One of the reasons why I was so upset the other day when Iberia lost my suitcase the other day was my grave concern over my kefir. Kefir grains, a culture of live bacteria that transform milk into an accid yoghurt-like liquid, are like my pets. They are alive and I carry them in a glass jar with some milk (their food) everywhere I go. I have been reproducing my kefir grains every single day ever since I got them from a Spanish friend since you cannot buy the live kefir grains: you have to get them from someone and then reproduce them yourself. This is what I have been doing in the past 7 years as I have been carrying them everywhere Ive been, from China to Mexico, from Peru to Israel and from Greece to Brazil and Colombia. Making kefir is easy. You need a colander, a wooden or plastic (never metal!) laddle and a glass jar. Every morning I make (or have made for me...) my extra healthy breakfast with oatmeal, ground linseeds, nuts, a banana, grated coconut, ground sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, all added to my kefir. I use half-skimmed milk which I pass thru the strainer, and I wash well the kefir grains that are left in the colander squeezing all water off with the wooden laddle. I put back the kefir grains into the clean jar, I add milk and my kefir is ready by the next morning. It can stay in the same milk for up to 3, maybe 4 days. This is why I was so stressed when IBERIA lost my suitcase. My thoughts were going to my beloved kefir bacteria slowly dying of starvation in my suitcase after having fermented (eaten up) the little milk I had put in their jar. The first thing I did when IBERIA finally (in the night of the 6th day) delivered my suitcase to my apartment in Bogotà, before even changing into clean clothes and shaving, was to check on my kefir. A disappointment: after 7 years of keeping it alive across 4 continents, my bacteria looked dead in a gooey substance that was the over-fermented milk in the jar. I wasted no time. I frantically started washing off the gooey substance with the help of the colander and the ladle, and I put the cleaned kefir grains back into the jar together with milk which I had bought in anticipation of the return of the prodigal suitcase. Three days went by. I was looking at the milk in the jar, smelling it frequently to see if the milk had gone bad. The milk was not turning into kefir. But neither did it go bad. In the morning of the fourth day something changed. The milk looked a little thicker. Just like kefir is supposed to look. But it was still not kefir. That happened the following day. My life-giving liquid was there. My bacteria had miraculously survived IBERIAs incompetence. I had my kefir. I had my linseeds, my sesame, pumpkin and sunflower seeds, my bananas, my grated coconut and my selenium-loaded Brazil nuts. An extra healthy breakfast was about to be created. Like almost every day in the past 7 years.
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 00:34:50 +0000
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