This Split Second

Originally I planned to join Soulemama for This Moment last Friday after capturing this series of photos that morning. I laughed at myself at the time about it because I've never linked up with that before and on the first time I'd've been breaking the rules. Three photos and probably some words (can I never not have words? come on.). But then, technically, these three pictures were taken within probably a second, so they would still all meet the "moment" criteria.

Alas, all of this was for naught because, ultimately, it never happened. But I still kept thinking about posting the series regardless, so here we are today. (And also I've had a couple of bits and pieces I thought worth posting about, so this was a good excuse for that.)

First of all, my ferments are on the rocks. Well, not technically. Initially I thought that freezing my kombucha scoby and the kefir and water kefir grains might be okay in order to take a bit of a break from all of the upkeep (since I have piima culture in the freezer and that's okay). But, I'm glad I looked into it because freezing them is definitely not recommended. It turns out that (from my research, anyway) dehydrating the grains (dairy and water kefir) is the most desirable form of storage with the best possible chances for revitalization in the future.

Since I've had these poor creatures being neglected in my fridge for weeks (and I've been feeling terribly awful and guilty everytime I open the door and glimpse them in there), I finally took the plunge on Sunday. I emptied them all out, washed them all off, and prepared a safe place for them to dry. It was a very weird day and a little sad, too. (I really have no idea what I'm doing and hope that they'll come through it all right in the end. One more experiment, right? And hopefully a new level of success and mastery with the crazy stuff, right??)

Anyway, so they seem to be doing fine for the time being, just getting drier by the day.

The kombucha is an exception, though. It seems as though you can store them in your fridge in sweetened tea and just open it up for air and/or fresh food occasionally. At first I thought I might get rid of my scoby entirely and either get one from a friend later or try growing another one like I did the first time. BUT, I had a change of heart because I thought the poor thing was probably starving and also we have friends coming this weekend who may still be in need of one (I have two). So I gave them fresh food and put them in the fridge and we'll see how that goes.

And I still have my back-up (and now only) piima cream culture in the freezer in storage. And I also dumped out all of my sourdough starter that I had been storing in the fridge. I felt really sad and wasteful about that, but honestly I didn't really care for the taste of the bread when I made it. :( (and I hadn't yet gotten around to experimenting with making other sourdough stuff: crackers, pancakes, etc., probably for lack of confidence in the taste of the result.)

So that's the current status on all of my fermenting adventures. I also feel a little bit bad about it, though, because without the kefir/buttermilk/whey products I really haven't been soaking any of my flour or grains, etc, via the Nourishing Traditions method/theory. Personally, I'm not totally committed to having to do it 100% of the time, but I loved the pancakes it made and some of the other recipes, too, so it's quite a bummer in that regard. And I also liked that I had already had a headstart on meal prep in one little step which eliminated last-minute (or all day) panic about what to make for a meal!

On the other hand, though, I've been thinking about trying the yogurt making again now that my load is a little lighter (and begin making bread again, too. really, I've been bigtime slacking.) which would probably yield some whey. And couldn't you soak with plain yogurt, too?----I'd like to try reproducing the culture in Activia (bifidus regularis) because I like how it works but I don't like all the sugar in it and am opposed to ingesting the *light* version. Plus, it's expensive and there's a lot of packaging waste involved. Do you think that's possible? If I used some of the Activia as my starter? It's my hypothesis, anyway.