DUMBO Art Fair!

A merry-go-round that I really wish I could ride (not enough space around the edges so no one could.)
A rainbow tee-pee made of plastic strips!
An old brink building with pyramids of plastic bags filled with green kick-balls.

'bucha baby!

I harvested my first batch of homemade kombucha! Harvest might not be the most appropriate word, but it just seems so fitting...

If you're not familiar with kombucha, here's the run-down: it's a fermented tea drink, made commonly with black tea but also with green and herb, that has live cultures and enzymes that are good for you.

But to make it you need a "scooby" or a "scoby" or a "mother" or a "baby" or a "bucha shroom," whatever you want to call it. I call it a "jellyfish" because don't know another way to describe it but to call it what it looks like: a jellyfish-mushroom. Really, it almost looks like an old slimy pancake sitting in the bottom of a trashcan filled with coffee grounds.

I don't know how you grow your own jellyfish. I got mine from some friends who didn't want to travel cross-country with it in their car. What happens with the jellyfish is that as you feed it the tea mixture during the fermentation, it grows. You can cut and peel as many layers depending on how big it gets. I could give several people layers of my scoby so that they could start their own kombucha batchs.

You've probably seen GT's Kombucha
in the grocery store. They have a bunch of great flavors. There's a few other pricey brands, too. This one decided to channel the wine look. I generally like ginger, but I'm a ginger fanatic. The guava is good too, and even GT's green one is delicious, although it takes the first bottle to realize it.

Kombucha smells like vinager and tastes like sour cider or vinger tang. I like ginger because it gives it something spicy to bite on.

Anyway, my batch is currently on the last third of fermentation... 2 weeks in the cupboard, and 1 week in the fridge for fizziness. This first batch is ginger, and I started a basil-mint for next month.
Even The Economist had an article on it.

Here's my set up. Boiling water, black tea, jellyfish... pretty easy, you just have to make sure it's all sterilized.

I don't know how to find time to do all this, but I also made a batch of homemade soy milk tonight, between watching the movie King of Kong: Fist Full of Quarters. Godo movie, good milk. I think tomorrow before work I'm going to grab a begal, a bottle of soy, and go to the garden.

The jungle

I sit here somewhat shamefully watching another episode of the second season of Lost. My boyfriend recently got into it and sucked me back into the abyss. I almost escaped it when I left the country and didn't have a TV for 2 years, but alas, I am now all about Sayid, Sawyer, Kate, and Charlie romping through the jungle fighting polar bears and building themselves a nice little island life.

But I have my own little jungle just behind my house! I'm lucky enough to live in a real house in Brooklyn with an actual backyard. However, as much as I've tried, it cannot be tamed. The boys at one point weeded it down to the dirt, but the weeds are dinosaurs and continue to take over. I tried planting wild flowers and sunflowers, and the sunflowers came up all pretty.

I have 2 tomato plants that are on their way out but still getting me tomatoes. 1 chive, 1 mint, and 1 chocolate basil given to me from farmer Joe at the McCarren Park green market.

This backyard is impossible. That mound in the middle, that's actually a chair. We've been using it as a measuring point, but now it's completely overgrown. A morning glory plant started on the back fence but now they've crept through all the weeds, crawlen up the sunflowers. There's some yellow flowers springing up, too.

So it's kind of pretty in a way, but frustrating that I couldn't get the garden that I wanted. At this point though it's not worth it. Not only is it almost winter, but with winter I have to move out of this house for reasons I'll leave for later.

It's surprising how dedicated NY is to gardens and plants. It's more evident at the farmers markets, all kinds of farmers come down from up state. There's also a ton of community gardens and rooftop gardens. My neighborhood around Pratt in Bed-Stuy has a lot of community gardens. There's a Target garden around the corner that's got a nice lawn, and another with a lot of veggie plots next to Evan's apartment. Having my few plants, it's nice having basil-mint tea in the mornings, and decorating my room with sunflowers.

I stumbled across this garden initiative called the "Dragonfly" vertical farming. Doesn't sound like it's going to happen anytime soon, but it's an extension on the vertical gardening idea that could feed cities locally, and which the rooftop gardener pioneers have already started.

Luckily, there're green markets all year round when I can't grow any more tomoatos.

Dedication

I haven't written lately. It's been a while, actually. But now my computer is fixed, I can share photos again, and I'm still in New York.

This photo is my dedication to keep blogging, to keep writing at least once a week, to critique food I eat, review places I go, to tell you about my molding, flooded house, and the new cocktails I've tried. As I sit here at 1am, watching old episodes of Lost and eating a sandwich made from really old vegetables, I realized I want to keep telling people about the old vegetables I eat.

I got home tonight from meeting two friends in Chinatown for some bubble tea. We all know each other and have been to the same places during school, but all during different times. But it was strange because it felt like we had hung out together before when really this was our first union as the 3 of us together. We hashed a lot about school, and work, and the awk-offs we're going to have, and the triple date we can go on for the first time because we all have boyfriends now. I felt like I've been in a weird rut lately with jobs and social circles and nothing really special or exciting. But now that it's fall and there are people here I love, during my favorite time of the year, and I'm going to do fun things in New York and write about them. I'm going to tell you about the awkward triple date we go on. Hope you don't mind.

Cheers! This isn't going to be like my friend Sasha's blog, which has also inspired me to start up again, but it's not going to be a diary either. I'm going to do this at least once a week. I need to keep writing to stop from such a terrible routine.

Tomorrow I have an interview and a date in Central Park, and need to spend some time working out my schedule. Wish me luck!