Once when I described maple sugaring to a friend, she said she couldn’t imagine spending all that time making a condiment. Friends have wrinkled their noses when I’ve mentioned that my entire kitchen table was covered with peaches for canning, and some have laughed in my face when I’ve said, quite seriously, that I love watching baseball while snapping green beans.
Is your yogurt cheaper and tastier than the store options? That's my metric, and I need one to keep my food craft at a sustainable level! But I'd still be interested in your yogurt method.
Homemade yogurt is so much cheaper, and in my opinion, tastier, than commercial yogurt. Using grocery prices where I live, ingredients for homemade yogurt are about half the cost as the same volume of store-bought yogurt. It also has far less sugar (even low-sugar, Greek-style commercial yogurts have added sugar), higher calcium content, and is vegetarian (many commercial yogurts have added gelatin, made from animal hooves and hides, as an additional thickening agent, while homemade yogurt does not.)
Like your kombucha recipe, making yogurt involves heating liquid to kill off the critters you don’t want growing in there, and adding the critters you want, keeping them warm enough to grow but not so hot that you hurt them. Yogurt is a lot faster, though—my whole process only takes about two days.
I'm surprised to hear that your friends think it's weird to can fruit and snap green beans! For me, that's the essence of summer. We religiously go berry picking every year to make jam that's gonna last us the whole year and we can gift to friends. If you've ever stared into the deep purple of bubbling berry jam, you know there's no going back :)
Now I'm wishing I'd chosen a different hook! Not all my friends feel that way :)
I devote an entire chapter of my memoir to huckleberry picking, which my family did on a large scale each summer (how I financed my school clothes), so I know that bubbling cauldron of jam well!
I typically freeze kale that I use for smoothies yearround and also make a year's supply of pesto from kale, parsley, basil, and sometimes garlic scapes. Perhaps I'll cycle a few garden posts in throughout the summer!
Joshua you’re hanging with the wrong crowd brother if they laugh at “I love watching baseball while snapping green beans.” These are heathens. I spend many an evening (de-)stringing beans or curry leaves whilst catching NetFlix with my daughter and mornings dicing orange pumpkins or beetroot into perfect cubes—a more Zen activity I cannot imagine. So your poetry is not confined to the prose you write but to peas you be liberating!
Ah, another commonality between us! Yes, it's nice to feel productive while being entertained. In the old days, as you probably know from my essay on huckleberries, I spent long hours at the family table prepping food for freezing or canning, and we wore out many vinyl albums and (later) CDs that way.
I'm not sure why I thought this essay needed to stand in opposition to the minority of friends who make fun of me for my domestic arts, but I was crunched for time and fell back on one of those old formulas for a hook 🤷🏼
I totally relate to your kombucha journey, although I've not developed a taste for it. Perhaps if I tried yours? My food rituals involve homemade bread, ice cream and sorbet and pie. Never buy bread, ice cream or sorbet. Used to can. I understand the hypnosis of food rituals.
I can attest to the yumminess of your bread, ice cream, and sorbet! Canning is arduous. I can see how someone would eventually give it up. I still think I'd want to do it even if I was wealthy -- nothing beats a jar of pickles or canned green beans.
Haha! I feel just the same way. No taste for it yet; "perhaps if I tried yours?" To me, the tart fruit sounds like it could be an inspiration.
I imagine that I could "come around" to kombucha by appreciating the ritual and history and the alcohol-alternative. Meanwhile, I'm all for canning fruit and jams and snapping green beans!
I think mine (Tim's?) tastes more like soda or seltzer than a lot of kombucha on the shelf. GT's brew is more vinegary than mine (though I imitate the flavor of their Trilogy). And if all you've tasted is a first ferment (just the tea, without the added fruit and ginger), then I get why you'd have felt meh about it.
The good news is that the SCOBY consumes most of the sugar. And then the fruit juice is a small portion of the second ferment (though that sugar helps catalyze more fizz). So it's nothing like the dose of sugar I get when I sometimes buy ginger beer.
I have not jumped on the bandwagon of drinking apple cider vinegar for gut health, but I imagine that kombucha offers a more delicious alternative (and perhaps one that is friendlier to your teeth).
Thank you so much for this! I've made kombucha on and off for several years ~ alternating or in parallel with water kefir ~ but never made a fizzy drink with it. Only the water kefir went fizzy. Now I've just realised the secret ingredient: The second ferment with some fruit!
I'll give it a go straight away. I have lots of maracuja growing this year ... should make a lovely drink. I'll let you know 💗🙏 🍑🍒🍓
I've never heard of water kefir (?!). But I'd love to hear if this method makes a difference for you! Other friends who have complained about flat kombucha have said that it was a game changer for them. Maracuja sounds intriguing -- I imagine that it pairs well with ginger.
oh, water kefir is made with a different kind of culture (sometimes called 'kefir crystals' or 'kefir grains'. They look like milk kefir grains, but instead of the milk you use filtered water and sugar + fruit (dried or fresh, the kefir grains feed on the sugar and the minerals in the fruit) + a few slices of lemon. It ferments much faster than kombucha and makes a very fizzy drink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndf-SobBJBg
I had Kombucha with friends at a restaurant last night. And now I see ...
I love this! It reminds me of my journey into making my own yogurt--although kombucha is more steps than yogurt is.
Is your yogurt cheaper and tastier than the store options? That's my metric, and I need one to keep my food craft at a sustainable level! But I'd still be interested in your yogurt method.
Homemade yogurt is so much cheaper, and in my opinion, tastier, than commercial yogurt. Using grocery prices where I live, ingredients for homemade yogurt are about half the cost as the same volume of store-bought yogurt. It also has far less sugar (even low-sugar, Greek-style commercial yogurts have added sugar), higher calcium content, and is vegetarian (many commercial yogurts have added gelatin, made from animal hooves and hides, as an additional thickening agent, while homemade yogurt does not.)
Like your kombucha recipe, making yogurt involves heating liquid to kill off the critters you don’t want growing in there, and adding the critters you want, keeping them warm enough to grow but not so hot that you hurt them. Yogurt is a lot faster, though—my whole process only takes about two days.
I'm surprised to hear that your friends think it's weird to can fruit and snap green beans! For me, that's the essence of summer. We religiously go berry picking every year to make jam that's gonna last us the whole year and we can gift to friends. If you've ever stared into the deep purple of bubbling berry jam, you know there's no going back :)
Now I'm wishing I'd chosen a different hook! Not all my friends feel that way :)
I devote an entire chapter of my memoir to huckleberry picking, which my family did on a large scale each summer (how I financed my school clothes), so I know that bubbling cauldron of jam well!
I typically freeze kale that I use for smoothies yearround and also make a year's supply of pesto from kale, parsley, basil, and sometimes garlic scapes. Perhaps I'll cycle a few garden posts in throughout the summer!
That would be great!
Joshua you’re hanging with the wrong crowd brother if they laugh at “I love watching baseball while snapping green beans.” These are heathens. I spend many an evening (de-)stringing beans or curry leaves whilst catching NetFlix with my daughter and mornings dicing orange pumpkins or beetroot into perfect cubes—a more Zen activity I cannot imagine. So your poetry is not confined to the prose you write but to peas you be liberating!
Ah, another commonality between us! Yes, it's nice to feel productive while being entertained. In the old days, as you probably know from my essay on huckleberries, I spent long hours at the family table prepping food for freezing or canning, and we wore out many vinyl albums and (later) CDs that way.
I'm not sure why I thought this essay needed to stand in opposition to the minority of friends who make fun of me for my domestic arts, but I was crunched for time and fell back on one of those old formulas for a hook 🤷🏼
I totally relate to your kombucha journey, although I've not developed a taste for it. Perhaps if I tried yours? My food rituals involve homemade bread, ice cream and sorbet and pie. Never buy bread, ice cream or sorbet. Used to can. I understand the hypnosis of food rituals.
I can attest to the yumminess of your bread, ice cream, and sorbet! Canning is arduous. I can see how someone would eventually give it up. I still think I'd want to do it even if I was wealthy -- nothing beats a jar of pickles or canned green beans.
Haha! I feel just the same way. No taste for it yet; "perhaps if I tried yours?" To me, the tart fruit sounds like it could be an inspiration.
I imagine that I could "come around" to kombucha by appreciating the ritual and history and the alcohol-alternative. Meanwhile, I'm all for canning fruit and jams and snapping green beans!
I think mine (Tim's?) tastes more like soda or seltzer than a lot of kombucha on the shelf. GT's brew is more vinegary than mine (though I imitate the flavor of their Trilogy). And if all you've tasted is a first ferment (just the tea, without the added fruit and ginger), then I get why you'd have felt meh about it.
The good news is that the SCOBY consumes most of the sugar. And then the fruit juice is a small portion of the second ferment (though that sugar helps catalyze more fizz). So it's nothing like the dose of sugar I get when I sometimes buy ginger beer.
I have not jumped on the bandwagon of drinking apple cider vinegar for gut health, but I imagine that kombucha offers a more delicious alternative (and perhaps one that is friendlier to your teeth).
And I imagine nothing beats the savor of one's own Recovery Tea.
Indeed!
Thank you so much for this! I've made kombucha on and off for several years ~ alternating or in parallel with water kefir ~ but never made a fizzy drink with it. Only the water kefir went fizzy. Now I've just realised the secret ingredient: The second ferment with some fruit!
I'll give it a go straight away. I have lots of maracuja growing this year ... should make a lovely drink. I'll let you know 💗🙏 🍑🍒🍓
I've never heard of water kefir (?!). But I'd love to hear if this method makes a difference for you! Other friends who have complained about flat kombucha have said that it was a game changer for them. Maracuja sounds intriguing -- I imagine that it pairs well with ginger.
oh, water kefir is made with a different kind of culture (sometimes called 'kefir crystals' or 'kefir grains'. They look like milk kefir grains, but instead of the milk you use filtered water and sugar + fruit (dried or fresh, the kefir grains feed on the sugar and the minerals in the fruit) + a few slices of lemon. It ferments much faster than kombucha and makes a very fizzy drink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndf-SobBJBg
Water kefir grains are NOT the same as milk kefir grains! It's a different culture.
Interesting!