Been Starting to Buy Kefir Again, For a Healthy Snack

SeaBreeze

SeaBreeze

Endlessly Groovin'
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USA
For years, especially while still working, I bought a lot of yogurt, for lunch at work and snacks at home. At home I would just go with a plain Greek yogurt and add lemon juice and raw honey to it as a healthy snack, also for Probiotic benefits, healthy gut flora. I stopped eating yogurt, just got tired of it.

Just got back into buying Kefir, it comes in many flavors and also has Probiotics. I try to get the organic when available, but will buy the regular when I have to. Today I bought some peach, and it did not come in organic. I always buy the low fat version, as opposed to the one made from whole milk.

We were eating a lot of ice cream at home for awhile, and decided to buy more fruit and healthier snacks items to take its place. Also bought some strawberries, mangoes and pears today. We pour the Kefir into a small glass, maybe the size of a small wine glass, and sip it, tastes good. Those who hate yogurt probably wouldn't like it though.

Anyone here drink Kefir?

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I was on a kefir kick for a good while. My grandson too, when he lived here.

I bought the flavored kind, not because I wanted sweet, but I can't handle sour very well, except for sour cream. It's good,

It got expensive too, and bored with it by then, I stopped. I'm too scared to make my own. I don't want to go messing with bacteria or microbes or whatever they are. :confused:
 
I don't like the taste, but I have started taking Kefir pills instead. They are rather large and difficult to swallow! I do like Kambucha, which is also supposed to be very good for the gut.
 
I used to make kefir on a regular basis, but then I just stopped making it. If you are going to make kefir from kefir grains (actually a SCOBY), then it is like having a sourdough starter, and you have to keep it fed or the little critters will starve to death.
I was not drinking enough to do this every day; so what I mostly ended up doing was to use the little culture kits instead.

They are little packets of dry kefir grains, and when you put them in a quart of milk, then they activate, and in 12 or so hours, you have kefir. You can use 3/4 of it and then add 3 cups of milk to the last cup, and leave it sit overnight, and then you have fresh kefir the next day, so you do not have to use a fresh starter packet for each quart of kefir.

I have decided that I want to start making it from the grains again, and ordered some from a lady on eBay. Apparently, if you do not want to make kefir, you can put the grains in fresh milk and refrigerate it for a week or so. The cold slows the ferment down so that they can last longer with out needing fresh milk. I plan on drinking some everyday because it has such wonderful health benefits; but if I don’t do it for a day or so, I can just refrigerate the grains in milk until I am ready to make more kefir.
 
I used to make my own yogurt back in the day, for a short time. But these days I have no ambition to use my time doing anything like that when I can easily buy it in a store. I admire those who prepare things like this at home, but for me, those days are gone. We're still buying Kefir today, had some last week and will pick up some more when I shop tomorrow at the supermarket.
 
According to something that I was reading (and it makes sense to me), in order to sell kefir commercially, they have to kill off most of the probiotics in the kefir, and probably in yogurt, too. As long as the ferment has live bacteria, it will keep going, and then the co2 would build up, and the container would either leak or explode.
In order to prevent this, they can’t sell a “fully-loaded” version of kefir.

Making kefir is so much simpler than making yogurt.
You just put the packet of starter in your quart jar of milk, stir it in, put it away out of the sun (and in a warm place if necessary) and then forget about it for the day.

If you make it in the day, you should have fresh kefir by the next morning, and the suggestion for the best probiotic use is to drink a cup before you have anything else, (including coffee), and another cup before bed at night.
This way, the live cultures get down into your gut where they are needed to provide the probiotics and prebiotics.
 

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