Kombucha has been called the elixir of life. It’s a probiotic drink made by fermenting green tea with sugar. If this is your first time making it, and you have no ‘scoby’ (symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast), you need to grow your own from scratch by using a bottle of store-bought kombucha. This is done by fermenting the kombucha with water, sugar and tea, allowing the scoby to form naturally and grow thick and strong enough. When you remove it from the jar, you can start to make the drinking kombucha. Your first batch won’t be good to drink, but it will be suitable for the starter and scoby. Discard the rest. Your next batch, using the scoby and the starter you produced, will be ready to drink within about a month. (If you don’t have the patience to grow a scoby from scratch, as explained in this recipe, see if you can find one online or get one from a friend.) Kombucha is great served chilled at the beginning of the day to get your gut moving, and also great as a base for cocktails or for iceblocks.