Friday, 3 April 2009

Kefir


Way back last year during one of my Internet trawls I came across Kefir (information here) and was able to find someone who would send me some kefir grains. I had a go at producing some kefir but kept forgetting about it, eventually forgetting about the last batch I was making and it spent the winter in the back of my refrigerator.

I dug the mix out a month or so ago and to my surprise the kefir wasn’t rancid, just a bit over sour. Well I say a bit, that really should say a lot sour. I ditched the liquid and spent a couple of weeks refreshing the grains in water to try and clear the curdled smell. This was quite successful so I then started using the grains again with milk. It took about a week but the grains recovered and are now producing wonderful kefir again.


It really is so easy to produce; I strain the grains out of the kefir liquid each morning, rinse the jar, replace the grains in the jar and top up with milk again. All I have to do then is leave the jar on the work-surface and repeat the process the following day. I now have a very cheap supply of probiotic yoghurt.

Today’s treat was to have it on cereal instead of just drinking it. It has a slightly sharp taste but I find it a very pleasant one.


I got my grains via a kefir exchange site – I just did an Internet search – and also found this site, which has a wealth of information.

One of my friends here is very dairy intolerant and we are going to have a go at converting the grains to soya milk grains so she can have a soya probiotic.

Does anyone else use kefir grains?

Snowy Update

Many thanks to everyone for their thoughts about Snowy. I'm really pleased to say that she's back to her meowy self and following me around and getting under my feet again.

She's still a bit frail but then she is coming up to 14 and the operation to remove the cancer from her ear did seem to age her quite a bit but she still defends her position as top cat so I think all is well.