A little over-fermented
February 2024
When something over-ferments, a few things might happen: the end product might be a bit too sour, or alcoholic; sometimes delicious, cottony mold explodes into bitter green spores before you can catch it — not ruining your food necessarily, but making it more of an acquired taste; a sourdough starter might bubble with such force that it leaks all over your counter. It’s not the end of the world, just a little over-fermented.
Related: I showed a picture of some tempeh I was making in one of my fermentation forums near the end of the month, and a microbiologist member suggested that my mold looked “a little stressed.” The mycelium probably wished for a few more carbs than I’d fed it, but it would press on nonetheless and prevail.
Throughout February, I related to all of this pretty hard. Nothing was the end of the world by any means. But I had absolutely taken on too much and was bubbling out of my comfy container. I didn’t have time to feed myself optimally with long morning bouts of novel-writing with my isochronic tones on. As you know, I was able to take part in KojiCon, everyone’s favourite mold-based fermentation conference, but I wasn’t able to vibe with it as completely as I have in past years. My dream of live-blogging my experience of the conference for the full two weeks went unfulfilled.
Normally I work half-days at my job as a graduate administrator at the University of Toronto’s Department of Physiology. That means I’m able to spend many of my mornings in that vibey, optimal way. I am so, so grateful. Occasionally, though, I get short on cash. Rather than do freelance writing to supplement as I sometimes do, I took on some extra hours at work to plan an event for Black History Month. This has been a longheld dream of my boss’s, and felt well-needed to me, too. I know this will probably shock you to your core, but the health sciences have a systemic racism problem. As such, I’m glad to get to work on this project; I’m hopeful the event will be great (it’s actually happening in March, we couldn’t find a suitable space in February, whatever, who cares, obviously let’s talk about racism every month of the year).
As I tried to balance my regular admin job and attending and live-blogging KojiCon and keeping up with a bit of novel-writing and dealing with the regular maintenance of relationships and basic hygiene plus banging out the millions of teeny tasks that add up to a successful event, February felt okay. I was definitely bubbling over, my mycelium was stressed, but I was ultimately still…edible? The metaphor is breaking down, but the point is I haven’t cried or yelled at anyone or gotten physically sick, which used to happen whenever I did a high-pressure work project in my twenties and thirties. I see this, frankly, as a pretty huge win and evidence that I’m finally honouring the person I actually am instead of spending all this time wishing I were otherwise — often the source of my tears in the past.
When I work on something I care about, my hyperfocus — the often fun, productive, all-consuming aspect of the ADHD brain and surprising sister-symptom to spaciness — goes into absolute overdrive, and it becomes hard to do anything but work. Most days of February I went to bed thinking about the event, woke up thinking about the event, worked for hours without a break on the event, and at times thoroughly resented the event. My eyes were dried husks, the crevices of my brain felt peppered with grains of sand.
But for the first time in my entire life rather than saying to myself, “What the fuck is wrong with you, you work almost-full-time for two months and you can’t even handle that?” Or “Just don’t worry about it so much, no one else stresses about the details of things as much as you do, no one cares!” I was very nice to myself.
I said things like, “It’s understandable that you’re so tired after working like that for eight hours straight. Sure, other people do their day job for eight hours every day and then write for three hours in the morning or night, but that’s not you. The fatigue verging on nausea you tend to feel post-hyperfocusing on work like this isn’t something you should ignore, nor endure for years on end just to feel like you’re presenting as ‘normal.’”
Or, “You’ve tried doing things you care about less full-tilt — you’ve tried so many times! But friend? Your particular brain doesn’t seem to allow it. That means you have to be very careful what you commit to, because if you give a shit about it, it will take over. Don’t forget to take a solid break before you do something like this again.”
Whoa.
To be clear, if I were single, I would have to endure that nausea-fatigue much more often because I wouldn’t have my partner paying a higher percentage of our bills than I do. I wouldn’t be able to take a solid break. Again, so grateful. But back when I did have to work full time, I constantly took on difficult projects and deprioritized my writing and mental health because I refused to believe that I couldn’t do it all if I tried hard enough. When it didn’t work (always), I beat the living shit out of myself. And it made it so, so much worse.
I share this turn toward self-kindness not just as a brag, but as encouragement for anyone to do the same who has too much on the go, who is simply over-fermenting. Of course the majority of us have to do all the things because that’s how the system is built — capitalism loves us to be so overwhelmed and spent we can’t possibly squeeze in imagining another way. It sucks. But maybe it can be a big favour to oneself to acknowledge exactly who we are in the face of this shit. Thanking ourselves for doing our best; reminding ourselves that we deserve a rest, a KojiCon, twenty minutes with our novel, an extra night of takeout, a bath; that our hyperfocus or anxiety or depression are real and need our support; we’re not just faking it or not doing enough or “being dramatic.” Or whatever it may be for you. For me, it has helped while my mycelium’s been stressed. I still can’t believe how much.
Writing
I did manage to work on my novel a little bit each week, just twenty minutes here and there, and again this was different for me. In the past when I’ve had something stressful commanding my hyperfocus, I’ve assumed it best to put the novel aside completely. I thought by doing so I was saving myself extra stress. But lately my therapist helped me realize that writing functions as an antidepressant for me. Sure, I might risk having a hard sesh spent bashing my head against the plot, but I still usually feel uplifted for having descended into the squish of my fiction-mind for even a few minutes. So I did so when I could.
Way huger news, though, is that I shared a scene of my novel with a few friends this month. The scene takes place at a karaoke bar where a group of us have had many transcendental evenings over the past decade. I felt such warmth toward these friends and those experiences as I polished the scene a few Sundays ago that I sent it to them on a whim the next morning. I wanted to share in case the scene hits the cutting room floor in Draft Three, as many inevitably will. Well, here’s another brag, but they loved it! I got so many nice texts! Some in all caps! I am trying not to rely on external validation as my reason to write as much as I used to, but I’ll tell you what: it still feels good as hell.
Reading & Eating
I didn’t read much except my fermentation books, so I’ll just shout out one of those here in case anyone’s interested in going deeper on filamentous molds. Koji Alchemy gets a lot of love, maybe partly because it’s chef-driven and includes wild and crazy ideas like growing koji on meat. But you know what else does? Miso, Tempeh, Natto by Kirsten and Christopher Shockey. While I do love Koji Alchemy — and its authors, Jeremy Umansky and KojiCon founder, Rich Shih — I find Miso, Tempeh, Natto a little more approachable and in some ways more comprehensive. I reach for it again and again when I’m in the zone of dispersing spores and incubating beans.
Most of my food life in February was dominated by growing mold on things, and I wrote plenty about that already; I won’t get into the details here. But I think I’d already given up live-blogging by the time my tempeh meatballs were done? They came out really great! You can read more about them on Instagram if you like.
Beyond that, I’m having a lot of fun with bean flours these days. Hopefully I’ll be ready to share a related recipe in the not too distant future. Until then, I’ll be toiling away, out-bubbling my bounds, but gently scooping myself back into the bowl each day; monitoring and stirring myself so I don’t get too, too sour.