Friday, July 28, 2006

Unnecessary post containing lots of whining... oh and some kombucha stuff

I am bloated. Bloated and PMS-ey and depressed and crappy-ocious. This week blows and I just want 4:30 pm to come so I can get the hell out of here.

Whine, whine, whine.

My sweetheart is also going through a depressed phase right now, so in way, I'm sure we're egging each other on. His depression is career and identity-related. Mine is just hormonal and food-related. But both suck. I need my Cuba holiday, stat!

And a big glass of kombucha.

I haven't been drinking it lately (surprised that I'm feeling low? Me neither.). In other, more positive news, I left that yeasty batch (that never really got un-yeasty, even after adding some cognac) and just let it ferment to vinegar for a couple of weeks. So now I have kombucha vinegar, which I may try to use in some way in the future. Since I don't eat much in the way of salad because of the salicylates, that may be a challenge. Maybe I'll give it away as a gift. But my scoby (the baby from the yeasty batch) was nice and thick by the end of the fermentation, so I put the mother in the fridge in some of the kombucha vinegar for storage and started a new batch with the baby scoby and it seems to be coming along swimmingly. Today is Day 5, so I'll have a taste when I get home and see how it's coming along, flavour-wise. The new baby scoby is quite thick already. I used green tea this time - jasmine green tea, actually - since I heard green tea makes for a better stronger brew because the kombucha grows better in it than it does in black tea (and green tea, apparently, isn't as good an environment for yeast). This may all be b.s., but it's worth a try and it seems to be working this time, so I can't exactly disagree.

I have grown to love the taste of kombucha. I never disliked it, at all, but now I really enjoy it and I'm wishing I had some here at work so I could have a glass. I can't wait to see if the jasmine tea gives it a different flavour, or if the kombucha taste just overpowers any flavour nuances. I need more bottles! I've been drinking Perrier so that I can use the bottles for Kombucha. They're nice because they're glass and I can't imagine that using plastic bottles to store something that's supposed to be detoxifying is a good idea! I already feel funny about using spring water from plastic bottles to make the brew, but what can ya do?

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Sunday, July 09, 2006

Oh no! My kombucha!

My second batch of kombucha seems to have something wrong with it. Or not. I have no idea. I am not experienced enough in the kombucha arts to know. All I know is that the first time, a big thick white layer of the culture developed on top like a hard shell (which is exactly what the photos I've seen on the web show). This time, I'm 4 days in and it's just kind of bubbling up this brown sh*t on top and no shell has developed. My original culture is just kind of floating on top. Ugh! I don't know if it's not going well or what.

Oh the drama!

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Wednesday, July 05, 2006

The Emma Davies-Style CKD

Now that I'm eating a normal-ish amount of food again but I'm still motivated to lose weight, I think I may try Emma's Keto diet with occasional thyroid-boosting days. It seems to have worked for her and I've never really tried it properly. Any time I've done anything similar, I'm not sure I've actually gone low enough in calories on the fasting days and actually acheived ketosis. Now that I'm most definitely back in ketosis (how could I not be, considering my calorie-intake?), I think I'll give it a try. Can't hurt, anyway!

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