...how to make my own Kombucha? And what the f is a SCOBY?

This one's for my friend Michelle, who survives largely on Kombucha and popcorn. Let's keep her daily 'buch costs affordable, shall we?

Summary:
1. Boil any loose leaf tea ("one tea thingy" full), add 1/8-1/4 c. sugar. Let it cool.

2. Add a scoby (symbiotic colony of bacteria and yeast).. or make your own from a Kombucha tea you bought at the store, though I've heard it might not work anymore? Make sure to "keep hands real clean" but don't use antibacterial soap, and also use glass as metal can, over time, hurt that poor little scoby doby doo.

3. Cover with a cloth and let it hang out away from direct sunlight for like 7-10 days, depending on temperature.

4. Take off scoby mama and save it for next time with like 10-20% of your kombucha. To the rest, add some clear (no pulp!) juice or some such for flavor. :) You can use herbs, fruit, whatevs, and even infuse it and then strain if you want it really clear.


Once you have a Scoby of your own, you can add it again and again and another Scoby will grow on top of your "mother" Scoby (someone shoot me now). You can then give this Scoby to a "friend".

You can also order scobies (scabies?!) online, fresh are best: Kombucha Kamp!

Pretty basic (and suuuupes chill) vid:



Full deets from The Kitchn: http://www.thekitchn.com/how-to-make-kombucha-tea-at-home-173858

Yeah!

...what to do with leftover duck bits & other scraps?

I had a LOT of time on my hands today. A LOT. And when I'm relaxed and have no obligations (which hasn't been much in awhile) I love cooking, especially getting experimental with it. Lately I've been into using "head to tail" of everything, even veggies. I'm pickling watermelon rind (0), pureeing slightly eh cucumber to make martinis, and keeping carrot/etc peels (which the French call mirepoix) to use to make stock.

The other day at Mariano's I saw whole ducks, so naturally I got one. When I went to roast it yesterday, I became pretty happy that I had some small background in biology because "rinsing" the inside of the duck landed me with what I believe are a heart, kidneys (we have two, right?), perhaps a liver?, and a spinal cord/neck. Blah. The roasting wasn't bad~ the recipe on the packaging was the easiest and SUPER delicious. Basically, you rinse the duck inside/outside with cold water, stick it on a rack in a pan, rub it with a salt/pepper combo, then baste it with a brown sugar/orange juice/berry/soy sauce combo. Roast for 30 min at 350f, then 1.5 hours at 300f. Baste it every 20 minutes. Boom.

The issue here is not the delicious, delicious duck. What do I do with those innards? Clearly the duck killers thought I would like them. So I checked out some recipes and basically I made:

-duck stock using the neck and the leftover bones after we ate, as well as scraps/peels from carrots and onions (1)
-roasted liver & co. which at first I thought were the same thing as gizzards, and learned in the nick of time they are NOT; they are the same as giblets (2, 3)
-duck fat, which I just collected from the pan after roasting (4)

Things I learned:

> You can roast in a glass pan, but it stains it. So put some foil in there and voila! No issue.
> It should get up to an internal temperature, taken at the thickest part of the leg meat, of 160ish.
> There are 4 cups in 1 quart.
> Duck fat as 20%  less saturated fat than butter. :)
> Those leftover carrot/etc. scraps? They're called mirepoix in French. Because of COURSE the French have a cute name for scrappies.

0 Zach and Clay of The Bitten Word
1 Jenn of Jenn Cuisine's recipe
2 Yummly.com
3 Chichi Wang at Serious Eats
4 D'Artagnan