Choke!

I just finished choking after inhaling a few drops of tea. That's what happens sometimes when a straw decides to slip from your lips before you really get the liquid flowing. I hate that feeling because it sticks around so long. I'll have this tickle in my throat for hours, I suppose. It probably doesn't help that I brewed the tea in an old sock.

An old sock?!?! Yes. An old sock.

Last night I brewed the tea for my current batch of Kmobucha. I have two jugs going so I need to brew two large batches of strong, concentrated tea. I use a half cup of loose leaf tea in about two liters of water for each batch. I have one tea "bag" that will hold that much tea. I usually put the tea in and use a rubber band to keep the cloth bag closed. I've made due with other methods in the past for the other jug but decided last night that I should have bag for it. So I grabbed an old pair of socks from the draw, cut off the foot of the sock below the heel and had a perfectly sized bag. I put the tea in, rubber banded the bag closed, and off we went. It worked like a charm. Yet another use for an old cotton sock.

For this round of Kmobucha I brewed a special blend of rooibos and pu erh teas. I like the flavor of both even though they are so different. The rooibos is light and almost fruity. The pu erh is dark and smoky and strong. Rooibos is free of caffeine and pu erh is chock full of caffeinated goodness. Sounds like a good pairing, right? Well, fortunately, it turned out to be a tasty brew and I believe it will make a delicious Kmobucha.

Today I threw both tea bags into a glass pitcher and filled it with water and brewed up a pitcher of this tea blend. For Kmobucha each pot of tea gets one cup of sugar. The little critters that make Kmobucha eat the sugar and thus the conversion process from extremely sweet tea to a more sour almost vinegary Kmobucha goodness. Well, the tea bags had some residual sugar permeated through them so this pitcher of tea is just slightly sweet. I don't normally sweeten my tea (why would you?), but this is quite tasty. 

If you're a kombucha brewer I recommend this combination!

Cold!

Yesterday it was very windy. Today the wind continues but not quite with the gusto with which it blew last night. It's 12:30pm right now and it's still in the 50s. There is actually a freeze warning for tonight. I don't like the cold. Never have. That's one of the main reasons I moved to Arizona from the bone-deep cold of northern Michigan.

I will have to cover some plants tonight, especially the small moro blood orange tree I recently planted. It is small, a few years from fruit, I suspect, but a promise there in my yard that I don't want to give up just yet. Last winter saw the demise of my photinia, which I'm still surprised by--it was a few years old, established, large, and had been doing well. At one point a tortoise had burrowed down into the roots and perhaps that exposure is what did it in. I don't know. Either way, it's gone. I have some honeysuckles that are still pretty small. I hope they make it through the winter. They should. Other than that, most things are in pots on the patio and will probably be okay. Everything else is on its own.

El Tour de Tucson is only a few weeks away and I have been hoping for decent weather. I hope this is not a sign of what's to come and rather simply a freak dip in temperatures caused by a storm in another part of the world. I hope.

Pickled Purslane

I'm sitting on the couch eating some pickled purslane. Purslane to most of us, especially my wife, is a noxious weed that persistently grows just about everywhere. Back lots, empty lots, East Coast, Midwest, right here in Arizona, and very likely your own back yard.

Purslane is quite possibly the most nutritious of the "greens" you can eat. They have the most Omega-3 fatty acids and have high levels of calcium, potassium, protein, and loads of vitamin A. It's good cooked like spinach or raw in salads. It's quite tasty.

The last couple of years have been apparently exceptional growing seasons for this plant, at least if my yard is any indicator. My back yard has been just carpeted with this plant. I ate quite a bit of it this summer even though my wife won't. I'd have to cook it separately or add it to my salads "on the side." Of course, I snuck it in a few places here and there. I put a bag of it in my freezer and I also decided to do a very simple pickling. Since I didn't know how it would turn out, I only did one jar, but I suspect I'll have a few more jars in next year's refrigerator stores.

Some people make purslane "pickles" by pickling the stems. I figured I'd just do the whole thing, leaves and all. I simply cleaned it and chopped it into reasonable sized pieces and filled the jar with it and then filled the jar with Bragg organic, raw, unfiltered apple cider vinegar (enough to cover the purslane completely) and then sealed it up and stuck it in the fridge. All you need to do is leave it a couple of weeks and it's ready to much on.

I think in my next batch I will add either a little bit of sugar or some agave nectar to give it just a little more sweetness but doing so is by no means a requirement.

Next summer you should look for some purslane in the yard and give it a try. I shouldn't have to say this, but if you spray poisons everywhere for no comprehensible reason then you might want to rethink your grazing strategies, but if not, give it a try. You'll discover a delicious, nutritious surprise.

Kmobucha

I should be making the tea for my next round of Kmobucha but I didn't buy any distilled water. I'll have to go to the store today because I can't let it sit too much longer or it will get more sour than I would like. I try to always use distilled water for the initial tea brewing so that I don't have to worry about chlorine or anything else in the water affecting the SCOBY.

I have really liked the rooibos Kmobucha. The only downside to the rooibos is no caffeine!!! So I'll probably do what I did last brewing cycle, one rooibos and one pu erh. Or, thinking about it now, maybe I'll do a mix of half rooibos and half pu erh. I bet that would be good! That's what I'll do.

I would like to brew the tea this morning because it takes so long for it to cool down to room temperature and my fridge is too crowded to fit large containers of hot tea inside--besides, that would probably kick the fridge into hyperdrive and I'm not sure the old gal could handle the extra load.

There are a couple of reasons I call it Kmobucha. One, well, it's kind of cute, don't you think? Kombucha/Kmobucha, the play on my name and all. But, more practically, I simply type it that way automatically because whenever my fingers need to type the letters K, M, and O they just automatically type in that order. Again, it's that whole name thingy.

Breakfast!

Today Stephy brought a couple of nice eggs and some cheese, broccoli, and chicken diced up for a nice scramble. I had some corn tortillas so I thought I'd make the kids some small breakfast burritos--they usually like to eat those on their own.

So what's the first thing Julian does when Steph walks out the door? He, of course, reaches up to the counter and grabs the cooler bag with the eggs and stuff in it and proceeds to drop the eggs on the floor. And, of course, they both broke.

Fortunately, I just bought some eggs and was still able to make them their special breakfast--which they ate half-heartedly. But at least they ate some of it, even if I had to clap for them every time they took a bite. I also had to wash Layla's little fork several times because she kept throwing it on the floor.

I often wonder how these kids keep growing bigger and stronger when they seemingly exist on about ten calories a day. They must be getting more calories from the dirt and other things they put in their mouths they're not supposed to eat.

No, seriously. I want to win a cargo bike.

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