Many years ago, in the early 90’s I was working 50 hour weeks.  My hubby was working as much, if not more.  We had 3 kiddos by then and lived in town.  In the previous 5 years we had buried both my grandmothers, my uncle, my mother and my grandfather. 3 of those deaths were cancer.  My Mom knew the connection between living right, eating well and environment but had no tools to stay or get well.  Her death cemented in me a need to give my family the tools and knowledge to do better than Mom could.

It’s hard to look at all modern day offers us and tells us we need and walk away from that with healthy choices.  We all know Twinkies and fast food are not healthy, plastics are bad for us and our environment and that activity helps keep us fit.  Where do you start if you are living in town, have no garden and a kitchen full of redneck Tupperware ( used margarine tubs for food storage?)

1st, don’t sweat the big picture.  You will loose your mind and develop an eating disorder. Pick a small part to focus on.  If money is an issue, who doesn’t have budget issues, start with something easy for you.  Probably the best way to start is with getting your digestion on track.  Get your body digesting food properly.  I read a wonderful book once, The Hot Belly Diet, it gives you a great one month plan for resetting your digestive system.

I started introducing cultures, living food, to our families diet.  Kombucha, yogurt, keifer, kimchi.  Any food that is a probiotic and you can make yourself to get your system processing the foods you eat properly.  Get that homeostasis functioning above par.

Getting on Track Pt 1

Kombucha

This is a great drink made from sweet tea with a Scooby, mushroom, culture that grows, ages and feeds on the sugars leaving you with a healthy fizzy drink.  Look up scooby, bucha or kombucha in your favorite market and you can easily purchase all the stuff you need in a kit for $25 to $50.  I did it on the cheep.

Went to the local store and bought a plain kombucha drink.  It needs to be plain, flavor will prevent the culture from feeding.  I looked for one that had sediment on the bottom of the bottle and strands in the tea.

I made a quart of sweet tea with organic green tea and 1/3 C sugar.  Then I poured it into 2 quart glass jars and topped that off with the kombucha I purchased. It needs to set still in a dark area at about 60 to 70 degrees.  You need to let it breath.  I used flour stack at first.  That only attracted fruit flies, not good.  So I eventually used the standard lid intended for the container, I never tighten them, only set them on the jar strait.  It lets the bucha breath and keeps bugs away.

Leave it be for 10 days.  Depending on the process the bottle you purchased went through you should see a film on top, sediment on the bottom and a tangy nearly fizzy drink.  Go ahead and drink some, if one looks or tastes better than the other, keep your culture and starter from that batch.

Make more sweet tea, add the culture and liquid you saved and set up again for 10 more days. It took me 4 cycles like this to get to a full proper culture growing.  This is what you are looking for.

After so many batches you will have mushrooms to share.  We give excess to the chickens, dogs, compost…. 

If you like flavor wait util you have some good fizz going for you.  Then when you take you finished bucha down you can add flavor in the form of juice, dried powders, or whatever tickles you and bottle it for a few days to let the fizz build and flavors marinate.  You’ll be making your own healthy probiotic pop.

We’ll call this “Getting on Track” Part 1.  Next in this series I will post a few options for making your own yogurt.