I love fermentation. It is at the soul of the best foods in the world. Chocolate, bread, and wine. Kim chi, pickles, yogurt, buttermilk, and cheese. And lots of other stuff. I’ve made some of these things, and I’ve always enjoyed waiting with anticipation while the flavors build over hours or days.

But chocolate, bread, and wine do not look like this when the fermentation process is going well:

This is my Kombucha tea, and I’m scared of it. In a couple days, I’m supposed to drink it.

It’s called Kombucha tea, but it’s not really tea. It started as tea 4 days ago. Then I added a bunch of sugar, cooled it to room temperature, put it in a sanitized container, and added that round thing that you can see in the liquid. That’s the Kombucha mother mushroom. Well, it’s not really a mushroom. It’s a symbiotic blob of yeast and bacteria that eats the sugar, turning the tea into Kombucha which, when made properly, is “a bubbly apple cider-like drink.” Apparently non-alcoholic.

I bought the mushroom online. They told me it’s totally safe.

See those nasty looking blobs coming up to the surface for air? Those are the beginnings of the baby mushroom. A new baby forms at the surface every time you brew Kombucha. You can give the babies to your friends and they can brew their own Kombucha. Built-in viral marketing!

Anyway, this is the weirdest thing I’ve ever cooked. Well, it’s not really cooking.

To Harvard Square today for a weekend walk. Harvard is the closest square from Inman, where we live, so the winter route to Harvard is followed by many squeaky Inman cyclists.

Went to the bookstore and found a used copy of The Square Foot Garden. I’m trying to grow an urban garden in our very shady New England back yard (18’ x 17’ — about 300 sq ft). I’m thinking potatoes. What else likes the dark?

On my way, I picked up a bottle of Kombucha tea, which tasted like my grandmother’s stewed rhubarb from her garden—delicious. I’m endeavoring to brew some myself, if I can find a baby bucha starter.

On my way back, I stopped at Savenor’s Market, which was Julia Child’s grocer and is about 3 blocks away. I’m paralyzed when I walk in there—I look a lot and buy little. Today I saw a hundred esoteric meats I’ve never cooked with or eaten: rattlesnake, duck eggs, quail eggs, black and white blood sausage, emu steak, deer, ground buffalo, duck bacon, kobe beef, rabbits, squab, yak steak. The people are extremely knowledgeable, but I feel like they should have recipes on hand.

They also have chicken breast cutlets, but you kind of have to look around for a while to find them.

I think it’s time to get past the shock of Savenor’s and dig in.