Tea mushroom

Tea mushroom

Other names for the fungus:
• Kombucha

Synonyms:

• Kombucha

Tea mushroom. A strange slippery thing floating in a bank neatly covered with clean gauze. Weekly Care Procedure: pour the finished drink, wash the mushroom, prepare a new one sweet solution and send it back to the jar. Watching how this jellyfish straightens, occupies a position convenient for itself. Here she, the true “tea ceremony”, does not need to go to China, we have everything at hand.

I remember how this strange jellyfish appeared in our family.

Mom then worked at the University and often told all sorts of news, whether from the world of “high science”, or from the world near-scientific speculation. I was still very little, a preschooler, and eagerly caught all sorts of tricky words to scare buddies. For example, the word “acupuncture” is a terrible word, true? Especially when you are 6 years old and you are panicky afraid of injections. But you sit and listen, as if enchanted, because it is explicit magic: sticking to the “right” points just needles, empty needles, without syringes with nasty vaccinations, from which then skin itches, and all diseases go away! Everything! But true to know these “right points” need to be studied for a long time, many years. it revelation somewhat chilled my childhood ardor immediately arm yourself with a pack of needles and go to treat everyone, from a dozen chickens in the chicken coop and our aging cat to the evil neighbor little dogs.

And then one evening, mom returned from work, neatly carrying in string bag of someone else’s saucepan. Solemnly hoisted a saucepan on the table. My grandmother eagerly waited for what was there. I AM, Of course, she hoped that there was some new treat. Mom opened the lid, I looked inside – Jellyfish! Nasty, dying, a yellowish-brownish jellyfish lay at the bottom of the pan, slightly coated with a clear yellowish liquid. Silent scene. Such brutal, you know, as in the best productions of The Examiner. Grandmother first found the gift of speech: “What kind of muck?” Mom apparently was ready for such a reception. Slowly washed my hands, took a plate, deftly picked up a jellyfish from a saucepan, put in a plate and began to tell.

Honestly, I remember little from that story. In mind left pictures and impressions. If there were abstruse words such as “Acupuncture” might have remembered more. I remember how much it was strange for me to watch my mother take this monster with her hands, explaining where he has the top and bottom, and that it grows “in layers.”

Mom, without stopping to tell, prepared a home for the jellyfish: poured into a three-liter jar of boiled water (this is the end of the sixties, the concept of “purchased drinking water” was absent as such, we always boiled tap water), added some sugar and topped up tea leaves from a teapot. Shook the jar to sugar dissolved faster. Again she took the jellyfish with her hands and released it into the jar. But now I knew that it was not a jellyfish, it was a tea mushroom. Mushroom thumped into the jar almost to the bottom, then began slowly to straighten and rise. We sat and watched, bewitched how it takes up the whole space of the can in width, like a can turned out to be just right for him (long live GOST and standardized glass container sizes!) as he slowly rises. Mom took the cups and poured liquid over them from pots. “Try it!” – grandmother squeamishly pursed her lips and flatly refused. I, looking at my grandmother, of course, also refused. Later in the evening, the drink was drunk by men, father and grandfather, I didn’t understand the reaction, it seems they didn’t like it.

It was the beginning of summer and there was heat. Grandma always made kvass. Simple homemade kvass according to a simple recipe, without any starter cultures: dried real “black” round bread, unwashed black raisins, sugar and water. Kvass stood in the traditional three-liter jars. A can of tea mushroom took a place in the same row. Drink in the heat I wanted it all the time, and Grandma’s kvass was the most affordable. Who remembers those times? There were machines with soda, 1 penny – just soda, 3 kopecks – soda with syrup. The machines were not densely, we then lived on the outskirts, within walking distance of them there were only two, but I was not allowed to go to one of them, since there it was necessary to cross the road. And there’s always something It ended: now there is no water, then syrup. Come like a fool with with his glass, but no water. It was possible, with luck, to buy a Citro or lemonade in a half-liter bottle, but they didn’t give me money for it (it seemed to cost a little more than 20 kopecks, such a lot of money I only appeared at school, when it was possible to save on breakfast). Therefore, Grandma’s kvass saved from thirst: you run into kitchen, grab a cup, quickly grab a jar, right through the cheesecloth you pour a magic drink and drink. This completely unforgettable taste! That’s how many tried different types of kvass later, in post-Soviet time, I didn’t find anything like it.

Three weeks have passed since the evening when my mother brought a stranger into the house a saucepan. The story about the jellyfish settled here has already weathered from my memory, I don’t remember at all who looked after kombucha and where did the drink go. And then one day exactly what happened should It was about to happen, about which you, my dear reader, already, of course, guessed it. Yes. I flew into the kitchen, without looking, grabbed the can, poured to itself kvass and began to drink eagerly. I took a few full sips before I realized: I don’t drink kvass. Oh, not kvass— With a general resemblance – sweet and sour and slightly carbonated – the taste was completely different. Raise the gauze – in the jar from which I just poured myself kvass, jellyfish swaying. Fairly enlarged since our first acquaintance. It’s funny that I didn’t have any negative emotions. I was very thirsty, but the drink really was delicious. Slowly finished, in small sips, trying better try it out. It tastes good! The fact that there are kombuch a small percentage of alcohol, I found out in twenty years, like the word is, “Kombucha.” Then we called it simply: “mushroom”. Question “What will you drink, kvass or mushroom?” understood clearly.

What can I say – a week later I was already a super expert on the “mushroom”, planted on him all his friends, for the “shoots” to his grandmother lined up from the neighbors. When I went to school, in line pulled the parents of classmates. I could easily and without stumbling to drum “point by point” what Kombucha is:

• it’s living
• it’s not a jellyfish
• it’s such a mushroom
• he grows himself
• he lives in a bank
• he makes a drink like kvass, but tastier
• I am allowed to drink this drink
• teeth do not spoil from this drink

This straightforward child marketing worked for everyone, gradually the mushroom jars settled in all the kitchens microdistrict.

Years passed. Our outskirts went demolished, we got an apartment in new building in another area. We moved long, hard, it was summer and it was hot again.

The mushroom was transported in a jar, from which almost all the liquid was drained. AND forgot about him. Ten days, maybe more. Found a bank for odor, sour specific odor of stagnant yeast fermentation with rot. The mushroom wrinkled, the top was completely dry, the bottom layer is still wet, but some are very unhealthy. Not even I know why we tried to reanimate him? It was possible without problems take the shoot. But it was interesting. Washed mushroom several times lukewarm water and dipped in a freshly prepared sweet solution tea. He drowned. All. He lay down like a submarine. Couple of hours i I also came up to see how my pet was there, then spat. A in the morning I discovered that he had come to life! Rose to half the height of the can and looked much better. By the end of the day, it surfaced quite as it should. The top layer was dark, there was something painful in it. I am a couple once I changed his solution and poured out this liquid, I was afraid to drink, the top layer is torn off and thrown away. Mushroom agreed to live in a new apartment and forgave us our forgetfulness. Amazing Vitality! In the fall, I went to ninth grade at a new school. And in the autumn my classmates came to visit me on vacation. Saw the jar: what this is? I took a little more air into my chest to drum the usual “this living—” – and stopped short. Text you are proud you recite, being a primary school student, somehow wildly will be perceived when you are already a young lady from high school, Komsomol activist. In a nutshell, she said that this is a tea mushroom and that this liquid can be drunk. And the next day I went to the library. Yes, yes, do not laugh: in the reading room. This is the end seventies, the word “Internet” was not then, as well as Internet. I studied the binder of the magazines “Health”, “Worker”, “Peasant” and something else was, it seems, “Soviet woman. “A couple of statues about Kombucha were found in each binder. The conclusions for myself, I then made disappointing: no plainly does not know what it is and how it affects the body. But, like would not harm. And thanks for that. Where did it come from in the USSR, too is unknown. And why tea? Kombucha, it turns out, can live in milk and in juices. My “marketing” theses at that time looked something like this:

• it’s a living organism, a symbiotic
• he has long been known in the East
• Kombucha drink is generally healthy
• it boosts immunity
• it improves metabolism
• he heals a bunch of some diseases
• he helps to lose weight
• there is alcohol in it!

The last item on this list, as you understand, was strictly for classmates, not for their parents. For a year all my parallel was already with the mushroom. Such is the “cyclical nature of history.” But the full cycle of the mushroom did when I entered college. I entered the same university KSU, where my mother used to work. First gave a few scions of girls in a dorm. Then she began to offer classmates: do not throw them away, these “pancakes”? And then that was already in my second year, the teacher called me and asked what I brought in a jar and gave it to a classmate? Not the one Is it an “Indian mushroom”, a drink from which cures gastritis? I AM admitted that I’m hearing about gastritis for the first time, but if it’s gastritis with increased acidity, then drinking this drink is unlikely to succeed: there will be constant heartburn. And that name is “Indian mushroom” too, in In general, I hear for the first time, we simply call it Kombucha. “Yes, yes!” The teacher rejoiced. “That’s right, tea!” Can you sell the shoot to me? “I replied that I did not sell them, but I distribute “absolutely no-air-mez-bottom, that is, for nothing” (activist, Komsomol, the beginning of the eighties, what a sale, what you!) on the barter: the teacher brought me some grains “Sea rice”, I made her a pancake with kombucha. In a couple weeks accidentally found out that the department has already lined up for processes. My mom brought kombucha from the university, with Department of Low Temperature Physics. I brought it in the same University, at the Department of the History of Foreign Literature. Mushroom made full circle.

Then – then I got married, gave birth, the mushroom disappeared from my life. AND here a few days ago, tidying up the Kombucha section, I I thought: what is new on this topic? As of now, end of August 2019? And tell me, Google— That’s what you managed scrape together:

• there is still no reliable information about where the mod came from ferment sugar solution using the so-called “Tea mushroom ”
• there is no exact information where he came from, Egypt is this, India or China
• it is absolutely unknown who and when brought it to the USSR �
• but it’s known that in the USA he gained incredible popularity in 90s of the last century and continues to aggressively spread, but not for free, according to friends, from hand to hand, as it was with us, but for money
• the kombucha drink market in the US is estimated at some totally insane millions of dollars ($ 556 million in 2017) and continues to grow
• the word “Kombucha” is tightly used, instead of a long and unpronounceable “Kombucha-made drink”
• there is no reliable information how useful Kombucha is for constant use
• viral news about alleged mortals periodically appear cases among admirers of Kombuchi, however reliable evidence also no
• there are a lot of recipes with kombuchi, almost all these recipes have herbal remedies, treat them necessary with due care
• Kombuchi consumers are pretty much younger, they’re not grandmothers anymore, which can with kombucha is on a par with kvass. Generation Pepsi chooses kombucha!

Note Photos used in this Note – these are not documentary photos of those years about which the story. These photos were taken by my friend, Yuri Podolsky, at my request, especially for Wiki Mushroom and for this article.