It's My Party

[degringolade]

 

Amanita Muscaria at the Hoh River

I am still working on the whole tempeh ecosystem.  Today is just some random notes concerning the process.

• Making your own starter is critical if you wish the product comes in at a decent cost.

• Equipment requirements are in flux.  Using the temperature controller for both the crock pot (making starter block), the food dryer (drying the starter), and the seedling mat (Making the tempeh) seem to work quite well.

• The starter is ugly when it is in process.  It looks like something that in any other system, you would throw away.

• I am not at all certain as to the purpose of the rice flour, but I am doing it anyway.  My first thought is that it acts as a desiccant for the spores.  I will treat it as such and roast it uncovered to dry it out completely immediately before grinding the spores.  That way when I put it into a sealed mason jar, the spores will remain as dry as possible.

• I will try to make a better overall writeup of the process.    I went to the library and ordered some articles from an interlibrary loan to serve as a bibliography.

• I also need to further discard past impulse purchases and more of my historic kitchen gear.  I do not need an instant pot and two pressure cookers.

I suppose that this current foray into diet and provisioning is a commentary on my current thinking about the nature of our society and the interface between spirituality and the emphasis on wealth in our culture.  When the act of living simply and minimizing is labeled as being just short of seditious.

Ramadan and Lent running concurrently is making me ponder the nature and sources of the common rites of abstention that litter the landscape of faith.  Why did they come about and are they actually useful?