fairy tales and projects: aka there is a mother in my cupboard

This may be a difficult thread to follow, but hang in there. It seems that a fairy tale inspired me to make a mother for apple cider vinegar.

For many years now, I have been trying to find ways of bringing back the richness of story telling. All kinds of story telling from fairy tales to sitting around camp fires and sharing old stories, being at ceremony and hearing the healing stories of our ancestors, and trying to encourage people to tell their stories. There is so much to learn and teach. And then there is the cultural flair and flavor I miss when all our pop culture stories are juxtaposed to how Hollywood or some publisher decides we will hear a story based on how much money it will make. Not only do these old stories teach us and entertain us, they give us strength in difficult times to carry on. To not give up. Reminding us that we know what to do, we just need to trust our community and ourselves.

In my quest for stories, I came across and anthology of fairy tales called "My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me" edited by Kate Bernheimer. Its 40 new tales based on the old classics with new twists and turns. "The Brother and the Bird" is based on Grimm's "Juniper Tree", and is where the anthology gets its name. When the author, Alissa Nutting, talks about her attraction/back round of the re-telling of the old tale, she brings up something I have also wondered.

There are a few tales like "Juniper Tree" where the father ends up eating one of the kids and doesn't even notice. He just excepts that the kid is out of the house.... for days... months.... He buys the story. He eats the food with out question. How often do we find ourselves eating what is in front of us because we like the taste, so we don't ask questions, we just accept being told, "its safe, its ok, there is nothing to see here kids, just move along now."

When the truth of it all is, we can taste something is not right. In Alissa's story, the father keeps going out and looking at the tree. He senses something is not falling into place, but its like he is under a spell. And I think that is where many of "us" have been for way too long. We have the FDA, USDA, etc telling us that the food they are allowing out of the factories is safe and good for us. It won't make us sick or kill us. And it doesn't. Well not like the poisonous apple of some wicked witch.

When we actually listen to the stories people are telling, however, we are realizing that their food is making us sick. In fact it is killing us slowly and painfully. What may be the worst part is, that those agencies that we are told are suppose to protect us and keep us safe, are now blaming us for getting sick, and deny us health care. The government has a magical ability of blaming the victim. It could the First Nations People in deep deep poverty because they refuse to leave land the the government keeps claiming resources of. Or the single mother working 2 jobs and raising kids with not enough time to cook whole grains and veggies so sends her kids to fast food.

Its kind of like our nation is in abusive relationship with "our" government. We want to trust and believe that they care, but really they only care about the rich and powerful.

So now it is time to pack our bags and remove ourselves from a relationship that is slowly killing us. We can do it. There is support. We can re-gain the trust of the voices in heads that are saying something is not quite right here and stop eating the poisonous lies. We can bring our foods back. We can revive our stories, our traditions, our food, our health...

Right now, I am trying to revive the dregs of some apple cider vinegar (acv) to make my own.

We've been at the bottom of a gallon of acv for months now. Its full of chunks of things that are the natural part of live vinegar of any kind - ya know when you see some at the store that say something about having the mother in it.

After reading about a mother that kills, and decided for something lighter, so i turned to how to make vinegar in the book Making It. So I headed off to the co-op and got some more acv to feed the dregs, and about 6 apples (fuji's were on sale so... that's what I got).

The dregs plus vinegar:

  juiced the apples:

mixed the 2:

covered with cheese cloth:

and well now its actually in my closet, not the cupboard, to avoid light. Sorry in advance to my co-workers and friends if I start to smell like acv. I plan on moving it to the cupboard once the mother is on the move. It should only take a couple months to have full on acv. I am assuming its a lot like the mother from making kombucha. And judging from my experience of making that, I feel like this will be a great success. Once we have a full mother, we can make as much as we want, you know, like a full gallon... if I feel like juicing that many apples. But then we will never have to buy apple cider vinegar ever again!

Apple Cider Vinegar has so many heath benefits. Some people drink it right up everyday. We have bottles of beverages in the cooler at the co-op made with acv. I personally use it so often, I don't know what I would do with out it. Its in my tahini sauce. I use it when I saute my greens, or making a salad dressing. If you are not familiar with this amazing food, I suggest you introduce yourselves. And then you can tell the story of how you first came to use apple cider vinegar.