Autumn Equinox Weekend 2017: Getting Bitter, Getting Sour

Friday

It was actually one of my more pleasant Fridays of this year, and counting in last weekend’s effort to re-organize stuff from Fall cleaning, and successfully riding out a storm of some other bad karma, I feel more able to do some steps toward other forms of betterment. I thought if I’m going to do more Fall brewing of beer in the days ahead, I should make an effort to craft it in such a way where it’s more therapeutic. Google flashed a dedication to Asima Chatterjee, a noted medicinal plant researcher and organic chemist from India, as it would have been her 100^th birthday today, and it strangely coincided with my recent interest in researching the healing power of hops: the getting bitter part of the weekend.

Back in the days when I was on a property on which I had access to garden space, my efforts to cultivate things were pretty much reduced and restricted to plants that were necessary staples for

bachelorhood, i.e. the crop outputs were the elemental ingredients for making pizza and beer. I was hit and miss with growing my tomatoes; a complete failure with herbs like basil and oregano. The only thing that I really had success at growing there were hop vines, which came from cultivars that I mail ordered from the Richter’s seed catalogue. I was tempted to go by the old place a few days ago and see if the plants were still there, and to perhaps snip a few away that were straggling into the public space of the back alley. I remembered though that a friend of mine said that she had some vines at her place, and she offered me a few cones. I happily accepted. She didn’t know what variety they were, but after some research on the visual and aroma profile (low bitterness, earthy, herbal, no real citrus notes to them) plus the elimination of varieties that wouldn’t thrive in this wretched climate of ours, and memories from previous experience, I think I narrowed them down to being maybe Hallertau or Saaz hops; either variety is most likely used for lighter lagers and Pilsners. Thankfully, the cones were not touched by frost yet*, and I got them at their peak ripeness. They needed to be dried before I can use them. I picked, sorted, and checked them for insect hitchhikers, and so now I’m experimenting with using a food dehydrator setting for a milder desiccation temperature rate: starting at 50 degrees Centigrade. Too low and slow risks incubation of molds; too high and dry risks the same sort of damage to the oil glands as freezing them.

If I am already regulating myself on the amount of alcohol I’m allowed to drink, then enhancing the sedating properties of beer in other ways has to be done if drinking more of it isn’t an option. Hops are supposed to have the natural properties of reducing anxiety and eliminating insomnia. Adding more to my brew kits seems to be the way to receive the benefits of them. For flavour, I’m targeting for somewhere a third of the way between the bitterness of what I remember Big Rock Traditional Ale tastes like, and that kicked-in-the-face-by-Satan-himself kind of bitterness found in Double India Pale Ales. There is no doubt about the medical potential of hops because they belong in the phytochemically super-rich botanical family of Cannabaceae, the same family as that of Cannabis Sativa, which is of course marijuana. I’m surprised that, or I at least don’t understand why, there is not more research done on hops, because we’ve only been using them since beer was invented 6000 years ago; it being such a pivotal beverage for civilization and all. The priority for research attention between the two plants shifts to hemp because there is more pressure to either discover more benefits of the plant by pro-hemp/marijuana legalization institutions, or for taking a contrarian stance for more research dollars focused to find evil in it by the forces that want to justify keeping it suppressed and criminalized. Either way, hops aren’t controversial enough to get the same attention. The side effects of higher intake of hop extracts, from what I’ve read, is like that of using too much refined soy products: a greater potential of overconsuming phytoestrogen. It seems growing beer titties might be more of a risk than growing a beer belly if your ale is infused with more hops.

Saturday

The getting sour part of the weekend. I made cabbage rolls today, with soured cabbage leaves and pressure preserved the sauerkraut that was being brewed under them in my fermentation crock. I already described the process involved in the previous entry, Fermentation Experimentation (On Baba’s Magic Rocks). The effort to clear out older bulk dry stock from my pantry is almost complete. Other results from that: Dutch Style Split Green Pea Soup with my remaining bacon, and my rendition of chili con carne with the remaining beef, tomatoes, onions, beans and other odds and ends. 

Sunday

I wanted to get sweet today, but I can’t let go of sour quite yet. I was gifted some sour apples (Battleford variety) I need to use and not waste, and there’s sour cream in the fridge, plus some raisins in the pantry. This means aggravation, because I settled on making pies with this stuff, which means messing around with goddamned pastry dough. I don’t know why I have no patience for it. Making regular bread or pizza dough isn’t a big deal for me. However, if there is any one thing I do in the kitchen that has me so challenged that I’m swearing like a salty sailor, it’s trying to mix and feel out that right interplay between flour, lard/shortening, and the exact amount of moisture and temperature It needs to bind it all together perfectly to allow it to be rolled out right for a pie. It’s somehow too technical for me. I committed to it today in the spirit of practice and persistence. If I screwed up the pastry, I at least have a crack at redemption in trying to craft a good filling. My sour apples were doctored up with plenty of cinnamon, and the sour cream and raisin filling for my other pie was spiced up with vanilla, cardamom, and cloves, and minimal of brown sugar was used for both.

My Sour Cream and Raisin Pie, so far my best attempt at

using a meringue. My apple pie was OK too taste-wise, but an

embarrassment to the visual aesthetic, and far too damn

fugly to add to this gallery.

The proof of how infrequently I cook with sugar, i.e.

brown sugar that looks like it needs to be dynamited out of the jar.

That's what the good old mortar and pestle is for.

Maybe my waning interest and ability in baking dessert-like things is perhaps a sobering and humbling indication that I’m aging. It’s a scientific fact that the taste palette shifts more from the sweet to the bitter and sour as we mature and approach middle age and beyond. I can only concur given that my taste for beer is stronger now than it was when I was a younger adult (I was more into rye whiskey at that age). I try more bitter things and am more forgiving of the pungency of other things now (like certain cheeses with their sudoriferous, or even fecal-like, stenches) that I would have been revolted by as a teen. I suppose I made pies to feel younger and spark a sense of a sweet tooth that I'm losing. At least I’m finding out that the aging tongue is nothing to be afraid of, it just gives cause to make one more adventurous. Coming to a point of appreciating things like more bitter beers, astringent wines, and smellier cheeses may be a sign of maturity.

*- I shouldn’t have to mention this to experienced brewers, though I suppose it could be done, but never should one use frozen hops for brewing, or store them in a freezer for later use, even if they are in pellet form. The humulone and lupulin glands in the flowers that produce their characteristic bitterness profile are essentially ruined when crystalized and then ruptured by frost and ice. I’m just saying that I wouldn’t do it myself. What’s the point of going through all the effort of searching for an ingredient with a specific aroma and flavour profile, a rarer commodity at that, only to destroy that which you’re seeking for the greedy act of preservation? After drying them and letting them cool to room temperature, refrigerate them for a short while in a vacuum pack if you can if their usage will be delayed, but don’t freeze them.

Hacking Pickling

As I mentioned in my last entry, this weekend was going to be the one where I’d be experimenting

I made pickled eggs too.

Can't waste the lovely dill.

with making my own lacto-fermented pickles. Before I get into explaining the crazy ideas I’ve had to accommodate for this endeavor, I should speak about how my first trial at it last year. It was the trial where I was stifled from a few errors, but I was still able to salvage some good results. The problem wasn’t in the recipe I fashioned for the experiment; it was a problem with the structural form of my pickling vessel. It all amounted to the ability to keep things submerged: any matter that you are trying to pickle and preserve by fermenting absolutely has to stay below the surface of the liquid brine. Otherwise, the risk of contamination by mold is very certain, which will turn the exposed cucumbers into a gross gooey gray mush. This happened to me last year with a few of them. Those that were inflicted by this problem had to be carefully removed and discarded immediately. The ones in the middle of the solution were still green and kept their form, but lacking in crispiness. According to my research sources, they were still edible. To be resourceful, I took these soft ones and ran them through a meat grinder to simply make a tasty relish* (waste not, want not). The ones on the bottom of the fermenter were solid and of good quality. I made another batch of sterile brine though for keeping them preserved in the jars, to avoid another risk of mold contamination by using their native solution.

If the walls of the vessel were straight, like that of a traditional European or North American ceramic crock, the matter could be easily solved by just fitting a weighted ceramic plate over the mass to keep everything below liquid level. Although there is a useful airlock system in my particular crock’s traditional Asian design, it was still not enough to prevent spoilage. The curved sides coming to a narrowed opening on top of it make it difficult to insert anything inside to keep the cucumbers (which really like to float) under the brine. Trying to tightly pack and layer the contents, and interweaving sprigs of dill to sort of bind stuff together didn’t help at all either. Solving this problem needed an innovative solution. Time to doing some hacking for this year’s pickle project . . .


Objective: With using just the minimal of materials around my home, to somehow make a liquid permeable barrier, that can be flexible enough to be inserted through the narrow opening of my crock jar, but yet can be rigid enough, and can adjust and expand across the surface, to hold down contents, and to prevent stuff from floating up and breaking the surface of the brine. The materials cannot include, or contain, reactive metals that can oxidize: which might impart rust/metallic flavours in the batch, or might even make it toxic. I’m restricted to using ceramics, glass, non-metallic earthenware, wood, or food-grade plastic. Taking a coffee break to think on it now . . .

Eureka! After dreaming and digging around, I found my tools and materials. They are:

• A bamboo sushi rolling mat (a bit of a sacrifice, but they are cheap, and I could use a new one anyway)
• Chopsticks (natural wood; no paint, varnishes, or other finishes)
• A round Pyrex casserole dish lid
• A marker
• Pruning shears (with flat jaw)
• Glass beads (at least a kilogram in weight)
• A food grade plastic Ziploc bag

My Hack for Making a Liquid Permeable Fermenter Barrier

The bamboo sushi mat is flexible enough to be inserted inside the jar, but for it to lie flat in there, and to prevent one’s pickles from probing through gaps, it must be made circular. The procedure to do this is as thus:

1. Roll out the sushi mat flat, and place an edged form that occupies the greatest circular areas positioned from the centre of the mat. I found a casserole dish lid, which worked well because it didn’t stain with marker ink.

2. Trace the marker around the edge of the circle to mark where to trim off the superfluous lengths of the bamboo rods of the mat.

3. Use the pruning shears to cut away the corners of the bamboo mat. Be sure not to cut through the binding chord/string running along the middle of the mat. Keep the extra string trimmed from the mat when cutting away the corners.

4. Take pieces of the trimmed string, and poke them through the spaces between the bamboo rods, making certain that they wrap around the middle binding chord on both distal ends of the mat, and one in the centre along the same axis.

5. Trim the chopstick such that it extends across the full length across the middle of the mat, perpendicular to the bamboo rods, leaving enough length for it to extend slightly at each end. Tie the chopstick to the mat with the pieces of trimmed string inserted through the points in the mat mentioned previously. This will make the surface rigid once it is put in the fermenting jar.

6. Sterilize the glass beads by boiling them in water. Drain them, and then place them in the food grade plastic bag. This will be used as weight to place and distribute across the bamboo barrier once it covers the contents. Just before placing this bag of glass beads on top of the modified sushi mat in the fermenter, set it in a colander in a sink and pour boiling water around it to get it as sterile as possible.

There are a few recipes out there for making one’s own homemade fermented pickles. I’m not sharing mine, as I don’t know if mine will turn out yet to be worth sharing. But from all that I read and accumulated in knowledge, I will add a few tips as to what I did with mine, which is supposed to make (at least in theory) nice firm pickles (and no . . . adding Viagra in the fermenter is not one of them!).

1. Begin pickling the cucumbers as soon as possible after they’ve been picked (easier said than done) – I made a mad rush to get to the Farmers' Market as early as I could to get my produce while it was still fresh.

2. Plunge them in ice water before processing them – allegedly this is somehow beneficial to get crisper pickles. I presume it slows down the effect of the enzyme activity in them that can possibly soften them, see next point.

3. Get rid of the blossom end of the cucumbers – while scrubbing and inspecting each of the cukes for defects (don’t use any blemished ones), I take and pare away the blossom end of the cucumbers. Not only does it facilitate the brine to permeate the cucumbers more easily, but the blossom end is full of enzymes that soften the fruit body of the cucumber once it’s taken off the vine. Just lightly paring away the skin from the tip should work; you don’t have to get crazy and peel away so much that it looks like you are giving the thing a circumcision. If you aren’t sure which end is the blossom and which is the stem end, just be safe and trim both ends the same way.

4. Cherry leaves – I “borrowed” mine from a neighbour’s tree, whose branches were sticking out into the alley. Cherry leaves are full of botanical tannins that work like a more natural form of alum, a more refined chemical used in pickling used for making crisper pickles. Leaves of other plants, like grape, oak, and horseradish, apparently work too.

My spices and salt mixed together, plus garlic, cherry leaves,

and most importantly, lots and lots of dill . . .

The Process

1. Boil a large pot of water and then allow it to cool to a temperature that won’t scald anything, but remains warm enough that will allow it to dissolve course salt, and can allow infusion and release the aromatics of the pickling spice blend, garlic, dill, and also releases the tannins from the cherry leaves. It will also purify the water, boiling off any residual chlorine, which makes for better brewing project results.

2. Weigh out the salt** and blend pickling spice mix. I like salty and sour pickles, so a 9 - 10% weight of course salt of the total mass of cucumbers should work.

3. Soak cucumbers in ice water, scrub them and remove the blossom ends (as mentioned above), throw aside any with any blemishes, mushiness, or signs of insect activity.

4. Place the cucumbers in the fermenter in layers, alternating with dill, garlic and sprinkling salt and spices between each layer. Don’t allow the contents to pile up! Make sure that the surface is spread level. The final layer of cucumbers should have no pieces of stems from the dill or cucumbers poking above the even surface. Top the last layer with any remaining salt and spices.

5. Place permeable barrier on top of the contents, and secure the crossing piece of chopstick to secure the barrier in a rigid form. Place the sterilized bag of glass beads on top of the barrier, and spread the glass beads evenly on the top of the surface.

Seems to fit very nicely . . .

6. Slowly pour in the warm water from the pot into the fermenter until it reaches above the bag of glass beads***. No cucumbers should be exposed at all.

7. Put the cover on the fermenter, and add water around the lid, creating an airlock. Gases from the lactobacillus bacteria that are metabolizing sugars and fibre can then escape, while (hopefully) no foreign and harmful strains of microbes will be able to enter and contaminate the batch.

I expect some burbling and burping

sometime tonight.

From there onward, it is just a waiting game involving monitoring, assuring that things haven’t shifted, and the removing any weird looking scum that looks like it doesn’t belong there.

*- This relish + mayonnaise + minced onion + ground black pepper + salt to taste = Awesome homemade Tartar Sauce.

**- Shame on you if you don’t have a kitchen scale, and yet still want to brew things! What the hell kind of chef/brewer/fermento are you?! If your kitchen doesn’t have a scale, I guess you don’t want to be a good one. OK, I’ll be kind this one time and give you a hint: 1 cup of course salt weighs about 250 grams. Shame on you again if you’re still stuck in the Stone Age, and not using the metric system like a scientific mind should, and 98% of the globe already does. I draw the line here, and I’ll just let you figure out the conversions yourself.

***- I suppose you are wondering why I have a bunch of glass beads in my kitchen. Remember Aesop’s fable about the crow that was dying of thirst, who found a pitcher, but the water in it was too low for him to be able to drink from it? So he added pebbles in it bit by bit to raise the water level. Same principle applies here: fluid displacement. In brewing, some recipes leave behind a lot of sediment, which cuts down the volume when the beer is transferred to a carboy. The air space and extra surface area from the diminished volume can risk spoilage of the beer. One can top up the volume with water, but that of course dilutes it, and no one wants that! So instead, dropping in sterilized glass beads into the carboy raises the level and shrinks surface area and space between the airlock without diluting it. That’s what this old crow has learned anyway.

Fermentation Experimentation (on Baba's Magic Rocks)

I’ve started this entry after work, by the light of the Blue Moon. I almost feel like howling at it as I sip and sample a rather large glass of the mead that I brewed last year. Tonight marks the beginning of having another stretch of days off before the better part of this summer slips away; ones in which at least the sky won’t be a dull grey haze, and the air won’t be loaded with smoke like the last stretch of time off.

One of the first things that I’ll be indulging in with that time is preparing and eating some decent food. There are enough moments when I’m involved in the Iron Chef challenge at work, but I’m still limited by their menus and the lack of ingredients, or the crap ingredients I find there, so I’m never able to make the stuff that I really want. I have a bit of a reputation in my circles as being a bit of a food rebel (believe it or not). I don’t allow myself to be restricted by recipes very much. Time off means I get to bend the needle into that zone again with ingredients I really want, but then again there are still limits. More on this tomorrow.

Aug 1st, Mid-afternoon

My time off runs into a phase when I’m in the middle of a brewing project. So, I’m sticking around home for the first few days to tend to it before I act on any impulses to leave town. It’s also the time of the year when somehow the rural instinct in me from my early upbringing is aroused, and I become tuned into crafting some preserves, pickles, and doing other folksy kinds of canning projects. I’m also on a kick now to make a mindful effort to eat more (locally grown) vegetables. It’s a good time to do it because now that late summer is approaching, more local fare is available at the Farmer’s Market. As much as I would enjoy my time off by hyper-utilizing my propane grill to barbeque all the meat that I can lay my hands on, the price of it lately has skyrocketed considerably: this drought we are having is the excuse for that. Imported fruit produce is costing more too because of our devalued dollar. I’m also trying to heal my legs again, so my running progress has regressed, and I’m not burning off the same amount of calories as I usually would at this time of year. Eating more veggies and less energy dense food like meat and carbs/fructose may be the remedy. I’m trying not to feel deprived, so I’m preparing my greens and veggies in the ways I like eating them. Eating them raw/marinated, or having pickles or sauerkraut are my favourite ways to intake vegetable matter. So I’m focusing on this.

I got lucky recently after taking a random tour through one of the Asian grocery stores* here in

My new baby, who's ready to get
down to business.

town, and found an amazing fermentation jar: the same kind used by Koreans to make kimchi. This one was the perfect size for my needs. It is enamelled earthenware crockery, and it was dirt cheap too: a real bargain, costing less than a quarter of similar ones I was looking at while browsing online. Other fermentation crocks I’ve spotted in yard sales start at ridiculously high prices too because they are sold as “antiques”. I thought it would be a great investment for experimenting and making my own lacto-fermented pickles and, more importantly, for brewing sauerkraut**. So there I was, excitedly hauling it over to their till: a crackpot with crockpot. I won’t go broke now buying what is considered as delicatessen food at a hyper inflated prices. I can make my own now at will. Nostalgia also was the driver, probably the most pressing one, for me to get this thing. Homemade sauerkraut, like the stuff I was raised on, tastes the best.

However, I have the humbling and disappointing realization that I won’t ever be making the best that there is or ever was, because I will be lacking one especially crucial element for brewing up the perfect sauerkraut. That would be . . . my Baba’s magic rocks. My Ukrainian grandmother’s sauerkraut, in my mind, was the best that there ever was. It wasn't delicious because of any sort of special ingredient she added. Only salt and shredded cabbage were used. It was delicious because of the special rocks she used in the process. Traditionally, or at least as it was in her tradition, rocks were placed on top of the shredded cabbage to keep it submerged and compressed in the brewing vessel in such a way that the bacterial culture that makes this stuff does its job right. The magic power was in those rocks! The more scientific explanation is that the pores in those rocks harboured the lactobacillus microbes, which used whatever mineral matrix that is in those stones to direct their particular course of evolution through natural selection after several generations of replication. The fittest ones that could exploit those minerals, and withstood being immersed in the salt and that specific pH level that a crock full of raw cabbage has, out-competed and out-performed all other strains; and the inferior ones then died off and disappeared. The result is a dominant, unique strain of anaerobic bacteria which was thus optimally mutated for making and imparting that lovely signature flavouring. In essence, that particular kind of rock is a micro-biome, and my grandmother was lucky enough to find the perfect ones to allow this kind of goodness to happen. It's easier just to say that those rocks are magical.

It’s kind of like the same concept of how artisan cheeses from Europe can only be made and found in one special unique place, because of some certain breed of cow eating a specific plant that only grows in some particular valley, which then flavours the milk fat, which then makes the curds that are pressed and then cellared and aged in some cave which has its own unique microbial environment that is found nowhere else on Earth. Replicating stuff like this elsewhere becomes nearly impossible, even in lab conditions. Fermented stuff is special in another way. Such food stuffs are given more of an opportunity than regular food to affix some special cultural identity: e.g. milk is ubiquitous, but things like skyr, an Icelandic cultured dairy product, is something very unique. It’s not really cheese, and not really yogurt because of its unique microbial culture profile. It was probably made entirely by accident during the first part of human settlement there a over thousand years ago, when some microscopic gollywobs native to that island probably shot out from the bowels of the Earth through one of their geysers, and plopped into an open pail of milk, and then someone dared themselves to consume it. It doesn’t get much more elemental than that. It is only cultured and made there, and not readily available anywhere else beyond Scandinavia. Icelanders are probably very proud to call this stuff their own, as it is a part of their culinary tradition and no one else’s. Belgian beer is another example. Rather than conforming to the rigid standards of having antiseptic conditions for brewing within a closed system, the beer in some places in that country is brewed in open vats, and the windows of the brewery are opened to allow the natural wild yeasts, pollens, and other God-only-knows-what particles (like dust falling off from the overhanging cobwebs) to blow in and ferment and flavour the wort. The resulting beer, like it or not, can’t be replicated in a test lab, and can only be made in Belgium. If the technique was tried somewhere else, it would never be exactly that same kind of beer, because nowhere else except that specific area of Belgium has that particular environmental signature. This is what the French call terroir: the characteristic flavourings in wine and other cultured foods and produce that is a direct result of the elements and environment that they were produced in. In the case of Baba’s rocks though, I would imagine and guess that the proper French term could probably be called pierroir*** since the unique culturing conditions stem from a stone.

After my grandmother died, my Mom became the keeper of the sacred magic kraut stones, and she still uses them to make our family’s sauerkraut. It’s a little milder than I remember what Baba’s was, but it is still kick-ass stuff; with that same unique signature aroma and notes of flavour that I can’t describe. Back in the university days, when we received care packages from home, the roommates I had would tie into the jars of my Mom’s sauerkraut, and they gobbled it up like greedy pigs. They agreed that it was the best they ever had. They foolishly thought though that it could just simply replicated if they made it themselves . . . my brothers and I knew better.

As well as for healthful endeavors****, I’m interested in exploring new measures of conservation of

This is trub . . .Horrid looking slop
 . . . but it did its job nicely!

energy and preservation, home economics and frugality, and reduction of waste on all levels. This guy here, who once studied biology and is interested in sustainability, is very curious to see how far cycles of fermentation can be taken within a single system, and how they can be expended and/or expanded by producing stuff with the by-products from a former fermentation cycle. An example of this is rather than discarding the trub (yeast sediment) after brewing beer, I collected it and used it as a sort of sourdough starter and to make some rye bread, which was goddamned delicious by the way! I’m now using that same bread to make kvass (see earlier entry). The lacto-culture from that kvass could be used for making more kvass, or used with fruit and honey to make a sort of healthier sort of pop, or used to ferment other vegetables for pickling. The remaining liquor from 

My resulting rye bread. Not too pretty,
but it tasted great, and will be sacrificed
for my next experiment.

that process could maybe be later used for pickling eggs . . . and so on, und so wieder, et cetera. It could probably last as long as I’m willing to commit to it.

It’s a shame that some of the younger and urban generations of today will never know what some of these homemade fermented products will ever taste like. That’s their loss. I think they have already sadly missed the benefits of such stuff. I don’t have, and never had, any sort of food allergies or intolerances, which seem to be more common with the younger people of today. I strongly suspect that starting off life being raised on things like homemade sauerkraut, unpasteurized milk, homemade cottage cheese, fresh picked unwashed berries, taking a carrot right out of the ground and eating it, and playing in real dirt helped me to develop a more resilient immune system. Having a pantry full of mason jars, and the knowledge to make stuff that fills them makes me feel like a bit of a relic from the past, but at the same time I’m bypassing an industrial system and food culture that seems to do nothing but figure out new ways to put more noxious chemicals and preservatives in the stuff we eat to poison us. There is a bit of a renaissance starting again with home canning and using natural preserving methods that include using probiotics like lactobacillus bacteria. I can only hope it catches on more.

The beginnings of bread kvass: rye bread
+ raisins + spices + yeast + water, and a
little dash of alpha-amylase to accelerate
the mashing process. And yes, I do just
happen to have a stock of refined
biochemical enzymes just lying
around in my kitchen cupboards
. . . I'm kinky that way.

If I don’t ever get to use my Baba’s rocks, it is my hope that either one or both of my nephews would get to, and learn and appreciate how to use them at least one time in their lives, so they can see and enjoy the results that they can procure, and be cognisant of the power of taste and tradition, and what real food is all about.

*- I freakin’ love probing through the merchandise at some Asian and other ethnic market stores. It opens your eyes to a lot of weird and wonderful ways and variations people can express their palette, and some stranger foods that bring people comfort. Discovering something new and tasty, when you’ve thought you’ve already had all that you wanted to try in your life, is a great experience. I do have to be wary though that some of the “medicinal” teas, herbs, spices, and condiments there that you could have tolerated well enough when you were younger can, within half an hour after consumption, make you feel like you were shitting pure battery acid.

**- For you pretentious, snobby foodies out there, I’m talking about choucroute. I know it sounds weird to be sentimental over something that in essence is the result of bacterial putrefaction. There are just some weirdos, like me, out there who love sauerkraut, while others out there would compare sauerkraut as the collecting all the most vile beer farts from everyone at an Oktoberfest, and condensing them into a jar of shredded cabbage. There is no accounting for taste.

***- Terroir is derived from “terre”, meaning land or soil; so it stands to reason that pierroir could be coined as a word derived from “pierre”, meaning rock or stone.

****- Fermented foods make for a healthier gut/digestive system, and are also proven to be useful in detoxification and chelation (removing heavy metals from the body).

Re-Motivating for More Clicks

For myself, guilt was the prompt to make me examine the subject of psychological motivators for running more closely. It follows from last night after making the mistake of having my first, last, and I'm sure to be my only experience of dining on poutine. The spell of a sluggish indigestion is still haunting me. It seems funny to admit this now, especially being that I'm Canadian and that it's this late in my life for doing so, but I have never actually sampled poutine before (for which I'm now grateful). I either need the constitution of a much younger man, or I'd have to be completely wasted to dare myself to eat this kind of crap again. For those Non-Canadian readers who have never heard of this stuff before, let me explain to you what poutine is (pronounced "pooh-TEEN", not like the current Russian president's last name). I'm ashamed to say that it was invented here in Canada. Some while ago in Quebec, some bozo of a chef took a look at a plate of ordinary and already greasy fries and gravy, and thought to himself: "Hmm, let's see, what else does this need . . . Aha, I know, MORE ANIMAL FAT WITH THE ADDED POTENTIAL TO OBSTRUCT ONE'S BOWELS!" (Perhaps that idea sounded better when it was said in the original French). And he thence and thusly proceeded to plop on some nice gooey cheese curds onto this warm greasy mass, and TAH-DAH, poutine was born. In summary, poutine is the one of the most perverse ways to introduce the greatest possible number of calories in a single mouthful whilst instantaneously elevating your body's blood triglyceride index to levels of lethality. It's like the "fugu"* of the world of French fries. Consuming this stuff falls just slightly short on the spectrum of calorie ingestion depravity as drinking an entire litre of melted butter followed by another litre of whipping cream; or just taking a short cut to bypass digestion altogether, and getting a liposuction done in reverse, with the cannula inserted directly into your aorta and filling it in with 100% pure whale blubber. I sheepishly admit that the curd and gravy component of the mix was rather tasty, and that is what halts me from completely branding this stuff as downright obscene. I could only finish a third of the portion I was offered. I'm not really a fan of French fries to begin with, and yet I stupidly chose this avenue of having a dish which should best be served with a side of nitroglycerine tablets.

 
But I'm digressing. Back to the subject of running. I finally returned (after a whole flippin' week!) to a pattern of recuperative sleep again after this past cycle of insomnia; enough such that I thought I could finally get back into the swing of running again without risking some serious injury to my already stiff legs, back, and neck. My physical conditions for it are improving, but I also realize that I've been rather lax in setting the right tone for the mental ones. Any real honest runner will tell you that the activity is more mental than physical. So, what I thought I would do is slap down some reminders in print to keep me focused on why I should continue to keep up with it. Some are carrots; others are sticks. I hope to be listing more of the former than the latter. They are as follows:

1. A Pound of Butter (stick) – It was brought into mind after what I wrote about the poutine. For accuracy, I should be using a pound of pork lard for an example, but I don't handily have any around the place to serve me with a visual. The grams per litre density of butter is roughly more or less equal to that of human body fat. Butter is about 911 g/L, while human fat is generally about 918 g/L: that's about two of these 1 lb bricks of butter in a litre. Now, having a concrete visual of what this actual volume is like, and imagining having 14 more of these things being pressed, packed, and tucked into me subcutaneously gives me more of a disturbing and disgusting picture of what would result if I just let myself go for half a year, because knowing from past experience, 15 pounds of extra weight is what I can easily acquire through an entire winter of idleness. It's also a disturbing picture when I imagine how much of a substantial proportion of matter with this consistency and density might be actually be coating my arteries and heart. The seven kilometer run I did today used about 685 calories, and that can be computed as to how much volume of fat which that run potentially shredded away, assuming there is approximately 3,500 calories in a pound of adipose tissue (again, roughly the same as butter), amounts to cutting away about a fifth of that pound of butter you see there. This is perhaps the most depressing calculation to make for this entry: knowing that I'd have to run 35 kilometres to make that entire block of butter, representing the same volume of body fat, completely disappear given my age, mass, height, and metabolism.
2. The Views (carrot) – I'm fortunate to have a lot of great vistas around this town that can only be seen from the running trails, like this one on the pedestrian deck of the North CPR Bridge with the view of towering over the weir of the river. The torture of running to there from my place and then scrambling up the stairways to get up there is sometimes really worth it just to feel the breeze. The Bessborough is also a nice feature that is omnipresent from most views along the trails between the University and Broadway bridges.
   
   
   
3. Encountering Random Spontaneous Social Events (carrot) – I occasionally spot free public events, like this one I found in Rotary Park while on my way home. I participated with this group for a little bit, practicing some outdoor yoga long enough to discover just how seized up and inflexible I really am.
   
4. Sleep (carrot) – We generally tend to underrate sleep too much. When you sleep, you aren't spending money you don't have, nor are you mindlessly cramming your face full of excess food, you're not stuck listening/arguing with annoying people and being in toxic relationships, and generally not finding and creating more reckless ways of sinning and hurting yourself and others (unless you fall asleep while operating machinery or a vehicle). It heals both body and mind. The Dalai Lama says that it's the best form of meditation. If we all thought this way, we would all try to nap/sleep more. Running is a great way to snap you back into a pattern of a more relaxing sleep. Soreness usually (inevitably) finds you the next morning, but believe me, it's a hell of a lot better than getting no sleep at all and then waking up repeatedly to the same kind of pain knowing that you've done really nothing to acquire it other than just staying awake too long.
5. Beer (carrot and stick) – I try to avoid drinking my calories as much as possible, but when I do this is my favourite way to do it**. I like beer too much to stop drinking it, but I can't drink it as liberally as I used to without some bad physical consequences if I don't exercise. So long as I continue to like beer, I'll have to run more to keep it off of me. There is an entire site devoted to people like me who are geeks who can brew beer, and are around this certain age/maturity where they have this cyclical carrot-stick relationship with their beer consumption and appreciation/need for running so they can drink more beer. The site is called Brew/Drink/Run http://brewdrinkrun.com/ , in which the title itself is a pretty obvious and brief mission statement. In a fitness perspective, I'm lucky that my favourite pub is in a Goldilocks Zone, not too conveniently close; yet not so far away that I can't walk or bike there. I can leave my car at home, and still not have to trouble myself with calling cabs. The walk there and back usually amounts to the exercise I'd need to burn off the couple pints I had. Thus things balance out.
   
    

*- In Japanese cuisine, fugu is slices of sashimi trimmed from a pufferfish, which contains a highly reactive nerve poison called tetradotoxin, concentrated in some parts of its skin, flesh, and organs. Even small residual trace amounts of it can be lethal. The supposed thrill for diners eating such fare is knowing that if it wasn't cleaned and prepared by the chef properly, the next bite could be your last, sort of like a sushi Russian roulette.
**- I just realized I said that sentence in the same way the "Most Interesting Man in the World" would in the Dos Equis beer commercials.

The Passion of the Yeast/Pseudo-Lent/Vegan Stupidity

It's Easter weekend, and I'm stuck with working throughout all of it. I just arrived home tonight after work; welcomed by the pleasant sound of my latest creation coming alive. I mixed together a batch of beer (real ale)* wort early yesterday, Good Friday, and now the yeast is doing its thing. I hear that lovely sound of respired CO₂ thumping and pulsating from the air lock of my closed primary fermentation system. It has a smooth and relaxing steady rhythm like that of a human heartbeat at rest. It reminds me of, and is putting me in the mood to listen to, the opening track of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon album. Brewing seemed to be the proper thing to do given the occasion. Taking and blending these ordinarily inert ingredients together to make something that starts to foam up and emit heartbeat sounds is the closest thing I can do to perform something that resembles some sort of resurrection.

I'm reminded that the Lent season is ending; not that I really practice any such thing myself. It just brought me to thinking about voluntary dietary restrictions in general and the (mostly superstitious) reasons that people do such things. I was also prompted to think about the subject of meatless eating because I realize that I absent-mindedly forgot to pack up some steaks that someone gifted to me before I came home, and I'm in the middle of kicking myself about it. I began contemplating about my own eating habits, and how unwittingly they have become quite erratic for me as of late. I have no meat left now, and I'm down to my last few containers of frozen homemade soups, homemade pickles and other canned preserves, plus another few options of what I have stored in my pantry. My intentional restriction to eating just this stuff to the point where it's running out is sort of a pseudo-Lent: it's a purposeful reduction and elimination of my stores to make it easier in having less things to muddle through once I progress to the arduous task of taking my spring cleaning into the kitchen, and for the ease of re-organizing and re-stocking with healthier stuff later. I'll be resuming a high protein-slow-carb diet for my training season.

Overall, I try not to be a fussy eater, and I get adventurous enough to try something new out at least once. However, the thing that I know that I could never get into is total vegetarianism; more specifically veganism. I actually do eat less meat than I used to, but the reason is stemmed more out of economy. I really do seem to need some form of animal protein each day, at the very least in the form of eggs or milk. I did go through a fasting spell once where I gave up eating all forms of animal protein (meat, fish, eggs and dairy) along with refined flours and sugar for a week for the sake of following a strict body cleanse regimen I was performing at the time. During that week of this special diet, the only thing that I lost was seven days of energy and sanity. I was very miserable and lethargic throughout that ordeal. Sure, it could be argued that it was the result of going through some sort of detox process, but given the way I felt through it all, and the very unnoticable 'improvement' I sensed afterward, I doubt if it was giving me any benefits. The only time I felt better after it was from eating a chicken dinner when it came time to finish the damn thing.

Being an occasional quasi-vegetarian isn't an entirely repulsive thought to me, or at least I'm not completely opposed to the idea. I do find myself enjoying more varieties of veggies and salads than I ever have, and I know and respect that there would be some significant benefit ecologically for this planet if we halved our intake of meat, or else just excluded animal flesh even for just one meal each day, or exclude it for one entire day of a week. The vegan meme though to me is a whole other issue of mindless extremism. Of all the real life people I've encountered who professed to me to be practicing vegans, very few of them struck me as ideal specimens of health (or sanity for that matter). They sure as hell didn't look like any of the models that PETA exploits for their campaign billboards. They either looked quite sickly, weak, and anemic; or else they fell on the other end of the spectrum of being (surprisingly) grossly obese. These latter people seemed to have over-compensated for the lack of protein by boosting and bulking up their intake of sugar, highly-processed hydrogenated plant oils/trans-fats, and excessive salt for flavouring. They looked like even more abnormally misshapen blobs possibly due to water-retention, probably suffering liver** and pancreatic issues or God knows only what other metabolic problems because of insufficient enzymes, or perhaps they were becoming hormonally screwed up from the onslaught of phytoestrogens from an excess of soybean products.

Some aspects of a strictly all vegetable diet are no better for you than having a high meat protein diet. There are lots of unhealthy fast/snack food around that would comply with a "vegan" diet, e.g. french fries fried in soy/corn oil, potato chips, and palm oil based dessert whip. There are no animal products at all in the beer I'm making, so technically it's vegan fare too. Even though a pint of beer and a plate of chips at the pub may qualify as vegan friendly, no one can say that it's the healthiest thing for you.

It's the personalities of these vegan-folk that bother me the most. I haven't yet met one of these vegans who didn't have a sanctimonious attitude about their chosen lifestyle, and felt some need to preach about it, while belittling others who do eat meat and are content with just being their natural omnivore selves. I have to laugh at the ones who endeavour to be so particular, and take such a hard core stand about having no "disgusting meat" enter their bodies, but have no such restrictions or concerns about smoking***. I saw an all-vegan recipe book in a book store, with the woman author on the front cover who had both her arms permanently covered and sleeved with a bunch of skank-ass tattoos. No "poisonous meat" for her, but it's evident that she never gave any second thought about how many toxic compounds were in that ink that she chose to inject and impregnate her skin with. Someone like that just strikes me as being just another annoyingly ditsy hypocritical shit-head. Just like the fashion dummies and celebrity spokespersons who gain publicity by admitting that they just can't bring themselves to eat those sweet little cows, but apparently have no problem with buying, wearing, and hoarding shoes and purses made from the their cute little hides, or tucking their asses into the seat of a Mercedes or Bentley made with the same leather.

The vegans and vegetarians who are so because of their religious beliefs have equally annoyed me as well; just the ones who claim that they have a "better religion and society" because they are vegetarian, with a "respect for all life". One woman, a new immigrant from India I met, was trying to explain all that very same bullshit to me some while ago. I held my tongue, but I could have been really tough and cruel on her, by bluntly and unrelentingly lambasting and pointing out that their largely Hindu vegetarian society hasn't prompted enough of a "respect for all life" to stop all the gang rapes that have been reported there in the last while, nor does it seem to be doing anything to curb the alarming number of female infanticides that regularly occur there (so poor families won't be forced later to pay some ridiculous customary dowry to get a daughter married), nor does it do anything to fully extinguish the segregating caste system that they still have, where such incidents have occurred where the impoverished Dalits (the so-called "untouchables") are sometimes beaten to death for doing something as minor using the "wrong" well for fetching the life essential of water. If I did get around to saying all that, without even mentioning the grinding poverty there and the lower life expectancy, I would have ended by asking her that if her "society and religion" were so much "better" there, then why in the hell did she bother to move here? Oh goodie for you if you were born and raised in an ancient culture living on a tropical subcontinent with a convenient year round growing season for fruits and vegetables. In a climate where dead flesh would spoil and go rancid in minutes without proper refrigeration, and where there is no clean enough water to process it, vegetarianism was/is a sensible and practical lifestyle there. This person didn't think at all, before she made her ethno-centric judgement, that hers was not a cultural paradigm that jibes well with living in a region where early settlement needed to account for only a four month growing season, extreme winters, and a need to can, dry, freeze and preserve food; which degrades the nutrient content significantly. Having fresh meat, poultry, or fish available was necessary for society to establish itself here. People must be cognisant and appreciative of that before they criticize. I'd like to see her and the other ignorant vegan dummies go up north and try to argue with the Inuit about meatless eating and social betterment with that kind of stupid self-righteous attitude.

The evolution of hominids into Homo Sapiens wouldn't have happened at all if our brain growth wasn't accelerated and fostered out of the necessity of trying to survive through an Ice Age by eating meat from hunting. Otherwise, we would have turned out to be not much different than pot-bellied ruminating gorillas who need to use most of their time foraging and eating to acquire their protein. Even within the perspective of modernity, if everyone was to spontaneously become a vegan here (as the more radical ones wish would happen) in this region of Canada, that means extra taxing and exploiting of the land and water resources in some other temperate/tropical agriculture zones somewhere else to grow more, and use more fuel for importing and shipping of this perishable nutritious living produce that we couldn't up grow here to sustain us for eight months of the year. We weren't made to live strictly on grain, which is the plant based thing we could do for a local homegrown vegetarian option throughout the winter months if we were to actively limit energy and costs for shipping. Furthermore, the grain-based diet itself has undergone lots of negative press in the past decade.

The other ignorant criticism at the global level that bothers me is the blaming of Western nations for not doing enough agriculturally to promote conditions more conducive to freeing the world from eating so much animal protein, and growing more protein rich crops. There is a real failure to note the interdependence. Canada (specifically here in Saskatchewan) is already the largest producer of lentils, a protein rich pulse crop, in the world; it's the Middle East, and other regions of Africa and South Asia where they are most frequently exported to, with India being the largest consumer. Ironically, our lentils are being shipped to places where climatically they are even better suited for growing such crops if their resources were managed better. I heard it speculated that if the entire pulse crop production in Saskatchewan alone were to totally fail in a year, there would be a real possibility of widespread famine and/or violent unrest due to hikes in food prices in those regions populated by those on strictly vegetarian diets. The real points of shame are that these nations and regions are not committing themselves to enough of an effort for a peaceful and stable political climate to enable themselves to establish their own sustainable agriculture systems, infrastructure, and practices to allow them to produce enough of their own food locally. The other great shame is ultimately the higher cost and fuel waste for us to be transporting this stuff half way around the world for them, as fuel prices go up due to terrorism threats from some of these very regions who demand this stuff, and there is added inefficiency due to skirting around and avoiding dangerous shipping lanes, like around the horn of Africa, where piracy is a real threat.

I don't have all the answers on how to live rightly, but I do know that being a vegetarian/vegan doesn't automatically make you a better person, although those who are would like us to believe it does. A lot of people have forgotten, or don't realize, that Adolf Hitler was a vegetarian.

* - Hydrometer reading: 1.043 for the original gravity. I speculate a 5.2% alcohol by volume end result, barring stalls and accidents.
** - The Dalai Lama even eats meat on occasion, more so to settle and remedy a pre-existing liver condition he has. Being a Buddhist monk, he is a vegetarian at heart, and not tuned into making other beings suffer, but he's also not so foolish about it as to compromise his own health. 
***- Tobacco and "other-than"

Re-Purposing Litter: A New Type of Green Justice

We took a great big giant stride into spring this week. I halted any full-scale spring cleaning for a while because it was pointless to do while all the dust and debris was being tracked into the place, and blown around with all the vicious wind we've been having lately. It's hard to scrounge up energy for it also after runs in such wind. The absence of puddles and road slush finally got me ambitious enough to fix up my bike. I accidentally destroyed two inner tubes getting it done (due to a tire defect), but it's done. I'm so much happier to finally see some green grass peeking and poking up above the dead mulch. I also gleaned a small profit in refunds since the thaw started.

I have a ritual, once spring thaw comes, of being proactive with doing something about some of the litter that's exposed once the snow recedes; as a winter's worth of evidence of morons rambling through the neighbourhood gets revealed on the sidewalks, the streets, the alleys, and the nearby parks. Waste and litter (and those who pitch it) sicken me. I wish there was a solution getting rid of these ghetto-scum idiot culprits with the stupid and lazy mindset that perpetuates all this, but that will have to be a topic for another entry. I could bitch and moan about the problem, or I could turn the lemons into lemonade. I clean up some of it. It's just a passive and casual thing I do when I walk the dog in the morning and evening.  The pitched coffee cups we find are reused for cleaning up after my own dog during the walk, and are disposed of properly, and we collect the bottles and cans we come across for recycling. This habit started back in the days when I tended a garden space on another property I was living on, I would do the same ritual every spring and throughout summer. This spot was in the centre of the "party district" in town, so there was always a substantial enough mass of strewn-about recyclables left behind. Enough such that after I collected and took all this junk to SARCAN, our provincial recycling outlet, I got enough from the refunds to use for purchasing my seed stock, and other gardening supplies; the amount from the refunds always completely covered the costs for doing all of that.

From the commercial side of the alley, I reclaimed the wood from broken and discarded shipping pallets, and built composters and bedding frames from them. It all yielded to me some fresh homegrown organic produce in the fall, and I even had enough of a surplus a couple times that some was donated to the local food bank. I called this activity 'Operation Green Justice'. Even now, if someone were to play a random word association game with me, my automatic response to "plastic bottle" would probably be "tomato seedling". The upside is that it's an effort of being a good steward to the community and the environment, I didn't need to join any special club to give me license to do it, and I learned and applied a useful hobby like gardening. The downside is that I'm probably often looked at, by those who witness me doing this, as some sort of vagrant scrounging around for enough of a refund to fritter away on booze, smokes, or on some other confection for sin and vice.

Using my energy this way to convert trash into nutritious produce won't serve to build me any sort of fortune or empire soon, but it is an effort to transform negatives to positives, and I'd like to think that it will somehow create some sort of better karma later on. My motives are still purely selfish.

I don't really have a garden to tend anymore. Since I've been living here, my effort to do some container plantings on my deck has been all in vain. I never had a substantial yield of anything. I tried to set up some passive hydroponic experiments, but to no avail; there were just too many shortcomings to allow for it. There are also no bees around to pollenate the plants properly. Even with setting things up to have hanging planters and growing things vertically, the space is too limited; and I have no convenient outdoor watering system. I'm pretty much limited to producing a few pots of fresh herbs and that's it. I think it's more worth my while to retire from the gardening, and thus re-purpose the SARCAN money for another noble pursuit. . . probably another couple of fermentation projects. The refunds I collected so far amount to enough for a couple of beer kits: that's 46 litres worth of beer (132 - 330 mL bottles, or 22 six-packs); in which the expenses for it don't really come out of my own pocket.

I guess, like some vagrant, but in a more indirect way, I'll be using my money for confections of vice after all. The difference is that I won't be giving any extra money away for sin taxes. A cleaner park and street to look at as I sip my homebrew from my balcony is ultimately the reward for doing all of this. I'm curious as to what else I could 'seed and grow' with any other surplus of this can money: both for me and the common good.

The First Three of the Fifty-Two of 2014/ MSX No. 1

I wasn't much in a mood to record anything during these first couple of weeks of the year, because all I would have done was spew out negativity. Fighting the flu, dealing with the bad weather, and enduring the resulting cabin fever, was all that I was basically doing: just feeling the erosion of all my vitality. I've been set back for a couple weeks in terms of working towards some sort of personal betterment that I intended to begin the year with because of being so depleted of energy for anything requiring physical effort and mental focus. I was forced to accept basic recovery towards normal as the first step to improvement.

Thankfully, the weather has been getting back to seasonal (and even above it), and I'm starting to find my strength and stamina returning again. I got back into some exercise (skiing), messing around with stuff on my spreadsheets, and now writing; to restore the habit of finding and keeping a solid train of thought again after being rendered too loopy for so long after using symptom remedies.

So, to re-stimulate my brain again and add some novelty into this new year, I'm setting myself up for my first mad science experiment of 2014.

MSX No. 1-2014: Brewing Mead

For the benefit of those out there who are gastronomically ignorant and don't know what mead is, it's an alcoholic beverage produced by the fermentation of honey.

The inspirations/reasons why:

• From reading Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation by Michael Pollan, and his terrific commentary in the "Earth" section of his book about fermentation as being sort of one of the fundamental cornerstones that created human civilization.* I was re-inspired to brew something, and mead was one of the things mentioned that made me curious.
• Apart from viewing food/drink/travel series with Anthony Bourdain** on TV while lazing around being infirm with influenza, I spent too much time watching movies and documentary stories themed around post-war/apocalyptic survival. I couldn't help but to wonder that if the end of this world did come, and if I did somehow manage to survive it, whatever skills and knowledge I have for using modern technology would be rendered meaningless. Whether it's due to a global disaster, a massive pandemic, or some war/economic chaos as an after effect of peak oil: to be a viable citizen reintegrating into a functional society afterward, one must revert to the practical mechanical skills, be able to grow foodstuffs, and perform other types of husbandry that have sustained us as they did for our first few thousand years of existence. Being resourceful, and knowing how to make substances out of bare essentials that add merriment in a grief-stricken world in this type of scenario would be an important role, not to mention perhaps elevating one's social status to that of a demi-god. In a weird way, it was a prompt to experiment in diversifying ingredients and to help keep in practice.
• I always wanted to try out mead, but I can't find it here in a commercial liquor store or wine shop. There used to be just one specialty liquor store in this town that handled mead, but there is a long sordid story as to how the stupid bugger who ran the place got himself into some sort of legal troubles and was forced to close the establishment down before I had a chance to sample any. Therefore, if I want to try any here, I have to make it myself.
• Some of the idea was sparked from an entertaining and silly conversation with a co-worker of Scandinavian heritage about the history of the Norsemen (who drank lots of the stuff). If you think that a drink made out of honey is for sissies, I'd dare you to tell that to someone with the disposition of a Viking. 
• I have a familial connection to a source of local honey which I can get in bulk supply, and now is the time to try this experiment before it's no longer practical or feasible to do***. I suppose it also puts me in touch with my inner hippie/David Suzuki wannabe-self; as it ultimately ends up being an option for a more environmentally friendly, think-local, low-carbon footprint way of making homemade booze. 
• To make it happen, I'll need a sanitary and hygienic environment. I needed some motivator to get off my ass and stop the excuses for further neglecting to clean up my kitchen space.

Special Challenges/Considerations/Drawbacks:

• Honey is a finicky substance when it comes to trying to coax it into a state of fermentation. If left in pure form, it can naturally last for years, even decades, without any spoilage; not allowing for any type of culture of micro-organisms to grow on it at all. More so than beer and wine making, the process needed to prime the environment enough to let yeast do its work has to take into consideration the proper mineral content of the added water, introduction of a properly staged nutrient regimen, and adjustment of the pH level of the must solution (leaning toward acidic is better). Those are the new factors for me to play around with and include in my brewing skill set.
• Mead can be made carbonated, sparkling, or still. I'm going to opt for making a still batch as my first trial (i.e. neutralizing the remaining yeast with potassium sorbate before bottling). I'm not willing to see how many explosions and flying shards of glass I'll be having around my place if my timing is wrong with bottling the stuff too soon.
• There is a possibility of having gunky, residual, hard to remove, bee's wax coating and contaminating my brewing vessels/carboys
• I'm irritated by the fact that most of the recipes I've been finding and reviewing are from the United States, and aren't conveniently posted with metric measurements. Hence, I often have to re-compute for the fixed volume size differentials for a closed fermentation system (US gallon batch sizes vs. metric or Imperial gallon volume carboys we use here). Why is it that Americans can actively and liberally accommodate for using metric for dealing in drugs, but can't seem to do so for anything else?
• Maturation: my findings show that mead takes a longer time than beer or wine to age and condition. At least six months of aging seems to be the norm. I'll let this batch condition itself for nine months, the same gestation period for a human, plus it then makes it seem right to consume it by the time my own birthday rolls around. I'll post follow up results then.

Initial Ingredients:

• 5 kg of Saskatchewan (locally produced) honey (floral nectar composition yet unknown) 
• One package (5 g) Lalvin Yeast: strain, EC-1118 Sacchromyces cerevisiae (ex -bayanus)
• 15 g Yeast nutrient
• 5 g Irish moss (clarifying agent) 

I have yet to determine and calculate:

• an acid blend (either citric, malic, or ascorbic), or a blend of additional fruits that are acidic (Note to self: I need a pH test kit)
• any additional flavourings of spices that could be used
• I won't be disclosing whatever else I'll be using for ingredients and the brewing process itself. That will either be a trade secret if it turns out well, or else it may just be pointless to share if it turns out badly.

Other related trivia and vocabulary:

• Mazer: A person who makes mead; also a large carved wooden drinking vessel from the medieval ages used to perhaps drink such stuff.
• Metheglin: Mead that has been flavoured with extra herbs and spices (probably the way I'll go); traditionally thought to have medicinal properties.
• Mead is thought to be the oldest known form of alcoholic beverage made by human beings, even pre-dating beer. Beer is made with harvested grain which is a product of an agricultural society, whereas to ferment honey you don't even need to farm. It could have been a lesser evolved hominid who was lucky enough to drop and dilute enough wild honey in water and discover this happy accident after some time.
• Many ancient cultures considered mead to be an aphrodisiac. The English word "honeymoon" is derived from a superstition that if mead was consumed one month (a moon) after the wedding, with sexual congress taking place, the resulting child afterward would be a male.

One Musical Playlist Pairing for the Project: Just Like Honey - The Jesus and Mary Chain

*-You would have to peruse the final chapter of same the book, Afterward: Hand Taste, to understand why I like doing this sort of stuff to begin with.

** - To get to travel around the globe exploring food/restaurants, and other lesser-known hidden away attractions; and to write, critique, and commentate about those experiences, occasionally doing it with a whimsical smart-ass attitude . . . I WANT HIS JOB!!!

***- Honey production has been drastically effected here and other parts of the world due to bee populations dying off because of pesticide use, and widespread disease and parasitic infections, which then ultimately makes a more substandard quality of honey and higher prices due to product shortages.

Vacation Day X: Brooding, Brewing, & Planning for a Better Escape Next Summer

I quit counting the days off that I've used since this past Tuesday. There has been nothing eventful since then, except for sobering issues that I had to address on Wednesday evening, all of which were work related. Other less than favourable circumstances have me restricted to being a homebody. So, I settled with converting the kitchen into a laboratory, to start brewing some beer, and then I continued to monkey around with other wildly experimental ways of cooking and food prep that just run shy of me using liquid nitrogen and explosives.

The brewing project is going well so far. The yeast culture is alive, activated, and doing what it loves to do best: making alcohol. I love hearing the initial rhythmic released bursts of CO₂  escaping from the fermenter's airlock, as it matches the same cadence and frequency of a person's heartbeat at rest . . . a tell-tale sign that this life form is being well-nurtured and content. Yeah sure, I suppose that sounds a little flaky . . . but I'd rather share this little blurb with an embellishment of romanticism than describing it all with the more accurate scientific explanation of what is really going on through this process: the synchronous expulsion of gas that is an expended metabolic by-product of digestion from micro-organisms. In other words . . . a pulsating release of the collected billions of tiny yeast farts.

I had to force myself to settle down, and let my ankles and knees recover from the shock of using my toe shoes (Hobbit boots) for running again. These things are a delight to run in, but they play havoc to the leg muscles when doing any extended period of walking in them. I became so seduced by how wonderfully I was performing with them on my run that I overshot my training range by a hell of a long way, and I'm paying for it now.

My review of last entry led me to search through travel sites for getting ideas for cheap packages for next summer. I figured that I'd extend my running to hitting a race or two out of province, or even out of country. I'd be doing neither races further south of here, nor any around the great lakes region in summer*: I don't handle heat and humidity very well as it is now. I figured that I could do a marathon in Quebec, or the Maritimes, or someplace in Northern Europe which would be suit me better: maybe somewhere between the latitudes of Reykjavik and Zurich. I have more research, and whittling down of options, to do.

*- Maybe in mid or late autumn.