Good-bye Soda, Hello Kefir!

First things first - Yes, I missed yesterday's post. Honestly, I was just tired and didn't want to think. We had the privilege of keeping a friend's 3 week old baby all weekend and loved every minute of it, but I'm not used to feeding, burping, changing around the clock so yesterday, I slept.  It was worth it! Thanks to the ONE person who noticed...and called me on it. Love ya.

So today, I'm going to post about our newest adventure at the E house: kefir water! I sometimes jump on random bandwagons so thankfully started this while Big Daddy was out of town for two weeks so I didn't get any grief from him. Three summers ago (man that seems like yesterday!), I started making/growing/drinking kombucha. We definitely felt the benefits, but it was, well, weird...and tasted pretty gross. So when the same friend that started me on that, was talking about kefir, I ignored her. Then I heard others talking about it and how good is it and decided to suck it up and give it a try.

With slight anxiety, we "borrowed" some kefir grains from that friend and called another friend and got the scoop on what to do with these little things that look like the lining of a diaper after it got wet. Yum.


I was so nervous to attempt this, and really had flashbacks of kombucha gone bad. But I'm here to tell you, and I wouldn't lie to you, this stuff is the bomb!  I don't understand it and honestly don't need to. What I know is I put some sugar and water in with those kefir grains, cover it for a day or two, then strain it and put some juice in with it and let it sit another day or two, and we have carbonated goodness that everyone begs for. And it is packed full of probiotics. Win-Win!

I have found numerous sites with the details on how to make kefir soda so I'm not going to bore you with that here...google it!...but my favorite site so far has been the Cultures for Health site.Check it out. She has videos and Q&As and all the real info.

I'm a simple person. I just know that this:

 Plus this:

 

 

Equals this:

 That two days later turns into this:

Then we basically lather, rinse, and repeat!

We like it so much that I had to research how to make more, more, more! So I know have rotating jars since I just let the first bath ferment for one day and the second batch for two. Pretty much, we drink two jars a day. I also found that using the mason jar lid was not letting it carbonate, so I started putting a baggie over the jar before screwing the lid on and we were back in business.

The kids favorite juice is Pomegranate/Blueberry 100% juice. We have tried apple and it is ok, but they like the other better. I have some cranapple in there to use next. We tried putting raisins in there, because I read that makes it taste like Dr. P. It doesn't. It tasted like straight up beer...and we don't like beer so ended up tossing that one. I had just made a small 1 cup sample to see if we liked it. We also liked adding a little vanilla and it tasted like cream soda. Really. There are lots of ideas for different combinations to keep the variety.

So there you go...a peek into my weirdness. Can we still be friends? I won't make you drink anything funny, unless you want to. :)