Welcome 2020!

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted something on this blog.  I’ve been busy working on my kombucha brand and spreading the word about it.  I am really loving everything about it.

Another milestone that has happened sine my last post is turning 42.  So you might think why is this number so special?  My family loves playing dominos and the game of 42 is our favorite.   I even joked that my wife had to learn it before we could get married.   The night I was going to surprise her with a proposal, a coworker of hers invited us over to a 42party.  I knew then it was meant to be.
Jennifer surprised me with a whole day of fun for my birthday.

This is my “the dude” look

I feel like this year and new decade will bring many amazing opportunities for me. My resolution this year is to try new things and to have more faith in the unknown and uncomfortable situations.   I’m working on my woodworking skills too as it brings me peace and joy.  Plus it gives me the opportunity to be creative and get rid of a lot of wood laying around the house.  Here are some of my projects thus far.

Made from old fence pickets

Added base and feet to match our new furniture 

Repurposed 2x4s from my old shed

Repurposed 2x4s from old shed with freehand stenciling 

My goal this year is to make something or at least work on something at least 3/4 weekends.  If I’m lucky, I might make a little money if I sell anything.  

WOW! has it really been over a year since my last post!

It's been quite a while since I have posted anything here. I have not done much gardening lately, as I have been giving the soil some much needed rest.

The two large keyhole beds in the front yard have not been as successful as I hoped. After the first few rains, most of my soil found its way through the cracks between the sticks and logs. Two kale plants did grow and survived the dry hot summer though. Still today, I am able to cut off leaves to use in may dishes. The go to dish for the large tougher leaves is kale chips baked in the oven with a little salt and sriracha sauce. With the smaller leaves, I have made salads with them and tonight, I used them in a stir fry with some rice noodles, radishes, mushrooms, garlic with a soy sauce, fish sauce, lime, sriracha, sesame oil, and a dash of sugar dressing. I turned out quite delicious.

My neighbor had purchased a few tomato plants this past summer and didn't get much produce off of them. I took a few cuttings from his plants and planted them into some of my spare 5 gallon buckets. They grew to a nice size but only produced a couple of tomatoes.

As always, at the beginning of winter, I am blessed with a decent size crop of wild cilantro in the backyard. I have made some cilantro pesto with it, garnished several dishes every week. Lately, we have had a lot of rain and mild/cool temperatures, that it has grown faster than I can use it. So my coworkers are going to be blessed with some free bunches of cilantro tomorrow.

I will be attending a National Junior Gardener conference at the end of February in College Station. I am excited to be able to go and learn some things, not only for myself, but to bring back and hopefully use at my school. One of the portables was removed at the beginning of the year, leaving a nice leveled open patch of land that would be great for a school learning garden. The only drawback is that another portable does block the morning sun, but you do the best you can with what you have. I spent about an hour sketching out a blueprint of the layout that I would love to do. It's going to be a big undertaking, but hopefully after the conference, I will have more confidence to move forward and persuade others to help me out.

I have started thinking about getting my hands dirty again here at the house, but I am still figuring out what and where my new beds need to go.

I can say though that my time out of the garden has not gone to waste. I have been getting pretty good at my kombucha brewing. I have experimented with many different flavors and brewing combinations. I attempted to do a coffee/tea brew, but the outcome was not that great as I had used a coconut flavored coffee, which isn't that great made the normal way. I still make a batch that is my normal.. a ginger, lemon balm flavor and a raspberry, ginger, almond flavor. If I have anything left over, I will do a small batch with a new flavor. I tried using a can of peaches with the juice and some fresh ginger... it turned out just ok. I still like to mix an exotic fruit like mango or papaya with a spicy pepper. They always seem to turn out delicious.

My love for kombucha has become evident as I have been able to share my love and experiences of brewing it to others that I have convinced them to start brewing at home as well. I'm glad to know that I can do something useful with all my extra Scobys. The scoby candy and jerky have always been a failure. So now it’s one more thing that I can grow and share with others. That's the joy of gardening and kombucha brewing.

Until next time....


Get outside and get dirty!

Eggplant two ways, scoby jerky, and fall gardens

Fried two ways ( oven baked and wok fried).  Stir fry with onions, bell pepper, cashews, and a homemade sauce.  

Oven baked was tossed with cilantro, tomatoes, mayo, and Greek yogurt and dill.   Otherwise known as Mother-in-law's Tongue. ( in a deconstructed kind of way).  

Stir fry eggplant is similar to tofu,  which I always fail at making.  The MiL's Tongue tastes like a potato salad. 

In the garden news,   I got a few sweet peppers and some kale from the two keyhole front yard gardens.  No extra water, just compost added every other week.  It helped that we had lots of rain from the hurricanes in the gulf.   

Fall garden seeds planted about two weeks ago.  Three different squashes, Brussels sprouts, lettuce varieties, radishes, and some broccoli.  Squash seedlings have already appeared and a few other seedlings from the rest of the 

plant seeds I through out in the dirt.  

I also tried my hand at some kombucha scoby jerky.....  It's tough, but doesn't really break down.  I think I dehydrated it to high and to long.  Oh well, you got to fail a few times to learn something new.  

New kombucha flavors

Now that I have a second setup, I've got extra kombucha to experiment with.  The latest new infusions are mango jalapeño, black cherry almond, and chocolate strawberry rhubarb.   Jennie really loved the cherry almond as she has already consumed the entire liter of it on two days.  

The chocolate strawberry rhubarb is nice and subtle,  a good dessert kombucha.   The mango jalopeno is a great way to jump start your morning with a citrusy tang and a hint of spicy heat.  

The garden is coming in slowly, as I saw my first tomato yesterday.  Half of my tomato plants haven't grown much die to the over crowding or over shading by the cilantro mini-trees😏.   I cleared around them about two weeks ago, hoping to see better growth soon.  The plants in the front yard keyhole beds are still quite small.  Only watering once a week, but thinking I may need to up that soon.   The cages for the compost are proving to be solid, no signs of critters getting in and not visible tracks in the dirt around them. They aren't smelly either, which I'm sure my neighbors are pleased about.  H

The weather around here has been unusual.  Not many hot days yet and moderate amount of rain.   Usually I think we are hitting the 90's by now, but we have gotten several cold fronts that are keeping the temps down for us.  

Until next time....

Go outside and Get dirty!

New month= new experiments

So the kombucha is still going strong in my house.   I drink it every day.   So after talking with my brother a few weeks ago, he shared with me that he tried some coffee kombucha and really loved it. The idea that had come to my mind about a month earlier but since I'm not a coffee drinker her I wasn't sure how to proceed or how I would even know if it was good or not. I decided to give it a try and used just some medium roast coffee from the local grocery store.  My wife texted me this morning saying that it was good!   

Other flavors this time are grapefruit kombucha and a jalopeno kombucha. I wanted to do a pepper flavor every since my wife and I enjoyed a ghost pepper ipa at a brewery in Tyler, Tx.  If you're every in the area, stop by True Vine brewery for a pint.  They always have about 5-7 taps with a variety of choices.  Both the grapefruit and the jalopeno turned out great. 

As you can tell, the jalopeno is almost gone and the coffee is not far behind.  

As far as my gardening for this season, I've been saving seeds from produce bought at the store (organic produce) and planted them about two weeks ago. So far I've got seedlings of acorn squash, butternut squash, watermelon, and bell pepper. From seed packets I've got Brussels sprouts.  The jalopenos and artichokes still haven't sprouted yet.  

I transplanted the fig tree further away from the house and divided my cannas and lilies to other parts of the yard.  

We've been enjoying the wild rogue cilantro that has taken over the beds in the backyard.   Pesto, salsa, and any other meal has enjoyed the added flavor of cilantro in it.  

This spring break my goal is to construct nice beds (keyhole design idea) in the front yard, using corrugated tin and cedar posts.

Until next time...

Go Garden and Get Dirty!

Kombucha brew flavorings

I'm getting pretty good at this kombucha brewing.   My last batch was ready in about 3 days, which I was shocked since it usually takes about a week for a batch to get to the right consistency.  I made my satellite batch, honey basil ginger.  I also had enough to bottle 3 liter sized bottles.  New flavors are black cherry basil, cranberry basil, and blueberry basil.    The cherry one was enjoyed tonight with our spaghetti squash spaghetti dinner.

Even though I have a continuous brew going, I think I am going to clean out the bottom of my jar before fermenting the next batch.    Need to do a little research beforehand.   

Kombucha success

My first real attempt to make kombucha with my home grown scoby came out great.   I was going to do a continuous brew cycle but decided against it after reading a few articles not in favor of it.   So my batch was enough to make two quart sized mason jars and two grolsch style liter jars.   I made four different flavors.  Mason jars- ginger basil honey and lemon cherry sea salt.   The ginger one was better out of the two, both still delicious.  The grolsch bottles I add a bit more sugar to create some carbonation to it.  Three days later, it was time to pop them open to taste.   I flavored one with apples and mint and the other with cucumber and some random flavor mint I have growing in my garden.   Again, both tasted good, but the winner of all four is the cucumber mint kombucha.   It tastes so good that I had to force myself not to drink the whole bottle at once.   I think the carbonated ones are much better tasting, so it looks like I will be traveling back to the store to purchase a few more bottles.  

In addition to my successful first kombucha brewing,  I have also started a nice little scoby hotel, with 3 tenants already checked in.   

Future flavors to try:

Raspberry peach

Coconut lime

Maybe something spicy or smoky 

Until next time...

Get dirty and keep on gardening.  

Fruit trees and kombucha

Got a deal on some fruit trees for $10 a piece at HEB.  I picked up 2 apple, 2 pear, 2 peach, and an apricot tree.  Finding room for all of them was a challenge, but I got them all in the ground.  It took me about 3 weeks, so hopefully the time in the containers hasn't killed them.

I started making my own kombucha about a month ago.  I started from scratch by making my own scoby. Today I brewed a large batch of tea to start a continuous feeding system.  Information I found said this method is less tedious and better for your scoby, so it sounded good to me.  I had about 4 cups left over from my scoby making batch. I used the left overs and experimented with adding some flavoring to the kombucha.  I am trying a ginger lemon batch and an orange lime batch.  I tasted the raw kombucha and it wasn't that bad.  Tasted somewhat like apple cider vinegar.   I have to let the flavors infuse for 3-5 days and then refrigerate them.  

We are heading to Oktoberfest this weekend , so they very first batch of clint's kombucha should be ready upon my return.  I can't wait!

Go outside and Get Dirty!