Chai Kefir

Sometimes I love kefir. It is frothy and bubbly and oh so mild and satisfying. For a girl trying to be gluten free (and having a hard time of it during breakfast time) kefir is a good immunity support and full of protein. Throw in some granola and some frozen raspberries and you have yourself a great breakfast.

Then there are times when I HATE kefir. There are times where I cannot face my kefir. It is slimy and sour. It is tedious to make for a woman who cannot even find 5 minutes to drag some eyeliner across her face. Sometimes getting the last sip down is torture. And don't forget the times that the pink mash of granola, raspberries and kefir has ended up in the garbage can because I just can't stomach one more bite. Please can I just have my sausage egg and cheese sandwich please??!!!

Eating the same thing over and over makes me nuts. I need change. I need freshness. Call it spring fever.

So my friend suggested I try his kefir recipe.

Chai Kefir

1 teaspoon spice mixture**
1 tablespoon maple syrup or honey
1 cup kefir

Place all ingredients in a jar and shake until the sweetener is incorporated into the kefir.

**For the spice mixture, just mix all of the following together:
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 teaspoon ground ginger
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1/2 teaspoon turmeric

This yummy drink is really refreshing and the turmeric has many health benefits! But what I really appreciate is that this kefir helps me stay on track and get those hard boiled eggs down, even when the muffins are calling. And oh...the muffins do call.

Kefir Versus Yogurt

So what is the big deal between kefir and yogurt? Is it just that one is more liquid-y than the other?

I have known about kefir for some time. I have seen it in the grocery store and I have heard about people who drank it. I knew that kefir wasn’t just drinkable yogurt, but I admit, I wasn’t sure why it wasn’t just drinkable yogurt. So what is the difference between kefir, regular yogurt and Greek yogurt?

For the sake of this post I am just sharing some insight about the PLAIN varieties of all three products. It is true, most of the regular yogurt on the marketplace is sold inclusive of fruit, lots of sugar and in many case high-fructose corn syrup or even worse, aspartame. It (she laughs) wouldn’t be fair of me to compare only lightly pasteurized kefir to ultra pasteurized yogurt with HFCS. And I like fairness. So here are some things to keep in mind.

· Kefir and yogurt are both fermented milk products. That is, milk that has been partially ‘eaten’ by bacteria. These bacteria are both specific strains (not just any airborne bacteria will do) and beneficial to your gut.

· Yogurt usually contains one or two strains of bacteria like acidophilus and bulgaricus. These strains are common in Eastern Europe and the Caucuses. Something that our Bulgarian babysitter loves to proudly remind us of…often.

· Kefir contains up to 13 strains of different bacteria. According to kefir.net, those strains can include “Lactobacillus Caucasus, Leuconostoc, Acetobacter species, and Streptococcus species.”

· Also according to kefir.net, “Yogurt contains transient beneficial bacteria that keep the digestive system clean and provide food for the friendly bacteria that reside there. But kefir can actually colonize the intestinal tract, a feat that yogurt cannot match.” This was the information I was looking for on the internet….thank you.

· In case you didn’t read that last one: According to kefir.net, “Yogurt contains transient beneficial bacteria that keep the digestive system clean and provide food for the friendly bacteria that reside there. But kefir can actually colonize the intestinal tract, a feat that yogurt cannot match.” That is pretty much the most important point in this post.

· The beneficial bacterium that is found in kefir and yogurt is found in the whey. Greek yogurt is plain yogurt that has been strained of much of its whey. This is why Greek yogurt is higher in protein (and calories) per ounce than its unstrained sister. Most of what remains are the milk solids. Greek yogurt is also lower in probiotic activity because it has had most of the whey removed. I love Greek yogurt because its taste is rich and thick and fatty. It is less tart and very pleasing. But I am not delusional; the greater probiotic choice is plain yogurt and definitely kefir.

The health claims of kefir beyond what I have mentioned above are long long long. It apparently helps everything from ADD to cancer to fighting Candida. And while I am not disputing that here, I remind everyone that kefir, like every other food and drug on the market, will likely work differently in different bodies. The taste is pleasing and the digestive benefits have been proven. And I love how filling it is. Whatever other positive benefits you reap are awesome, but conclusive of all 78 items on this list from the link I posted? I am just not sure. I don’t like posting anything here that I claim to be a wonder drug/ food. However that being said, I definitely have better digestion and by that I mean that my husband is less able to poke fun at me after a Mexican dinner.

I am truly in LOVE with my kefir. Go to http://www.kefirlady.com/ if you are curious. She has lots of great information, instructions and recipes. And she has been a pleasure to deal with!

This post is part of Traditional Tuesdays at Real Food Whole Health and Simple Lives Thursday at GNOWFLINS and Sustainable Eats and Fight Back Fridays at Food Renegade

Kefir! Kefir! Kefir!

The lady at the farmer’s market who sells me my milk every week (I now know her name-that is a big step!) has tried in the past to sell me on the Milk Thistle yogurt.

“I have another customer who says it beats the pants off the yogurt at {insert another local farm}, you should maybe try it. It is drinkable, a little looser than {insert another local farm}’s yogurt.”

I regretfully inform my almost-new friend (whaddya want, I am actually pretty shy deep down), that I am not interested in her yogurt because it is drinkable. I explain Thing 1 likes Greek style yogurt, I buy the other yogurt because Thing 2 occasionally eats it and doesn’t like the Greek stuff. Oh, and I cook with {insert another local farm}’s yogurt.

Finally she wears me down, okay I will try it. And it was delicious. But I didn’t buy it again. I just wasn’t ready for change. But maybe, just maybe, my almost-new friend planted a seed…

Late last month, inspired by a recipe I had seen for vanilla water kefir soda during a blog carnival, I decided to hop on over to The Kefir Lady’s website. MB, my kombucha mentor suggested I try kefir, but at the time I wasn’t interested. He told me about the website though and I filed it away. Thinking about probiotic cream soda though was enough to make me commit to shelling out cash for kefir grains. And while I was at it, I might as well try using the milk grains. I ordered one order of milk grains and one order of water grains.

Marilyn contacted me about a week later to say that they would be arriving the following week, which they did. I didn’t mind paying for my grains. Especially because I do not know anyone personally except MB who makes their own kefir. When the grains showed up I was very excited! I bought coconut water right away for the water grains and poured the milk over the milk grains that night.

I wasn’t sure what to expect. The process for the water grains seemed more like the kombucha with which I was comfortable…sugar water solution, let ferment for 3-5 days, strain and allow for a second fermentation in a bottle. But the milk kefir procedure was altogether different. Every day?! They would eat more and more and more milk if I let them? The grains sounded like selfish greedy little beasties to me.

But I gave it a whirl. The first day they produced a thin mild kefir, about 2 cups worth. I wasn’t sure what to do with it, so I put it in the fridge. The next day it was the same, but I could already see that the grains were growing bigger. My milk source is excellent and quite high in fat, and Marilyn said the grains LOVE fat. I was making too much kefir. I had a quart after 2 days and I hadn’t even started drinking any! Not to mention the everyday ritual. I was starting to feel like the chubby guy in those Dunkin Donuts commercials from the 80’s. Only I was getting up every morning bleary eyed saying “it’s time to make the kefir, it’s time to make the kefir.”

Finally I did begin to drink the stuff. At first I took a serving, 8 or so ounces, to work. I had my kefir with my granola. I would have brought milk to have with my granola anyway, so this was an easy substitute for calories already in my diet. I tried it, and you know, I really liked it. The taste was pleasing and mild. The texture was not unlike buttermilk. In fact, the kefir itself looked a lot like the buttermilk I had used to make quark all those months ago… And within a week the texture got a little thicker. Especially when I started adjusting the ratio of milk to grains. My water kefir on the other hand was strange, it tasted like sweet fizzy coconut water, but it smelled like cheese.

I have been drinking kefir for breakfast every day for the last couple weeks. It is way more filling than regular milk, so I have been able to lessen my serving of granola or on some days and entirely omit it on others. And to my kefir I add a teaspoon or two of honey (please don’t tell me that that defeats the purpose!) and I have been drinking it through a straw. Although I had stayed away from kefir for the reason that it was too loose, now its liquidity was exactly the characteristic that I was finding the most pleasing. Drinking kefir was downright…comforting. Wholly unexpected.