Good day, Steemians! 

We had some pomegranate seeds that were starting to taste a bit like alcohol. When fruit passes its prime for eating, it's time for some sustainable alchemy, so 

I made pomegranate vinegar and you can too!

Making vinegar is a super simple process - you put old fruit in a jar, 

cover it with 1 part sugar to 3 parts water (leave some space to allow for expansion), 

and toss in a mother. 

Weight down the fruit so it stays submerged below the liquid line (I use a glass lid from old mason jars with a little rose quartz crystal on it), cover it with a cheesecloth secured with a rubber band (because you want some airflow but not bugs), label it, and let the jar sit on a shelf in a cool, dark place for a few weeks, then voila - it's vinegar! 

So easy!!

^{They're on their way to new form now!}

How much would you pay for pomegranate vinegar at a store? That's easily a super fancy $10+ foodie product, right? 

This was free, save my valuable manpower & time - but even this only takes like 15 minutes if you have all your materials together. Add 5 to 10 minutes for a sexy vinegar photoshoot, and you're still looking at less than half an hour to make an impressive, super duper healthy commodity. 

So what's a mother?

Have you ever heard of a SCOBY for kombucha or jun making? A mother is the same thing. SCOBY stands for Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeast, and it's a wet, squishy, blobbly mass of microorganisms that eat sugar and excrete acid or alcohol, depending on the species. Vinegar is a weak acid, so the mother = SCOBY is going to do all the conversion work of turning your old fruits to delicious, delicious vinegar. 

So where do you get a mother? 

• Maybe you have a nice friend who will share theirs - just pull off a chunk and both pieces will grow larger in the next batch of vinegar. 
• Grow one in store bought vinegar. Ever see a blobby layer floating on your vinegar? It hasn't gone bad - that's a priceless mother! Sometimes you'll see some stringy things down at the bottom of something like Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar - that's a mother too! Strain it out with a coffee filter or something and you're in business.
• Grow one in wine! Add a splash of balsamic to some red wine you don't find too yummy and wait a few weeks. The mother will eventually develop.
• You can even just put fruit in a jar with sugar water - it may take a lot longer, but at some point the mother will grow. 
• You could potentially buy one if you're really impatient or don't have any friends...but why would you want to pay taxes and for distribution and packaging and stuff? 

I got mine out of another vinegar we had in the works @gardenofeden. 

Vinegar is an important part of our food preservation system in the @gardenofeden, because it is a PRIMO way to use up older, softer, squishy, and/or bruised fruit (but not moldy - moldy parts can either be cut off or the whole thing can be chucked in the compost). Any kind of fruit will work! 

It's super yummy, and SUPER good for you! Plus, you pretty much can't mess it up: you can tell it's done vinegaring after a few weeks when you taste it and it tastes like vinegar...but sometimes something is a little off and it tastes more like alcohol. If it's not delicious for consumption, you can always use it for cleaning! 

In a few weeks, I'll check my pretty pomegranate vinegar and see how it turned out!

UPDATE: I checked it - IT WAS AWESOME!!!

All you do to render it is save the mother, pour off the gross looking chunky mushy stuff, and transfer to a clean jar. Now you have delicious, homemade, fancy pants vinegar you can sprinkle on everything!

I hope you'll give it a try! 

💛 Sara!