The Test Lab

My kitchen definitely looks like a test lab!

Kitchen Experiments

First, and foremost in my opinion, we had kefir smoothies for breakfast. I bought the dried kefir powder at our local health food store to try it. Unlike regular kefir grains that can be used over and over and grow til they need to be divided, the kefir made from the powder can be used as a starter for another batch but only a few times and then, apparently, it becomes too diluted to effectively.

I started a jar of kefir Friday about 3 p.m. The instructions were to let it sit 12 – 18 hours. By noon yesterday, it had been well over 18 hours and it hadn’t done anything. The milk didn’t have a bad smell . . just smelled like milk and tasted like room temp milk. I almost dumped it but while emailing back and forth with a friend, she said “just leave it” so I did. Thinking maybe I screwed up somehow but really . . you open the packet, dump the powder in milk, stir, I went ahead and started another jar with a second packet of powder.

It was well after midnight when I went to bed last night and I checked on it before going to bed and it was done! Thick, smelled a little like buttermilk. Sucess! I stuck it in the fridge.

This morning we had our smoothies. Kefir, chia seeds, ground flax seeds, spirulina, strawberries and bananas. I also used some of this kefir to try to start another jar. Hopefully that will work.

Other jars sitting on the counter . . beans to sprout – we finished the last of our sprouts yesterday so I should have had some already farther along but I’ve been busy playing with other fermenting projects. There’s tea that I’m trying to use some leftover older kombucha and some from a bottle we bought to grow a scoby; there’s three jars of pickles, two with whole pickles and one with spears and a couple of jars of leftover salt water in case I come up with any more fermenting ideas over the next day or so.

I’m having fun. It may be healthy . . maybe not but we are both enjoying doing it.