Anodyne
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Posts posted by Anodyne
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1 hour ago, Alchemica said:I should probably try this with nibs which might be a more interesting thing to use than cacao powder?
Good yeast to potentially try? Just bakers?
I have tried adding cacao powder to fermenting drinks...man that can get messy. Nibs are much easier to filter out, and you don't seem to get any extra flavour from using a fine powder - or at least not enough to make all the rounds of decanting & filtering worthwhile.
I was mostly using the nibs to flavour kombucha during secondary fermentation (eg. 1tblsp nibs, 1tsp cardamom pods, 1 small cinnamon stick, 1 red chilli, 1 tsp brown sugar for 1L kombucha) - possibly not a high enough concentration of actives for your purposes, but delicious nonetheless - the combination of acidity & slight alcohol content seems really good at extracting a wide range of flavours.
Not sure about the ideal yeast - that paper said that lactic & acetic bacteria worked as well as yeast, so you could probably try a whole range of things where the results would have similar active-conversion but different flavour profiles: any kinds of unpasteurised whey, kefir, kombucha, beer/wine yeasts should all work as starters, and I am guessing those traditional brews most likely were colonised by wild yeasts rather than using any starter at all... take your pick.
I'm interested to hear how your paste turns out, or to hear more about traditional cacao fermenting or modern adaptations. I am becoming increasingly convinced that more food should be fermented...possibly ALL the food.
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I share all the knowledge I can, in the hopes that some people will actually use that knowledge to do things for themselves.
In my generous spirit, it is great to see people doing things for themselves - this is something I find really rewarding myself, and it is great to be able to share that.
And in my mean spirits, I know that people don't always want to know, but hey, I don't always want to take time outta my day to work out how to fix their shit for them either. Forcing them to sit through the process with me hopefully educates them so they can do it themselves, but at the very least it bores the shit out of them and gives them an appreciation of the work that goes into it so that they're aware of that before they ask again. My heart leaps with joy every time I see a workmate get a computer problem now and fix it for themselves, since they learned that bringing it to me would get them a tutorial instead.
And if people want to hoard their knowledge so they get more attention, well, the reverse strategy works too - you can just flood them with things that only they know how to deal with until they break down & start training others.
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Which community are you writing for? This one right here? Or true genpop? The two are pretty different IME. The homeless community you want to distribute your chocolate to would be a different readership again.
If you're going for general readership, I think that the model used for pharmaceuticals where they have a general info sheet & a detailed one "for medical professionals" is an ok one? But if you're just making an information pamphlet to hand out with your products, then it probably doesn't need to be anywhere near that kind of level of detail - it might even be counterproductive.
Sorry to give such a wishy-washy response, but the intended audience is such an important variable here...
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It occurred to me that a hot chocolate drink paste might be another way to go with this. Hot drinks can be very comforting even when they're just some leaves in hot water... and a nice fatty hot chocolate on a cold winter day is on a whole new level. If you just had a jar of paste (or powder, but paste might be easier to make) that you could stir into some hot water...dunno where you're at and what the homeless facilities are like in your area, but in Sydney it is pretty easy to access a cup of hot water. Sorry to keep throwing ideas @Alchemica when you've obviously got a lot already!
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I can't articulate my thoughts as well as I would like to right now, so I'll just summarise. I'm so very glad that people are talking about this & working on it. This is something that needs to happen. There is so much fear & suffering around death, that needn't be there, if we would just spend a little time & effort thinking about it. It only seems "creepy" because talking about our own mortality is such a taboo.
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TI - bliss balls can be cheap if you make them yourself. They're often date-based, but you can def make them more nut-butter/coconut oil based if you want - I'm not much into dates & sweet things in general and prefer to make them like this myself, eg. cashew-coconut-cacao. My point wasn't that they're necessarily a perfect food - just that they're more versatile & forgiving of variations/additions than block-type chocolate recipes are. Nut butters work better as a binder than rough-ground nut meal since they have released their oils, but if you don't need it to be smooth/sticky for texture/binding reasons (eg. if you're adding lots of oil & dates) then you can use either - they're nutritionally about the same and you can make both with a food processor.
Wet chia seeds make a good binder for other stuff (if the product doesn't need to keep well at room temp).
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ok, if the aim is less perfect chocolate bar and more healthfood as vessel for cacao-alks, then I would be looking more at bliss-ball type recipes for inspiration - relatively cheap & simple to make, easy to tweak in a high-protein/keto direction, easier to pack/distribute than jars of paste.
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Curious what the sweetener is for? I understand preserving things in honey or strong sugar solution, but isn't that property lost when it is diluted? Seems like the kinda addition that'd leave you with mouldy lotion & sticky fingers. Or is this one of those "not for human consumption, external use only *wink,wink* " things?
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Getting good texture with chocolate is tricky. For small-scale stuff, unless you are prepared to waste a bunch of ingredients mastering this craft, it might be simplest to just start with a decent dark chocolate & then melt it to add whatever you need to add. If adding powders add a spoonful of coconut oil or cacao butter to balance the dryness.
If you've really got your heart set on making it from scratch, here's a few ideas. You probably need to up fat content of that recipe - pref with cacao butter for good mouthfeel/mp, but coconut oil is workable & cheaper. Try spreading it out thin (chocolate "bark" style) - this can help with the texture and gives you maximum surface area for adding toppings as a bonus. For non-dairy creaminess, use very finely-ground nuts (eg. "smooth" nut butters) &/or replace some of the cacao butter/coconut oil with coconut butter (which contains coconut solids) - this will make the chocolate somewhat grainy, but you can try to use that to advantage by making more of a nut fudge - plus if it's grainy anyway you can use dates as the sweetener for extra minerals. You can always coat/top the fudge layer with some smooth dark chocolate (snickers-style) for presentation/mouthfeel.
"Slow-release"...er no, probably not.
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Walked past the George Hotel (760 Elizabeth St, Waterloo) the other day and saw a sign outside: "Bluegrass Sundays 4-7pm, second Sunday of every month, everyone welcome"... so that'd be this Sunday. I've never stepped inside that pub before so I can't make any recommendations, but I'm interested to go check out their free music. It's only ~10min walk from 107 if anyone feels like kickin on afterwards to wash down their psychedelics & spiritualism with some beer & bluegrass.
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On 02/07/2017 at 5:54 PM, etherealdrifter said:fckn tell em Ano
What? No, I just wanted to see more SAB members resolve their disputes in posing straps. I feel that beauty pageantry is reprehensibly underrepresented within the ethnobotany community, and this situation needs to be undressed... I mean, redressed.
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On 29/06/2017 at 2:44 PM, MoonUnitBotanica said:Is our boxing match still on hillbilly?
ega sidealley? I've got the most resplendid trunks to wear.
Or you could ditch the boxing part and take this posing contest literal. I'm thinking Miss-Universe-style complete with incoherent inspirational speeches.
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11 hours ago, DualWieldRake said:If i come across it i will link you up.
Cheers mate.
11 hours ago, DualWieldRake said:Extraction research sounds fun, still need some plants first though.
Another thing was that mindperformer's report (over in the other thread here) hinted at stronger activity in fresh material. That was a pretty small sample size, (afaik he's the only one around here who has grown enough to try it), but may be something else to keep in mind.
Also the Chinese lab who was making some of the extracts has told me that the wild supplies of this plant (at least, in their area) have been getting smashed by the demand for this extract and they could not supply any more. So if that's a widespread thing, we should probably all start growing our own.
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I found I got a decent response if I avoided caffeine. I wouldn't say it was comparable to other opioid-based plants/meds, but I'd rank it above most other analgesics & anodynes
A few other members or their friends had a positive response also. And some did not. We haven't worked out all the details yet on why that might be the case - whether there are other interactions with common substances, whether it is metabolised by some enzyme which has wide variations in different people, whether it is not acting by classic analgesic pathways and therefore only works for some types of pain...many unanswered questions and wild speculation at this point (unless some other group on the nexus or something has been working on it since I last checked.9 hours ago, DualWieldRake said:Medicinal it suposedly only works intravenously (or so the papers say)
Papers might be wrong. Can you link me one or two? Just curious what exactly they were injecting, and into who/what. Afaik everyone who tried those extracts & reported back here took them orally, and there was definite activity there, at least for some people. Not everything works the same in rats & humans, and there are qualities of drugs that it isn't easy to design a study where you can tell if a rat is experiencing those specific effects.There are certainly some weird bugs to iron out - if you're enthusiastic you could grow a bunch and get working on the ideal extraction method & ROA... or if you're lazy like me you could toss it in the "look at again one day" pile and hope that some researchers sort us out with some more answers in the meantime.
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Lol, I know 107, Flux - I wasn't fretting. Even disregarding any disclaimers, I was assuming a fairly chilled vibe for a lunchtime Sunday event. But yes, dogs at Redfern are a real thing - I work nearby & think I saw them there twice last week.
How does this space-hiring at 107 work? Can we lurk about in their public bar /lounge after the film - or should we come up with another place to kick on to?
Glad to see stuff like this getting organised, cheers to everyone who made this happen!
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Yep, I think you're right - looks a lot like the cristate asparagus on the wikipedia page:
Nice call, horseman
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Found this cool mutant Ipomoea growing in the yard:
Anyone familiar with vine mutations? Is this some kind of polyploidy?
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Ok someone can correct here if I'm wrong, but I thought the deal in NSW was that the plant itself is not scheduled, so you are ok to grow them. But if you harvest & prepare plant material, then you are in possession of a cathinone-containing material, which is illegal.
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Stonewolf, as far as I understand the "significantly psychoactive" legislation that NSW & Queensland brought in a while back, "legal" and "not specifically named as a scheduled substance by the TGA" are no longer the same thing in those states.
If phenibut is a cheaper and easier synth than those "cleaner" options you named (as I suspect it is, since it's still used medically in some poorer countries), that could also make it a more attractive option for illicit manufacture after it is specifically scheduled.
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From the booking page:
QuoteThis is a drug and alchohol free event.
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6 hours ago, bardo said:Are you trying to say or discredit the idea that lots veggies are recommended and good for health and diabetes ?
No. I'm not a subtle person generally speaking - if that was what I was trying to say, I woulda just said it. I was simply saying that your blanket "antioxidants are good for you" concept may be flawed.
6 hours ago, bardo said:the article you shared is not relevant to my suggestion to eat veggies because it is about supplements
Yes, researchers tend to use pure compounds where they can - the reason that they do this is because it's really REALLY difficult to separate out the effects of a bunch of different things - it is often easier to find out what is going on if you just isolate them and look at them one at a time.
6 hours ago, bardo said:How bout starting a new thread where you can talk about this stuff or if you want to discus something I have said maybe message me, this is not the place to be going into these tangents.
Nope. You're giving general lifestyle advice in response to a specific question. And don't get me wrong, I agree with lots of it. But you posted it here, so here is where I responded. If you want to start a general "healthy eating" thread where you discuss your views, I will happily respond there instead.
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5 hours ago, bardo said:Anyhow lots of good greens, veggies and such and consuming them raw is better because you want the antioxidants
...or maybe you don't:
QuoteAntioxidants May Make Cancer Worse
Scientific American, By Melinda Wenner Moyer on October 7, 2015
Antioxidants are supposed to keep your cells healthy. That is why millions of people gobble supplements like vitamin E and beta-carotene each year. Today, however, a new study adds to a growing body of research suggesting these supplements actually have a harmful effect in one serious disease: cancer.
The work, conducted in mice, shows that antioxidants can change cells in ways that fuel the spread of malignant melanoma—the most serious skin cancer—to different parts of the body. The progression makes the disease even more deadly. Earlier studies of antioxidant supplement use by people have also hinted at a cancer-promoting effect. A large trial reported in 1994 (pdf) that daily megadoses of the antioxidant beta-carotene increased the risk of lung cancer in male smokers by 18 percent and a 1996 trial was stopped early after researchers discovered that high-dose beta-carotene and retinol, another form of vitamin A, increased lung cancer risk by 28 percent in smokers and workers exposed to asbestos. More recently, a 2011 trial involving more than 35,500 men over 50 found that large doses of vitamin E increased the risk of prostate cancer by 17 percent. These findings had puzzled researchers because the conventional wisdom is that antioxidants should lower cancer risk by neutralizing cell-damaging, cancer-causing free radicals.
But scientists now think that antioxidants, at high enough levels, also protect cancer cells from these same free radicals. “There now exists a sizable quantity of data suggesting that antioxidants can help cancer cells much like they help normal cells,” says Zachary Schafer, a biologist at the University of Notre Dame, who was not involved in the new study. Last year the scientists behind the melanoma study found that antioxidants fuel the growth of another type of malignancy, lung cancer.
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These molecular investigations shed light on the large human trials that have implicated antioxidants in cancer. It is possible that the supplements did not triggercancer but rather accelerated the progression of existing undiagnosed cancers, making later discovery of the disease likely.In other words, it “could be that while antioxidants might prevent DNA damage—and thus impede tumor initiation—once a tumor is established, antioxidants might facilitate the malignant behavior of cancer cells,” Schafer says.
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Yet another example of people confusing correlation with causation. Everyone is doing it, not only anti-vaxxers but cancer research scientists as well, and everyone in between... I wonder if this is something that we will ever grow out of, as a society? Wouldn't that be nice? If people actually learned statistics and rational thinking in schools, so they could learn how to question things, rather than just deciding that one thing they have been taught is sus, so it must all be sus, right?
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Surely it was already covered under the analogues legislation? I mean, I know people were selling it openly, but I used to work in Redfern where people sold their diverted methadone openly... doesn't mean that it's legal.
Says they're still tossing up between S4 & S9, my bet is on S9 - in the eyes of the TGA, benzoes do everything phenibut does, but makes them (or their business associates, fuck the TGA selection process is so appallingly corrupt) much more money. Phenibut is nasty but also cheap, there's a reason it was popular...
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Something that I think about a lot is design. With good design, things last a long time and make your life easier. With bad design, tools give you RSI, burn down your house, and contribute to landfill. So I wanted to start a thread where we can shame poor design in all its forms, in the hopes that maybe we can learn from their mistakes.
Here is one I used to look at every day. I actually started thinking out that it had one good design element: that the gutter in the middle of the roof emptied into a hollow upright pole, so that you got a 2-for-1 upright support and downpipe. That's neat, I thought. On closer examination, I discovered that the top of the pipe is sealed and the water just runs down the outside.
At first glance this bus shelter doesn't look so bad, right? It's got a fair amount of overhang on the roof, and the clear roof and traffic-facing wall mean that it has decent natural lighting and you can see approaching buses. Here's where it starts to fall apart: the angle & height on that roof means that in any slight wind, there is no place to stand where you are out of the rain - the seat is covered in water in that 2nd photo. It also means that any time after about 10am that seat is in full sun, so there is no shade on those 40 degree days - you can walk by on any summer day and find 2 or 3 old ladies with their shopping trolleys huddled in the tiny patch of semi-shade behind the shelter, because there is none to be had inside it. Like turning over rocks in the forest. And because the walls are made of that metal mesh stuff, it doesn't keep the wind out either, and rain blows straight through the wall into the "shelter", soaking everything & everyone inside.
I understand that Transport NSW want to keep homeless people from sleeping in their bus shelters, for some reason. So I guess if the idea was to make them as leaky and drafty as possible, then their design was a great success - anyone looking for somewhere warm and dry to sleep would go elsewhere. But if the idea was to make an actual bus shelter, it is a complete failure.
So folks, what design flaws haunt your lives and make your work harder than it needs to be?
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Fermenting cacao! An experiment
in Pharmacology, Chemistry & Medicine
Posted
I didn't suggest water kefir becuase I wondered if the cacao flavour would work. Milk kefir I could get on board with, coconut-milk-kefir even more so...that sounds delicious...why is this not a thing that exists already?!
Or you could let it brew for a month, and you'll have a scoby. Like Sally said, this is how I have gotten all of mine going.
I think the downside to trying an "easy" non-scoby-containing kombucha is that it might make contamination more likely. As I understand it the scoby (in combination with some starter-tea) serves the dual functions of being a home for lots of starter-material which gets your brew going quickly (i.e. before it can be contaminated), and just being a physical barrier to stuff falling into the brew. If you don't have a scoby you'll have to worry about artificially acidifying it (eg. by adding ascorbic acid...ah, I see what's going on here!), or artificially protecting it from contamination by using complex apparatus... like lids...and who can be bothered with all that?
Two serious comments: one, I'm not sure this is actually easier, just quicker - you could convince me, but I'm not there yet. Two: I vaguely remember reading that the critter profile in kombuchas changes around the 4-week mark as some of the slower-developing strains come into play. Whether or not they are actually beneficial is up for debate, but they are something that would be absent from any brew where you favour single-batch over continuous fermentation.
And a question: why are you adding the rooibos at the start? Are you just using rooibos tea and no camellia-type tea at all? If you're aiming to get a culture going that thrives in a non-caffeinated tea-like environment, then ok, I see the point (I had a nice kombucha recently that was grown only in hops, no tea). But if you're just adding herbs & things (whether for flavour &/or medicine) to a regular tea-kombucha, then why not add them during secondary fermentation? It is quicker & avoids the risk of upsetting your primary culture - and if a flavour works really well for you, you can always work on getting a primary culture of it going later, like those hops guys. As another plus for mad-science, adding flavours during secondary ferments means that you can try a lot of them: from a 4L brew (minus a bit for starting the next batch) you could try ~10x 330ml bottle with different combinations.