>>40770192
second half to your question-
since leaving that high speed life, old habits kick in, like insomnia and feeding off of stress hormones. in typical /x/ fashion, I took up alchemy, specifically practical spagyric alchemy. none of the salt circles on the floor bullshit, and especially no moon rituals.
I planted a garden for the first time this year. mostly melons, herbs, and flowers. the spagyric books I have mention the overall process to "take apart" a plant by
>fermentation of fruits for ethanol
>solvent extraction of the unfermented fruit sugars/flavor/essence of the plant using ethanol, oil, or water.
>calcination of spent biomass
the idea is that plants are liquified, seperated by their solvent affinity, treated to further processing, then recombined.
one of my projects is to crystallize about 1 pound of watermelon syrup, then calcinate the remaining melon pulp, ethanol extract the flavor/aroma chemicals, then recombine it all into a hard watermelon candy lump of sugar, stored in a bath of ethanol. the calcinated pulp uses the hydroxides in the ash to increase the bioavailability of the food.
another project is valerian, chamomile, blue vervain, vanilla, and honey in a spagyric recipe. valerian/chamomile for sleep, vervain for relax, vanilla obvious, and honey for fermentation. the extracts are then kept in a sealed bottle and left to mature under moderate heat.
hand tilling the garden, growing all the plants from seed, fermenting the ethanol from feeder plants, then combining/cooking with the medicine/food plants keeps me decently busy.
there are all kinds of combinations, especially when the combine "side" plants to vasodilate/vasoconstrict/etc with the "main" plant.
super interesting and super cheap to do stuff.
