Month: March 2024

This is something you’re going to want to see.

It’s the freshest, most wonderful smelling, with the whitest core, head of lettuce I’ve ever purchased.

The above photo is the small haul I made recently at the Mercado de Taxqueña, as you know, less than a kilometer from our house. Bananas, papayas, mangos, limes, and the beautiful lettuce. I also bought a half dozen tomatoes, but had already put them in to disinfect.

So, all of the above fruits, minus the bananas, and papayas, got disinfected, put into storage bags, and into the fridge.

I forgot to buy a pineapple, but have some in the freezer that I can use when it’s time for the kombucha’s second ferment. That should be soon.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Just for you.

I haven’t shown you anything of the Kombucha that I made a while back. (As I’m typing this, it was just last week.) So, without further ado, here’s what it looked like just a week after being refreshed.

Can you see that SCOBY floating on top of the tea? Maybe you can see the bubbles as well. That’s the SCOBY having digested the sugar in the tea. It’s fermenting, which is exactly what I need it to do. The colony digests the sugar, making the tea virtually sugar free in the end, and as a result, ferments to become Kombucha.

I’m hoping that within the next few days I can start a dozen, or so, bottles to a second fermentation. As I wrote in an earlier post, I’m going to use pineapple, mango, and guayaba, (passion fruit). I can’t wait.

Kombucha is one of those food items that you like, or you don’t. It took me a few tries to like the flavor, but once I did, wow; it’s now a favorite of mine.

I think, to start at least, I’ll do 4 bottles of guayaba, 4 pineapple, and 4 combined mango, and pineapple. I know I like the mango, and pineapple, and I really like guayaba flavored juice, but I’m going to try the guayaba separately the first time around.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know I hadn’t killed the SCOBY. It’s alive, and well in my pantry.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

I believe the above title is now what is commonly called “click bait”.

Though some of what I am going to ramble on about may, very well, be of interest to some, it will not, probably be very interesting to everyone.

For example, I have restarted my fermentation processes for both the kombucha, and the sourdough. Ok, you’ve already read about both of those.

What you don’t know, is that I started an actual physical journaling of both of those endeavors several years ago, using a very stylish leather-bound diary, if you will, and a handsome, though practical fountain pen!

Honestly, I have not seen, nor used either one since the end of April, 2021. What a shame.

I decided that since I’m getting back into fermentation, I need to document what goes well, and what doesn’t, in kombucha, as well as sourdough.

I got up in the cabinet in the bedroom, found the journal, opened it up, and there was my fountain pen. (I have 5, or 6 beautiful fountain pens now, 2 are antiques, the others are well named, and beautiful. Too bad I don’t use them.)

Now, having been dormant for 3 years, the pen was dry. Duh! So, what did I do? I figured that if I dipped it in a bit of hot water, Bingo!, it would be fluid again.

Not so much!!!

The metal part of the nib fell off; the ink was still dry in the pen, but what little was dried on the nib leaked all over my hands, the granite countertop, well, you get the image.

Starting at the beginning of the reparation, I dried everything off with paper towels, put a touch of Gorilla glue on the metal nib, and reattached it to the tip of the pen. I really do some dumb things, don’t I?! (More a statement there than a question).

I had already spiked a new cartridge at this point, having found the pen I thought adding the new cartridge might reactivate the pen. Nope.

So, now I have the “just glued” nib, drying on my “desk”, and an open cartridge in the body of the pen, open to air, and hoping nothing tips it over. (It spent the night in one of my candle come glasses, upright. You’ll see what that’s all about in an upcoming post.)

The next morning, ready to take on the world, or in this case, the dreaded fountain pen debacle, I put the nib onto the body of the pen, thinking it would seat itself into the cartridge, but alas, it hadn’t gotten the memo.

Can you guess what happened next?

Of course, it leaked all over. I had to start all over again with cleaning the pen, blah, blah, blah.

After about 20 minutes of cleaning the ink off of my hands, and the pen, everything is back to rights. I was able to, once again, document what was happening in my kitchen to both ferments, and have placed the pen back in the spine of the journal.

Thought you might get a kick out of what happens when you least expect it. Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Well folks. I’ve returned to my days of all things fermented.

Last week I revitalized the kombucha, and this week, I’m making a loaf of soft crust sourdough sandwich bread. It’s the first loaf of bread in ages.

I have done some research, online, about baking at such a high altitude as we have here, and there are a few things I need to tweak in order to get a descent loaf of bread.

Evidently, I need to add a bit more hydration, 25º more oven temperature, and about 10 minutes less bake time. Also, dough rises faster here as there is decreased atmospheric pressure. Go figure.

I’ve got my first dough rising as I’m typing this, so we’ll see what happens.

As it turns out, I combined 2, or 3, different recipes, adding an egg, some sugar, and a tablespoon of avocado oil, hoping to make the bread soft enough for Ivan to eat. Otherwise, it’s Pan Bimbo, (Mexico’s version of Wonder Bread), for the rest of his life.

The sourdough will be a healthier alternative. I’ll let you know how it turns out, regardless of whether it’s a loaf of bread, or croutons in the making.

The recipe I’m trying has 1 tsp. of active dry yeast, as well as the active sourdough starter, to allow a faster rise, and a less sour taste. Gonna give that a try.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: I made the bread, the soft crust sourdough loaf, and Ivan has given it his approval. It tasted amazing. Here is how it ended up. Yes, we’re enjoying every bite. It is so soft, so tasty.

Well there it is, the first loaf of many. I’m going to try some sourdough pizza crust tonight, with the discards. I’ll let you know how it turns out as well. See ya.

You should get a kick out of this.

I refreshed my Kombucha recently after probably a year of it sitting in its container, on the counter in pantry. I’m hoping I haven’t killed it.

I figure, however, that without having fed it for soo many months, now that it’s been fed, it should take off, guns blazing, as it’s said.

I’ll let you know.

I did, however, throw the huge SCOBY away as it was too large to reuse. (I’m not going to take the organics pail downstairs until I’m sure what was usable is still, in deed, usable).

Here’s the SCOBY; remember that stands for symbiotic culture of bacteria, and yeast. It’s got to be more than a year old, if not, then it’s close to that. I just got out of the habit of second fermentation cycle, and let it just sit there. That’s our 5 gallon container that I use for the initial fermentation. After it has finished that process, I go on to the flavoring of the Kombucha, in the second fermentation process.

So, next week this batch should be ready for flavoring, which I will do with fresh mangoes, and pineapple. Love the combination of those two fruits. Now that I’ve typed that, I think I will also try guayaba, or guava as it is called up North. Oh, it’s also called passion fruit.

Anyway, I’ll let you know how it all turns out, when it turns out.

Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Well, damn the delivery thieves, but thank you Amazon.

I spent only 15, or so, minutes communicating with a representative from said company this morning, regarding the 2 separate incidents.

I contacted Amazon online, answered one of their questions in English, and was asked if I wanted help in English. Yes, thank you very much. I had a bit to say, which would have taken too long to do using my translation app.

The person on the other end was named Rodrigo, and he was very polite, helpful, and efficient. He had both our refunds being processed within minutes. When I was handling Ivan’s refund, I asked him if he was “the same Rodrigo that helped my wife recently”? He said he was. How nice.

I told him, also, that these 2 delivery issues were not the only ones. Ivan had ordered an Apple laptop in 2020 that he never received. He was refunded that at the time, however. As I told Rodrigo, someone down here is stealing Amazon’s products, and that you folks might want to investigate this. He started a report for all 3 of the incidents.

They know who is assigned to what packages, which are to be delivered where, and when. If they don’t want to do anything about it, that’s up to them. I did what we both thought we should.

Whether he did, or not, is not something I’m going to worry about.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

We are both so tired of some of the delivery people down here.

As you know, we order lots of things from Amazon, and most get delivered without incident. Now, for some reason, we have had 2 of our packages being stated they were delivered, but neither of them actually had been delivered.

What is up with that?

We need to replace our 25 year old garage door openers, but, no, the delivery person seems to need them more than we do. And, the pretty Mexican sarape placemats I want to use to add color to the table? Nope, he needs them as well.

Trying to contact anyone human at Amazon is next to impossible. Then, you have to wait 24 hours to begin any form of recompense online, “in case someone in the house has accepted the package and put it somewhere”.

Ivan tried 3 different times to contact humans at Amazon, but got only recorded messages.

Argh!!!

So frustrating.

I’ll let you know what happens, if anything happens. Just makes me so angry.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

A few months ago, just before Christmas, I had ordered 2 turtleneck pullover tops from Amazon.us. One I received, the other said I received it but, alas, I did not.

The app said the package was “handed directly to someone at the receptionist’s desk”.

There was no one at the desk at the time of the alleged delivery. (One doesn’t get the opportunity to use that word often!!)

I went so far as to ask Jesús if maybe Liz was around, and had received it, and was waiting to bring it with her when she came downstairs.

She wasn’t even in the building.

Jesús offered to review the video of the front door at the time of the “you know what”, and did I want to come down, and watch as well?

Sure, I told him; I’ll come down. (This was just at the beginning of us being sick, so I really didn’t want to go, but I went anyway.) I’m very glad I did.

We watched a delivery man pull up to the condo on his motorcycle, buzz our apartment, wait about 15 seconds, and left; with my package.

I hadn’t been able to get to the concierge phone, in those 15 seconds, as I was in bed, having just gone to bed about 4 hours prior.

On the app, as I said, he indicated he left the package, delivered, with a receptionist.

I couldn’t believe it. I’m so glad I saw it on the screen. I have a copy of it even, to remind myself that, unfortunately, not everyone is honest.

I hope he can give the green turtleneck to someone he loves. He must have needed it more than I did.

Yes, I contacted Amazon in the US, online, and they refunded my money within a matter of days.

No moral to this story. Just another day in my life.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Nick, and Jenny Moon have rescued 2 more very old championship horses from certain death.

They had to drive, despite a few difficulties, to the border of France, and Italy to pick up the two horses, get them back to the Moon household in France, get them quarantined, and settled in.

Charlotte is 29 years old, and Grace is 27. Charlotte is in fairly stable condition, while Grace is simply skin on bone.

They were rescued on the 8th, home by the 9th, and have been progressing into somewhat better health with amazing speed.

Here’s Grace. These photos were taken from screenshots of their YT channel, “The Moons”, just this evening, the 12th.

If you haven’t watched their channel, please do, even if only on occasion. If you press the “like” button, they get credit, and it grows their channel allowing them to be able to afford all of the food, and meds, supplements, tack, etc., that the horses, “The Legends” need. They now are caring for, and loving over a dozen Legends.

Not only are they taking care of the horses, their kids, their other animals, they are trying to get legislature passed to protect these horses from this type of neglect, and abuse. Some owners have changed the name of the horse, gotten new papers for the horse, (called passports), so no one can find out what they’ve done, or are doing with these champions.

These horses are all “put out to pasture”, ready to be sold to different countries in the EU, as meat substitutes. These are thoroughbred horses, not just a nag down on the farm. These horses made their owners hundreds of thousands, and some millions of pounds over their careers, and have been left defenseless.

Am I passionate about this?

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

It was 5 years ago today that I retired from my former job, career, and lifestyle.

Exactly 30 years from when I started at Trinity, which was not called that at the time. It went through changes of name, and location, but the people were always the same.

I’ve not regretted a single moment, however. Life here is not a bed of roses unless you understand there are still a few thorns. The occasional thorn is worth it.

That said, I hope all of you have a wonderful day, possibly remember me with kindness, and treat each other well.

Until tomorrow. Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.