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Hometown Happenings
About Hometown Happenings Podcast
Welcome to Hometown Happenings, the ultimate podcast where we bring the heart and soul of North Arkansas straight to your ears! Hosted by a lively set of friends (Angela and Drea!) who know and love their community, we explore the unique stories, events, and happenings that make our hometown special.
What You Can Expect:
🏡 Local Stories: From hilarious realtor horror stories to touching tales of community spirit, we uncover the fascinating narratives behind the people and places that define our town.
🎉 Event Highlights: Stay in the loop with the latest and greatest events in North Arkansas. Whether it's a bustling new business opening, a must-attend festival, or a charity event making a difference, we've got you covered.
👩👩👧👦 Community Focus: We shine a spotlight on the incredible individuals and organizations working to make North Arkansas a better place. Hear from local entrepreneurs, community leaders, and everyday heroes who inspire us.
🌟 Fun and Engaging Conversations: Our episodes are packed with laughter, lively discussions, and plenty of surprises. We keep it real, relatable, and always entertaining.
Why Listen to Hometown Happenings?
- Stay Connected: Whether you're a longtime resident or new to the area, our podcast keeps you informed and connected to your community.
- Feel Good Stories: Enjoy heartwarming and humorous stories that showcase the best of small-town life.
- Exclusive Insights: Get insider tips on the best spots to visit, upcoming events, and hidden gems in North Arkansas.
- Join the Conversation: We love hearing from our listeners! Share your own stories, suggest topics, or just say hello – we're all about building a vibrant community together.
Tune in every other week for a fresh dose of hometown pride and discover why North Arkansas is such a special place to call home. Don’t forget to subscribe, so you never miss an episode of Hometown Happenings!
Hometown Happenings
Fizzing into the New Year: A Kombucha Crafting Journey with Carolyn Arnold
Embark on a fermentation adventure with our charming guest Carolyn Arnold, who brings her homemade kombucha expertise straight to your ears. Feel the effervescence of her passion as she shares the tale of how a quest for probiotic prowess led her to craft a luscious blend of pineapple, cranberry, and grape kombucha, a toast to both taste buds and well-being. We unravel the art of brewing this gut-loving elixir, diving into the essentials of SCOBY care and the alchemy of secondary fermentation for that sought-after sparkle. Carolyn's guidance doesn't fizz out there; she also bubbles up some wisdom on how to safely uncork and strain your kombucha, ensuring every sip is nothing short of sublime.
While the new year often prompts resolutions of health and happiness, we're stirring up tradition with a twist, celebrating with our own fizzy creations and sharing our latest local find—Nature's Wonder—for all your kombucha concocting needs. Between sips and stories, we'll regale you with our recent wallpapering escapades and the comedy of our unintentional twinning fashion. Eager to start your own fermentation journey or simply looking for a delightful dose of probiotic chatter? Grab a glass, and let's raise a toast to the fizzy, the healthy, and the homemade—no Amazon needed. Cheers to that!
The Home Team
Angela Ballard & Drea Rogers
870-577-6754 | 870-577-0276
Weichert Market Edge
https://aundrea-rogers.weichertmarketedge.com
www.angelaballardrealtor.com
Well, welcome to this week's episode of Pongtown Happens. So we have a special guest today. Her name is Carolyn Arnold, Hello. So today we're going to talk about kombucha. Kombucha, Love it, Okay. So a lot of people may be curious as to what kombucha is. Why are they named this? It's so weird.
Speaker 2:Yeah, random like that. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:But so also so people know, because they've probably heard the background noise to some degree they have all grass. Where is that? In Harris, arkansas, up on the hill by Dairy Queen, the college, all that they sell kombucha. They don't make their own anymore, but they do sell it. But we have with us our special guest, carolyn, who actually makes kombucha, and she's going to talk to us about that today. I am so kombucha for anybody who is curious about what it is, it's a fermented tea that sounds gross.
Speaker 1:And it has lots and lots of health benefits. So, Carolyn, tell us about why you started making kombucha.
Speaker 2:So probiotics are so good for women, for our health, and my mom had lupus and so I've heard I don't know it's a fact, but heard that it's good for kind of preventing and maintaining if you have lupus or have that gene or whatever. But I just love it for the probiotics.
Speaker 1:Yeah, our gut health is huge. Yeah, it's huge. So, as a nurse, they say that if you can make sure your gut is good, you can kind of prevent a lot of other problems that you may have down the road.
Speaker 2:So instead of me buying whole lot of biotics and talking to them every day. I just have a little glass of kombucha. It's good, and so you can tell you how I make it. What flavor is it? This is pineapple, cranberry and a little bit of grape. That sounds pretty good. My favorite is cranberry and elderberry. So a friend of mine.
Speaker 1:Malia, I went to their house.
Speaker 2:We went to their house for supper and she said hey, you want a little bit of kombucha and I'm like sure it was great, but it was the cranberry elderberry, so it's a honey made Cranberry, elderberry, you know elderberry has a lot of benefits on its own. So I can't. I bet it's really good.
Speaker 1:And it's elderberry to me tastes good on its own, exactly Like the syrup.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, I couldn't find elderberry, so I come up with this concoction, but you start with six cups of water, six tea bags and you steep your tea.
Speaker 2:You know, like your grandma used to bring the water to boil and you let it steep, Then you add a cup of sugar and you let it cool down and you add six more cups of water and when it's cool, I put it in a big jar a glass jar, I like glass. Put it in a big jar and then this is the scoby. So I brought my scoby to show you. So I ordered my first one from California. That's so gross, but it is. It's just a scoby and it makes another one.
Speaker 2:It grows into another one, oh kind of starter, kind of sort of Okay.
Speaker 1:So you have a kombucha starter.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is a scoby. You have to have a scoby to start, so you put this in your tea and water, do you?
Speaker 1:know, what scoby stands for? Scoby-doo? I do not. Symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast. There you go, disgusting. There you go, okay. So what do you do with that?
Speaker 2:So you put your scoby into your tea and water and when you do water, don't use tap water. I did that once in my tea mold that always used to steal you distilled water.
Speaker 1:Six cups of water.
Speaker 2:So you've got in your jar. You have your tea, your water, your scoby. You let it sit for two weeks. I put a coffee filter over the top of it and put it over a van and I date it. I put my date when two weeks will be, so I know when it's ready. When it's ready, when two weeks is up, I take the scoby out and I put it in the jar, like this, with tea, to save it until I'm ready to make another batch. Oh, how long do you hold on to that? Well, it's so far. I threw the old one away and this is the new one, so you don't really throw it away. That's another subject.
Speaker 1:We'll come back around the time.
Speaker 2:So you take your scoby out because you're ready to mix it, take it out, put it in your jar with some of your tea and you just put it aside, like this.
Speaker 1:And it just hangs out.
Speaker 2:Okay. So then you take your cranberry, elderberry, whatever kind of juice you like, and I probably put two cups of pineapple, two cups of cranberry and one of grape. That's what this is. So you bottle it and you put the cap on it and you let it sit for two more weeks. I just take it downstairs in the fridge, put my bottles in there and let it hang out For two more. So it takes a month to make a bottle.
Speaker 1:So you're trying to have a bottle brewing while you're drinking a bottle.
Speaker 2:So then that's why your scoby you can get going on your next one. So I suggest you pop it open and let us taste it, and I'll show you how we do that.
Speaker 1:Do you have to shake it or anything? No, no, no, it's carbonated, it's carbonated, so you just take the curbs off.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Open that. I'm scared.
Speaker 2:That. So buy you a screen, okay, oh, so you do need to, because it's a living in the bottle. It's a living and you don't want to strain it. I mean, you know it's a living organism. This is why she brought props.
Speaker 1:Yes, I brought props for you guys. So people listening. She's got a little strainer here that I filtered our boochette through Exactly. You'll see this on YouTube and our show notes will have recipes and all the fun things, I think we should attend to this, okay.
Speaker 2:What do you?
Speaker 1:think. What do you think, is that good?
Speaker 2:This is really good, so my kids love kombucha.
Speaker 1:Really. Yeah, we use it as a. I do too. I love it. I love it. I like much better for them.
Speaker 2:But, like I say, my favorite is elderberry and cranberry.
Speaker 1:And where do we get elderberry? Elderberry and you buy Amazon or just this.
Speaker 2:Grocery stores but you buy juice, it's a hundred percent juice, not anything, not half. You know, no sugar okay, then I have a little funnel. You know that I used to funnel it into your bottle.
Speaker 1:Okay, how long does that one bottle last you with you drink? Is this about how much you drink a day? I probably have full.
Speaker 2:You know a little more than that, but it'll last for a week, yeah, but I mean you can see, I mean it's just living, is?
Speaker 1:it just you, or does Chuck drink that?
Speaker 2:too. Um, chuck will drink it, if I give it to him.
Speaker 1:Yeah, have you noticed you feel any better since you drink it? My gut, feels better.
Speaker 2:Okay, kind of like you know, when you take probiotics and then you quit. You just feel, feel it right, it just it does, it just has health benefits. So I truly believe it's good and it's fun to make busy kick.
Speaker 1:Yes, right, it's carbonated.
Speaker 2:So that's why my kids they think they're getting soda pop, but they're getting, but they're getting, yeah, and I guess you could add more sugar if you want it sweeter. I don't like, I like, I like that, I don't want to get it any sweeter.
Speaker 1:It's kind of tart and I like that.
Speaker 2:So Circling back to your used scoby. Yeah, as you see, it'll grow like you'll grow to in there. I take out the new one and I make my new batch and then the old one. You can grind up and put with water and you can water your flowers not a lot because you don't want to dump it all on, but you can mix a little bit of that and it's like a photo fertilizing. It's good for your plants Inside it out. I'm sorry, just a world.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm very surprised here.
Speaker 2:I'm not good with plants.
Speaker 1:Maybe that's what I'm missing Kombucha scoby used scoby, so you are actually a kombucha.
Speaker 2:I've reached. I've reached the status that I wanted, so.
Speaker 1:For you said you bought your scoby on Amazon. I bought it on Amazon. For those of you who don't do Amazon or do want to try to stay local, I haven't Ventured there yet, but I had a friend tell me yesterday that nature's wonder I has a kid a kid to make kombucha, and you can get it there.
Speaker 2:So we are gonna go check it out.
Speaker 1:We're gonna check it out.
Speaker 2:So that's we'll probably give you guys some more information. We should be just for Christmas. We started it now be ready by New Year's.
Speaker 1:I'm a crack a bottle that open. We're gonna drink kombucha New.
Speaker 2:Year's. Okay, it's busy and it's fun right and it is healthy.
Speaker 1:Look at first year.
Speaker 2:Let's put forward that's right. New Year's healthy kombucha. I like where you're thinking.
Speaker 1:Yeah and that's right. Well, you're welcome.
Speaker 2:Yes, we have just been wallpaper and so hence the I don't have all my. Really, I don't look as pretty as you guys Blowing okay.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:I like it. Overall you guys are fun.
Speaker 1:Okay. Well, I'm asking you guys You're matching, as always.
Speaker 2:I'm impressed, so one time I would don't wear black. Yeah, all right, thank you. Thank you, guys, and we appreciate it, all right.
Speaker 1:Thank you, check out the show notes everybody. Yeah, yeah, okay.
