THE 5-POT LUCKY EATING GAME THE WORLD WAS WAITING FOR

Dedicated to my nieces and great nieces

(Please send me feed-back)

A NEW EATIQUETTE FOR WO/MEN
Men automatically included
We can decimate our work time in the kitchen!
90% work time saved.
NO more daily & nightly slaving over a hot stove anymore! Liberation from daily & lengthy meal preparations thanks to recent Bio-Science Findings that are still widely unknown in the general public! (Perhaps because of the social bullyboy technocracy of ‘Big Kitchen Kit’: a la ‘Must have 50 thousand Dollar Kitchen appliances’ (-Really? WHO must? Only the oven industry tries to make us believe so.)
Instead, with this Four PotluckY diet scheme, we can offer a New Lifestyle:

LESS (kitchen stress)
IS MORE (Stress-LESS-ness) !

We can live longer, and healthier, and much happier lives, AT LEISURE!

This eating game COMES WITH THE BLESSINGS OF WORLD CLASS DOCTORS
Can this be true?
Sounds a bit too good to be true you may think – Rest assured: It’s the best liberated & healthy lifestyle you’ll ever have – (saves not only time, but money, too! (tens of thousands of dollars for me over the past decade- and will for you, too.)
That’s why I am sitting here, writing – hopefully- this my third –time-lucky, WHATEVER YOU DO  DON’T COOK! BOOK-
for you, my dearly beloved Sister & Brotherhood of WO/MEN;
for all those of you who are thoroughly fed up with mediaeval-style, clock-work-orange- kitchen ordeals, day-in day-out, just for the sake of feeding family members, young & old, like lifelong toddlers – year-in-year-out, every few hours, day-in, day out!
Why is it still left up to us ‘liberated’ women, having to report, like modern kitchen slaves, a thousand times per annum, to be ready at our stoves and ovens for yet another meal preparation- ( whether trademarked modern Miele or not- it IS still modern slavery: It still means: slaving over a hot stove, for long weekend hours, through summer and winter, autumn or spring – while the rest of the family, on coming home, can simply call it a day, away from such menial work chores as feeding the rest of the clan, which is left to the female partners, mainly. This is clear discrimination,I must tell you.
But wait, there’s an easy way out of this oven dependence:
Let me be your pilot pot stirrer and whet your appetite for trying out this 5 potlucky scheme as a new eating game; indeed as a game – changing family feeding program– both easy and healthy!
As a bonus, it will also enable you to automatically make those ‘waisted’ & wasted extra kilos tumble – without any calorie counting & fasting days!
But, I’d like to ask you this first and foremost:
Will you earnestly like to try out MY eating game for a change?
How happily liberated would you feel if I told you that
you will only have to make breakfasts & lunches & suppers ONCE or TWICE per FORTNIGHT –
instead of silly seven times per week?
You only have to plan & work out a basic menu ONCE a week, which means, SEVEN times less than if you stick with your old daily work scheme of feeding yourself & your loved ones.
I can give you the assurance that my system works – on the basis of a long-time-proven, epidemiological, biology-based & very practical, time & money-saving fermentation technique.
Why does it work? Because it was not invented by me or any kitchen etiquette, but by Nature herself, and is the oldest proven feeding scheme since the beginning of civilization, quite a few thousands of years ago!

You’ll need NO PANS or CANS henceforward; instead, I invite you to join in my favourite chant of My kitchen rules:

‘PAN’ the PAN and
‘CAN’ the CAN!
YES ! YOU CAN
PAN THE PAN
CAN THE CAN!

And now, my dear womenfolk, please, don’t leave out your own men in this game. It’s the wherewithall for better health and wealth – with equal rights & benefits for all Mankind, and our one and only Planet Earth. (Unless you want to migrate to Mars!)
Incidentally:

BAR MARS BARS
(BAR ON MARS)

COOKED BOOKS RUIN OUR WEALTH.
COOK BOOKS RUIN OUR HEALTH.
(through habitual food arson)

Instead, for starters,
This is ALL you need, apart from a deep Love of Freedom (from Kitchen Serfdom- doom & gloom? Out with this old order-of-the-garter slogan: I SERVE!
ICH DIEN’- I serve? NOT for ME! (Ich dien’ hat ausgedient!) Instead,
I propose a new barter:
PotluckY ways- for happier days!

THIS IS ALL I NEED for my kitchen freedom
by way of my Four-PotluckY Scheme :

1. A ‘SEED’ POT – for A MUESLI – (I call it ‘AMUSE’LY, a la: French amuse-geule:
Amuse your gullet- N.B.:Y stands for question WHY- see Index for answers)

2. A ‘SPROUT’ POT- for BEANS/CHICK PEAS, LENTILS
(to feel ‘FULL-OF-BEANS’- literally; Did you know the year of 2016 was the Year of Pulses? So, it’s pure plant proteins for your pulse rates: PULSES FOR PULSES!)

3. A ‘KRAUT’ POT – for CABBAGES & ‘THINGZ’ -PRE-PROBIOTIC

4. A TEA POT – for COMBO CHAI – my home-made MAGIC POTION

This is ALL the kitchen tools for the POTLUCK ‘Y’ DIET you’ll need, too- I promise you!
But wait, for those who have enough potluck pluck to try it out, there’s more: for sweet rewards – as I’ll let you discover my home-made dark chocolatier secrets:

5. A CHOC POT: CACAO CUM COMBO CHAI & BITTER-ALMOND DATES

But FIRST THINGS FIRST! I’ll have to let you in on my own secrets of cool cuisine.

PROVISIONS!l
My shopping list for circa 2 weeks is approximately
7times Seven kilos of fruits and vegetables in all colours – see poster Go-For 2 & 5

With One kilo-bag of each- this lasts the two of us for a fortnight or more – and with a handy little storage trick I learned from florists, to keep veggies like celery and cabbage fresh in fridge: wet socks! Put yourself in their shoes; they are still alive in their cool ! Ask any botanist: plants have personalities, and survival know-how, almost like us, needing water like nothing else to stay alive.
Let me assure you that I have not made up this YDiet but am here following recommendations from the Australian Government, and the World Health Organization, unlike the BIG FOOD corporations!
GO FOR TWO & FIVE & MORE is the lore! (superfoods, tested & proven life-prolonging fruit & veggies).
Their pictured logos do date back at least a decade, but still show us what to eat every day, as a ‘prescription for longevity’:
1 carrot, 1 apple, 1 orange, 1 tomato, 1 capsicum, 1 bunch of celery & broccoli-
or any other cabbage – for that matter (red, white, green cabbage, cauliflower – all in the family of anti-cardiac & cancer fighters).
Now, all we have to do is to factor these fruit & vegs into our daily eating habits..
Sounds easy, but isn’t- as I and many others have found out- in fact, statistics have shown,
only about ONE IN TEN follow these simple feeding rules!
But, let there be MUSIC! Music makes the world go round, and this applies to the health world as well.
So, from this old teacher, from ME to YOU: the message is here, right into your EAR! Sing along with me, wherever you are,

the mnemonic shopping list of

THE HAPPY WANDERER!(Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann)
This song version was first launched in Yanchep Lagoon, thanks to the Hillarys Boat Harbour Ukuleleans visiting our little seaside resort on the Indian Ocean, near Perth/Western Australia.
For my ‘theme’ song, I texted new lyrics for an old folk song based on the German ‘Mein Vater war ein Wandersmann’ tune, just to make the game rule stick- It works, and has become my own musical memory stick, when I go on my one-and only weekly market shopping-cum-weight-lifting exercise- equipped with 1 trolley & 2 shoulder bags, which serve me as handicaps, and that weekly weight-bearing exercise does it for me by way of fitness training!-) It has successfully kept ME- and my partner- off overweight for the last ten or so years! (90 % of other diets fail over that time span!)
No kidding- It was the easy way that did it. I gradually lost exactly one third of my weight- 25 kilos- in ‘saddlebag & bum’ regions – and this after menopause, and a fully automatic weight loss it was indeed- with no calorie counting needed, and no fasting days, ever! Miss Piggy was right: ‘Never carry more than you can eat’ –And in good old RETRO- fitness fashion, carry those fruits’n veg’s in shoulder bags -a true GAME-CHANGER to a happier lifestyle.)

Here it goes (lyrics provided by the author, to serve as a shopping list memo:

I.
I LOVE TO CRUNCH MY CELERY,
APPLES and CARROTS, TOO
TOMATO, SWEETCORN, BROCCOLI!
PEPPERS & CITRUS, TWO.
Celery, Celer-ah, Celery, Celerahahahahhahaha!
PEPPERS & CITRUS, TWO!

II.
I LOVE to munch A MUSELY,
APPLE and CARROT, too.
SUNFLOWER, LINSEED, SESAME,
ALMONDS and BUCKWHEAT TOO.
Museli, Musel-ah, Museli, Muselahahahahahahahaha!
BERRIES & CITRUS, TWO

III. I LOVE MY LUNCHEON POTPOURRI!
ONIONS, POTATOES, too!
BEETROOT, RED CABBAGE, CELERY!
& SHE’LL BE APPLES, TOO.
Potpourri, Potpourrah, Pot Pourrihihihrihihihiha!
PEPPERS & CITRUS, TWO!

IV.
I LOVE TO BREW SWEET COMBI- TEA!
IT IS NOT HARD TO DO:
FOUR TEABAGS TO A POT OF TEA!
WHEN COOL, ADD Culture – DO.
Combi-tea, Combi-tah, combi-tea, Combo tearitaratearitararah!
LET STAND FOR A WEEK OR TWO!

That’s ALL you‘ll have to do! Relax for a week or two, &keep memorizing the song.

But I before we can proceed any further, I must again ask you in all earnest now:

1 Do you feel fit to make a pot or two of sweet tea? (circa 12teaspoons of sugar per liter)

2 Can you possibly let it cool, pour it into a jar, add a culture, and cover with a linen cloth, and let it stand for a week, before lifting the lid and pouring off the cider tea?

3Do you feel capable to add cool clean water to a pot, without spilling the beans, peas, or lentils? Without ever having to boil them, as just soaking them will do?

4Can you possibly learn to cut an apple or a carrot lengthwise & crosswise into small cubes? (the more cubes the merrier.)

5Can you colour-coordinate fruits and veggies in your breakfast and dinner bowl?
own, colour-coded game rules:
All this IS needed for the new Game Changer– with its
Peas on Earth, (nil chicks or chickens tweeting in battery farms- just beaky little live chickpeas instead)
This easy-peas game is so easy that even a child can do it- Easypeasy as can be.
(Hang on: But do our present-gen. app. whiz kids still learn any kitchen skills? Or is a fruit knife considered too dangerous?)
If not, this means they can learn these new skill games and have a lot of fun outcompeting each other – with prizes bestowed by their Grandmas/Aunties etc. as sponsors, perhaps… More of that a little further on.
Some more rules for these truly ‘weight-lifting’ games do apply, so, please, note:

6. No commercial soft drink bottles from now on the gaming table! This applies not to bottle-fed toddlers in the family, but to still bottle-dependent, though fully grown persons :
to get bottle-weaned, & THROTTLE The BOTTLE! Bottles did not exist in the olden days This is a RETRO GAME!
You will also want to inform your doctor about this game changer plan, anyway, and he will be happy to hear you will forswear Sugar bait drinks- Coke & Co. while the game is on – for a day, or week, or month, at a time;
in tandem with
‘GO FOR 2 & 5 AND MORE’
– to help you win the survival game in your own life’s timeline!

You will tell your doctor that it’s NOT a diet, but an On –Doctor’s- Order Game; you can factor it into your own existing dietary habits scheme if you so wish, and try it first as a purely part-time, complementary addition.
To make the rules stick better in your memory, I have also called it the Y DIET Game, & not without rhyme or reason, and now I am adding another name to it, and am hereby christening it:
THE
SALAD-IN
WIN
SALAD-ON-
YOU’VE WON!–GAME.
(Sneak a salad into or onto anything you intend to eat.)
I have added a ‘soundtrack’, too, to give it its name: CRRUNCHGAME.
You will have a happy crunch- time of 20 minutes during meal times, which will oxygenate your brain from the jaw muscles moving, and give you a natural high- as German research from Stuttgart found out in the Nineties. It all has something to do with the brain getting more oxygenated with the muscle workings of our jaws.

Say, you want to replace your sugar-encrusted supermarket ‘cardboard-flavour’ ‘muesli’ with my live- grain version, you can now switch to the CRUNCHGAME– just for an introductory, ear-opening, little crunch-time.

You can also try a neat wheat & meat free day, to lose weight: all you need to do is to factor in the seven-colour live fruit/veggie theme– and think: crrunchtime!- and
I bet you a hundred Dollars that you will win the crunchgame – and with flying colours-pure & natural plant colours that is, not colourful cartonages (with nil health value).

Here are the unbeatable advantages which No newfangled, lop-sided diet regime could ever offer you. Only a biologically natural diet can deliver, and I have named this cool diet,
5POT-LUCKY DIET.

The POTLUCK-Y Diet is based on PROBIOTIC KOMBUCHA TEA, a type of tea cider fermented (like yoghurt or kefir), and a traditional health drink, proven over two thousand years.
I call my own, home-made culture KOMBO-CHAI, for its Indian chai flavour combination.)
The specific tea culture is a ‘combo’ called SCOBY, which stands for: SymbioticCombination of (friendly!) Bacteria &Yeasts.
It’s the cleanest, most hygienic, and fuss-free probiotic drink I can imagine, much easier to handle in the kitchen than the cheesiness of either yoghurt or Kefir which I used to make before my partner Robin helped me to forswear this my former ‘udder dependency’ (from those poor hormone-injected ‘milch’cows).
Yes! This is- believe it or not – a Big step Forward for WO/MENS’ Liberation from the modern version of high—tech kitchen slavery, as we no longer have to cart in cartons of milk, cream & yoghurt- and all this cheesiness just for the sake of probiotics!
Unlike the highly industrialized yoghurt cult beverage of Big DAIRY,
Kombucha is a true vegan, salt-&cholesterol-free fermented tea.
To us, it’s a multi-functional pro –bio-(tic), Bio- Magic Potion, and we truly enjoy it every day, in multiple variations:
Whether as a refreshing cider-like wake-me-up,
a strawberry-champagne-like morning drink
a salad dressing,
a tasty veggie-sauce dip,
in a guacamole,
a gazpacho-type vegetable soup, or
a miraculous museli marinade etc.:

For us, in hygienic simplicity alone, NO other probiotic product can compare with Kombucha’s multi-tasking tick list of healthy food choices. You might not believe it at first, but do try! I for one could not believe it at first either, in fact it took me time to finally get convinced about the benefits of Kombucha/Kombo-Chai by my partner Robin who had brought this probiotic prime asset into our partnership. Another stroke of luck- as it was he who had done all the previous fieldwork, being acquainted with it long before -through internet links with American health specialists. (Easily found under Kombucha Wikipedia- in English and German).
Both of us – after around 10 years of using it- now firmly believe in its therapeutic values, judging from our own health improvements- despite some skeptics’ comments – as launched by conventional medicos – most of whom have never even bothered to try it out- let alone, test it!- for its medicinal value; and why is that you may ask? Because no profit-making patent can ever be issued for a two-thousand-year-old folk medicine like Kombucha- and a Far-East- Asian one (Mongolian?)at that! In fact, for those who google Kombucha up in German: The news is that, in Northern Europe, Kombucha has had around one hundred years of good medical records as a digestive tea – especially in Russia – but the First World War seems to have blocked off all academic correspondence, ditto in World War II, and we can thank those few medically interested migrants from behind the Iron Curtain that found their way to the United States, via California’s health market – and also Germany’s.
At last, the news is out and about, and we can buy Kombucha as a probiotic soft drink in Western Australia’s selected shops and supermarkets – or, even better, make our own, literally ‘for a song’ – simply by sharing the ever growing thriving culture, known as S.C.O.B.Y. (for: S(symbiotic) C(colony) Of B(bacteria & Y(yeast).
We have now two personal home brew- urns, like cool samovars -providing us with a vintage about twice a month, each time with around six litres of ciderlike fermented tea. How much easier can it be?
And, into the bargain, we can rest easy, knowing that, unlike other probiotics (e.g. yoghurt or kefir) our daily Kombucha drink is guaranteed to be:
Salt free (unlike Sauerkraut & Kimchi)
Lactose free (needs no milk)
Bovine growth hormone free (unlike yogurt)
DDT free (unlike yogurt & kefir)
Gluten free (needs no wheat)
Cholesterol-free (needs no dairy products)
Trans-fat free (no synthetic fats a la ‘margarine’))
Acrylamide free (not heat-damaged)
And as good as free-as-tea – as you will see, and ideal for all intended purposes; in short, suits me to a T!
And so easy are all the recipes to create herewith, thanks to Kombucha, especially in combination with the GoFor 2 & 5 Diet Scheme, these recipes form a naturally fruitful symbiosis: It’s the win-win formula of Nature:
Pre-Biotika feeding Pro-Biotika!
(In plain English this means: Fruits, grains &/or veggie combinations, soaked in fermented Kombo-Chai – my own trademark for my home-brew – from tea, of which both black and/or green can be used.)
So, let’s lean back & relax, and
let Ms Nature, the friendly Mother Goddess of WO/MEN’s LIB, take over.
Here she comes, Ms. Natural, with a new, kilo-shedding wonder kid on the block:
The Potluck-Y- Diet – with its triple-C Rating, hereby launched as
THE COOL COLOUR CRUNCH GAME.
This – our own new-born ‘e-babe’, is my own combination of a freshly fashioned fusion diet, made up of two of our oldest civilizations on Earth:

THE MEDITERRANEAN DIET – salads and all– and
the ORIENTAL DIET– with Curry spices,
now, the two of them, magically merging into our
INDO-EUROPEAN FUSION of
COLOUR-CRUNCHY COOL CUISINE!
So, let’s toast to this new Union of two classics with a two-thousand year-old Greek toast befitting the occasion:
‘Stin Hyas Sou!’-
meaning :
Salute To Your Health!

PLUS: A great ‘Plus’ to add to: Oriental Kombo-Chai, Curry & Co, for very good company! Thanks to the East India Company, founded around 400 years ago, which made Indian curries known in the West for the first time- (bar Alexander the Great’s expedition into India, almost two thousand years earlier..and his and his army’s mass weddings to Indian ladies..perhaps due to the divine curries these made?)
Back to our time now:
Here’s QUICK FOOD; ‘quick’, in the sense of ‘live food’) as MEDICINE, prescribed 400 years before Christ by Greek Doctor Hippokrates, hailing from Cos.- to whom most of our young doctors still to this very day swear an oath, pledging that they will first do no harm (PRIMUM:NON NOCERE)- which-come to think of it- is still far better than any conventional modern medicine can offer, due to all of those drug-derived, concentrated & toxic side effects.
The medical truth is out now about MICROBIONTA (‘tiny living things’).
For all our medical specialists: whether gastroenterologists, cardiologists, opthalmologists, rheumatologists, hepatologists, nephrologists etc.
this QUICK FOOD now should tick practically all the lists of doctors’ dietary recommendations:
Its long list of benefits is well-nigh unbeatable: to name but a few ‘mouthfuls’
with all-Greek & Latin ‘Doctor-Speak’ explained here in plain English:

Carotenes (‘carrot- coloured ones’)
Flavonoids (‘yellow-orange ones’)
Anthocyanins (‘flower-blue ones’)
Chlorophyll (‘green leaf’) –
did you know that
all plant greens are the best proteins, solar powered proteins, with omega 3 oil and folates and magnesium and nitrogen as a cholesterol-free package deal?
But there’s more for you into the bargain:
Plant Fiber (for friendly bacteria gut health)
Calcium from green leaves & seeds like sesame (see Muesli)
Potassium from all veggies: potatoes, root veggies, bananas etc.
Trace minerals (from nuts & seeds like sunflower seeds & nuts)
Lactic acid bacteria from Kombucha
Trace elements (like Vitamin B 12: cobalt)
Non-haem (no animals’ blood) iron (beetroot has just been found to have hemoglobin healing capacity- in its red betalain pigment. See our PURPLE POTLUCKY recipe)
N.B. Vitamin B12 (did you know this precious cobalamin vitamin is freely produced by your own friendly gut bacteria? No need to get it from cows’ guts!)
Best Omega-6/Omega-3 balance (see Amusely Recipe)
Optimal Alcaline/Acid balance (prevents osteoporosis)
And, not to forget: It’s just sooo easy!
It means: NO more sweat, no high electricity bills, up to now, next to nil doctors bills,
And no greasy blackened pans or cans with gender-bender phthalate coatings any more….
Time for my next slogan:

PAN THE PAN!

Feeling healthy & happy as can be!
Just ADD WATER! (It’s HYDRO-power, naturally.)
Just WAIT AND SEE: And let nature run its course:
Let the seed proteins come alive (as all prebiotics, they are SOLAR-powered– thanks to the oldet & longest-proven solar panels on earth, called ‘leaves’, whose green protein pigment does the trick of creating food energy from sunrays! )
How much more easy can it be?

IT makes us ALL FREE FROM KITCHEN SLAVERY, US WO/MEN of the World!

In my own case, it has also made me free from past medical ailments that had haunted me previously; old health complaints like,

Bingeing (Over-Eating & Drinking)
Overweight
Puffiness under the eyes
Sluggishness
Low thyroid
Sleepiness
Headaches
Bleeding gums
Periodontal pain
Shoulder pain
Tooth aches
Caries
Candida
UTI
Constipation
Diarrhea
Itchy skin
Dandruff
Short-sightedness (I seldom need reading glasses!)
Cataracts
Depression/S.A.D. (seasonal affective disorder)
Sleepiness/drowsiness
Restlessness
Foggy brain
Headaches –
Colds and stomach bugs
(We took Kombucha on our travels and suffered much milder & shorter symptoms of Noro Virus on our last cruise.)
For me, touch wood, this list of my past ailments is now a thing of the past.
But, of course, I can only speak for myself here. I follow the wise old Greek saying: GNOTI SAUTON (Know yourself!)
Everybody should try Kombucha in their own life I think- and not get admonished by conventional medicine men not to try it at all; if you ask me, they cannot simply say:
not proven – it’s their own dire lack of interest that has led to this lack of proof! Anyway, it’s taken 100 years for yogurt to be accepted, so there’s still time…

N. B.: I can proudly tell you that I was not at all born yesterday. In fact, at this point of writing, I am three score and four, feeling much better than I did 20 or thirty years ago, and, thankfully, cross my heart, I am still not on any medication. Now how much luckier can things get – I wonder, keeping my fingers crossed (Yoga-style- my own home-made, easy, laid-back version, ‘Yog – aah!)
And also, firmly trusting my sturdy German family trees, surrounded with fruits and vegetable gardens, apple & plum trees, runner beans, blackcurrant bushes, and potatoes during the war, which were providing the bulk of food for four to fourteen family members eating at the table, as my Mother’s old family fotos show.

I hereby dedicate this Y diet not only to the community of Yanchep on the Indian-Ocean West– Coast side of Western Australia, from where it evolved over the first 15 or so years of our new millennium, but also in memory to:
My two Grandfathers,family gardeners, who both made it into their eighti & nineties, with my Bavarian Opa taking me as a little girl to love apples & strawberries from his own garden, and my North German Opa happily having raised 6 sons and six daughters from the produce of his garden paradise, and I can still see him smiling like a German Buddha on his garden lounge, anno 1948.
Hanna & Hans, my parents, who raised me with a deep respect of fruit. ‘Apfelsinen’( meaning ‘apple from China) & oranges were rare fruits, fit for Christmas presents, and in summer, Mama’s green runner beans, chopped in the Bohnenschnipselmaschin!
Tante Ruth, Tante Sophie,& Tante Christa, three of my seven Auntie, who, over their lives, handed me down some unforgettable salad recipes that I would love to pass on; they truly deserve to survive::
Here’s to Prussian Purple Pot, Bavarian Bohnasalad, Gurkngsalad/Greaner Salat forever!)
Dr. Frank Farrelly, my late first partner, who brought me home all the apples, and pears, and oranges I had wished for, together with interesting British Medical Journals, with research articles recommending health-giving plant colours for the first time, back in the late Eighties,
And of course, I must mention my
Robin Layton, Editor in chief, Life Companion, and Comrade in Raw Food Feasting, who managed to finally wean me from my bovine ‘udder dependence’- and introduced me to the fine art of brewing KOMBO CHAI– my very own boutique home brand- which we all can brew at home as well- for: if I can do it- without any previous kitchen training, so can YOU!

So, let’s begin at the beginning, with a
Kool Kombucha Tea Ceremony– the ‘must-have’ before we can even venture into making our other MAGIC POTLUCKYS.
You will now be introduced to the magical making of a
MAGIC POTION that, literally, holds the whole Y DIET PROGRAM together:

COMBO CHAI AHOY!

You will need two teapots and one wide-opening jar (ceramic or glass is best) of around one-and-a-half liter each, to go into an urn of ca. 4 lt. (We use the lower half of ceramic water urns, with a clean linen or cotton cloth on top for airing, and an urn with a tap at the lower end, for your own Cider-on-Tap.
Now, please, you must wait and be patient! For, like in all good brews, it will take time for the friendly yeasts & bacteria to turn tea into homemade cider! However, after a week (in summer) or two (in winter), your own Victory Vintage will be ready.
But let’s put first things first and begin at the beginning!
Into one teapot, you put four teabags (2green, 2 black, but do NOT use Earl Grey and other extra spices- Let boil and then cool off. Then, pour around half a cup or 80 grams of sugar per liter of heated water-liter into teapot Two . Let cool down – for your microbic inner pets don’t seem to like it hot! Scoby likes living body temperature, for it’s a live, symbiotic partnership between friendly yeasts and bacteria producing friendly acid bacteria-antibiotics for their own well-being, and ours! – acting as anti-inflammation, anti-candida & even anti-dental decay & gum disease (in my own experience).
Once the two teapots have well and truly cooled down, you can pour both the sugar water and the tea into their final ‘habitat’, the wide-topped jar or water urn (lid open, linen placemat or napkin ready to cover it with, once the threesome, tea & sugar water with Scoby, are safely lodged inside, you will by now bravely have your first Scoby Baby culture launched, from its container into its own Urn, where it will live happily ever after, producing weekly, frothy, cidery vintages- which you can proudly fill into bottles, directly from the urn tap, and best through a funnel- what more vintner’s fun can you have? I ask you. And, as you will see, Scoby will reproduce itself within the next week or fortnight, adding a new layer, and another one, and another one….which you can simply lift off, as free welcoming gifts for your friends & family’s health & wealth gain, and weight loss plan- thanks to
Nature’s very natural and time-proven pyramid scheme of ‘live and multiply’!

Having made this ‘magic potion’ drink now, as our cultural starting capital, we can proceed further.
The thing that is most important in your daily life, nutrition-wise? Guess what-
It’s your BREAK-FAST!
I noticed very early in my life as a student, that, for true & long-lasting satiety, nothing could beat Dr. Bircher-Benner’s recipe dating back to circa 1910: the BIRCHER MUSELI.
(It’s solid Swiss-German for: ‘little mousse’). The good Swiss Doktor had created an ingeniously raw version of Porridge! (By soaking oats overnight in cool water, grating an apple in the morning, with milk and raisins mixed in.) But is it really raw? No, it’s not. Apart from the apple, the rest is all rather dead you bet. Why? Rolled oats are not called ‘rolled’ for nothing – they have been steam-rollered in a factory! And all raisins, currants, and sultanas are ‘mummified’, dried-out former grapes! Plus: Most likely, your milk & honey has been heat-damaged through Pasteurization to deaden the live enzyme proteins- and so have the cow-derived creams that tend to make us crack at the seams…
But wait, there’s a really raw & historic version of a cereal, and that’s more than two thousand years old – just like Kombucha- (a discovery of ancient China it seems). Muesli was once the WIN-WIN ROMAN ARMY BREKKIE! Yes, these winning army soldiers marched right across Europe with their own DO-IT-YOURSELF muesli kits: grains, pestles & mortars in their backpacks, ready to grind & soak the night before the marching morning after. The word CEREAL is a Roman ‘brand name’, too. It stands for what Ceres, the Goddess of corn & produce is offering for meals: CEREALIA meaning: ‘Ceres’s foodstuff’. It was served as a ceremonial meal during high-class weddings – which entailed a ritual called ‘CONFARREATIO’, meaning the MIXING of the two wedding partners’ grains! It was definitely not the ‘fluff & puff version’ of Kellogg’s as we now know it; but the real whole grain stuff rather that held the FAMILIA ROMANA together, and their RES PUBLICA (public life), too, in their republic.
So I trustingly base my own break-fast creation on this ancient & long- proven recipe. Here it is:

A-MUSELI POT- POURRI – Made ONCE a Week, to last for at least SEVEN DAYS!

Actually, it’s based on the ‘theme & variations’ scheme, so it shouldn’t get boring, in giving you a week’s basic ‘stock’ cereals, ripe & ready, bathed in cidery Kombucha- for longevity- its own – and ours, with NOTHING TO DO- just adding fresh fruits in the morning! The grains mix potted & ready-made, waiting to be mixed with freshly cut apple, carrot orange chunks, plus grapes or strawberries.
I devised a little mnemonic visualization scheme which freed me from having to make shopping lists and recipe reminders – if you would like to memorize it, too (for good brain training) – remember:
My brekkie mantra is:
‘Live grains for Live Brains!’ So you can start your breakfast the night before you want to eat it, because those grains in their container come to life with water added!
Al Mond, Steel Cut-Oats, and Buck Wheat
Are coming to meet:
Lin, and Sun Flower,
And Sesame Seed!
Open, Sesame!
Let ‘em spend the night together,
Singing in the rain…, all in true Sixties’ style…

Next morning, there’s your breakfast, together with well-known characters
Julienne Carrot, Lem On, Orange & Apple Cubes, plus the Wineberry Sisters. Sometimes even the odd Pomme Granate drops in for a change!
For an extra crrunch you will love it if you, at the breakfast table, just scatter a handful of crunchy sesame seed, buckwheat. Buck the wheat! Eat Buckwheat! It ain’t wheat! In this way, you can have a different ‘mouthfeel’ every day- or, for variety’s sake, perhaps rather not, with rolled oats, those dear old softies, or their grittier version, steel cut oats.
One thing is abundantly clear to me: I for one, will never ever want again my musely munch without a crunch! So: never again such things as Ricecrispies for me-misnomers selling under the name of ‘Crispies’ do not stand up to their promises, but instead, get so sadly soaking wet the very second they end up in a bowl! I tried them out as a teenager, sixty years ago, back in the mid-fifties, and still want my pocket money back from those Big-Carton Corporations who tried to fool me over the fake ‘crispiness’ of their merchandise- and they still conjure up this illusion on their cartons, without ever mentioning the soggy truth– a very flaky business trick indeed!
This was the time when I was still ‘Bouncing in Bavaria’ as a fifteen-year old; This was an American radio program, and I was then very keen to live the American Way of Life– carting home a new trendy cardboard box of ‘Corn Flakes’- but what a hoax! These floppy flakes, as soon as they were launched in milk, to me, have always tasted like soppy, salty, sugared-over cardboard.
So my Mother’s old Bircher Benner design won head over shoulders, and easily tided me over many school exams that lasted for three or four hours – without me ever having to grumble about a rumbling stomach.

And it was so much cheaper, and still is today- to buy oats loose, and this choice made my students’ allowance even pay for the odd cinema ticket.

So much for my ‘Luncheon in Muncheon’ lunchtime radio sessions, brought to me by AFN, the American Forces Radio Network in Muenchen) which also brought over home-delivered croonings of Elvis and Pat Boone – to me, this was my must-have background music, consoling me over my maths homework sessions, on many a long and longing teenage afternoon.

Much later I came across Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin:

“So, let us munch on, crunch on, Breakfast, Dinner, Supper, Luncheon!”
At last I have now understood the fun of that playful pun of ‘Luncheon in Muncheon’ – as, to these G.I.s, there must have been plenty of ‘munch-ons’ in ‘Munch’en,
‘Wurst is Worst’ goes the saying-
as the secret contents of wurst (perhaps, pig’s trotters, snouts ‘n all included) are only known to the butcher – and God, that is, if there is one, supervising hot dogs.)
It’s time to let you in on my philosophy leanings now, which brought me to view human life as a life- long game; not so much as a divine comedy a la Dante, nor OLIO Dante.
Regarding ‘playfulness’, this theme has been like a life-long ‘theme with variations’ for me – ever since I gave a talk about the theme of play acting in human life in my leaving class; our German teacher had introduced me to a famous philosopher’s book :
HOMO LUDENS: ‘Playful Man’, but also through my contact with two students of biology nearby who stirred my interest in a famous Austrian researcher, Professor Konrad Lorenz, the man who playfully ‘adopted’ ducklings and goslings by swimming with them in a Bavarian lake, a few miles away from where I grew up. He was the one who explained their- and also our own- ‘imprinting’ and instincts, and had practically started a new research branch in Bavaria: comparative behaviorology, which led to evolutionary biology– as the modern study of mankind.
As I had been told by my father who adored his poets, I knew that one wordsmith had put it nicely in a nut shell:
“Man is only truly Man where he is at play!”
That was Schiller, the poet of the Ode to Joy– with Beethoven’s Ninth’s happy ending, ending up itself as our Olympic anthem!</
This text had lain in lonely Ludwig’s desk drawer for twenty-five years! At last a divine spark of joy he called Goetterfunken made this choral a hit song, ripe for the Olympic Games, the universal jubilation tune on our planet.
As a Saturday school teacher of young students learning German in Australia, I also realized how much easier my lessons got if I could teach them the rules like a game, with playful rhymes, chimes & songs- after all, those were the ‘Sesame Street’ days that were, in the early Seventies.

So, this is my recipe series of ‘Serious’ Cereals, (in contrast to the abovementioned commercial ‘Cereal Killers’) here rather ‘playfully’ arranged by my own ‘Triple C’ classification: Remember?
C.C.C. standing for: COOL COLOUR CRRUNCH
Let me here bring in my own tossed fruit & grain salad:
A MUSELY
(As I said before, I meant it to sound like amuse-gueule, which is verry Frrench for : amuse your gullet.

This recipe booklet deals with ‘playfully easy eating’in its entirety- and in the name of the Goddess of Health whose name sounds –to non-Greeks- a bit like a sneeze: Hygieia -!
And, like a typical game, it is colour-coded , and, being the oldest game on earth- no toys in Paradise yet! as I told my Saturday class, no dyed play dough or colour pencils around yet, but instead:
real-life plant colours– think:
red apple, think
orange as in orange, think
tomato, think
yellow corn cob, think
light green celery, think
dark green broccoli, think
red/green/golden peppers
-and memorize!
Just EAT-
No Heat!

No more slaving over a hot stove, by Jove!

The Australian Government’s ‘GO FOR 2 & 5 and more’ is, in itself, a colourful eating game recipe, showing us players the super fruits and veggies that have to be munched and crunched- in order to win the Health Game of Life!
What does it mean you may ask. It means that, in contrast to industrially churned out ‘fluff & puff’ cereals, yours will be alive, theirs will be dead- plain biologically dead. People might find that I am exaggerating perhaps – but, when you come to think of it, the natural destiny of a grain according to Mother Nat., is to be a dormant plant embryo, waiting to be aroused into life by the gentle rain from Heaven..
(unless you boil or bake or grill the poor little embryos in cremation devices called oven, pans, woks, etc.)
So, please remember, much as we all like bread as a social glue (held together with gluten):

All Bread is Dead! Even with those highly decorative token grains on top.
And so is Shred! As in shredded wheat etc.
And so is Spread! As in pate & cream, I scream!)
Our motto is:
LIVE grains for LIVE brains! A further warning first, though:
How about ‘rolled’ oats? They are all ‘steam-rollered’ in factories, factory fodder for longer shelf life…
I personally am more interested in ‘self life’- my own, and that of my one and only brain.
All other animals feed on unprocessed food,
only we eat dead food-
and risk getting brain dead
before being dead, properly..
Alzheimer’s seems to strike far fewer curry-eating Indians than Westerners, thanks to turmeric with its cucurmin, and other spices like saffron.
Please remember also that there is no such thing as being ‘a little dead’ when it comes to heat- damaged food, however fresh the chef claims it had been in its former life.
But back to the morning meal -from now on :
breakfast
shouldn’t be ‘mealy’, but grainy,
non-shred
non-bread
non-spread,
non-dead!
Meaning for our game:
no ‘dead’ sugar jams ‘jammed’ into glasses are allowed on our gaming table- from now on, unless you want to gather heavy demerit points and even lose the game.Rules will best be set individually by the participants at the beginning of each game. We live in a democracy after all. An overripe fruit, like a naturally caramelized banana, a persimmon, mango, mandarine can easily replace dead jam on your toast (if you must have that).

For this our time- and life-saving brekkie enterprise to come to life, all you need as a starter capital is a glass jar of around 1 litre. Or a preserve glass jar, both with loose, detachable lids to let the grains ‘breathe the air’ (which they actually do.)
It gets filled half-way up with a grainy mix (d.i.y. way) of fifty-fifty % or so
Linseed, also known as flaxseed, for it’s highest in omega3 lightest ‘solar’power’ oil – (more of this under green protein) and
Sunflower seed – in which there is more omega 6 or ‘storage’ oil for the developing embryo.
Add to this:
a handful of Almonds- (unroasted or –toasted) for its high calcium value – for each daily personal portion – say, 4 handfuls for four people – (for better measure, I add the almonds every night, they always tend to stay up on top of the mix).

But now it’s time to come to the morning-after!
That’s the real time-saver for liberated wo/men: It means that all we have to do in the mornings is to
dice an apple,
slice an orange,
chop a carrot, and
toss a handful or two of grapes or berries into our breakfast bowls,
moisten them with KomboChai – and, hey presto! Bon appétit!
The morning after the night before you have already laid the bed for the grains, dipping them in clear water for revival, just like a baptism..Baptism originally means ‘dipping’ – just added water- to a height of about double the grain height – and a little more- for the seeds to make them swell up to a higher, embryonic life, literally!
N.B.: You must leave a finger-length of clear breathing space for the soaked grains- as these come to sprouting life, about one-and-a-half to two days later. (Forward planning is needed here, again, but no sweat! Kitchen stays cool, and you, too.)
For extra crunch, as I said before, you can scatter buckwheat, or sesame seed, or even rice flakes over your brekkie.
Buck the wheat
Eat buckwheat!

Now to our sweet reward:

Nr.5: CHOC POTLUCKY (adults only)

As a special treat, I now also make my own French-style pralines- slightly alcoholic, thanks to KomboChai that I add to dried dates or figs, and a teaspoon or two of 100 % cocoa powder –plus- for that special ‘marzipan’ effect, a handful of bitter apricot kernels; for all these, I have a little- glass jar, a former mustard container to be precise, and let it stand outside the fridge for a little fermentation- overnight only! If you wait any longer until you serve these natural sweets, the Scoby critters will have gobbled those sugars all for themselves, leaving the choc pot a bit too sour- sweet& sour is best.
Please note: there’s no industrial sugar in my sweet treats. Instead, dried dates or figs provide their own personal sweetness- but it’s best to ration the serves to ONE apricot-kernel-stuffed fig or date per person at a time, on a little dessert spoon, to be taken, by mouth, as a praline-, adult-only- special sweet treat.)
As to servings, encores, repeats & extra portions: the rule of the game is this:
ONE is NONE
TWO is ONE TOO MANY, and
THREE is NOT ENOUGH!

This applies to any food portion you put in your mouth…especially factory-made concentrates -like chocolates, biscuits, cakes, the whole lot!
So, beware… Restrictions work! Funnily enough, we find the intense bitter-sweetness of our home-made choc-mousse far more tasty to adult tongues than milksop- chocolates flooding the supermarkets).

Time to come to our next POTLUCKY:

THE TRULY AMAZING SPROUT-COME-OUT! POT-LUCKY!

I always try to keep a cache of my favourite sprouts in glass jars, always ready to be sprouted; there are
brown, and green lentils (try them all, e.g. Puy lentils which the French love),
chickpeas (find the ones that sprout best),
mung beans,
split peas, green and orange (which can be used even after soaking for just 8 hrs I found),
and many more beans and peas .(the bigger the longer it takes them to come out of their reserve and sprout.)
I, for my person, being also rather lazy, and impatient, to boot, still haven’t tried them all out. Besides, I never knew what ‘sprouts’ were, until my dear friend Helga Trask introduced me to her own pot system, with which she travelled – in true nomad fashion -when she stayed as my guest for a couple of days. There these little things sat, on the window sill, right next to the kitchen sink, getting a douse of fresh water rinse at morning and in the evening! And behold! These lentils/chickpeas etc., with their former hardcore bodies, morphed from dormancy into a new existence, and, within a couple of days, cheerily sprouted into little green mini plantlets! (Why did we not learn this in our biology class?)
Biologists have found tongue-twisting names for these critters’ first root and first shoot, all in gobbledegook Greek, of course; what else? One of these is called ‘cotyledon’ (don’t ask me why – but let me find out from the dictionary-the best anti-Alzheimer’s reading game I bet – what with this having to find the right order of letters according to the dictate of the alphabet- each time you search for a word! Cotyledon: voila! ‘the primary or rudimentary leaf of the embryo of seed plants!- from Greek : for any cup-shaped hollow’! But where did the hollow cup get into the picture I wonder….insider lingo indeed! But I saved you from looking it up for yourselves, which makes me feel good.)
A propos: cups:
I suggest you switch to hollowed-out cup-shaped bowls anyway- and why? They are much more manageable, for all ages; nothing much can get overboard.And a Chinese bowlful will appease everybody’s appetite, and can get easily wrapped up and parked in the fridge as starter capital for the next day! Meden Agan! This is another eating game motto– dating back to the ancient Greek philosophers, meaning “nothing too much” But what IS too much I ask you: who- like me – have been sick and tired by calorie-counting and other useless counting games before; if you want to get my advice: ONE portion is enough! So, a serving dish that is roughly stomach-sized food container IS enough!
(We use either a ‘man-sized’ bowl- or a smaller ‘woman-sized’ bowl, mine own. You see, the principle is to not overfill our rather different-sized tummies with too much food input at a time; and so for us: to hell with flat plates! ONE-POT-ful per PERSON makes sense, not only in nutrition but also in dish-washing economy.
‘NOTHING TOO MUCH’ applies to ALL our food intake: and especially to our cooked food, which gets dehydrated & compacted through long boiling, and therefore turned into a far more condensed, de-natured version of its former self.
Want to hear about My problem? My mistake is to overfeed on Indian takeaway curries- with their lumpy white rice, for me, it is a far too dense, de-natured type of food, much as I do love the curry flavour as such, although it does come from often far too oily and highly roasted spices! My pancreas seems to switch on ‘industrial action’ nowadays with any too- much- cooked or –baked, refined high G.I. carbohydrates, and these are now simply making me lose my appetite- for a day! I can now understand my mother better, who also tended to overindulge on bread, cakes –be they ever so home-baked- these are at is if we manage to skip the heated oil slick that is invariably involved with the making of Frenin-home diabetes heart disease triggers, as they tend to ‘cake up’ the system- just like potatoes can do, too, but on a lesser scale than French fries.
So, to the two of us, this new & lighter combination of our Indo-European Fusion Diet is the ideal solution it seems. Besides, it averts the ‘too-much-of-a-muchness’, because the ‘Salad-In’ or –‘Salad-On’ scheme definitely de-densifies the chyme– (Greek for food ‘juice’), which is the ‘bolus’ (Greek for ‘lump’ of food) we send ‘down the chute’, in blissful ignorance- holus-bolus (mock Latin for ‘in one gulp’). N.B.: I am talking seriously medical here, no joking! For curries, we always bring our own medicine: raw crudités, in the shape of celery chops, cherry tomatoes, onion bits, carrot cuts, apple slices- to meet the ‘Crrunchgame’ rule Go for 2&5 Diet regulations.
We also bring our own, easily home-made piccolo-sized bottle of medicinal Kombo Chai dressing wherever we go for a dine-out meal- and, mark you, unopposed- because we just follow the good old Aussie tradition of ‘BYO’ (Bring your Own Bottle)…
If we should ever not be allowed to bring our own digestive medicines (pre-biotic 2&5, plus pro-biotic KomboChai) into a restaurant, we would vote with our feet, and make it plain we only stay where guests can take medicine with their meals! (unlike any other diet we have the backing of our Government, plus the World Health Organization on our side.)
As a matter of fact, there was just one single instance, over the past seven years, that we were told we could not eat a B.Y.O. apple in their restaurant- which we found to be a rather tall order, then, but which has since been discreetly withdrawn, so we can enjoy our stay at the inn whenever we can make it there for our “Meatless Monday” Salad Days, Paul-McCartney’s way of action to lower both carbon footprints & health risks.
To come back to the ‘caking’ cakes & ‘dead’ bread dilemma: I must say in all honesty, that, for me, I cannot live on bread alone, but I also cannot –and do not -live without bread.
(I grew up in Bavaria, the land of Bretzeln, Semmeln & Co. and all the multi-variety crunchy breads served at practically every meal- from morning Fruehstueck till nightly supper-time, and I still have that slogan in my ear:
“ D’ Brodzeit is de schenste Zeit!” (‘Bread Time’s the Best of Times’)!
Besides, bread time means: a social get-together time, no washing up, because bread serves as an edible underlay to whatever is put up on top. It is our ideal picnic finger food, in sandwiches, open or not, it can be dipped into soups and mop up saps & sauces & salad dressings, and be used as a final mopper-up of plates! (not to mention it’s ideal for outings, work & school lunchtimes, safaris, trips, beach brunches, and caravan serails).And it can be toasted- the classy English way, which I only learnt as a teenager- when, believe it or not, in Bavaria, they did not have toasters before the mid-fifties, and then, in true Spartan style, still without a thermostat switch-off, and the charcoal smell- from- hell of former bread remains deeply embedded in my olfactory memory bank, as firmly fixed as Marcel Proust’s memorable ‘madeleine’.
So much has ‘bread’ been ‘engrained’ in the German and Anglo-Saxon psyche that it literally goes against the grain of every European to ever skip the bread habit, (and to hell with the cancer-causing acrylamide in the browning process- blame the Danes for having blown the whistle! ‘Let them eat cake!’ is another story, typically it was- (perhaps) – Marie Antoinette von Habsburg, that Torte-spoilt girl from Vienna, who thought the French Revolution could perhaps be prevented by letting the mob eat brioches! Not only the ‘upper crust’ wants the upper crust, but now the vulgar crowds, too! (The ancient Romans had known that long ago; where a p.r. man working for the emperor had coined the election-winning words: PANEM ET CIRCENSES (bread and circuses for the crowds).
I remember myself and my brother Martin getting caught IN FLAGRANTI DELICTO, sitting in bed on a Sunday morning, parents still not up, for some reason or other, and the two of us then taking the morning meal matter into our own hands, and demolishing, like two little Mice from either end, biting into a whole, brown-crusted loaf of Bavarian whole bread – stolen from the kitchen, and ‘lording’ it!
Later, at University, studying the history of English, I learned that, at least a thousand years ago, the Anglo-Saxon titles of ‘Lady’ and ‘Lord’ derived their meaning as the two ‘nobility’, upper classy, terms of address from the humble bread loaf:
‘Lady’ meant originally: ‘hlaf digge’- for: loaf digger or kneader: the classy new job for the ‘Lady of the (Manor) House, and
‘Lord’ meant a contraction of the word for: Loaf Warden! (‘hlaf weard’)
(N.B. the servants & peasants were still into unbaked gruel.)
When you look at the oldest form of bread, look no further than the Middle East- where unleavened bread is still the norm, and the whole world loves it as Lebanese Bread, in its simplest flat form.
For me the microwave is ideal for crisping up, or, in our West Australian, almost eternal summer sunshine, it gets sundried on the window sill!
I also use it as a Break- Fast -Fast Falafel wrap.
But wait, there’s more:
I now use it, microwaved to crispness, as my version of a trendy, salted & caramelized biscuit a crispy fruit tart, or fruit pizza, topping it with : persimmon slices, passion fruit,mango, pomegranate, kiwi, custard apple,halved bananas, mandarin segments..as a ‘TEMA CON VARIAZIONI’, a theme with variations, just to appease the old animal-of-habit that lurks in all of us who have been conditioned to deadly sugar-bomb bikkies in our previous lives..
The designer version of my tartlet I have christened: “The Winged Keel”- in honour of the Yachting Boat of the Eighties, and of Alan Bond, who wrested the famous America’s Cup Racing Trophy from the American sailing team with a new designer keel, the famous “Winged Keel”. The same maniacally driven man was also the Foundation Father, in 1972, of the iconic Yanchep Yachting Village & idyllic yachting port at TWO ROCKS, which, according to its prize-winning architects, was built in the look of a pioneer ‘Portugese’ fishing village, on the Indian Ocean, here in Western Australia, literally in the original sand dunes, to house the next America’s Cup- but, it took awhile to be won, in fact, it took all of ten years, for the ‘Winged Keelers’ to win the race- and to put Western Australia on the map!
That was in the Nineteen Hundred & Eighties! Now it’s time I think to put the Yanchep Colour Diet on the world map?
After all- the Yanchep Diet had already got an invitation to the 2015 MILAN EXPO from the Italian Colour Society.

PURPLE PROBIOTIC POTPOURRI THAT MAKES ITSELF
FEEDS FAMILIES FREES FORMER KITCHEN SLAVES
FROM DAILY COOKING & SHOPPING!

Its provenance? You may well ask…
Its ancestry lies clearly in medieval Northern Europe, and for me, my Mother’s hometown Lueneburg , not far from the North Sea and also the Baltic coast, is its birthplace. This is where the main ingredients come in, in the form of winter veggies like cabbages, potatoes, celeriac roots, and beetroots, as well as apples that could be all stored in cold storage – with winter temperatures in cellars around freezing point- long before fridges were invented. I remember as a child the rows of homegrown apples on handbuilt wooden racks that my Grandfather stored in his subterranean Keller; and we as a family getting deliveries of a hundred kilos of potatoes from a horse-drawn cart every autumn. This meant that women did not have to go shopping for these ‘heavies’ every week either! And neither do I nowadays have to visit the ‘super’market- which ain’t so super In fact, I for myself think it’s short for: ‘SUPER(FLUOUS)MARKET) it is. Socrates would have shunned it too, saying that HE goes to the market only to SEE what he DOESN’T NEED! My partner, most caringly carts home the coconut & pineapple & potato sack ‘heavies’, and I am using my trolley as my weekly fitness tool on the way to and fro from the farmers market. (Having once sniffed the rubbery air in a gym, I have never felt tempted to enter one of these locales; I think there was perhaps a childhood trauma of mine, dating back to the gym classes in our Turnhalle- literally (body-turn hall), the smell of sweat & magnesium-rubbing rituals, and the whistle in the mouth of a gym teacher that made me feel like a slave being chased around her barracks – Although I remember I did make her laugh with my awkward body gyrations. Enough detours, now back to the heritage background of the Purple POTLUCKY, which, in actual fact, was an annual Christmas- or NewYear’s Eve dish in my family, with the added presence of a diced pickled herring, with sour gherkins galore, to save, for ONCE A YEAR ONLY, the Mother of the Household from having to cook on Xmas Eve, the holiest Eve of the year, before finally singing Stille Nacht, Heilige Nacht (‘Stilly’ Night, Holy Night) in family unison-or not- as in our case, everybody had their eyes already fixed on the gingerbread platter & presents on the family table, but, for the sake of a For-One-night-only!-family peace Carol singalong, we had to admire the candle-lit Tannenbaum, a Christmas spruce that had come in from the snowy woods and decorated by Papa, accompanied with the annual criticism of Mama about his lateness in hanging up straw angels and baubles. t’s back to the staying power of our POTLuckY! – for a reconciliation en famille. Wherever you are. All of you!
(Actually this potluck has remained a surviving main object of desire for me, when I think of family Christmasses; and I might not be alone, as I have heard that it’s mainly the edible family heirlooms, like Chris’Pudd.n’Cake that make it into memorial ‘eternity’- over the generations of children (and grand& great & great-grand & beyond. I am writing this in my rather vague function as a far-far-away Great Aunt who does not even know all the names of her great nieces and nephews by heart, but who still wants them to get to know their family’s long-passed past- at least as far as I can reach it down to them.)
After this preamble, here’s To my favourite pot-luckY:
You have been given the list of essential first ingredients – but there’s always room to add more over the next few days, once the PotluckY level of contents gets lowered through day-by-day ladling-out, when you want to have a raw veggie-chutney, or pizza cover, or midnight soup, for that matter. (Just add freshly boiled fennel or mint or ginger tea to the veggie stock!)
You can always remember, repeat and rehearse this list of ingredients, by singing the verses of the Celery-Celera theme song! But, just to reinforce the memory lane again:

For a ONE-litre Kraut-pot-luckY, you need:

ONE very big potato, to be sacrificed in Microwave, as my favourite food amalgamator (hand-crushed)
ONE big raw beetroot, cubed or diced or grated
(a messy but rewarding carnage for your heart, thankfully, because of the magic potion KombuChai which you add as a live & probiotic liquid as soon as possible, the pot-luckY system is so long-lasting that this messy grating job is only a once-a- fortnight job! I have even had pots that outlasted the two week span, parked in the fridge for three weeks. However, these long-lived- pet pots did get ‘rejuvenated’ every week with new inputs of Kombo Chai and fresh veggies.This stopped the contents to morph into vinegary pickle pots. (Even these verry sour potpourris can be turned into instant veggie soups, however- by adding freshly brewed fennel or chamomile or Roibosh tea I can serve raw Borsht in those handy high-rimmed bowls, with addition of hot potatoes. So much for my kitchen mess minimization scheme!
Pardon me for my stream-of-consciousness technique which I cribbed from modern writers; but I think this method of mindfulness is rather a natural kitchen tool for me.
ONE big crispy apple, e.g.Granny Smith, to be cubed-
(What did you expect? Now you know why all these aspiring French cuisine students spend their first half year on learning how to julienne etc.etc.) Mindfulness exercises, again. Nothing concentrates the mind more than avoiding to cube your little finger into the saladiere. But, on the brighter side, note also that nothing is as joyous and fun-filled for children as having this ritual as a “Cubic Cube” Skill Game- as I can attest from my past workshops with the kids of my friends; they have long grown up but still remember how they had to cube an apple into 48 cubes, as a race against time, with the other gamesters casting the dice to achieve 6 points and thereby oust the competitors.
There can also be prizes won in the crunch game for:
Eating in full colour (half a dollar for a colourful fruit, the whole fruit, and nothing but the fruit!)
Or you can count the number of crunches, every five crunches makes five cents!
You can bestow special bonuses for eating unknown /unliked veggies, or combinations.
You can give 20 cents extra for every whole walnut cracked. (I found out that an Australian friend had never cracked her own nuts- until my crunchgame session.)
A saying of Goethe’s : God gives us nuts, but he does not crack them open. (Our Y diet always makes us ask WHY? – just as we kids in the West Germany of the early fifties heard the song :
Warum hat denn die Kokosnuss
Noch immer keinen Reissverschluss?
(Why’s the coconut
Still not with a zipper shut?)
The nut case is the shut/open case for the embryo to bide its time over winter to sprout into a tree baby, come spring…
Fruits like oranges have a thick coating against radioactive sunrays- to make them survive! How would we feel if we were hanging in the tree for many months??
With the Kombucha pot system pre-soaking and fermenting the citrus skin, it becomes edible and protects our own skin system as well, due to evolutionary survival tricks to which our own cells respond with wellbeing…
We are all on this world together after all.
Which brings us back to this inter-generational crunch-game:
It is a truly ALIVE?- or- DEAD? Game indeed, depending WHAT we eat.
It’s the oldest game on earth, and the simplest. Even a child can do it.
Leave out all abracadabra & gobbledegook, toss out the medico jargon.
Just eat your GREENS. Lime greens & forest greens –
And oranges
And reds
And blues
And purples
Follow the rainbow to your potluck of gold.
Do as you’re told.
And behold,
there’s a final sweet reward for you:
Strawberry with Cider charm, made in-house by Combo Chai:
Fill a handful of strawberries into a little jar of Combo Chai. Let marinate overnight. Chill in fridge the morning after. Fill champagne glasses, and
enjoy!
And call it a day!

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