kombucha

Kombucha has been used as an alternative medicine for the treatment of cancer... Something we fed my mother among other things during her struggle with the disease...It is funny that at the time I made fun of kombucha and now John and I drink this daily…although Martin-Lane now makes fun of us… Kombucha is a tea made with a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast sometimes referred to as a SCOBY or a mushroom... What happens is you brew a tea--I prefer a green tea-- add sugar "to taste" (you need some sugar for the fermentation to occur) let cool and float a SCOBY in it for about two weeks (cover with a towel so the mixture can breathe)... after two weeks you have a fermented tea and a baby SCOBY in addition to the Mother you originally floated...separate the baby from the mother and set the SCOBYs aside... Now you bottle your tea in air tight jars, I use old wine bottles with air tight stoppers. Then let bottles sit in a dry airy cool place for two more weeks... Refrigerate and drink when cool... What you have is a carbonated tea that is full of good bacteria, pro-biotic similar, to yogurt...

Kombucha has been brewed for hundreds of years and is believed to have originated somewhere around the Russian and Chinese border. Only in that last five or six years have we seen it being sold commercially. In the seventies I can remember going to more than one friends house and seeing these creatures growing in large jars on kitchen counters.

John gave me my SCOBYs when I was visiting him in Brooklyn. Evidently there is a lot of kombucha brewing in BK and at 6 bucks a bottle retail I can see why... The secret to success is finding the right spot as the SCOBY collects and grows not only from the bacteria of the tea but also from it's/your surrounding environment. Feeding back into an ecosystem in a micro-form of permaculture...