Old Houses – Fabulous Fermenting

For those who don’t know me, I really do like to experiment with stuff, try new things and really there isnt really much that scares me like that. It might go back to curiousty as a child trying to figure out what makes the hallway night light turn on and off…oops fuse blown or mud pies, or even trying to bake bread on the heat register on the floor in the kitchen… Yes I did say curiousity.

Some of the food my food curiousities have been lots of fun, some intersting and some just down right wrong but I have tried a few things that I like.

Fermenting is one area that I have been really enjoying. It includes a wide variety of areas and they have been intersting. I am self taught in a lot of areas and this one is no exception.

We started with saurkraut and cheese making back in Ontario I’d say about two years before we moved to the island. Russ discoved a guy by the name of Joel from Well Preserved. We we growing quite a few fruits and veggies in our backyard and we had this over abundant crop of peaches and we were looking for recipes. Well Preserved was a hubby and wife that live in Toronto (downtown) who made the most of their little lot growing cooking and preserving fresh food. He had some really cool recipes for fermenting and we started with saurkraut… it was so good, we then tried homemade cheese which was lots of fun. It was this curiousity that really launched us into our being more self sufficient lifestyle we were headed into.

Its funny what inspires you and just where that takes you. It was truly through all that research and discovery that we really jumped all in and started our new life here on the island. Its been quite a learning journey that has been so much fun.

So since being here we have tried quite a few different things in the fermenting area. I grew my own scobies to brew Kombucha, I have learned how to make fermented “pop” with whey and just recently learned about kefir and have “brew” some pretty amazing kefir the last couple of weeks. Thanks to a good friend she had some extra kefir grains to offer to people that wanted to try it so I got some and I love it.

My kefir grains are growing so I will be experiementing with converting some over from milk to water. I will let you know how that goes in a few weeks.

So it is so easy to make kefir I don’t know why I didn’t try it sooner. I will describe how i make it here. You start off with the grains aproximately 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of grains, you add 2 cups of milk I use homoginized or whole milk. I put it a large mason jar close the lid label it and leave it on the counter in the kitchen usually overmight for about 12 hours. When it has femented I strain it out in a bowl to seperate the brewed kefir and kefir grains. I bottle the finished kefir for use. I then start the process again that easy.

I usually puree up fresh fruit like bananas, blueberries, strawberries or rasphberries and mix it in with the finished kefir. Its so delicious, I don’t add any sugar but you could if you want too my suggestion would be honey, maple syrup or organic cane sugar.

The probiotic content in kefir is even better then yogurt….

So that’s my new fermenting curiousity….. I do have more stuff I want to try but for now this was the easiest.

When I get a chance to convert some grains over to water kefir, I will get a chance to do some fruit pop like drinks with it that are naturally carbinated by the grains. I’ll let you know how it goes….