We first met Jefri in my husband’s village on the Black Sea in 2012. He was a tiny street puppy who had been given attention by one of Şeref’s young nephews, who then went back to Germany leaving Jefri with only his name. We had a dog at that time, a giant Neapolitan Mastiff named Ray. We have since had to rehome him (he was aggressive) but now he lives on a hazelnut farm on the Black Sea, so his story has a happy ending. Jefri followed us around for two weeks, and at the end of our holiday I couldn’t leave him behind. So, we made the 10-hour drive back to Istanbul, 5 of us plus Ray and Jefri in our 2004 Opel Corsa. Jefri was carsick the entire ride home. I think back on that time, we were such a rag tag group just getting started in our lives together. We lived in a part of town where the internet was so slow I could barely load Facebook, let alone conceive of a blog. At that time I was not doing pickling, fermenting or making kombucha. I was still navigating the basics of Turkish life.

These days we live in a very cosmopolitan part of the city, Şeref’s family love to comment on Jefri’s rags to riches story. They make out like he is walking around in a top hat and a monocle. I like to think that we grew together into our roles. That being said, you can take the dog out of the street but you can’t take the street out of the dog. Jefri is a notorious food thief and a unrepentant seeker of street chicken bones. Each night as we walk, his only goal is to eat as many scraps from the garbage as possible. When we get caught by the occasional passerby with Jefri’s head fully immersed in a garbage bag, I pretend to be shocked, but we know the truth. That dog ain’t gonna change. He only eats his dog food as a last resort, and even then in protest. In the interest of getting some healthy snacks into him, I decided to kill two birds with one stone. My kombucha mother having been left unattended for a fair part of the winter had grown massive. I feel guilty throwing them away and the kombucha community in Istanbul is small. So I decided to try making some kombucha doggy snacks.

I don’t have a food dehydrator so I had to use my oven.

Method

Peel the layers of the SCOBY and cut them into one inch thick strips.

I brushed them with some liquid smoke, you can also use Better Than Bullion.

Lay them on a rack and bake them at your ovens lowest setting.

Bake until the become dried and jerky like.

Store in sealed container indefinitely.