A New York Times article all about kombucha! I didn’t know about Kombucha Exchange, where you may be able to find someone to give you a starter culture. Here’s a recipe that’s close to what I ended up with after trying several alternatives.
Thanks to Dave Lull.
From a travel guide to Hikone, a town near Osaka:
But natto is nothing. The real test of gastronomic mettle in [Japan] is funazushi.
A challenging plate of funazushi. This forerunner of all sushi comprises fish that have first been salted and then had the salt soaked out before being packed into large crocks between layers of cooked rice and left to “mature” for two or three years. The resulting utterly ungodly stench from this finny fare is enough to make a grown man practically keel over.
But, reflecting that some fine-tasting cheeses have a rancidity not unlike that of diaper contents, I tried it. And of course the stuff tastes exactly like it stinks. The official guide to Hikone cheerfully observes that funazushi is often referred to as the “king of delicacies.”
This comment was made recently on an earlier post:
I am so glad I found this blog.
My daughter has had coughing fits for 24 months (she’s 5 1/2 yo).
Inhalers, several doctors, nothing helped. She routinely coughed until vomiting. After one 10 hour coughing fit I reached my limit and scoured the web.
After putting in her whole medical history as search qualifiers I found this [post]. The prior eczema and antibiotics were key indicators.
After 3 days of drinking 1 probiotic shake a day, she showed very marked improvement. After 1 week, no symptoms. This is a girl who’s been unable to run and play for 2 years. Who woke up coughing and gagging most nights.
After 6 weeks of the same regimen, she still shows no symptoms and is running and playing full blast.
The pulmonary specialist discounts the results we’ve seen as a fluke . . . we’ll see. Previously my daughter’s lung capacity was measured at 47% of expected.
“Unable to run and play for 2 years”! I’m impressed. Not only (a) the improvement is huge, but also (b) it resembles verification of a prediction, not just something a theory can explain, (c) it wasn’t obvious to “several doctors” or (d) the rest of the Internet, and (e) after it happened it was dismissed by an expert, even though the evidence for causality is excellent. The verification aspect reminds me of Pale Fire:
If on some nameless island Captain Schmidt
Sees a new animal and captures it,
And if, a little later, Captain Smith
Brings back a skin, that island is no myth.
During a 2009 FBI/NYPD raid of a house in Queens
A hazmat team in full protective gear was brought in to investigate a jar of kombucha tea fermenting in the basement.
The police seized a Mao Zedong refrigerator magnet, among other things.
Thanks to David Cramer.
A new study in the Archives of General Psychiatry, summarized in the Wall Street Journal:
Researchers in the new study identified 81 people, ages 13 to 25, with warning signs of psychosis, including sleeping much more or less than usual, growing suspicious of others, believing someone is putting thoughts in their head or believing they have magical powers. Forty-one were randomly assigned to take four fish oil pills a day for three months. The other patients took dummy pills.
After a year of monitoring, 2 of the 41 patients in the fish oil group, or about 5%, had become psychotic, or completely out of touch with reality. In the placebo group, 11 of 40 became psychotic, about 28%.
The study is impressive not only because it uses ordinary food (fish oil) rather than dangerous drugs (such as Prozac) but also because it studies prevention. Just as the ketogenic diet suggests a widespread animal-fat deficiency, so this study suggests a widespread omega-3 deficiency, which won’t surprise any reader of this blog. Completing the picture — I believe most Americans eat far too little animal fat, omega-3, and fermented food — baker’s yeast is being studied as a cure for cancer.
Thanks to Oskar Pearson and Chris.
1. You don’t need a starter culture (often called a scoby). You can make one from store-bought kombucha. I let a cup of Rejuvenation kombucha sit in a wide-mouth jar at room temperature, covered with a paper towel. After two weeks, a thin film had formed on the surface, easily transfered to a tea-sugar mixture. More This didn’t work! The culture grew poorly. It might have worked to just pour the Rejuvenation kombucha into the tea-sugar mixture.
2. My friend Carl Willat has used empty Synergy kombucha bottles to bottle kombucha he makes himself. By bottling your kombucha, and leaving it at room temperature for a few days, you get carbonation.
At a Beijing “food and wine exhibition” (which was 95% wine) my favorite drinks were the Lindemans fruity beers — a type of beer called lambic. The label of the raspberry (framboise) one says:
Lindemans Framboise is a lambic made from local barley, unmalted wheat, and wild [= air-borne] yeast. After spontaneous fermentation, raspberries are added, creating a secondary fermentation and yielding a beer of exceptional flavor and complexity.
Maybe the presence of two quite different fermentations (grain and fruit) is why it tastes so good, just as this says. To me, the more important point is the linkage of fermentation and complexity — the idea that fermentation creates complexity.
1 pound of pork belly…………$3
1 pound of scrap animal fat…$0.15
expired food……………………none (can’t buy)
better health…………………..priceless
There isn’t one fermented food on a list of “the 11 best foods you aren’t eating” compiled by Tara Parker-Pope, author of the world’s most visible health blog. Nor do any of the listed foods contain animal fat. One of them (sardines) is high in omega-3, so the list gets a D instead of an F. Fermented foods and animal fat (in sufficient quantity) have easily-noticed benefits, in contrast to every food on the list. Parker-Pope and the nutritionist she consulted (Jenny Bowden) have large gaps in their understanding of nutrition.
