Lent, day 1

Today was very fulfilling.

I spent a fair bit of time this morning looking into various foods, mostly fermented, that I could try making over the course of the next six weeks. Kimchi, black garlic, black limes, makgeolli, tsukemono, tamari, soy sauce, miso, mead, sea salt...the list goes on, and obviously some of these things take much longer than six weeks to make. So I'm going to try to divide the list into three categories. First, things that will take nearly the whole time, like tsukemono, and which I should start ASAP. Second, things which will take only a few days or a couple weeks, and which I can wait a bit for (like cured egg yolks). Last, things like soy sauce which will take WAY longer than six weeks, but which will obviously be finished sooner if I start sooner. But I'm going to at least try to get something food related done every day; today, I dehydrated some brown sugar. I intend to make two batches of cured eggs yolks, one with salt and white sugar, the other with salt and brown sugar. The dehydrated brown sugar will obviously be much better than regular brown sugar when it comes to drawing moisture out of the yolks. In the next few days, I hope to obtain koji, nuruk, and dried soybeans in order to facilitate making miso, tamari, possibly Japanese-style soy sauce, and makgeolli.

I'm also going to have to think about containers. I have quite a few glass jugs, which would be fine for making things like mead. But anything involving solids is going to need a jar or a crock, and I have two crocks that might possibly be considered fit to ferment in. I honestly think that at lest some things might be better if made in glass jars. For example, some of the recipes I've seen for Korean-style soup soy sauce say to take the lid off and expose it to the sun when possible, which seems like an invitation to contamination. But I've found at least one reference to a glass lid to be used in such circumstances; surely a glass jar could do as well or better, particularly if equipped with a shade or wrap.

But that's not all! This morning also involved stretches and strength training. After some video calls for work, I went on an extended bike ride, donated platelets, biked partway home before my tire blew out and I had to get an uber the rest of the way, ran a bit over 7 kilometers, and had another video call. I actually didn't drink all 3 keto chow meals; instead, I had 2, and 4 scoops of protein powder instead of the planned 3 to compensate for the third, unconsumed keto chow meal. In 43 days (or less!), I will hopefully be down to my target weight of 87 kilos.