Random musings
So my doctor wants me to be consuming large amounts of probiotics for a while (ie several months) - see if my colonies are just low and maybe that's why I have all these random skin fungal infections. Makes perfect sense, don't know why it never occurred to me before.
So I've been eating a lot of yogurt. Read this nifty idea where you get a quart of plain yogurt and split it up into an ice cube tray or two and freeze it, then pop the cubes into a ziploc in the freezer. Then when you need to make some more, you thaw one into your milk and you don't need to buy an entire new quart every time. (which is rad, since you can't get plain yogurt in a small pot, and you can only start a new batch from the old one for so long before the strains get too weak to make yogurt out of)
In the meantime, I'd gotten a kombucha scoby from a friend of mine at about the same time. So I've been learning to brew kombucha. Pretty simple, make a very sugary tea, bring it to room temperature, add the colony and give it a week or so to ferment. Pour off, make sure you keep the jar about 10% full, add new tea and start again. Take what you poured off, let it sit for a few days at room temp, then chill and drink. The jar I'm brewing it in gives me about two bottles a week, which isn't much, but there's only one of me.
Well, kombucha scobies produce babies every time you ferment a batch. So I offered up some of the babies on a local yahoo group, and the lady who asked for one mentioned that she makes water kefir. I've heard the term, but the only kefir I've encountered before has been milk kefir. So I asked her if we could do a swap, some kefir grains for a kombucha scoby. I didn't know anything about making water kefir, so I'm learning now. It ferments a lot faster - 24-48 hours as opposed to a week! So I suspect I'll be drinking a lot of that. It wants a lot more than kombucha wants, too. Kombucha just wants tea and sugar. Kefir wants minerals in the water, though from what I've read you can add baking soda and calcium if you have soft water. I don't know how hard or soft mine is, but I don't feel the weird squeaky/residue sensation I get with very hard water, so I assume it's been softened to some degree or another. Some people use clean eggshells; I'm hoping to be able to get some nice fresh eggs from one of the moms at the dance studio within the next couple of weeks (probably after next paycheck, I'm a bit broke right now). In the meantime, I chopped up a bit of one of my calcium/magnesium supplements - it's food-based rather than lab-created, so it should work, right? It needs sugar to eat, of course, and I am out (used my last in the batch of kombucha I started on Sunday) - so I used powdered sugar. It's the ONLY sugar I currently have in the house. Memo to self, trip to WinCo tomorrow (powdered milk, too, for the yogurt). It likes dried fruit, I have some dried cranberries on hand, we'll see how that tastes. :) Something I read also says it likes lemon slices, so I have a few floating on top. Hoping this will work!
So, there we go. Three different sources of probiotics. They're all different cultures, so the combination should cover pretty much everything, right?
If nothing else, I'll have some new and interesting things to drink. :) About to get involved in a raw milk group again, so maybe I'll see if I can also track down some milk kefir grains. Though on a few water kefir groups, I've had people say that milk kefir is harder and they killed the milk kefir while their water kefir grains were fine. Funny, from what I recall, all milk kefir grains want is whole raw milk, which I could provide it... (Jersey milk too, yum!)
So I've been eating a lot of yogurt. Read this nifty idea where you get a quart of plain yogurt and split it up into an ice cube tray or two and freeze it, then pop the cubes into a ziploc in the freezer. Then when you need to make some more, you thaw one into your milk and you don't need to buy an entire new quart every time. (which is rad, since you can't get plain yogurt in a small pot, and you can only start a new batch from the old one for so long before the strains get too weak to make yogurt out of)
In the meantime, I'd gotten a kombucha scoby from a friend of mine at about the same time. So I've been learning to brew kombucha. Pretty simple, make a very sugary tea, bring it to room temperature, add the colony and give it a week or so to ferment. Pour off, make sure you keep the jar about 10% full, add new tea and start again. Take what you poured off, let it sit for a few days at room temp, then chill and drink. The jar I'm brewing it in gives me about two bottles a week, which isn't much, but there's only one of me.
Well, kombucha scobies produce babies every time you ferment a batch. So I offered up some of the babies on a local yahoo group, and the lady who asked for one mentioned that she makes water kefir. I've heard the term, but the only kefir I've encountered before has been milk kefir. So I asked her if we could do a swap, some kefir grains for a kombucha scoby. I didn't know anything about making water kefir, so I'm learning now. It ferments a lot faster - 24-48 hours as opposed to a week! So I suspect I'll be drinking a lot of that. It wants a lot more than kombucha wants, too. Kombucha just wants tea and sugar. Kefir wants minerals in the water, though from what I've read you can add baking soda and calcium if you have soft water. I don't know how hard or soft mine is, but I don't feel the weird squeaky/residue sensation I get with very hard water, so I assume it's been softened to some degree or another. Some people use clean eggshells; I'm hoping to be able to get some nice fresh eggs from one of the moms at the dance studio within the next couple of weeks (probably after next paycheck, I'm a bit broke right now). In the meantime, I chopped up a bit of one of my calcium/magnesium supplements - it's food-based rather than lab-created, so it should work, right? It needs sugar to eat, of course, and I am out (used my last in the batch of kombucha I started on Sunday) - so I used powdered sugar. It's the ONLY sugar I currently have in the house. Memo to self, trip to WinCo tomorrow (powdered milk, too, for the yogurt). It likes dried fruit, I have some dried cranberries on hand, we'll see how that tastes. :) Something I read also says it likes lemon slices, so I have a few floating on top. Hoping this will work!
So, there we go. Three different sources of probiotics. They're all different cultures, so the combination should cover pretty much everything, right?
If nothing else, I'll have some new and interesting things to drink. :) About to get involved in a raw milk group again, so maybe I'll see if I can also track down some milk kefir grains. Though on a few water kefir groups, I've had people say that milk kefir is harder and they killed the milk kefir while their water kefir grains were fine. Funny, from what I recall, all milk kefir grains want is whole raw milk, which I could provide it... (Jersey milk too, yum!)