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Last night was a very good night. Not only did I get a solid eight hours of sleep, but it rained. I don't know if the two events are related, but they both make me happy. Especially the rain. The dry and dying crops made all the people angry and sad. There wasn't a lot of rain, and so the drought is not really over. If we don't get some more rain soon what we got last night won't matter much.
The rain was generated by a high pressure system that arrived from up north, and as it usually happens with these strong fronts, it's supposed to be cooler with lower humidities for a few days. Yippee! We have had temperatures up to almost a hundred degrees (37.77° C) nearly every day for two weeks. That's not strange here in July and August, but the dog days started early this year. We need tropical storms and non-destructive hurricanes to save the day.
Today is also kind of important for my new and budding obsession with kefir. If all goes well, I should be getting some water kefir granules in the mail from Texas, and the milk kefir granules I ordered from Michigan are scheduled to be shipped today. I'm eager to get both kinds to see what we can do for each other.
A Japanese woman has started writing about how to make sake on a nutrition list I subscribed to. It's made from fermented rice, and she uses Japanese names for the ingredients and the various phases of the process to describe it and the stages of the fermentation. I'm fairly familiar with sake from my visits to Japan back in the late Fifties and early Sixties of the last millennium.
One of the sake recipes uses kefir as the fermenting agent. Thus, the reason why her posts are on this particular discussion list. Another member wrote about how to use kefir as the fermenting agent to make your own sauerkraut. This is getting to be an international type obsession.
I've never been all that crazy about sauerkraut, but some swear that homemade sauerkraut is not only tastier, but brings health benefits because it's not pasteurized like commercial sauerkraut is. All these do-it-yourself foods and drink seems especially useful to a miser like me. The basic ingredients are cheap, and the results are considered gourmet. How snotty and condescending will I get? '-)
Several people have written about how the bran from various grains is not good stuff. They insist that the general public is being fooled into thinking bran is good for you so the commercial grain processors can make money from what has always been considered a waste product that costs them to get rid of.
I don't know whether they're right or not about bran. I've always liked bran muffins, but the breakfast cereals that promote bran to deal with constipation have never appealed to me. One of the arguments that includes the support of the Japanese woman who writes about sake, is that the ancient indigenous peoples deliberately invented ways to get the bran off the cereal grains they grew so that it would be healthier.
Brown rice is not a national tradition in any of the Asian countries. Bran doesn't even ferment. The Asians apparent think the Westerners who idolize brown rice are faddists and for the most part, just nuts. My own mother wouldn't cook brown rice, and she came from an area down toward New Orleans where rice is more common at meals than potatoes.
One of the driving forces that pushes me toward making my own kefir is how lousy my diet is. I take a lot of supplements and vitamin pills to offset the lack of keeping my own garden. I don't think my body is digesting the food I no longer have the teeth to chew well either. It's not so much a personal problem as a problem of the aging.
For instance, I just had a big problem with a rotting tooth. I ignored the pain because I wanted to keep that tooth for chewing the food I eat. It didn't work out. Eventually, to save my life from infection in my lowered immune system (due to using methotrexate for rheumatoid arthritis) the dentist pulled the tooth, and prescribed heavy antibiotics to quell the infection.
The antibiotics also killed the friendly gut bacteria that helps me to digest my food, and being full of shit makes me grumpy and ruins my social life. It contributes to a general sadness and depression. It turns out that what is good for me is part of a vicious circle that life and the aging process itself engenders, and I feel like it's pretty much up to me to counter it of my own volition however I can.
Next, I'm scheduled to have the cataracts in my right eye removed and the lens replaced by surgery during the next month. I'm extremely pleased about that happening, but it means that I'll be given lots more antibiotics to counter possible infection, and that will kill off the probiotics that help my gut digest food again. Two months in a row. Thus, my enthusiasm for the probiotics that come with the kefir to bring some balance in my tortured old body. In the Wilhelm/Baynes translation of the I Ching it is written, "Care of the cow brings extreme good fortune."
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