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The milk kefir grains I ordered arrived a little after 2 p.m. yesterday. Before 3 o'clock I had put them in a cup and a half of whole milk to get them started converting the milk's lactose into kefir. I intend to let them stay in the milk until 3 o'clock today unless they separate into curds and whey before then. If they do, I'll try to strain out the grains and put them in some fresh milk. The idea behind changing out the milk is to acclimate the grains to my house with new milk. Until last Monday they were in somebody's house in Michigan. Two different worlds.
I did pretty much the same thing with the water kefir granules I received from Texas last Monday. I put them in some sugary water with a teaspoon of molasses right away. I didn't know when to strain the grains out and put them in a new batch of sugar water. I wrote a post to the e-mail discussion group to ask when I should do that. I asked what signs or omens I should look for in order to figure the right time. I was told to taste it. The kefir granules eat the sugar. If the mixture was still really sweet it wasn't time yet.
Tasting a solution that I had deliberately put bacteria in was somewhat of a problem for me. All my life I've been told to kill germs, and to avoid bacteria like crazy. Now, I'm going to deliberately drink them and put them inside my body? It was a challenge, but finally I did it. It was very sweet. It apparently wasn't time. I tasted it every few hours after that, but it was still sweet.
A member of one of the kefir groups I subscribe to wrote in saying here kefir wasn't doing right. One of the pundits wrote back and told her that her problem may be that she had left them in the sugar solution too long, and they were dying in their own excrement. She suggested that the member put them in a fresh batch of sugar water. Although she wasn't writing that to me, I decided to do the same thing.
It was my first attempt to make water kefir. The woman in Texas who sent me my water kefir grains was very generous in the amount of grains she sent me through Priority Mail. I measured out one tablespoon of grains for each cup of sugar water, and put the rest of them in the refrigerator. When my initial solution stayed sweet after 48 hours I decided to dump the rest of the grains in the solution to see if they could help eat the sugar and make it taste tart.
Later that evening I decided to strain all of the kefir grains out of the initial solution and place all the grains I had into a new batch of sugar water. I had some ginger powder I'd bought just to make the solution tasty, so when I changed water I put a teaspoon of ginger in with the grains along with the teaspoon of molasses and a slice of lemon I'd peeled the rind off of.
The strained water from the initial solution was still a little sweet, so I put some of the ginger powder and a slice of lemon in it, sealed it tight, and put it in the refrigerator to "rest". I came up with that idea on my own without asking advice about it. This water looked like it had some baby grains in it, and I wanted them to keep working the unconverted sugar, but slower. I planned to leave this initial solution in the refrigerator all night.
This morning I took it out and put it on the counter so that when it warmed up with the day the baby grains would start working, and if they did and the solution lost some of it's sweetness and got tart I'd know I had done the right thing, and drink the solution, baby grains and all.
For some reason I wasn't all that surprised this morning when I tasted the new solution I'd put all my water kefir grains in, and even after 12-15 hours it was barely sweet, and already had a tartness to the taste. Not only that, but from the looks of it, I had many more grains in the jar. They had multiplied. This was exactly what I hoped and figured. I want to have enough spare grains to experiment with, but without risking my entire mother culture.
Recently, I've been reflecting on whether living probiotic gut bacteria will survive what happens to it as it progresses through the system. It seems like one's stomach acid would destroy most living things, but I don't rightly know anything about it. Pro or con. I know that if I burp up some stomach acid into my throat it is a very unpleasant experience. It burns.
Studying oracles for my entire adult life after I became thirty years old was my way of dealing with my intense need to understand: Why me? Why can't I just be a real boy instead of a mannequin whose strings are pulled by a docetic spirit who can't become human.
Currently, PBS is showing a rerun of the life of Buddha, and they've shown it several times a day besides night after night. Whatta I expect from a State television station? They even play a lotta ancient, fifties style, burlesque propaganda from BBC. They can't get away from the old Cold War era mentality. No blame.
Its like trying to fight a ground war with stormtroopers in a fight with insurgents who melt into the woodworks where they hide behind the innocents, and then wait for your shame for shooting women and children to eat you. Lots of veterans can't live with what they've seen done. What they've done. War is hell.
The Buddha documentary has been on so many times even I get it. I know the rap. I've said all of it my own self in other words. Siddhartha and I had a lot in common to drive us out into the world to find our own gospel truth. That's exactly why the Gautama Buddha represents Everyman. All the stories of all the world saviors are the story of everyman. You are supposed to perceive the similarities in their life and your's.
I know I do. At least some of the stories of the known world saviors have parts in them that I identify strongly with. Particularly some parts of the Buddha stories I had conveniently left out of my previous versions. It was a sin of omission. I appear to have simply ignored the parts of the Buddha stories that seemed to copycat my own story.
For instance, when Siddhartha was about to leave his father's castle to enter the mundane world he stopped by his wife's room where she lay with their newborn baby boy in her adoring arms. It is claimed that he named the boy Fester because he knew that if he went over and picked the boy up and held him in his arms he would never be able to walk away from a life that had been chosen for him.
I know that feeling. I got caught up in that dynamic several times. Sometime married, and sometime not. It's not to die for nor an impulsive lark to get out of responsibility. It hurts. Some seekers do not survive that pain.
Like the ones who voluntarily join the military to find out if they measure up to mental and physical intense standards. To find out if they got the right stuff needed to destroy their superiors' enemies upon command with a governmental license to kill. Some professional soldiers end up not feeling so professional. Like the Buddha. He was a total failure when he sat down under the Bo tree.
What happened to the Buddha; what happened to Jesus; what happened to Mohammed; what happened to Krishna/Arjuna... happens to us all. We are all Everyman on the sa-me journey. Nobody knows.
They don't. It's the Gods' own truth. Nobody knows. That's why you can do what thy wilt as if your ongoing decisions were the Whole of The Law. Nobody gnows. They think you're doing what they would be doing if they were you. What can it mean if you don't know you're not what they claim they would be? You gotta be careful. Some people ain't got no couth. '-)
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