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Note from Forest: Finally we have the awesome Dragon Sue back blogging here! This post on Kefir Grains has got me very excited and I am going to be on a mission to seek them out here in Egypt. They are readily available in USA and UK.
Probiotics are the healthy bacteria that live in all of our digestive systems, without them our immune systems are seriously compromised, and our ability to digest the essential components of our food would be so restricted it would result in serious illness, if not death.
Antibiotics spell death for our life-giving bacteria, (which is what probiotic means – ‘for-life’), and with our Western diet pumped full of meat saturated in antibiotics, we are literally shooting ourselves in the foot!
One way to replenish the probiotics damaged by our diet is to buy those little drinks in the supermarket, but I have a problem with that. They are sold as live bacteria, but I really can’t see how anything can be truly living in a sealed bottle without access to both food and air to grow and multiply. Now I don’t know the mechanics of bottling the stuff, and I’m definitely no scientist, but I just don’t trust it.
Another way to get probiotics in to your diet is to grow your own. Yoghurt is the prime example here, and has been a popular way for the last 30 years or so in the West, but I find the rigmarole of heating milk, and keeping it warm for hours on end a bit of a chore.
So imagine my delight when earlier this year I heard of something called Kefir Grains. From what I have read, Kefir Grains come from the Siberian Steps. Nomads half fill a goats stomach with milk, add these little grains that look like tapioca, and hang the stomach in a door way. Every time someone goes in or out, they give the bag a little knock to stir up the milk, and the next day they have a very healthy yoghurt drink, and more grains with which to make the next batch with.
You don’t need a spare goat’s stomach or a doorway with a hook to grow your own Kefir Grains in your own home though. All you need is a jar with a lid, some milk, a sieve, and a warmish place to let them stand.
Intrigued by what I had read about these little miracle grains, I looked on Ebay, and discovered people were selling grains online! I got mine for the princely sum of 99p plus post and package. When my grains arrived I quickly popped them in to my clean jar, covered them in milk, then put them on top of my microwave, where the heat from the standby would keep them a little warmer than the ambient temperature of my cold kitchen. Every time I walked by, I gave the jar a little swish, because I had read about how the Nomads do it, but I have since learned that the grains don’t seem to mind either way.
The next morning I strained out my grains, returned them to the freshly cleaned jar and covered them with fresh milk. I then stood looking at the strained fermented milk. It looked like slightly sour milk, you know when the fats are just beginning to separate, and I didn’t find the sight appetising. I dipped my finger in and transferred a tiny amount to the tip of my tongue. Mmm, it was very similar to yoghurt, but with the mildest hint of a ‘fizz’. I drank the lot down and wanted more!
Over the following weeks my grains grew in number until they were making ‘yoghurt’ that was a little too strong for my taste, so I split the grains and started a second jar. I had plans for that second jar, I had read about making soft cheese with Kefir, and I wanted to give it a try. The cheese is delicious and now I have a jar dedicated to making cheese and one to making yoghurt.
But my grains kept growing. Soon I had four jars sitting on my kitchen counter, and even with the best will in the world, I couldn’t consume that much every day. So I posted a batch on Ebay, I may as well recoup my initial cost I thought, and I did, and I am now selling enough to cover the cost of the milk to feed them up too! So now I’m getting my probiotic drink daily, for free, and sometimes the auction goes well enough that I make a few pennies on top. Better than paying through the nose for that ‘half-alive’ stuff they sell in the supermarket, and there is no messing around with saucepans, thermoses and thermometers, I reckon I’m on to a winner here, as my health has improved ten fold too!
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