Please Keep Trying!

This flu season hasn’t hit David and me hard thus far, knock on wood, but it has made me aware I need to beef up security on the home front, i.e. my immunity. The ways to increase immunity are manifold, and start with proper nutrition; lots of veggies and fruits, balanced vitamin intake, and probiotics. Adequate sleep is another biggie for a tougher immunity, as is plenty of exercise and water.

I have the veggies and fruits down pretty well, along with the sleep and exercise, but I find I need to work on my vitamin, water, and probiotic intake. Vitamins and water should be easy to fix, but getting the priobiotics I need to maintain a healthy immunity is time consuming and potentially expensive. Yogurt is an OK way to get some probiotics as is popping pills filled with the lil’ buggers. However, I’m lactose intolerant and I hate taking pills if I don’t have to. The solution? Kefir.

Kefir is a milk beverage developed hundreds of years ago by the nomadic tribes of the Causcaus. They discovered if they poured freshly obtained milk into a sack and added kefir grains to it, the milk would ferment at room temperature into a sour, slightly carbonated beverage. The milk was thus preserved and kefir was born. The milk doesn’t go bad when it’s fermenting at warm to hot temperatures due to the colonies of yeasts and bacteria which break down sugars in the milk and which also keep harmful microbes from spoiling the milk.

These critters are the same ones we need in our guts in order to have a balanced system. We humans are symbiotic creatures and depend on a slew of microbes, probiotics, to keep us healthy. Kefir is filled with what we need. What about kefir being a dairy beverage and hence a bane to anyone with lactose intolerance?

If kefir is brewed at home, it can be fermented longer. Fermenting longer and then initiating a second fermenting of kefir enables the microbes to digest the lactose, milk sugar, responsible for lactose intolerance. No lactose sugars, no farting. The brew is more sour due to the lengthy fermentation, but it’s possible to sweeten it with agave or honey to take the edge off. I read kefir tastes like yogurt and during a second fermentation, fruits and sugar may be added to create a yogurt like smoothie.

I bought some kefir grains this week from ebay to try my hand at making kefir. The grains looked like white mush and smelled like old socks and rotting bread, which is apparently how they’re supposed to smell; it means they’re alive.

It’s been sixteen hours since I added the milk, and the kefir is thickening up nicely. However, I read on the seller’s website to toss out the initial batch of kefir and to only consume consequent batches. I’ve also read not to initially wholesale chug homegrown kefir after you first start making it. The body may be unused to the massive amounts of good buggies and will be upset at the deluge of incoming microbes, thus upsetting the system. What will follow is a kill off of all the undesirables living in the guts at the thousands of “hands” of the probiotics, which’ll create more turmoil. Slowly titrating onto kefir is the best way to avoid stomach upset. That’s fine by me since I’m not going to have gallons of this stuff handy any time soon anyhow.

I’m excited, though; I’m back to “growing” good food which is good for me. I love being so connected to my own health and well being! I’ll keep you posted as to how my kefir turns out!