Don't Be So Sauer!

      Sauerkraut, the wonderful German condiment, consists very basically of salt, cabbage and water. Through fermentation, these ingredients are joined by various lactic acid bacteria, including Leuconostoc, Lactobacillus, and Pediococcus. This fermentation gives the shredded cabbage its distinct sour flavor.
      Beyond being extremely tasty and German, sauerkraut is very very healthy. Cabbage itself consists of isothiocyanates, amazing anti-cancer agents. Further than that, the bacteria which are wrought from the ferment are the same or similar to those within yogurt, which are good for your gut, promoting an active flora within your insides (and that is a good thing). One study suggests that sauerkraut is as effective as Viagra in stimulating the nether regions of one's self. Lastly, sauerkraut is high in vitamin C.
      To do this, I merely sliced cabbage (5 heads, various colors), salted it as I went, and tamped it down into a gallon jar. When I reached the top, I placed a clean ramekin in to push the solids beneath the brine (created almost solely by the cabbage itself). My friend and I modified the lid to make way for a grommet and airlock (conveniently obtained from the homebrew store). Then, I waited. In two weeks, after much bubbling, the kraut was finished, and appropriately sour. And here is the result:

Happy New Year!

They Froze Light!

As it says, the newspeople are now telling us that light has indeed been stopped, albeit for 10-20 microseconds, though this is huge for a thing that travels 186,000 miles a second. This power, they say, might be useful in the future for making quantum computers, which would make your brand-spanking new Mac seem like a relic of the past. The idea is that we could use the light particles, photons, to store and process data, making new computers much smaller and at least ten times faster than our computers today.

What next?

Beauty in Lack of Memory

Billy Collins is one of the great American poets of our time, born 1941, a product of this great steely machine of industry and war, this great conglomeration of states. He speaks to our biggest fear, forgetfulness. Without further ado, Billy Collins:

(If you would rather listen with playful animation, continue on to this:

Forgetfulness
 The name of the author is first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.


Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye,
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,


something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.


Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.


It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.


No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.


I hoped you enjoyed.

Let's Watch Kangaroos Box

Just as the title says, let us watch these kangaroos fight. I never realized how weird these animals are. Watch and enjoy.



Happy Holidays or whatever.

Tempeh-tations

Tempeh is fermented bean stuff, covered in a fuzzy colonization of mycelia, and it is beautiful and I made it. Me and my friend Lucas. This first image is what the bean cakes look like when they aren't bean cakes, bean cakes unbinded, before incubation. Prior to this picture, the soybeans were soaked, dehulled, skimmed of skins, and skimmed of more skins, and more, and then inoculated with spores from the Rhizopus oligosporus. The ziplock bags are poked with a fork or needle or something every half inch or so, in order that contact is made with air, and they are stuffed with the bean and spore mixture, packed tightly and about one inch thick.
    In the bedroom I rigged up an incubator system with a digital thermometer and a heating pad, with an oven rack and blankets. I got the temperature up within the range of 80 to 93 degrees F and put those little puppies in to sit for 24 to 36 hours, which they did, hence the next few pictures, where the cakes are now white with mycelium, the fungus fully winding its way through the crowded beans and partially digesting them. In this form they are solid and easily sliced.

Work In Progress

I've taken to baths lately, finding the most important things in life seem to be the simplest (i.e. sleep, food). Bathing, I realized, didn't have to be merely for the strict and quick utility of cleanliness, but could be prolonged indefinitely, recharged when needed. One only needs to stare blankly to muse successfully. I wrote a poem encapsulating this experience, or one among many, but it is still a work in progress, as I say. Not even the title is a surety.

Bath
Soapy water and drippy faucet and that sky of empty
that sky of jets and radio waves
that sky of black and cloud and wet
sounding down through the ancient
ventilation of this seventy-year old behemoth
sounding out into bathroom
bringing a sort of ambiance to
the solitude of bathing
an existentialism
and awareness
that
strip the walls
and there are
many nude, many recumbent
humming jazz
and staring ceiling-ward
contemplating nothing
but the planes passing overhead
booming through the atmosphere
tumbling over rooftops
and steeples
echoing proudly down
those antiqued
and white-acrylicked vents

It's jagged out there
and cold
I can hear the rain
tapping bebop on the roof
spitting the rhythms
of way back
old school
the oldest of musicians
Inside, many boxes of home,
enclosure, safety, warmth
the whole reproduction
of womb
and out there
it's classical music
the stuff of baby geniuses
and that most premier
of mothers
humming inwardly

Two Down, Six To Go

I have now successfully completed two applications for graduate school. University of Massachusetts - Amherst, and San Francisco State University. Left are: Indiana University, University of Iowa, University of Washington, University of Oregon, Oregon State University, and Naropa University. What work this is! Yet, each one does feel like a small victory. But, why does applying to school, to put yourself in a better financial situation, cost so damn much money?

So Much Depends Upon

Here is one of the best poems I have ever read. And one of the shortest. From the master, William Carlos Williams.

The Red Wheelbarrow

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens. 

We can say so much with so little.

Ants again.

        I have been watching, on youtube, several David Attenborough videos as of late, about various animals and plants, but close-up and with David Attenborough's voice. They are great. This one falls into the familiar realm of ants, but mixed this time with the realm of fungi. Cordyceps, the mushroom involved in the following clip, is apparently also very humanly beneficial. As wikipedia is concerned, a specific type of Cordyceps, cordycepin, is used to make a pharmaceutical drug. "ciclosporin — a drug helpful in human organ transplants, as it suppresses the immune system." It seems that it also might have use as an anti-depressant, although I think that there may already be some mushrooms that claim that honor. Anyway, enjoy this beautiful video.

Thanksgiving Redux

OK, thanksgiving was nearly a week ago, but I am now only writing about it. We went over to our friend, Stephen's, house. He had an elegant dinner setting out for us. How wonderful it is to be a guest. For this event, I made two dishes, both having come from a book at my work, surreptitiously photocopied and not bought. The book, Cooking With Pumpkins and Squash, has many amazing recipes in it. Thus, I photocopied the recipes for a Pumpkin Gnocchi and a Roasted Squash Soup. The soup was the star, but the gnocchi was amazing itself, buttery and decadent and time-consuming as all hell. The soup was vegan and the gnocchi was rich and vegetarian. The way in which they recommended to make the soup was something I had never imagined. The gnocchi would have been easier if I would have had a potato ricer, which I just got today. Anyway, just look at these images of these recipes. They're pretty.
P.S. I did not take these pictures, but they would be almost as pretty.