No kitties, Kombucha!

So ... about kombucha. Kombucha is fermented tea. It's an ancient Asian drink and is available at many health food stores and even some grocery stores like Hannaford. There are many supposed health benefits, but the main ones are lots of pro-biotics (good for the digestive system) and lots of B vitamins (likely due to the yeast).

If you've ever had hard cider, I think that the taste is similar, but less sweet. There are "hard iced teas" on the market, but I don't think that the flavor is very like those. And, yes, as a fermented beverage that starts out with sugar, it does contain a very small amount of alchohol - but a lot of that is dependent upon how long you ferment it.

I decided to embark on making my own due to the fact that the cost of the stuff I like is about $3.70 per 16 ounce bottle. I looked into it online and found a number of different sites and blog entries devoted to the brewing of kombucha. It sounded simple enough - tea, water, sugar and time ... except that I would need a starter culture, sometimes called a Kombucha mushroom, but more technically and accurately referred to as a "SCOBY". S.C.O.B.Y stands for "Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast" and is exactly that. You can buy a SCOBY online for anywhere from $15-$30, but I was leery of all these little individual sites and researched if there was a way to make my own.

Sure enough, there is! It's a little time-consuming, but it's relatively inexpensive, and the three that I grew have made me several batches of kombucha and ensure that I can rotate them so they can rest a little between batches... and I always have one backup. The cool thing is that they grow their own replacements - a "baby" that you can separate from the "mother" when the baby is thick enough.

Here is a list of the things you would need were you to decide to brew your own kombucha:

• LOTS of black or black and green teas (there are some that believe some black tea is essential for a good kombucha - who am I to argue that?) - preferably organic and it's great if you can find affordable free-trade tea. I found organic black and green teas at Hannaford.
• White cane sugar. Can be organic if you prefer, but my understanding is that the sugar is almost completely consumed by the fermentation process, so most people aren't as picky about this. Other sweeteners may be iffy - honey, for example, has natural anti-bacterial properties and so might kill the bacterial part of your culture, ruining your kombucha. Probably best to stick with plain white cane sugar especially to start.
• SCOBY plus some starter tea - generally included if you purchase a SCOBY online.  If you grow your own, you will have the leftover tea from that starter. And you will always save some kombucha from each batch you brew to protect your stored SCOBY and use as starter tea for a new batch.
• At least one, prefereably two, 1 gallon glass jar(s). I purchased 5 litre canning jars online - they were pricey - or at least the shipping was high, but they fairly sturdy.  You might be able to find gallon or larger glass jars at a restaurant if you know anyone who might be willing to save them for you.  Or, if you purchase in bulk and can find glass jars that large, and don't mind eating a lot of pickles or whatever before you can use them ...
• Cheesecloth (I triple layer it for better protection from flies and such), a square or two of muslin or other breathable but fairly tight weave cloth large enough to hang a couple of inches over the mouth of your jar(s). Some people use a lint free kitchen towel.
• Rubberbands. Several. Large enough to go around the mouth of your jar and whatever material it is you cover it with. Just get a package of them so you have plenty of them when you get going - eventually they will stretch out and break, and you'll want to have more to replace broken ones.
• 1 -2 quart Pyrex or other heat resistant bowl or measuring cup.  I have both, but am now mostly using my 4 cup Pyrex measuring cup. The measuring cup can be used in both the preparation process and the bottling process, so it might be your best bet.
• Tea kettle or small stainless steel stock pot.
• Six to eight 15-16 oz bottles. If you already drink a commercially sold kombucha you can sometimes use those bottles - especially if they have screw on caps. Or you can do what I did and buy bottles ... or what I really did was buy a case of Grolsch beer in the flip top bottles and drink or discard the beer for the bottles. It is actually cheaper to buy a case of Grolsch and pour the beer down the drain to get the bottles than it is to buy the bottles online and pay for shipping. Shipping glass is EXPENSIVE.
• A funnel that will fit into the necks of your bottles. Still tricky, but the funnel truly helps in bottling.
• Plastic straws. I have a little dispenser similar to the old fashioned straw dispensers one used to find in the old soda shops - this keeps them clean and protected in storage. You will want to use the straws to help sample your kombucha during the fermenting process to see if it's at the point you would want to bottle it yet - i.e., taste-testing.
• A quiet, warmish (70-85 degrees F) space big enough to hold at least one, if not both, of your gallon jars, and possibly 3 or more of your bottles. I use the top of my fridge right now, but I'm thinking I will need to rearrange the area over my wall oven - mine is an old oven with a pilot light, so there is always a little bit of heat rising from it. The warmer the area, the faster your fermentation will take place.

So ... there is a little investment in time and equipment/supplies if you really want to brew your own kombucha. While you can do it in smaller containers, that means more SCOBYs, so the gallon container is ideal. Two containers means you can start a new batch before the first one is finished. I haven't quite gotten that timing down yet, but I'm hoping to at some point have batches overlapping by 3-4 days so that I never run out. I have already saved a bunch of money by cutting my dependence on store-bought kombucha in half if not further, and I am hoping that I get a routine that will enable me to only purchase from the store when I need an infusion of new culture into my kombucha family.

I will write more about how I grew my own SCOBY and how I brew and bottle my kombucha in future blog posts... I hope you are interested and enjoying the read!

Kitties and Kombucha ...

Not together!
Just catching up on some stuff ... and the two big things to catch up on are the kitties and my foray into making my own kombucha. I was going to try to fit both into one post, but it will be much too long, so I am going to split into at least two posts.

Kitties first: Earlier this summer Cinnamon was very sick. I truly thought I was going to lose her. After much agonizing on my part, I finally decided to take her to the vet with my sister Donna's assistance. Given that Cinnamon stresses out so badly about ... well, everything ... I was afraid she was going to wind up in worse shape from the trip to the vet. As it turned out, I was in worse shape on that trip than she was. She started wailing as soon as I moved the cat carrier, and she didn't stop except at a few stop lights along the way, but she weathered the trip ok. Her illness stumped the vet. She'd vomited up everything she'd eaten two days in a row and had diarrhea and then didn't eat for another day or two - hence the vet visit. But when Dr. Drumm did his exam, she had no fever or palpable blockages. He gave me some medicine that was supposed to relax her digestive tract and prevent her from vomiting so readily, and he said that if she wasn't better by the next day he wanted her back at the office (Oddly, while she hadn't stopped eating, Sianna had also been sick for a day or so during this period of time). The medicine worked, and the next day she was eating a little bit without any vomiting. I still have no idea what was wrong with her - I suppose she might have eaten something bad, like maybe a sick mouse or something - but I really don't know.

Since her illness, I've been feeding her a little differently. My girls both get Taste of the Wild Rocky Mountain Feline Formula - which has venison and salmon - for their first meal of the day. Then at dinner time, they get chopped up chicken breast that I cook for them (I do it all at once then freeze or refrigerate it until feeding) plus a little more dry cat food and if there is any broth left from the chicken they get a little of that, too. And before I go to bed, they get a rounded tablespoon of dry cat food. The other dry cat food that I feed is Purina One Beyond (salmon and brown rice) and I rotate that and the other dry food for the dinner and bedtime meals.

The main thing that is different about the dry foods that I am feeding is that they contain no corn, wheat or soy. Cats are what is known as "obligatory carnivores" meaning they MUST eat primarily meat to maintain proper nutrition. While cats might consume vegetable matter in the digestive tracts of animals they eat, they do not need to eat grains or vegetables. They need more protein than the average cat food contains, which is why I feed the Taste of the Wild Rocky Mountain Feline Formula - it has 42% protein as opposed to less than 32% for most other cat foods.

A quick side note: Interestingly, when I was looking up the links for this blog article, I just found that Purina One had a voluntary recall of one type of food for salmonella. The symptoms, with the exception of fever, are very similar to what Cinnamon's symptoms were. It wasn't the same brand, but it does make me wonder ... although salmonella is fairly common - it is even found in ants these days. And I recently read that, while dogs and most healthy humans are very resistant to salmonella infections, cats do not have much resistance to it, as they generally eat what they kill immediately or not at all.

Anyway, Cinnamon has been doing very well on her new food regimen. I'm taking more care to control how much she eats and she has lost weight, which is also a good thing. She looks and acts healthier now than she did before she got sick. Sianna is also doing well with the food, although she isn't as into the cooked chicken as Cinnamon is. I wind up giving her less chicken and more dry food and Cinnamon gets less dry food and more chicken. And they still wind up finishing up each other's dinners - only a little bit of leftovers in each dish, but it's funny to see them sneak over to the other's leftovers.

Tomorrow - kombucha.

How Did it Get to be Next Summer Already?

I see that I last posted over a year ago. That was not my intention. But winter was emotionally difficult for many reason - not the least of which the very wintery weather!

I seem to have lost at least one friend over the hard winter, perhaps two - people who I spoke to regularly. One seems simply to have dropped off the face of the earth, and the other ... well, I'm not quite sure what is going on there - just that I hear "I'll call you later" a lot but then nothing ...

Work has been stressful for me, and that is all that I will say on a public forum about that.

But, I've been trying to get myself out of the emotional dip I seemed to have gotten into and I think I'm doing it, finally.

Let me share some of the discoveries I've made ... I'll forwarn you - they are food and drink related.

I make a decent guacamole - but I cheat. I use pre-chopped pico de gallo, then mix that in with mashed fresh avocado, and a liberal dash of lime juice, either fresh or bottled.

I make a pretty good stout beef stew - and I cheat at that too. I think I wrote about that in a previous post, but I'll repeat it here. I buy raw diced potatoes, fresh English peas, celery and carrot sticks, chopped onion, sliced mushrooms and stew beef, and a four or six pack of stout ale like Guinness. I flour and brown the beef pieces in a little olive oil, coconut oil or another healthy oil, then remove it from the pot. Then I chop the celery and carrot sticks into stew worthy pieces (in other words - however big or small I feel like at the moment!), throw them and the onions in, and saute them until the onion is getting transparent. Then, back in goes the beef, maybe some fresh rosemary, a little minced garlic or garlic powder (whatever I have at the moment) and whatever herbs strike my fancy - keeping flavor in mind, of course! Then, and here's the part I haven't quite got perfected, one and a half to two 12 oz bottles of the stout... Too little and it hasn't got that hint of bitter bite, too much and the bitter bite is much less enjoyable. After the stout, add water, and simmer for a while - until the carrots are starting to get tender. If you need to get more beef flavor, add small amounts of beef flavored Better Than Bouillon paste to taste. Then add the peas and the potatoes. The peas will probably take longer to get tender than the potatoes, so you may want to add them earlier - depends on if your peas are fresh or frozen (don't EVEN put canned peas in there!!!). Once the peas are close to done, add the sliced mushrooms and simmer for a while longer or until it all tastes delicious and all the ingredients are tender. Depending on how thick it is, or how thick you like it, at any point you may wish to blend a little flour or cornstarch to thicken it up, but be careful not to add too much or you will have jellied beef stew! :)

Finally, the drinks... I've discovered barley water - a gaming friend introduced me to it! It's pretty simple, really... here's a couple of links: Barley Water by Alton Brown of the Food Network and this answer at Yahoo Answers. Depending on how long and vigorously it simmers, you may find it is a little thick - syrupy, almost. Just add water or ice to thin it down. It's refreshing and has many of the benefits of barley. Don't throw out the barley like Alton Brown says, though - put it away for eating... you can heat it and put honey on it for a lovely hot breakfast, or use it in some stout beef stew ... or any number of ways that you could use rice or pasta. It's good for you and tastes great!

For my next post I will talk about my experiences drinking and now making Kombucha - a fermented tea drink.

Until then - hope you get a chance to try some of the "recipes" I've shared. Be adventurous in the kitchen but try not to burn anything! :)

-- T