I went to another acupuncture appointment today. It seems to be helping, although of course my body is healing itself too. But it seems to be going faster than it would otherwise. And I do feel like I'm getting results. I get acupuncture and chiropracty at the same time. My doctor cracks my neck, which feels quite good at the time, but after it feels a bit sore, like it's bruised. Also, apparently I lock my shoulders right where they need to be loose my sinuses, so every day she has to put pressure on this particular point in my shoulders and it hurts so much. I'm hoping this all helps. At any rate, I feel much better after I leave than I do when I go in.
Today, I finally have a bit of my sense of taste back! Maybe that's why I ate so much dinner tonight. It doesn't look very good because it fell apart when I cut it, but I made meatloaf. It has carrots, celery, shallots, parsley, cheddar cheese, and I glazed it with honey. It was really, really delicious.

I made some stir-fried vegetables with it, too. I used a recipe from this month's Fine Cooking , substituting grapefruit juice for orange juice. I cooked some shallots and rosemary, then added green beans, an orange pepper, and some spinach with a balsamic vinegar and grapefruit sauce. It was super-yummy... at least, what I could taste of it. My husband's not home yet so I'm going to wait for his verdict.

Finally, I cooked two of these today!! Two loaves of honey whole-wheat bread. I'm giving up sugar, so I thought I'd experiment with making bread with honey. Also, I thought meatloaf sandwiches for lunch tomorrow would be delicious. The bread didn't quite rise right. I need to figure that out. And to be honest, I'll probably eat most of this with peanut butter, which may defeat the fact that I made it to be healthy.
Finally, look how my kombucha baby is growing! I'm so excited. My friend tried my first batch of kombucha today. We both agreed it's a little too sweet, so less sugar from now on. We'll see how it goes.

More acupuncture tomorrow. I'm excited, I hope it's working and I won't have sinus trouble anymore. We'll see.

I've had a sinus infection for a few days now. I get several of them every winter, and I'm sick of them. Last time I went to the Student Care Center, they said they couldn't really treat it and to tough it out. So I did, and it healed itself. This time, I'm so congested I can't even use my neti pot, and I can't breathe through my nose. So I went to acupuncture today. I'm going to have 12 sessions and this will hopefully take care of the problem for the long-term. I'm also changing my diet--giving up dairy apart from my morning yogurt smoothie, and giving up all sugar except honey. The acupuncturist this morning told me I have fluid on my heart, and while she said it wasn't serious and I didn't need to worry, it drove home the fact I really need to lose weight and get in shape. So I'm going to try my best. I'll keep the blog updated with that, as well.
Acupuncture was interesting. I expected just needles, but I got needles hooked up to an electrical machine that sent little pulses through them every few seconds. I'm a little bit better, insofar as I can actually blow out of my nose this evening, but I'm still not better. I go again tomorrow and Friday to deal with the immediate problem of being unable to breathe, and not having a functioning nose. Then I'll go one or two times a week until I'm "cured."
Right now, because of my nose, I also can't taste anything at all, which makes cooking dinner a challenge. Tonight, everything was way too salty. I made sauteed green peppers, broiled salmon, and takana fried rice.

The kombucha project continues as well. These are the vessels I'm using to make the tea. Yesterday one batch seemed like it was done, so I bottled it, and made some new tea. I put the mother in my biggest jar and the baby is now on its own in a jar, as well.


My bottled kombucha! I re-used bottles from kombucha I'd purchased because that seemed easiest.


The batches still waiting to finish, starting with a half-gallon jar, the one I've been worried about:
The baby, now on its own in its own jar with new tea:
My gallon jar that now contains the mother:

Komucha and keema

My cold continues to be stuck in my head. I've noticed the first sign I'm coming down with something is a runny nose, and a plugged nose is the last symptom to leave. I had the flu more than a week ago, yet I still can't taste things, and I'm using my neti pot so many times a day I can't count. In an effort to get rid of the lingering effects of the flu, I've been drinking garlic-honey tea, and lemon-honey tea. I've continued with my kombucha brewing, as well.

This is the latest, gallon batch. There's a thin film over the top of the tea, so I suppose that means it's coming along. Still quite early, though.

My batch that contains the actual scoby looks pretty good now, though. The new baby on the top is thickening ans spreading to cover the surface of the liquid, and the scoby itself has started to float a little bit. I've drunk quite a bit out of this jar, and even thought about bottling it today, but decided to wait until the baby scoby develops just a BIT more before I did.
The same jar from the surface. The bubbles mean it's growing correctly, apparently.

My last half-gallon jar and the one I'm most concerned about. There's plenty of baby scoby floating in it, but they aren't growing together. The flavor seems to be developing the most quickly, but then that brownish baby looks odd to me. It looks like it's growing though, so I'm going to leave it alone to develop.

I mentioned my nose at the beginning of this post. One of the side effects is I have absolutely no sense of taste. I can down a glass of steeped raw garlic and barely taste it. To compensate, I've been cooking spicy food for dinner, like the chickpeas, so I at least get a tiny bit of flavor. Today I made some bok choy that was in the back of our fridge and we'd forgotten about, topped with some sesame dressing. The main dish was keema curry with genmai. I'm trying to be healthy and get well here.

The recipe I used was different from the one I used to make keema curry last time, and this one was a bigger hit with my husband. I couldn't really taste it, so I can't tell, but I hope I'm doing better tomorrow and can give a fuller report. At any rate, as my husband likes this one better, the recipe I used today is the one I will use from now on.


In related news, I've been talking to my father about giving up sucrose after reading an article in the New York Times. I think I may start tomorrow, I'm sick of being sick. As long as I have honey, I think I can do it and I'll be OK. The kombucha converts all the sugar into vinegar, so I think that would be OK too.

In addition to my dissertation, I think I really need to focus on getting myself healthy. I'm tired of catching colds.

Mainly Kombucha

I talked yesterday about my kombucha addiction and the three jars I have brewing two gallons of the stuff. The newest batch is in a gallon jar, and I haven't used a SCOBY to start it. I did scoop a bit of the developing baby scoby out, and I poured in a store-bought bottle. I started this jar yesterday. Today it has developed a thing film over the top, but no other changes.


This is a half-gallon jar I started in the same way as the gallon jar, but I started it a few days ago. The developing baby is kind of weirdly brownish looking, but it appears to be growing, and there's growth on the bottom, too.
This is my last half-gallon jar. This actually contains the baby SCOBY I got online, and it has reproduced the bits of baby scoby I have spooned into the new jars. I'm hopeful this jar will be done in the next few days. The baby on the top is starting to thicken and become more opaque, although it's still quite thread-like, rather like egg drop soup. I tasted this kombucha (in fact, I've drunk quite a bit of it despite the fact it's not ready yet), and it's developing nicely. Once this finishes, I'll put my online-purchased baby scoby in the gallon jar and start another half-gallon with the new baby on the top of this one in here.
The jar from the side. When I first put the baby scoby in, it sank right to the bottom, but now it's starting to float a bit. At the risk of sounding cheesy, maybe being shipped traumatized it. I hope it continues to grow, though, and that I get delicious tea from it soon!
For dinner tonight I made Maruko's famous chicken again. As is the case with everything Maruko taught me to make, this was delicious. Vinegar-simmered chicken, spinach with sesame seed dressing, and a bit of stewed chickpeas leftover from yesterday. A nice dinner, very filling.

Recovery

Today was my first day cooking anything meaningful for quite some time. The past two weeks or so my husband and I have been living off of quick stir-fry and tsukemono (Japanese pickles). This was because first I had the flu (it seemed so much worse than whatever strain I used to pick up as a child). In addition, I had a chapter on my dissertation due. BUT I turned in a draft yesterday, and I had promised myself when I finished I got one day off. That said, we still had some hakusai and moyashi tsukemono to eat, as well as some leftover miso pork from yesterday. So the only thing I made today was a spicy tomato and chickpea... it's not quite a curry, but it's close. Anyway, I thought it was delicious, and super-filling. I'll definitely be making this again.



The chickpea curry. It's made from onions, tomatoes, chickpeas, a little pit of cumin, salt and pepper, and a little bit of coriander. Oh, and the juice of one lemon. We had it over rice, but I think it would be equally good over quinoa or couscous. It was super, super, super easy to make, and could stand alone as a side dish with chicken, or it can be served by itself. I also think it would work well with the addition of other vegetables like potatoes and carrots. All in all, I was very pleased, and can't wait to experiment with the dish more in the future.




My other ongoing project has been brewing my own kombucha (紅茶きのこ). When I had the flu, my fever spiked to 104, and I couldn't keep anything down. I had heard so much about the health benefits of kombucha, and after my fever broke I was so miserable I thought I would try it to see if it would help. I don't know how much it did help, but it tasted so good and so refreshing after my bout of illness that I quickly developed an addiction. People have talked and talked about how healthy it is, but I just find it super-delicious. That said, at $4 a bottle it got very expensive very quickly, and I'm a poor graduate student. So I decided the only logical thing to do, rather than giving up the tea, was to brew my own.
I got a mushroom online, and started a batch, which is pictured here. Then I thought, I wonder if you can brew from a bottle? I looked online, and found some sites that explained the process, so I started two more jars from store-bought bottles. I now have 2 gallons of kombucha brewing, which seems a bit excessive. I think the finishing times will be very different, though; my first half-gallon batch will be ready in maybe two or three days, and then a few days after that the second half-gallon might finish. The gallon jar will take at least two weeks. I'll update here about how it grows, and how long the gallons last. Kombucha is so delicious, with my husband and I both drinking it I don't think they'll last very long. We'll see!After a week, the "mother mushroom" has started to grow a "baby mushroom." It's odd-looking, and it's hard to tell if it's healthy or not. But this is what it looks like. The translucent layer fanning out from the opaque center is actually sort of lovely.