Kombucha Brewing: A Lesson in Trial and Error

I seem to be in a season of trial and error in my life. And that's ok. I've accepted it. It's taken me a while, but I think I've finally come to a certain peace with trying, failing, scrapping one plan to form another. The past 6 months have demonstrated to me the concept of a clean slate, and just what it means to wipe it completely.

So it should have come as no surprise to me that I would try and fail (but still give it my all!) as I ventured into the art (craft?) of brewing kombucha, from scratch, at home, instead of in some scientific lab.

I have to admit, I am not a person of science. I majored in English because I loved reading books like Mrs. Dalloway and got my kicks at Penn State not from sorority parties, but spending long nights in the stacks at Paterno Library, perusing ancient compilations of Yeats and dissecting Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market" on the hunt for every food reference possible. Save for a school science fair victory once, long ago, science and I are just not besties. Don't get me wrong, I love reading Scientific American and watching PBS programs and going on nature walks. Just don't hand me a beaker and expect me to know what to do with it. It might explode.

So even now, 21 days later, I'm kind of shocked that I took a foray into brewing kombucha. But not that shocked.

You see, kombucha is the shit. For lack of a better word. It really is. I'm not going to try to censor myself here. It's definitely an acquired taste, but once you get over the fact that a tea is fermented, bursting with fizz and tasty like a soda, except HEALTHY, you come to a place of obsession. Or at least I did. Kombucha is chock FULL of probiotics. I first started drinking kombucha some time last year in a desperate attempt to counterract all of the crazy antibiotics I was taking, determined that I could get just as many probiotics from food/drink that I could in a very expensive daily probiotic capsule. Through tons of research and hippie friends regaling me with kombucha stories, I realized I just needed to try it ASAP. One afternoon I ambled to my local neighborhood Safeway in DC and grabbed a few bottles of GTs Raw Kombucha. It was organic. It had tons of probiotics; the same amount if not MORE than those nasty pills. Win. It was delicious. And I got a little tipsy off of it, though sadly I haven't had that reaction to another bottle since.

I started drinking kombucha daily, then realized, at $3 a bottle, this might become an issue. I couldn't get enough of it though. I'd try different brands, every flavor of each new brand. My favorite is still to this day GT's grape chia, a delicious grape-flavored kombucha with not as much of a vinegar taste as the Original or Ginger flavors, loaded with chia seeds (another huge health bonus) that look odd floating all around, suspended in the kombucha bottle, but have an earthy taste.

Which is why, for my 30th birthday last month, all I wanted was a scoby. A scoby is a symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast, and before you think I've lost my mind, know this. It's like the starter in sourdough bread. (Which if you haven't made before, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?) My sister is the type to oblige my weird birthday wishes and ordered a scoby for me on etsy, and when it arrived I was both intrigued and scared. It looked like a certain flattened body part. It was slippery and slimy and I couldn't possibly fathom handling it enough to slip it into a jar. Everything started to feel creepy, like maybe I shouldn't really be making this at home. That maybe I had no business trying something so new and scientific, and how the HELL was the green tea I poured into a gallon jar supposed to sit with a scoby for 21 days and voila, healthy drink-omatic. I became hesitant, so I let the scoby rest in her juices for a few days while reading up on some kombucha blogs.

And then I became obsessed. I suddenly wanted to care for this scoby that would produce a baby scoby in due time. No pun intended. At first I scoffed at those bleeding heart beatniks who named their scobies like they were some kind of pet. And then one day I named mine Joni Mitchell. So who's laughing now.

Joni became my brew. I attended to her every day, painstakingly making sure to read and re-read and dissect each instruction so I couldn't, wouldn't mess up. I scrubbed and sanitized a huge multi-gallon glass jar. I bought cheesecloth. I made sure to use the right kind of green tea, only organic sugar, and stayed up until 5 am one night checking the starter tea, making sure it was cooled down to room temperature before releasing the scoby into the jar. I kept the jar in a cool dark place but not too cool. Warm enough so as to ferment and made a lid cover of cheesecloth, two layers so as to keep out fruit flies.

The first few days were a little boring, with no real scientific action to write home about. Stuff was FOR SURE bubbling under the surface, but nothing quite visible yet. I was looking forward to the part where a new scoby forms. The romantic in me just can appreciate new life, and if I can create it in a jar, well that's kinda cool. Days went by and I forgot about my pet. That's the great thing about kombucha brewing (or so the bloggers say)...you can just dump everything together, cover and walk away and this whole, complex, scientific process occurs without constant attention. That's something I can get down with.

At about the 7th day I could visibly see a new scoby forming as a top layer over the brew, covering the tea underneath. I taste-tested the brew at this point, which was WAY on the sweet yet still vinegary side, so kept letting it ferment. Eventually 2 weeks went by. The new scoby at this point was so thick that I started to dream up just bottling the brew already, however I really don't stick with things and wanted this to be a breakthrough. I let it keep fermenting. I read a lot. Wrote far too little. Started a new job.

Then, magically at day 21, it was ready. Except.

Fruit flies. Hopping around.

Everywhere.

At first I saw one jump from one side of the jar to another. Then realized I had created a breeding ground for insects, and that in fact there were probably millions of baby fruit flies that were about to come to life. I'd read enough about fruit flies to know how they plant their eggs, and I'll be damned if I drink a gallon of fruit fly eggs. I've got enough stuff going on with my bod.

Chagrin isn't the word. I was devastated. I just stared numbly, then stubbornly started straining out fruit flies and bottling my brew. Then of course, once neatly bottled in Mason jars, dumped it all down the sink. But first I made it pretty. In April I would have thrown all of the jars across the room until they shattered, screaming obscenities about the unfairness of life. Things have changed. I can still pull the utmost of juvenile tantrums if you put me on a highway during rush hour, but I like to think the days of unnecessary outbursts are gone.

Which is a breakthrough. In some regard, it was never about the kombucha directly. It was about creating something organically, start to finish. About process and routine. Sticking to a task until carried out. Despite the fruit flies, kombucha WAS created. New life was formed. It might've been a trial by fire, but sometimes that's the point.

Chicken Stock Failures

You might be asking yourself, "How can anyone possibly fail in making chicken stock? It's water and bones. AmIright?"

Well, you would be wrong.

There is a distinct art to crafting an authentic chicken stock, according to my lovely chefy.

There is procedure. There are logistics. There are time limits. And other myriad constraints.

But mostly, there is preparation. More than I realized. As in, an authentic chicken stock is supposed to be dark? So the way I've been making it for five years is completely wrong? Everything I've ever made has been sub-par. There will be roasting...

Whaa...?

Yep.

Listen and learn, friends. Listen and learn.

Chefy dictates to me, mid-stock-boil, "Where are the roasted bones? They don't look roasted at all."

AT ALL. That redundant duo which always make me want to commit nefarious acts.

As I paw him away in my penguin stance over the aromatic simmering bone water stock, my memory refreshes and I remember that, in this house, YOU HAVE TO ROAST BONES before you ever dream of fashioning up a good stock. Any kind of carnivorous stock requires proper bone-roasting technique. Which, for me, usually means throwing a bunch of rib bones or chicken bones or steak bones onto a charred cookie sheet. Even though they're technically supposed to be cleaned. And placed gingerly onto a schmancy roasting pan. You're probably supposed to bow your head in reverence to the bone gods and say a charm and Karma and Kismet each involve their ethereal personae, and BOOM! A stock is born.

Stock's some fancy ish. And you thought it was basic. (It's ok, I'm with ya.)

I feel like a bit of a witch when I make chicken stock. Sometimes I think to myself, sampling my magic brew, I could totally bottle this stuff up and sell it. This would fly off the shelves at Eastern Market. All kinds of creative names (or not) (read: Shannon's Stock, Cecere's Chicken Brew) fly through my head. I could even market it for Etsy, I fantasize, and invest in the local dry-ice business (???) and ship it off to exotic places where they've never even heard of homemade chicken stock. Like the UK. Or Altoona, PA. Market me fast, baby. I'm the next Rachael Ray.

My ADHD culinary Good Samaritan reverie is interrupted by the next-door neighbors' random outburst of go-go music, which I can appreciate, but not necessarily at 2 am, and definitely not while creating nectar of the gods, aka roasted chicken stock.

Chefy ambles outside to harangue the neighbors, and this is my perfect opportunity to suddenly spring to the freezer, remembering the two quart containers of chicken wing tips I saved the last few times we made chicken wings. (Preparation.) Chicken stock for all! We'll bottle it in Mason jars and gift it to both sets of parents for Easter, arriving into town bearing homemade presents! We'll ship it to friends for birthdays and bat mitzvahs. It'll be a mainstay in the pantries of everyone we know. Right next to the gourmet mustards and artisinal preserves. We can give it as wedding favors!

I salt the water because one time I heard the Barefoot Contessa say on her show that if you don't salt the water, the stock that you worked so hard on will taste like dirty dish water.

Ain't nobody got time for that.

So I salt the water. And toss in some peppercorns, like I've seen chefy do. Except a cup of peppercorns come flying out of the spice container since I always forget little tricks like opening the tiny opening side versus the huge side. I handle that emergency, grabbing up peppercorns with both hands from the boiling stock. The chicken tips (and my hands) have thawed and are neatly placed across a cookie sheet, the oven is preheating to 500, carrots are roughly chopped, onions are halved and thrown in, a stalk of celery goes in, doesn't have to look pretty, it'll all get strained out anyway. I roast the tips, throw them in. Chefy tells me you never salt the water. Excellent. I taste test. It tastes like bouillon. All salty and vegetabley and chickeny and peppery. And very concentrated, having reduced for way too long while I got side-tracked and read recipes for all the dishes I was going to make with the stock. So I add more water. It's a better consistency. Thank you, Karma and Kismet. You showed up. A little late the party, but you showed nonetheless.

It's nearing 4 am and my back is aching. A cloth freezer pack covered in monkeys is icing my neck. My throat is sore. My right eye starts itching all of a sudden. Woe isn't me, though. Cause the stock looks beautiful. Chefy's long been asleep, snoring from the bedroom. It's time. It is finished. I turn off the stove and have to let the stock cool before straining and pouring into quart containers and then tomorrow, Mason jars, tied with burlap and twine for that homespun look. I go into the bedroom to rest my eyes while the stock cools.

And then fall asleep for 8 hours.

#fml #chickenstockfailure #itwouldvebeensodelicious #storingitanyway

Lessons in Bread Rising

Do you ever have the urge to make something delicious and fresh, but lack the patience to WAIT for the end result? Earlier this week my fiancé and I were craving bruschetta. We'd had it at Famous Luigi's in downtown DC a few weeks back, and I was itching to try making it on my own. It's one of my FAVORITE things ever, and every time I watch that scene in Julie and Julia I salivate over the whole experience. How hard could it be to pile tomatoes on top of grilled bread?

I scoured Pinterest for recipes, naturally. The saying must be true that you eat with your eyes first. I'm telling you, 5 different photos of scrumptious-looking bruschetta prompted us both to get up off the couch on fiancé's day off and hit up our local markets for bread flour, the freshest-looking cherry tomatoes we could find, and organic basil. We already had garlic, a house staple. I'm obsessed with food and he's a cook. Garlic plays a large role at our dinner table.

But what kind of bread to use? And of course it has to be homemade. After debating the merits of ciabatta vs. focaccia, I decided on Italian bread. Fiancé lugs out his huge baking and pastry book from culinary school, a tome we're sure houses a perfect bruschetta bread recipe, and proceeds to read me EVERY. SINGLE. BREAD. TITLE. Until we both realize there is no goldmine bread for bruschetta. You just have to wing it. Back to the drawing board (Read: Google). Finally I just decide the heck with it and go with a standard French Bread. We debate the merits of using a baguette or just a loaf of what Google brings up as "French bread" and at this point I don't care that much. I just want bread, grilled, oiled, garlicked, and loaded with tomatoes, olive oil dripping from the corners of each of our satiated mouths.

I finally find a suitable recipe, any one will do, and get home readying my mise en place. That's what you do to prep yourself. When you live with a chef.

For a day my mise en place was ready. I lugged out the Kitchen Aid mixer from underneath the sink (city living for ya), dusted it off and scrubbed it down, a feat in and of itself. Do you know how much those things weigh? And because I'm basically falling apart physically, I rubbed shea butter all over my neck and iced my shoulders. The things we do for authenticity.

Just when I felt ready enough, cracked my fingers and toes, and washed up, I realized something fateful.

No yeast.

Damn.

You cannot make bruschetta bread (what I started calling our project) without YEAST. It's just...there just...

There is no way that I forgot to buy yeast. I have yeast, oh yes, but it could be 4 years old for all I know, since everywhere we move, the contents of our fridge gets packed up with us. I have one packet of yeast. You need two. Awesome.

So now it's been roughly 3 days since the drooling-for-bruschetta began, and I remind fiancé to bring home yeast if he has a chance.

He says sure. Then forgets it.

No biggie. The basil is now wilted and sad looking, the tomatoes have been over-ripened on the window sill since I forgot about them for 3 days, and you know what? You don't even NEED bread flour for bruschetta bread, because sometimes the universe slaps you across the face like that. Next time in a blue moon when you decide you have 7 spare hours on a lazy day to make homemade pizza dough, bread flour will be standing at attention like a soldier from the kitchen cupboard, but today it's just giving you the middle finger. Kinda like life.

Soooooooo. You put aside plans for bruschetta, and instead make a huge salad, which is healthier anyways. But the desire never leaves (and fiancé brings home yeast the next night!).

So TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT. Your kidneys are sore and you can barely walk, but you heave yourself over to the kitchen and do 2 toe-touches before lunging for the Kitchen Aid mixer, patiently awaiting you from her shadowed perch. You say a quick prayer to the bread gods and re-scan the recipe, and you're good to go.

Alas, fresh bruschetta in our bellies tonight. After a long, hard day, you, fiancée extraordinaire, will have freshly baked, grilled, olive-oiled-and-tomatoey bread waiting for your hard-working man, which you'll hand off to tired fiancé ambling through the door with his bike.

And then you read it. 2 hour rising time. What the WHAT.

This cannot be. Tongue now hanging out with illusions of Italian zest and saliva almost dripping from your mouth in anticipation, your eyes read over the depressing words again. Allow time for rising.

To which you just sit back, crawl onto your yoga mat, and assume the fetal position.

You question why bread has to rise and what the point of yeast is anyways (fiancé says it's a bacteria, ew, as if you need more of THAT in your dilapidated bod), and curse the bread gods for lying to you and curse the universe for shunning your every recent culinary move, and curse America for needless biowarfare, of which you could literally write the book, and you curse your Pinterest habit for getting you in the mood. And you plan to throw that Italian food memoir you've been reading in the trash for making you want to be all authentic all the time. And you give famous Luigi the bird for getting you wishing and hoping and salivating in the first place. Dumbass.

The fetal position eventually gets boring and your dog has now splayed himself across the yoga mat, which he always does when you're trying to breathe and meditate and not focus so much on your potential long-lasting kidney damage and how much cooler you thought you'd be approaching 30. You curse yourself a few more times for good measure, curse the dog and the fiancé for no good reason, and curse your tiny apartment for being so loaded down with sprouting plants, none of which have grown into vegetables for you to eat. And then your belly growls. The dramatically loud groan reminds you that you MUST hoist yourself back into your hallway-kitchen.

Mise en place ready, facing rising time head-on, you measure and mix and pour and finally track down the two dough hooks you have, one of which you've been meaning to return to your old landlord.

You knead for the 8-10 minutes Devil Bread requires. You go lay down for the first little round of rising time, resting your aching joints, deliberating if you should just go to the store now and buy a loaf of bread. Fiancé will SEE all the dirty, doughy dishes, then he'll eat the perfect fluffy bread. From Safeway.

You almost convince yourself of this brilliant new plan, and then realize where you live and that you can't just run out for a loaf of bread in this neighborhood at 10 pm without a black belt and/or a pint of pepper spray. Your ADHD mind goes into overdrive dreaming up floor plans and blueprints of suburban sprawls nowhere near DC.

Then your phone alarm goes off. You have to check the dough. Little bitch better have doubled in size or you're done.

She has!!!

You jump around your living room praising the bread gods for their good karma and apologize for calling your miraculous and holy dough the she-devil and punch her down and cover and rise and roll and seal and taper and finally, BAKE.

And 40 blessed minutes later, the smell of Italian kitchens wafting through your perfect little happy home, you meet the prettiest two things you've ever seen on a cookie sheet.

You're dog-tired and even your dog is tired of watching you wait for bread to rise all night. Who cares about bruschetta? Seize the day. Let's slice into this perfectly baguettey-looking, misshapen (but who gives?), not-completely-risen, blessed little perfect, precious bundle of goodness and crunch into it. There will be other nights for tomatoey garlicky bruschetta-ey goodness. You just mastered the art of French bread-making. And that deserves some butter, so slather up.

Comfort Food

Any time I'm going through a season of challenge I tend to obsessively cook a bunch of comfort food. I might have touched on this in other posts, but cooking takes me through the tough times and allows my senses an overload so my heart can take a little break.

The beginning of this year has been met with many challenges. Let me just say that during the toughest times my soul wants to cling to Scripture. This week I clutch the Psalms. They seem to be the only place to go for solace lately.

I originally started And Be Merry during the long college winters in Pennsylvania, far away from the comforts of home and the conveniences of family life and desiring to become devout in my religion and more developed as a home cook. I think I missed the faith boat back then, but 8 years later I am realizing that it didn't miss me.

These brutal first days of 2013 have demonstrated that life is short and and meant to be simply lived and constantly savored. That social networking doesn't fill any kind of void, as fun and convenient as Facebook's constant status updates are and Twitter's steady stream of the happenings in the lives of strangers is. That family--both blood and chosen-- is everything and to hold them close. That my fiance is my rock and most sharpening iron. And that fostering a Relationship far exceeds following a religion.

Here is an old standby that never fails to warm the hungry belly and a verse to soothe the hurting soul.

I started making meatloaf about 5 years ago and it was the first meal my then-boyfriend Jeremy and I made together.

I had always despised everything meatloaf stood for but had never actually tasted it. I thought it was the lazy man's meal, up there with crock pot dinners and frozen pizzas (shudder). In the fall of 2007 I was reading the paper (thank you, Penn State Readership Program) and a New York Times recipe made me realize that there was a better, more gourmet version than cafeteria slop, affectionately termed "mystery meat" during my childhood. My mom never made it. My grandmother did but I didn't dare touch it. But the New York Times changed me (and earned me a steady boyfriend).

I've been making this version for about 2 years and sometimes change it up slightly but mostly stick to the same adapted version from an old country cookbook I bought used in a train station long ago. It's an old recipe, covered in tears and stains and my various notes but I love it even more each time I make a loaf. I made it most recently during Hurricane Sandy while watching the wind howl by, safe in our new apartment, eating piece by piece while holding onto my pup. It's been in constant rotation since the holidays and never fails to comfort no matter life's circumstances.

Yankee Meatloaf
(recipe adapted from "Larousse Treasury of Country Cooking", 1968)

Prep time: 5 minutes
Baking time: 45 minutes
Cooling time: 15 minutes
Total time from start to finish: 65 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pound ground beef
1 cup organic whole milk
1 cup homemade seasoned bread crumbs
2 eggs
dash of Worcestershire sauce (I use Lea & Perrins.)
freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup Heinz ketchup (has to be Heinz!)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. (My oven underheats...Your oven may need to be turned down to 325 as the original recipe suggests.)

2. Combine the ground beef, milk, bread crumbs, eggs, Worcestershire and ground pepper and mix with hands. Shape into a loaf and place in a greased baking pan. Spread Heinz ketchup over top.

3. Bake for 45 minutes. Remove from oven and let rest for 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

Serves 4 (Or in our case, serves 2 in about one hour flat.)

Like I said, I make this differently each time but this is my favorite version. The cookbook recipe is much different, adding in onion and green pepper, lots of herbs and seasonings, tabasco sauce... so I guess you can say mine is just a very basic meatloaf, but it's the recipe I base it off of.

This version is deliciously moist. Sometimes I add a pat of butter as the cookbook suggests, and instead of Heinz cover with sliced tomatoes then bake...but the ketchup to me really kicks the "comfort" part of comfort food up a few notches. I'm eating a slice right now. Yum. Enjoy.

Shannon


"My flesh and my heart fail; But God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever." Psalm 73:26