frandroidI had started a rejuvelac culture with older whole rye berries that F had bought years ago, and they just spoiled. I chucked that, bought some new whole wheat berries, and started a new culture with these and brown rice grains as well. The rice had visible sprouting earlier than the wheat. After they germinated, you soak the grains in water for three days. At the end you filter everything out, chuck out the grains in the compost. The filtered liquid that's left, which smells like feet, is your rejuvelac. Eww. Apparently you can DRINK this?? I mean I will obviously try it because I am me.
F has a soymilk maker with which she makes her soymilk. At the end of the operation, you're left with soybean fiber and still lots of protein matter to be cast off. You can't make tofu from it, since tofu is made from precipitating soymilk anyway. It's sometimes used at cattle feed, but because it's so wet, it has a very short shelf like, so much of it is just disposed of. So F had made soymilk and had left her usual 2 cups of okara or so on the counter for me, because I had been looking at using a tempeh starter to make okara tempeh. People have done it, and it's not as good as tempeh, but apparently it's edible. I think if one was to mix in extra broken soybean chunks in the okara, like there is in tempeh, it could come closer to the experience. I thought I had bought tempeh starter, but I can't find it. It's probably deep in the freezer an I can't be bothered to empty the freezer to find it, so I thought that I'll just buy a new culture later. However this newest batch of okara has been sitting on the counter for three days now, it's fermenting a bit but it'll spoil if it stays there any longer, so I should just chuck it.
Meanwhile I'm looking at my cookbook which starts a lot of these vegan cheese recipes with pulverized cashews. And I had this okara in front of me. So the obvious thing to do is to try to start a cheese culture with the okara and the rejuvelac. It required more rejuvelac to get a smooth spin in the blender, possibly because my blender is not one of the ninja style machines, it's an old, classic Osterizer. But eventually I got a smooth spin going on, and it looks like the okara further pulverized itself, turning to a creamy texture.
So we'll see what I get! I could get a spoiled culture on account of the okara being left to rest on the counter for a while, I could have a vegan cheese, or maybe I could have some sort of disgusting natto paste. If I get a spoiled culture, I'll just try again with fresh okara in a week.
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Oh yeah, I had bought a Drinkmate, the BDS-safe bubbly water machine, (don't buy SodaStream) but in typical ADHD fashion the box had just been sitting there, unopened for a few weeks. The goal being to add more bubbly beverages to my rotation to drink less beer or something. So I finally opened and unpacked it. Even just carbonated plain water is nice. What this machine has that's better than the SodaStream is that you can carbonate other beverages too... So if I find the rejuvelac edible, I'm going to see about carbonating it too. :P But more seriously, I'm looking forward to make bubbly cold chai, and bubbly amaro type things.