Well, I'm laid up again with a nasty foot injury... strange how disabling that can be, due to it's location rather than the severity. So I thought I would reflect here a bit. I just put on some background video of a Bocelli concert in Portofino, which makes somewhat sappy music in a pretentious location quite magical... is it the Italian touch, or maybe my memories of hiking the pretty hills in the background (better than crowded Cinque Terre!).

I recorded it off cable tv and was about to flush it, but then found it is a real cinema movie, This trailer makes it seem brash rather than it's actual mellow, scenic character:

Anyway, I didn't realize the extent of my injury because it had a numbing effect at first. I got all distracted by trying to create my own salt free Cajun seasoning by mixing up stuff on hand. This was after much frustration of trying to subscribe to that from Amazon... if you subscribe to 5 things at once regularly they deduct 15% and charge no postage. Anyway, why not mix various pepper, paprika, garlic, onion and others powders together? Came out a little harsh, so why not add some mellow thai seasonings and nutritional yeast... pretty good, but what is that throbbing in my foot... YIKES!

Another liberating area of self-mix is sodapop. Got the neat Sodastream carbonating machine (did I mention this earlier?) and concoct my own syrups. A good one is root beer extract mixed with the super healthy agave syrup instead of the usual corn syrup. Or canned frozen concentrate of lemonade mixed with coconut syrup... refreshing! I found an adaptor valve online to use paintball co2 chargers which are vastly cheaper bubblemakers than from sodastream, yet fit in their machine. Real quality results, cheaper, and I save all the lugging of cans and such.

My next mixing direction is something I touched on in a topic here about fermented applesauce. I am crazy about bubbles (not alcohol) in what I eat or drink, and accidentally created a perfect mix of fermented cranberry juice mixed with applesauce. The bubbles stay suspended in place and are amazing to encounter. But it's hard to perfect. Too thin and the apple pulp just sinks below a watery gruel. Too thick can be fun, but has problems I talked about earlier. The trick seems to be starting a tad too watery, then the yeast turns the mixture a bit gluey with absolutely immobilized bubbles. But you can drink it, sort of like a smoothie with tart bubble bursts!