Growing your Own Scoby and Making Kombucha Tea

I recently have been very into drinking Kombucha tea. Kombucha (Kom-Booch-ah) or "buch" as it's affectionately called is a cultured tea by a Scoby (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast which grows into what the call a 'mushroom') which sounds disgusting but is actually more of a delicious life elixir. But I'll admit it does have a kind of tangy and somewhat startling vinegary taste in the beginning but it grows on you quickly.

Kombucha is a natural probiotic and aids digestion. I drink it about everyday but it is especially good for your body if you have been on antibiotics recently (or ever as the good bacteria in your belly are killed off by antibiotics and take a LONG time to grow back).

It can be bought commercially at most health food stores but costs usually between $3.50 and $4.50 a bottle and because of a dispute over alcohol contents in the tea (because it is fermented kombucha has about 0.5%) many stores like whole foods won't sell it.

So if you can't swing the price or even find it MAKE YOUR OWN! This here below is my Scoby all grown up and ready for action, I've grown quite fond of him actually.

Making the Kombucha is actually really simple. You will need:

a half gallon glass jar

4 black tea bags

about 3/4 cup o' sugar

1/2 cup of Kombucha from the last batch

1 scoby!

Fill the glass jar half full of boiling water and then add your tea bags. Let the tea steep for about 20 minutes. Fish the tea bags out and add in the sugar. Let the tea cool for about 20 minutes more. Then fill the jar almost to the top with cool water but make sure there is enough room left for the 1/2 cup of Kombooch and for the Scoby of course.

Make sure before you DON'T add the kombooch from last batch or the Scoby untill the tea mixture is room temperature. The heat could kill the little Scoby!!!!

When the tea is cool add in the 1/2 cup from the last batch and put the Scoby on top of that (like below). cover the jar with a thin cloth or paper towel and store in a warm dark place for 5-10 days, I keep it for 7 days. It will start to smell very vinegary and when you taste it, it'll taste tangy.

YOU'RE DONE!

Take the Scoby out and put it on a plate to the side, it'll have another, thinner, baby scoby stuck onto it. This baby can go into this next batch or given to a friend. Pour your tea in different jars and start again.

What? Whats that you say? you don't have a Scoby? Well, why don't you grow your own?

It's really easy. You can buy a starter culture on line for like 35 bucks OR you can go to your local health food store and buy a bottle of Kombucha, make sure it is both RAW and unflavored. Pour the whole bottle in a large glass jar. Fill the rest of the jar up with sweet, room temperature, black tea. Cover the mixture up with a thin cloth or paper towel and let it set in a warm dark place.

Somewhere between 5-7 days a baby scoby will start to grow, like this baby here.

Warning: IT WILL LOOK FUNKY

After another week or so it will start to thicken up and turn a yellow/white or pink/white color

You'll know its ready to start kombooching when the Scoby is about 1/4 an inch thick!

Happy Kombooching!

Medicinal Herbal Honeys (Making Fennel infused honey)

I'm going to go on a short honey rant quickly. I am in love with honey. First off, as I'm sure you've figured out by now, its a superior sweetener to sugar just for its rich taste. But did you know that it is anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and anti-viral? It is the only food that never goes rancid. Recently there have been studies linking honey intake and prevention of colon cancer. The modern medicine world might finally be tuning into the medicinal uses of honey, but honey has been used in folk remedies for hundreds of years. Its anti-bacterial properties can ward off infections on cuts and burns and it is a great throat soother.

I recently found this great blog called Urban Herbwifery which suggested making herbal honeys. An herbal honey in basically just honey

infused with medicinal herbs. I decided to make Fennel Honey just because I happened to have dried fennel at hand in my dorm room and because fennel aids digestion and can ease gas.

Here is the link to this AWESOME herbal blog with the full list of herbs that work well in herbal honeys, their uses and the full recipe, but below is how I made my Fennel Honey (and it was easy!)

http://urbanherbwifery.wordpress.com/2011/02/20/herbal-preparations-honeys-oxymels-and-elixirs/#more-998

Since fennel seeds are SO tough I just ground it up before I put it in my jar. Below you can see the size difference between the ground up seeds.

After I ground up the seeds I filled up a jar partially. I would have filled the jar half way full if I had enough honey to fill it the rest of the way up but I only had about three quarters a jar of honey so I used less seeds.

I then heated the honey just a little. I put it in the microwave for 20 seconds until it was runnier than normal but not just fully liquidy.

I poured the heated honey over the crushed fennel and mixed it together. And that was basically all of it. I closed up the jar and I'm going to let it stay sealed for a few weeks, flipping the jar upside down every day or so, just so it really will get all mixed together.

Hope that your herbal honey making goes well!

Ghee, Glorious, Ghee (How to Make Purified Butter)

Ghee, it's all the rage in the health food world today so it was high time for me to check it out. It's been used in Indian culture and cuisine for thousands of years so I guess we are behind the eight-ball, but now that it has caught on, it's spreading like wildfire.

Basically, the process of making Ghee is just a few steps further of rendering and straining butter. When you make ghee, you remove the milk solids from butter, so you end up with a butter-like substance that lacks both lactose and is then considered "purified". Also during the purifying stage, most of the water is removed which gives the ghee a much longer shelf life. (can be stored un-fridgerated, for up to a year).

Ghee provides essential fatty acids (where are necessary for our body) and is considered the most digestible fat (some even say it aids the digestion process!). It can be heated to high temperatures which makes it great for cookin

g and it also contains vitamin A and E.

That being said it is a pure saturated fat, so, like all fats, should be used sparingly.

The clarifying process is easy! Start with a pound of unsalted butter (four sticks), the better the quality of butter the better the quality of ghee. Put them in a pan on medium heat and DON'T stir them. The process will take about 20-25 minutes. You will start to see a froth rise to the top of the pan and a sediment will start to fall to the bottom of the pan. The butter will start to bubble and hiss gently and the sediment will slowly turn a golden brown.

At about the 20 minute mark the bubbling and hissing will quiet down and the sediment will be a

amber color. If you can't see the sediment, gently, tip the pan to get a look at it. When the sediment is

an amber color turn the heat off immediately so it won't burn. Let it sit for about five minutes.

Line a strainer with cheesecloth and pour the liquid through into a sterile jar. I actually forgot the cheesecloth and in a state of emergency while the butter was on the burner, I ripped my house apart for a cheesecloth like material, ended up with a sheet of gauze from the med kit hah. You can see all the milk solids that were left over. I tasted them, they kind of tasted like parmesan cheese in a way…
While the Ghee was still warm, it looked like this below
But after it had cooled to room temperature it sort of had a whipped butter texture (the first picture on the page). I'm not really sure how I feel about the way my ghee came out. It tastes fine but almost has a grainy texture. I figure it'll be good for cooking. I think maybe my use of gauze as opposed to cheesecloth might have had something to do with it. I'll update ya'll next time I make it with the proper equipment and see if it makes a difference in the texture.

Well that's all for now folks! Now get making some Ghee!

How to make Masala Chai (Chai Tea!)

Today I want to talk about tea! Tea is the most popular beverage, after water, throughout the world. I am a huge Chai Tea fan. Every time I stop at a coffee shop or anything I always try to order an Iced Chai, But the thing that irked me is that barely anywhere makes their own chai teas. The places that I go that I know DO make their own chai are always out because they say that it is a hassle to make it doesn't keep for that long, so today was the day to try my hand at making it!

"Chai" is a literal translation for the word tea is both the Hindi and Urdu language. The world "Masala" is a Hindi word for spiced. So together "spiced tea" or "Masala Chai".

The ingredients were rather expensive, just because the spices that are used are not as common in the States so they tend to be on the pricey side, but I'm gunna do some bulk shopping around and see if there is anywhere where I can get them cheaper. I was pretty happy with how my Chai turned out in the end.

• 2 teaspoons fresh ginger root; grated
• 1 whole star anise; broken up
• 1 teaspoon orange peel; grated
• 1 stick of cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon cardamom seeds
• 10 whole cloves
• 5 whole peppercorns
• 5 cups water
• 1/4 cup loose black tea leaves;
• (I used Darjeeling but I want to try making it with Green or white tea,
• also, I if you can't find large leaved, loose tea, then just go with
• using about 7 tea bags because it's hard to strain a lot of the smaller ground loose tea)
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/4 cup honey
• 3 cups milk

The first step is to take those first seven ingredients and put them into cheese cloth and tie it up so the ingredients are contained. I actually found a Spice pouch made of organic materials at the grocery store which was convenient. the pouch I used was made by the Organic Coffee Co. which was perfect! Place the pouch into the water and put it on hi on the stove. I tied the string to a wooden spoon and placed it out of the pan like a big tea bag. This is helpful because it makes it easier to fish out the bag out later on.

As soon as you bring the water down to a simmer you can add the tea. Let it simmer for 15 minutes.

I made the mistake of using a finely ground loose tea and it really made a mess with straining. Also I find that loose tea ends up being more bitter for whatever reason… dunno why.

I read a tip somewhere that said if you like strong tea, try increasing the amount of tea you use, instead of increasing the amount of time you cook the tea.

After 15 minutes of simmering has passed. Remove the spice pouch and strain the tea into another container. Here add the vanilla and honey. You can also add the milk at this time, but I decided to leave it out so that my friends and family could add the milk to taste.

I used my tea and spice pouch to make two batches. My first batch was much too strong and

bitter but the second batch was great. I used maple syrup to sweeten the second batch.

If anyone has any tips or suggestions or would like to tell about how their Chai turns out, I would l

ove to here form ya'll!