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.