or cancer causing agents into my life.

Welcome to my first installment of
Cheap & Green & Probably-Won't-Cause-Death: The face edition
The best homemade alternative I've found so far came from Dr. Oz. It's an acne fighting, exfoliating scrub that is practically free. Crush 4 - 6 aspirin, mix with a little bit of lemon juice and then wash your face. It's like magic. Pimple fighting, pore exfoliating magic.

I'd like to apologize for having to tell you about the devastating new autism research and Beulah my geriatric ova in order to tell you about the magic, but that's just how my brain works.

You'll thank me later

My favorite blogger Jenny Lawson wrote a book. It's so funny it's an ab workout. 

Bird Murder

From the bungalows, Santa Monica.

The lugubrious birds are back.
Winged terrorists.
Conniving, plotting, feathered torturers.

Every night beginning around 11pm they start chirping. Angrily. Loudly. Incessantly. All night. Every night. It's wrong. It's just so wrong. It's perplexing. It's annoying. It completely backs up my birds-are-evil theory. Those migration patterns? Far too complex. Mark my words, birds are up to something. Global domination seems far fetched, but so did iPads 5 years ago.

I just googled "obnoxious night birds" and it took me to a garden web forum and now I feel like a huge loser. Apparently, the angry nocturnal bird question is quite a hot button topic among the garden web set, as is misspelling, improper use of their, there and they're, and ridiculous theories about tree nesting foxes. I console myself with the knowledge that I did not post to this thread, but I've read it and there's simply no denying that.

While the gardenweb people seem intent upon identifying the source (be it bird or fox or owl or tree frog), I'm preoccupied with what the birds are saying. It's like getting your nails done at a Korean salon and all the ladies are giggling and throwing you sidelong glances and you know they're totally mocking you and all you can hope to gain at that point is just to know the reason WHY. But you will never know why unless you take Korean at the local community college, which probably doesn't even offer Korean. And then you spend hundreds of dollars on rosetta stone CDs that you have to painstakingly convert to MP3 and make a playlist called "fucking Korean spa ladies", copy it to your iPhone and learn Korean while you're stuck in traffic on the 405 while the driver on your right is picking his nose and the douchebag producer in the porsche to your left is getting road head and all the while you are trying to learn how to order spaghetti in Korean. After you learn what you think is a passable amount of Korean you go back to that nail salon, triumphant, because now you are armed with the ability to understand why they ridicule you, only to find out they're not Korean. They're Vietnamese.

The point is this: those nocturnal rowdy fuckers are mocking me. And they're up to something. This has nothing to do with sleep deprivation. Nothing at all.


P.S.
Dear Overland Park and adjacent areas,

It's 1am and I'm sitting up writing bullshit instead of drinking my face off and making questionable life choices and googling bird murder methods. I expect payment in the form of comments.

Death Fun Facts & other travel related nonsense

I recently returned from Cancun & Cozumel. I know this, because no one offered me a mojito all day. Also, I was wearing a bra AND pants. The evidence is conclusive that my vacation is over.

Air Travel Fun Fact in reference to death - b/c all fun facts should really be correlated with the potential for death, yes?

The chance for the average American traveler, in the course of a lifetime, to die in an airplane crash is 1/5,552. The chance to die in a car accident is 1/247 (The New York Times, 2008). This is the fun fact mantra I use before and after downing dramamine and two mini bottles of amaretto as my pre-flight cabin check. 

The following link has an infographic. I'm a sucker for a good infographic, that and mojitos. This dubious data seems to report that Branson, Missouri is the #10 travel destination -- worldwide. I find this unbelievable, but I never thought Bush would be elected President once, never mind twice, so what do I know? But Branson. Missouri? German tourists must be the culprit. There is simply no other explanation.

http://kipsang.com/2011/02/07/travel-and-vacation-statistics/

I want peacocks

I don't trust people who don't know what they want. People who let life happen to them with very little direction are flaky, they disappear, they aren't to be depended upon. I also distrust morning people, vegans and Prius drivers. I digress.

In fairness it's scary to say what you really want. At some point we learn or we're taught that wanting is shameful. In my case, I had a step-mother who called me selfish each and every time I expressed a desire. This was clearly transference. I imagine she felt she made a daily sacrifice for everyone else's well-being at the expense of her own. I suppose she repressed her desires, probably never even giving them words or a space big enough to breathe, tamping them down and castigating herself for selfishness. I reject that. As the old saying goes, if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy. In the case of the cabin losing pressure secure your oxygen mask before helping others. You can't give to others what you don't have. So let's make Mama happy, secure our masks, shore up our souls, because then we can have fulfilling relationships with other people instead of seeking other people out to fill the gaps in our lives and psyches, the gaps that are ultimately mine and my responsibility to manage.

I don't think that you get much of anything worth having in life if you don't go after it. Imagine what would happen if you exhibited 20 seconds of insane courage and went after what you really wanted, courageously, damning the torpedoes. It's quite inspiring this idea of just being okay with failure, nothing ventured, nothing gained. However, what do you want? What do I really want that I don't have? If I could get over the shame of wanting, get past the embarrassment of wanting and allow myself to really verbalize my desires -- what kind of acts of courage would it take to make it happen?

what i want
Here's my list, for today anyway.
A house where I can have peacocks and a goat to eat my yard (so I don't have to mow it). I will name the goat Oscar and the peacocks Leland & Georgette (they're in love). I will teach Ephraim, the giant red poodle to not chase peacocks or goats. Perhaps I will have to teach Oscar not to chase Ephraim. Can you reason with a goat? These are things I should find out.

I think the insane act of courage to achieve that would be in actually finishing a novel and sending out a thousand query letters to literary agents and receiving a hundred rejection letters and not becoming a terrible alcoholic in that process, a process that should probably involve Xanax. & a little vodka. Probably together, even though it's incredibly contraindicated, but just because pharmaceutical companies don't want us to have fun. That is what illegal drugs are for.

I want a man who finds me ineluctable (irresistible, inevitable). If he knows the definition of that word we may be well on our way. The insane courage needed to get that accomplished would be the illogical act of letting someone in. I'd have to do vulnerable and a little less fierce.

That's pretty much my list. It's fascinating how difficult it is to even have the courage to say what you want and that's the easy part.

potential rash = adventure

I recently suffered a break up with a software engineer. Most of this was conducted via email which is a really bad idea. Spoken words fade and even those of us with the best memories lose our grasp of the precise language over just a few hours time. Not so with email! You can reread that bullshit and achieve near precise levels of infuriation. Each and every time.

In my defense I didn't realize that the heated emails were building up to a dissolution of the agreement (which was exclusively dating each other and not knowing anyone else (biblically) while this contract was in place). Now voided, I'm free to know other men - Biblically.

I digress. In one dastardly missive the software engineer wrote AND I QUOTE "you have only a narrow and limited concept of what true adventure means and what goes along with it. You are more familiar with consumer imitations of adventure than true daring and true self-reliance."

Before I proceed, you should know that I allowed him to live, but on the condition that he do his living far, far from where I'm doing my living. He later profusely apologized, showing a sincere desire to make amends and retracting everything that he'd said. There's a parable in here - never argue over email. It's far easier to forgive what someone said to you, out loud, in the heat of it. Quite a different matter to forgive what is written and conceivably well thought out. I did forgive him, but it's conditional upon proximity. If he's across town, he can bask in the warmth of my magnanimity. If I can see him, my words will likely get away from me, despite my best intentions to exhibit kindness and goodwill. Let's not forget that I let him live and and continue to view this as personal growth and spiritual progress.

As for my narrow and limited concept of true adventure... I jumped out of an airplane. It was scary as shit. I'm never doing that again. Even so, I defy anyone to tell me that jumping from an airplane at 12,000 feet is not adventurous. I've travelled the world. My passport has stamps. Air travel in a WWII era plane across Nicaragua is foolish and adventurous. I moved across the country with $230 and no job because I was in love. That's clearly retarded, but also adventurous! Just last week I rode a public bus in Cancun.  Two days ago I hiked Mayan ruins on Cozumel. There were lizards. There was also a Google maps bicycle but that should not take away from your appreciation of my sense of adventure! There were lizards.  New rule: anything that may result in a rash gets to be classified as adventurous.

I'm sensing a pattern. Things that are dangerous, foolhardy, clearly not well planned and likely will turn out to be mistakes are adventurous. Rather funny when you consider that almost every lesson we're taught by our parents is a lesson in averting dangerous, foolhardy, badly planned mistakes.

My question is this: why were we not warned away from falling in love? That's a dangerous adventure.

amreeta

The definition of amreeta is ambrosia, nectar of the gods, etc.

I know this word because I play words with friends with a CHEATER. Apparently, some of my friends do not abide by the same moral compass that I find imperative when playing word games. He busted out "amreetas" & right after I had a seizure, I looked it up. He did not know this word. I know this because I challenged him to define it. He couldn't.

I don't even know if we can be friends anymore.