Eat, Drink, and Be Ready for More!

Those of you who know me, know that I experiment with my food, so that no, my kitchen is not a regular kitchen, nor is it a test kitchen. My kitchen is a science lab. Yes, I’m a sort of a food nerd, if you will. I don’t mind, it’s fun.

So, I see a post from a friend of mine, Lisa, about something called kombucha, which is a natural probiotic tea that is fermented, but not alcoholic. Fermented as in similar to how pickles of various kinds that are healthy for you, and to promote good bacteria to keep your digestive tract healthy. After the 1st fermentation, you separate the tea from the scoby, which is the “Mother” for the brew, and do a second fermentation with fruit, to flavor it and give it that natural fizz, similar to apple cider, but it’s a healthy tea. 

 

 

Kombucha peach fizz tea, ready for consumption.

I’m still perfecting my 2nd fermentation, in hopes to get a flavor I like better, but, my son Chad, husband Mike, and friend David all seem to like them fairly well. I kind of liked the last one, which was a pear spice tea, but, Mike really like this batch, which is the peach spice. I also had done a mixed fruit one, and that seems good too. So, instead of tossing them out after fermenting into a fizzy fruit tea, I turned it into a kombucha fruit pie. Needless to say, with the little bit of brown sugar and cinnamon I added, the pie went over well, and didn’t last 48 hours.

 

 

Peach and mixed fruit "kombucha" pie

Oh, so great. Now you know where my priorities are... Talking about beverages and desserts... Where’s dinner? Here it is. ;) 

 

 

For dinner: Miso soup with black oysters Gyoza (poststickers) Sushi brown rice Spicy nori, traditional takuan, kimchee takuan Shiitake mushrooms, marinated Dipping sauce for the gyoza (it’s my homemade concoction).

 

 

It's kind of like a 5 course meal, all in 1. It looks delicious, doesn't it?

 

I like to cook, and I like to try different things. Some experiments are better than others, and other times, mistakes turn into something better. Go figure. If this makes you hungry, feel free to invite yourself over for dinner, and I just might make something cool & full of goodness for you.

The only thing better, would be to be able to sell MY food, to raise money for my one and only nonprofit, Youth Voice Initiative, a registered 501c4, a social welfare organization to push social changes necessary to help abused children get protection and justice under the law, as opposed to returning them to the harmful environments that they are in. We are, as a society, way too easy on those who abuse children.

 

 

Yes, we hear that children are resilient. But, that would hold true to ones that are going through a more natural hardship, such as poverty or what have you. Normal households have an environment to where children are able to create trust, have normal boundaries, have self respect and some self pride, learn to discover the world around them through play and study, form relationship with others which are productive, not destructive. Many of these are totally missed or are miscued in so many ways, because rather than figuring out how to stack the blocks so they won’t fall, abused children have to find a way to not get beaten or sexually abused. The normal phase of building trust is replaced with trying to figure out how to get mom or dad or whom ever to love them. Boundaries are broken, and often, is not able to figure out where the normal ones ought to be. Rather than a safe and peaceful home life, home is the war zone with no where to go. There will be no rescue. There is no escaping. Home is the abusive war zone. The road to normalcy is one that can be unattainable by some who have survived the atrocities of manipulation, grooming, psychological abuse, physical abuse, narcissism from the abuser, sex abuse, etc... (being told you are stupid by your parents makes you believe you are, after all, parents are supposed to love you enough to be truthful, right)? 

 

 

And, it’s very ignorant of those who have not gone through this to say, “You’re an adult, act like it, you know better”... Okay, so, the only thing many pick up about being an adult, is either follow the footsteps of your parents, good or bad examples, or, if you have had bad ones, the choice is, don’t be like them. But, who do we end up like? That is the same as saying, you have a roof, now build the house. You can’t build the house under the roof. You have to build the house to put the roof on. Abuse survivors are ones who as an adult, has the roof, because that is where being an adult is, figuratively speaking. We don’t know how to build a normal house under that roof, because the figurative one that we lived in throughout our childhood had been hit by a tornado, an earthquake, a hurricane, and a fire. Us survivors must start from the ground up.

 

 

I think I’m headed down the right path. Things may not end up working out they way I exactly wanted, but, sometimes we have to reinvent ourselves, and use that title in a different way. As a child, I wanted to be a dignitary, and be the representative ambassador from the United States to other countries, seeing the exotic people, culture, food, sights, and all of those good things. Maybe I imagined it to be more glorified than what it really is. I’ll probably never get appointed, even though I have a natural knack understanding different peoples of our planet, if I get to meet them in person. But, even if I may never get there, I really feel like I am being an ambassador, for the abused children, to the legislature to bring ideas and change to make new laws, to protect our most precious resource: Our next generations to come.