Toasting My Dog's Health with Kvass

Today is my only whole day off this week, and my chance to catch up with projects I told myself I would do and complete since the New Year arrived, but the urgency to re-engage with them has waned a lot with the plummeting wind chill factor. Instinct is drawing me into slipping into winter torpor instead. Charging around in sub -40° C weather to get stuff done is somehow failing to appeal to me, despite the need to do so. This recent spell of cold weather has really sapped me of energy, and I still have so much to do. The only reason I’ve sat down to write is that I feel like I have so many knots to loosen in my head first before I can focus on mindfully approaching or tackling any one of them. Writing has proved to be somewhat therapeutic for me in the past; sometimes it has been a helpful way of re-motivating me. Maybe my instincts are the right things to guide me now, and staying in bed and resting is what I really do indeed need; I fear the boredom of it though.

Good news came yesterday in regards to Ella. The lab test results showed that the tumour that was removed from her turned out to be benign. I’m greatly relieved in that respect. However, that big ugly bump, and the new unforeseen expenses that it incurred, really threw a monkey wrench into some of the planning I’ve already done for some things. It’s tempting to just throw up my hands and say that there is nothing I can do about it; yet doing nothing about it feels like it’s not the answer. I’m trying to be tenacious enough to not let this bit of misfortune control me, or knock me off target.

Drevlyansky Classic Style
Ukrainian Kvas. . . Yum

I took a break between paragraphs. During that time I bottled my beer from my New Year's brewing project and then went out shopping to fill the huge void in my fridge. I made an effort not to drag home junk food despite the great cravings for it I’ve had as of late. I got experimental again, and bought more stuff at the Ukrainian food store on the east end of 8^th Street. I found the perfect thing to substitute and satiate my odd craving for pop. I bought a bottle of kvass to sample. I heard of this stuff a while ago while working for one of the Ukrainian cultural centres. I found recipes, but I never got brave or interested enough to make it for myself. The homemade stuff is quite perishable, and I’m only equipped for large volume production of more potent potables; plus since it is rye based, there is a real risk of some accidental contamination or culturing of ergot spores* in my kitchen, or on my brewing equipment. For those who don’t know what kvass is, the best description I can give for it is that it’s a fizzy cola-coloured, fermented drink, made out of rye malt or traditional sourdough rye bread. It’s sort of tangy and not too sweet. Technically, it’s a low alcohol form of beer without any hops; it’s sometimes flavoured with spices, raisins, or other fruits and berries. It’s a healthier drink than pop because it’s naturally fermented with living yeast, and thus rich with the B complex of vitamins. It has no preservatives, plus it’s loaded with same kind of probiotics like yogurt has, so it’s good for your immunity and digestive system as well.** I was told that traditionally in Ukraine and Russia, it’s quite often used as a hangover cure. I found it to be quite delicious. I think I'm hooked and actually prefer this stuff over Coke.

*- Ergot: a fungus that grows on rye and related cereal grasses. The spores of ergot produce toxic residues akin to lysergic acid (LSD). Poisoning from it (ergotism) results in some extreme neurological effects, including cognitive impairment, seizures, and hallucinations. There is a theory in cultural anthropology that ergot tainted bread consumed in the early years of Christianity produced "divine and mystical" experiences after the Eucharist ritual, thus attracting more "believers". In medieval Europe, the flour/meal made from grain of ergot infected rye crops, caused whole villages to be afflicted with St. Antony's Fire, and bad trips on this stuff may have unsuspectedly fueled and influenced negative perceptions and experiences of the "supernatural" which may have resulted in witchhunts and the Inquisition. Think about it: millions tortured, and killed by hanging and burning at the stake because of some snot-like organism growing on rotting kernels of grain. Fungus, yeast, mold, smut, germs, and other parasitic microbes and creatures don't get nearly enough credit for making such radical and lasting impacts on human cultural revolutions, history, and civilization in general.

**- An interesting historical note to add. In the 1800's, during the Napoleonic Wars, kvass may have been a critical key element in saving Russia from Bonaparte's armies. Napoleon's soldiers were frequently cut off from their supply lines while they were advancing toward Moscow, and were forced to drink the local untreated water in Russia which was, at that time, loaded full of water-born diseases. The Russian imperial soldiers had rations of kvass to protect them from these epidemics, and hence were healthier, and could spend more time fighting French battalions who were already starving, sick, and shitting themselves to death from cholera. One could assume that this was probably another factor that led Napolean himself to believe and conclude that, "an army marches on its stomach."