What's in my Soaking Cabinet

I've been meaning to photograph the cabinet I've dedicated to all overnight, room-temperature food preparation processes. The bottom shelf is full. An array of bowls holds some combination of the following: soaking millet, soaking brown rice, soaking porridge, brewing kefir, fermenting sauerkraut, sourdough starter, rising yogurt dough (is this supposed to be kept warmer?), and draining cream cheese. In the future I hope to rotate in curing meats and plenty of other pickling fruits and veggies.

It's the corner cabinet that runs all the way up to the back wall behind the sink, so it is relatively difficult to access, and this is both a help and a problem. It's nice because I don't want to use that cabinet for anything I use constantly, like pots and pans or drinking glasses, but I also have a problem with things spilling on the way in and out. It is just awkward. As I soak larger quantities of things, with the growing confidence that I will actually cook them soon, I need to find taller containers, not larger-diameter ones. This will keep spillage down and also help me fit plenty of microbial projects into the space, which can be as high as I want, but not infinitely long or deep. I've also learned the hard way that some of those cute and sturdy glass mixing bowls I recently purchased cheap at the second-hand shops are not ideal. The ones with sloped sides: \_/ are very easy to slosh, especially on the way out. Bowls and crocks like this: |_| are much better.

I finally had a truly successful batch of kefir, one which was hard to stop drinking instead of hard to start. I used the no-grains method, which, as I have learned, takes a few batches to bring it up to snuff. I put a tablespoon of raw honey (it MUST be raw) in a quart of raw milk. Two days later I had a kefir-like substance which had curdled beyond drinkability (at least for me; Ryan drank it happily). The texture was just too lumpy. But I persisted, as I had heard I should, and used some of this batch as starter for the next and repeated the process and so on. I think it was the third or fourth try that did not curdle, but turned thick and creamy and only slightly mottled in texture. This was very tasty and much much easier to swallow. Whatever the flavor and texture, though, I have always noticed that kefir makes me feel good when I drink it after eating protein and fats. Lots of enzymes.

The other upside is that the less-than-perfect batches had the positive side effect of making Lactobacillus-rich whey, which is the starter culture to make sauerkraut, pickles of all kinds, and the soaking medium for grains.