☯
It was a joke. I'm not a cannibal. I didn't really eat any Chinese people at the restaurant. I doubt I could get anybody to cook them anyway. I don't eat raw foods much. I'm too snaggletoothed to chew them up in order to digest them.
The water kefir I've been making and drinking has turned out well. It could be better. In the desire to make it better I bought a plastic bottle of mineral drops at the health food store. One of the primary needs of the water kefir grains revolves around whether or not there is enough minerals in the sugar water used to make it.
The pundits offer all sorts of advice about how to tackle this problem. All the way from adding a tiny bit of baking soda and some eggshells to the water to newt's eyes (not really). Others have suggested putting a multivitamin in the water, and some of the members of the e-mail discussion groups I subscribe to say that the simplest thing to do is to buy the liquid vitamin drops and put the appropriate amount into the water, and be done with it. I chose the latter course. It's as good a way as any to make sure I get enough minerals in the kefir.
The milk kefir I'm making is a different story. The problem has been that the milk I've been putting the milk kefir cultures in has been separating into curds and whey altogether too fast. When that happens it's hard for me to retrieve my milk kefir granules from the milk I put them in. I didn't know what to do to rectify this situation. I didn't know what question to ask the discussion group to get a helpful answer.
It's all good. The response of one of the moderators of the group to another member's problems solved mine. I've been using way too many kefir grains for the amount of milk I was putting them in. He suggested one teaspoon for two cups of milk, and I was probably using a tablespoon per cup or more.
He also wrote about the warm temperatures of summer and how that affects the amount of kefir grains he uses, and described the method he uses to strain the grains out of the milk. I used a less gentle, more haphazard way of straining. Not in total ignorance, With no experience I don't know how to read good advice like this until I screw everything up.
As it turned out, I had not really screwed things up. The reason I had not was due to simply lacking the insight experience provides. I was lucky I scrutinized this dude's post to somebody else, for an answer to a problem I didn't know I didn't have. I.E., I didn't know that I didn't really have a problem until later.
In response to the possible insight I got out of Harry's post I went straightaway to my kitchen and added twice as much milk to the new batch I started in order to find out if I could save any of my kefir grains from my klutzy misunderstanding. I hoped with only hope left that whatever kefir grains that might have survived my crude attempt to strain them would be revived in new milk.
This morning when I went into the kitchen to check on what happened to my milk kefir grains, I saw that the strained material I'd garnered from the separated whey was floating on the top of the new milk. Immediately I was encouraged.
I picked up the quart canning jar and swirled the contents around (which is recommended from ancient times) to see if there was any early separation. It seemed thick, viscous, and utterly (pun intended) desirable for an ideal batch of milk kefir.
When I bought the commercial milk to use to make kefir, I bought some whole, vitamin D ULTRA Pasteurized, homogenized milk. Some of the more experienced members of the discussion groups aren't too happy with the ULTRA killing of the good things in raw milk. Many of them only use fresh raw milk and seem ready to argue about the proper goodness of doing that. Others think they're a bit fanatical and use commercial skimmed milk with success.
When I thought I had really screwed up and possibly killed my kefir grains, I became much more flexible about how I should make kefir. I decided to go buy some regular whole milk that was homogenized and merely pasteurized instead of being Ultra pasteurized, in case that might have been part of the problem.
When I got back from the grocery store (a different one where I could read the labels better with my cataract-ed eyes), I decided to strain the batch I'd left on my kitchen counter to make all night, that had the kefir grains floating on top of it. Hopefully, whatever healthy grains that had survived my neophyte's plight could be strained out of the thinner milk.
After I used Harry's method of gently straining the kefir grains out from the fermented mix, it turned out that practically all the grains I'd retrieved from the separated curds and whey were kefir grains. They weren't dead at all. That's why they had turned the new milk I put them in, into really good kefir.
Ironically, instead of having killed the few milk kefir grains I obtained, I had tripled my supply of milk kefir grains, and learned an important point about using too many.
I decided to make a kefir smoothie with the kefir from last night with some frozen strawberry slices I'd bought for that purpose. I tossed a handful of the frozen slices into the blender, added the three cups of milk kefir, and... voila! I had a bland strawberry kefir smoothie that was a little too frothy. My smoothies will get better. It was only my second one I've ever made.
Ehhh... Who cares? I'll live until I die. I'm a lousy cook too, and I ain't dead yet. '-)
☯
