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Miscellanea: Low-carb, high-protein, probiotics, fermentation, canning, and other stuff
Tuesday, February 28, 2017
Tuesday, Feb 28
Normal Tuesday stuff today. Breakfast smoothie. No lunch because I was busy and forgot to eat (not good!). Dinner at Chipotle.
Monday, February 27, 2017
More Monday, Feb 27
Oh yeah, other things I did today:
- Cycled my water kefir
- Harvested my lentil & mung bean sprouts (and then used them in dinner!)
- Rinsed & refreshed the water on my green peas, Lady Cream peas, soybeans, & the mixed bean sprouts
- Made more tea - I do this every day, actually, because I drink 2 quarts of tea every day.
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Monday Monday, Feb 27
Smoothie for breakfast. Lunch was a low-carb tortilla sandwich with turkey & ham. I was out of cream cheese, so I substituted butter and some store-bought Ranch dressing I need to use up. Just used a little and it gave a nice flavor without adding too many carbs.
For dinner, I cut up two chicken breasts (about a pound of meat) and cooked them up in my not-a-wok non-stick stir fry pan. After the chicken was cooked through, I set it aside and added 1/4 cup of store-bought beef broth to the pan (again, because I have it on hand and need to use it up), and added one medium chopped onion, and 2 cloves of minced garlic. After the onion was translucent, I added my garbanzo bean sprouts, my almond Sprouts (*), and two handfuls of lentil and mung bean sprouts, covered the pan and set the timer for 2 minutes.
When the timer went off, I added another 1/4 cup of broth, one medium zucchini and one small carrot, both cut into smal-ish pieces. Covered the pot. 2 minute timer.
Added a pinch of sesame seeds, some fresh-ground salt and pepper, 1/4 cup of balsamic vinegar, a spoonful of homemade pesto sauce, and returned the chicken to the pot. Covered. 2 minute timer.
Stirred everything up and declared it done! Forgot to take a picture before serving, so here's the pan after about half of it had been eaten!
Savory and flavorful. Yum! 👍
(*) I have no idea why autocorrect sometimes capitalizes Sprouts and sometimes doesn't. 😒🤷♀️
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Morning weight, Feb 27
Once again forgot to weigh myself until after I was dressed. Also until after I'd had breakfast.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
Sunday, Feb 26
Had my usual morning smoothie for breakfast, then after church I had a low-carb tortilla sandwich with cream cheese, turkey, ham, & green leafy sprouts.
I also rinsed and renewed the water on my bean sprouts. It always amazes me how much water they soak up! Here's last night's pic:
And here they were today. Wow!
And look how pretty the mixed beans are!
So they're all soaking for another day. I also started up 1/4 cup of soybeans to soak. I've never had soybean Sprouts, so I figured I'd start with just a little and see how they turn out.
I took a nap this afternoon, then got involved doing work for Area 12, and so didn't make dinner. Brianne said she can scrounge something for herself and I'll just make a smoothie for myself, so it's all good. 👍
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Saturday, February 25, 2017
Saturday, Feb 25
Today was a fairly typical day.
I had a smoothie for breakfast. I did the dishes. I did some work for Timbré, for Area 12, and for school. I also cycled my water kefir, and harvested my green peas, my Lady Cream peas, my garbanzo beans, and my almonds.
For dinner, I made that Southern-style Lady Cream pea recipe again.
This time I added the green peas in as well as the carrots and used some store-bought beef broth that I had on hand. I also added a seasoning mix recommended for use with Lady Cream peas.
I just combined all the dried herbs in one of my Ninja smoothie cups and blended it up, then added it at the end of cooking time.
Oh! One more thing I did. I decided to use the guar gum to thicken up the sauce. It was the first time I've ever used guar gum and for whatever reason, the package had no instructions I could find. So I treated it like corn starch: I put a teaspoon into 1/4 cup of the beef broth and stirred it up.
Well, entirely UNlike corn starch, the guar gum thickened the liquid IMMEDIATELY while I was stirring it! I had to add another 1/4 cup of beef broth before I could pour it into the pan!
Despite that little hiccup, the beans and bacon dish was delicious. Brianne had hers over top of some of the rice I made in the crock pot today.
After dinner, I realized I didn't have anything other than garbanzo beans in the fridge, so I started up some more beans for sprouting:
Left to right: 1/2 cup mixed beans, 1/2 cup Lady Cream peas, 1/2 cup English green peas, 1/4 cup mung beans + 1/4 cup lentils.
The mixed beans are from the sorting I did earlier this week, combined with the remainder of the white beans I already had. They contain two (maybe even three) different kinds of white beans, speckled and red pinto beans, black beans, and black eyed peas.
Oh, and speaking of the rice I made in the crock pot, here it is separated into 2 cup portions (approx one pound each). This is in addition to the portion Brianne had with dinner. It's a combination of brown rice and wheat berries. I didn't put in the wild rice, but will cook that up separately.
Once these have thoroughly cooled, I will pop them into the freezer for Brianne's future use.
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Friday, February 24, 2017
Dinner, Feb 24
Brianne decided she wasn't hungry enough to eat dinner, and if she got hungry later, she has some leftover lasagna in the fridge. So I decided to just put together some snack items and call that dinner.
I had 2 hard boiled eggs, a hunk of Kojak cheese, some macadamia nuts, and some chicharrones (pork rinds), with some cold tea to drink.
Easy, tasty, and it'll keep me full until breakfast!
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I had 2 hard boiled eggs, a hunk of Kojak cheese, some macadamia nuts, and some chicharrones (pork rinds), with some cold tea to drink.
Easy, tasty, and it'll keep me full until breakfast!
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Picnic lunch & cleaning out the pantry, Feb 24
After my usual breakfast smoothie, I packed up a picnic lunch for the two of us. We'd been wanting to do some exploring along Lytle Creek Road -- every time we pass the Sierra Road exit on I-15, we comment that we should go for a drive back there, but we never had time to do it while we were thinking of it. Well, I thought of it last night and so we decided to go today since it was such a beautiful and sunny - but brisk! - day.
Into our insulated carry bag I packed:
Into our insulated carry bag I packed:
- leafy green sprouts
- bread (for Brianne)
- low-carb tortilla (for me)
- cream cheese
- dried apricots
- homemade dilly beans
- dark chocolate-covered macadamia nuts
- white seedless grapes
- a bamboo knife (to spread the cream cheese)
- chopsticks (to eat the dilly beans)
- collapsible bowls (that function as plates when collapsed)
- a big bottle of water
On the way out, we stopped at our local grocery store (Stater Bros) to pick up some lunch meat - turkey, ham, roast beef, and salami.
After driving and exploring for a bit, we stopped at the Applewhite Picnic Area in Scotland, California, right along the Lytle Creek. (Aside: I think it's funny that there's a Scotland in California, AND there's a California in Scotland!)
We took the long way home, going east rather than west on CA-138, and then took CA-178 into Hesperia, which helpfully let us off on Main Street, which we followed west as it turns into Phelan Road, and back home.
Things I also did today:
- rinsed and refreshed the water on my soaking green peas, Lady Cream peas, garbanzo beans
- started some almonds to soak
- started some wheat berries to soak
The wheat berries are soaking because I'm going to add them to brown rice that I'm going to cook, portion out, and freeze for Brianne. The best part is, I can cook it in the slow cooker! The reason I'm adding the wheat berries is because I only have about 1/2 cup of them and it seems silly to throw them out. I'm soaking the wheat berries to soften them but I'll only soak them until tomorrow morning, when I plan to make the rice, so it's not a full-on "sprout" just a soak. I also have some wild rice that I'll add into the crock pot with the rice and wheat berries.
I also went through my pantry and gathered all the pasta so I can give it away to my local Buy Nothing group.
Tomorrow, I'll also take our recyclables in to our local recycling center. I'll post more about that when I do that.
Now it's almost 6pm and I need to make something for dinner! I'll post again later after dinner's done.
TTFN!
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Thursday, February 23, 2017
Lunch and dinner, Feb 23
Today was a fun day. Went to my friend Linda's house in Glendale to meet with Keiko, a visiting handbell musician from Japan.
Linda and I had lunch at the Black Cow Café. I had this awesome salad with bleu cheese, avocado, apple, candied pecans, and mandarin oranges, with a balsamic vinaigrette dressing. I had passion fruit flavored ice tea to drink.
I took the zucchini bread home for Brianne. 😄
After our meeting, we all went to dinner at Trattotia Alegria, an awesome Italian restaurant. The chef is from Parma, Italy. I had some carpaccio and calamari for appetizer and chicken Parmesan for dinner. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture; I was too busy eating the wonderful food! I had a glass of Pinot Noir from the Russian River Valley (California) with dinner.
A fun day and great food! 👍
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Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Buying in bulk, Feb 22
Since this blog is more than just a food log, I wanted to write a bit about buying things in bulk.
The reason we went to Sprouts today is because I thought I remembered the one down in San Marcos had green tea bags sold in bulk, rather than in a box. I may have been wrong, because the one we went to in Costa Mesa today didn't have that, though they had all the other things normally found in bulk at Sprouts.
So, while I ended up buying a box of 100 green tea bags and a box of 20 Earl Grey tea bags, as well as a bag of Bob's Red Mill brand (employee-owned!) guar gum, and a bottle of Sprouts brand rice vinegar, those are all things I had hoped to buy in bulk. Sigh.
We did buy some bulk items, though, and I used reusable cotton bags to do it! We picked up raw almonds, roasted (but not salted) macadamia nuts, and white peaches and put them in the reusable bags.
I wrote the PLU number on the bag using a Crayola washable marker.
Once the bags are empty, I will wash them and they'll be ready for re-use!
We also bought dark chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, cherries, and cranberries, but I used the disposable plastic bags to package them because of the chocolate.
Maybe next time I'll bring some lightweight plastic containers for those things. I specify lightweight because Sprouts doesn't seem to have a way to note the tare weight of your bring-it-from-home reusable containers and while glass containers are more environmentally friendly, plastic weighs a lot less. I don't want to pay for the extra weight when it's just packaging!
There is a market closer to home that features a lot of bulk items and that is WinCo (also employee-owned!). Unfortunately, they have signage indicating that they don't want you to bring your own containers for the bulk items. I'm not sure why that is. It can't be a health department regulation because Sprouts allows it, so it must just be corporate policy. Maybe because they don't want to deal with the tare weight? I should call the headquarters and find out. 🤔
In other news, I had a bag of mixed beans in the pantry which I've been avoiding. It's one of those 14 bean soup mixes, I think. I'm sure that when I bought it, I didn't notice that it had kidney beans in it. I HATE kidney beans! 😤 To me, they taste mealy and yucky. It's why I don't like refried beans: the mouth-feel is like dirty mud. 😖
So, knowing that I would never use this bean mix for its intended purpose, and not wanting to discard it, I have begun to sort it.
I am sorting out the kidney beans into one container, Lima beans into another, and garbanzo beans into a third. Then I am sorting non-sproutable beans such as red lentils and split peas (plus other broken beans) from sproutable beans such as white beans, Pinto beans, black beans, etc. There are some green lentils in there too, and while I normally sprout them, they are so small that I don't want to fuss with separating them out from the red lentils, so they are going into the container with the non-sproutable things.
I have sprouted Lima beans before, but it's a big PITA because when you soak them, their seed coat comes loose, so you have to remove it from each. and. every. bean. 😩 which I don't want to do, so they get a separate container. Plus, Brianne confessed to me today that she feels about Lima beans as I do about kidney beans. I had no idea, after 15 years of marriage! 😳 but as she said, she is not given to complaining about things like that, so whatever. 💁
Once I'm done sorting, I will sprout the mix of white, black, & Pinto beans, plus the separate garbanzo beans. I will use the non-sproutable beans in soup, or maybe stir fry, then I will give away the kidney and Lima beans (as well as some red and white quinoa I found in my pantry) to our local Buy Nothing group. I'm sure someone there would love to have them!
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Wednesday, Feb 22
As usual, breakfast was a smoothie. I really do enjoy them, even though Brianne makes faces at my hydrated chia & flax seeds because they're "goopy". 🙄
For lunch, at Brianne's request, I cut up a pound of beef pot roast meat and stir fried it along with the balsamic vinegar sauce from the other day:
4 cloves of garlic, minced
one small Onion, minced
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
2 Tbsp ponzu sauce
1/2 tsp pink Himalayan salt
and added a couple handfuls of frozen green beans and some sesame seeds. Yum!
The sauce was kind of thin, so I thought that there must be a low carb solution for thickeners. Corn starch has 7 g carb per Tbsp:
which is less than I expected, but still a bit high. So I googled and based on recommendations from this page:
picked up some guar gum from Sprouts market.
In other news, I ordered 2.5 lbs of dried green peas for sprouting, which arrived today. Can you say "over packaged"?!
Yes, that was all that was in the giant box! 🙆
I started some green peas for sprouting and realized that all I had ready was green leafy sprouts, so started some garbanzo beans and Lady Cream peas, too.
I mentioned that we went to Sprouts today. I picked up some more bags of green tea and Earl Grey, plus some macadamia nuts for snackage. Brianne insisted on getting some dark chocolate-covered macadamia nuts, too, and how could I resist? 🤷♀️ I also got some raw almonds for sprouting, which is one of my favorite nuts to Sprout! 👍
After Sprouts, we headed to Costa Mesa for our semi-monthly vocal therapy support group and instead of sitting in the therapist's office, we all went to a nearby Nouveau Industrial Hipster Bohemian Café to hang out and chat. Since lunch had been 5 hours ago, I got a Caprese salad. I forgot to get a pic before I started eating, but this was about halfway through:
OMG so good! I indulged and had two bottles of beer with dinner:
So that was it for today. 😉
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Tuesday, February 21, 2017
Typical Tuesday dinner, Feb 21
Breakfast was my usual smoothie, but I got distracted by work I had to do this morning so I didn't actually have it until almost noon. Oops. So it was breakfast AND lunch.
I had a bowl with lettuce, carnitas, salsa, and cheese. No rice, no beans, and sadly no guacamole. I love guacamole, but there's something in Chipotle's guac that upsets my stomach, so I don't have it. 😞
I'm allergic to vegetable peppers such as bell peppers and other sweet varieties. Poblano peppers are sometimes ok, sometimes not. It depends on the individual pepper. Ditto with jalapeños. Hot peppers seem to be ok, but I don't like them very much. For some reason Chipotle's mild salsa - really more of a pico de gallo - is ok for me, as are some store-bought varieities. Whatever. 🤷♀️
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Morning weight, Feb 21
14 lbs over the course of 6 weeks (42 days) is an average of 1/3 lb per day, which is a nice slow healthy rate. Yay!
Monday, February 20, 2017
Lunch & Dinner, Feb 20
Today I realized I hadn't left the house since last Monday when I came down with that head cold. So we decided to go for a drive to check out the damage from Friday's storm. Omg! As if the Cajon Valley hadn't suffered enough from the Blue Cut fire this summer, the valley was practically scoured from flood waters! We could see where they'd had to plow mucho mounds of mud off of the road so that traffic could get through. Repair crews were out to fix the interstate where it had collapsed.
While out, we decided to stop at McDonald's for lunch. I had their Chicken Bacon Ranch salad with grilled chicken.
Not bad, but not awesome. I think the salads at Wendy's are better, but that's faint praise, indeed.
On to dinner:
So for dinner tonight I did a variation on a traditional Southern field pea dish, the basics of which I found here:
My variations included adding 2 medium carrots after the bacon, onions, and garlic had cooked down, plus 1/2 cup of store-bought vegetable broth. After letting that cook until the carrots were tender, I added the rest of my lentils and mung bean sprouts in with the Lady Cream peas, plus another 1/2 cup of vegetable broth, which used that up.
Since my beans were already tender from sprouting, I didn't have to cook them for an hour and a half, only about 5 minutes or so. That's another benefit to soaking the peas for 48 hours or more: drastically reduced cooking time!
Finally, I added some beet greens to the pot and let them steam for 2 minutes before stirring them in and seasoning with fresh ground salt and pepper. I topped each bowl with some fresh grated pecorino Romano cheese.
Soooo good! I definitely think this will be a permanent part of my dinner repertoire!
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Sunday, February 19, 2017
Sunday dinner, Feb 19
Slept in today, skipped church, and napped most of the afternoon. Finally feel like the head cold is on its way out. I didn't even take any decongestants today! Here's hoping it lasts.
Rinsed my soaked Lady Cream peas and put them into a sprouting tray. Cycled my water kefir. Made more tea. Checked on the fermenting mustard I'm making for Patti - they're still bubbling, so they need to sit for a while longer. I estimate at least another week.
Breakfast was my regular morning smoothie. Lunch was a low-carb tortilla lunch meat wrap. Switched it up a bit for dinner by browning some Italian sausage and setting it aside while I prepared the veggies.
To one cup of store-bought vegetable broth, I added all of my garbanzo bean sprouts (probably about 3/4 cup), plus two big handfuls of lentil and mung bean sprouts. Threw in 1 cup of diced tomatoes plus a can of tomato paste, half a medium zucchini, and 2 small carrots. Finished it off with a generous sprinkling of Italian seasoning and a spoonful of pesto sauce.
Once all the veggies were heated through, I threw the sausage back into the pot and heated it for another 3 minutes. Dished it into bowls and topped it with grated pecorino cheese.
Pretty good! 👍😄
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Saturday, February 18, 2017
Dinner, Feb 18
Since we slept in today, we didn't have lunch. I had my regular smoothie for breakfast, then mid-afternoon Brianne went to the freezer for some meat for dinner. She thought she was bringing in pork chops, but actually brought in another pork roast.
I didn't want to make the same thing I made earlier this week, so I googled a bit for ideas and finally decided to make a slow-cooker balsamic pork roast.
In addition to the frozen one-pound pork loin roast, I put the following into the slow cooker and set it on High:
4 cloves of garlic, minced
1/2 cup balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce
2 Tbsp ponzu sauce
1/2 tsp pink Himalayan salt
After about 1.5 hours, I added one cup of store-bought vegetable broth and 1/2 cup rice vinegar, plus one onion (cut into wedges) and two small carrots (cut into pieces).
In another hour or so, I was able to cut the roast into 4 large chunks. After that, it only took another hour for it to be ready to eat. I didn't make any additional vegetables because I'm still not over this head cold and I'm just exhausted. 👎🤧
We ate the whole thing and it was tender and yummy!
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Friday, February 17, 2017
Stormy Friday
Bad storms in SoCal today and tomorrow. With winds upwards of 70 mph, I'm very glad we took out the last 2 dead trees yesterday morning. Especially since they had vertical tears in their trunks, probably from previous windstorms! It would be no fun at all for them to fall onto the house. 😳
Breakfast was my usual smoothie and I used some of my kefir water as the after rinse. There were some chunks of kefir grains at the bottom, which were like flavorless gummy bears, only not that big. Ah well, that which does not kill me strengthens me, as someone once said. 😉
I also used my kefir water to start up a batch of Lady Cream peas to sprouting.
For lunch Brianne had the leftover pork roast from last night. I was going to have another lunch meat sandwich but decided I'd rather have a quesadilla.
It's just one of the low-carb tortillas heated in a skillet, filled with cheese, and folded in half. Easy-peasy!
For dinner, I dug through our teeny-tiny fridge-side freezer and found two chicken breasts. Put them in to bake and prepped my veggies to go with them.
That's 1/2 cup of kefir water to get things started, then mixed garbanzo bean sprouts, mung bean sprouts, and lentil sprouts with 2 small carrots and half a medium zucccini, followed by some green onions and beet greens, and finishing with some of the pesto I made the other day.
Here's the end result:
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Thursday, February 16, 2017
Dinner, Feb 16
Dinner tonight was super simple, too, since I'm still not feeling well.
About 1:30 this afternoon, I realized that I didn't have any meat thawed for dinner, so I asked Brianne to go out to the garage freezer and bring some in. She asked me what kind of meat to get and I said I didn't care. She returned with a frozen one pound pork loin roast.
I put it, still frozen, into my smaller crock pot, dumped in a container of homemade chicken broth (about 2 cups), a cut-up small onion, my jar of sprouted mixed white and speckled beans, and some salt & pepper, then set it on High to start cooking.
At about 4:00 pm, I dumped in a can of cream of mushroom soup, plus a can-full of water kefir. Happily, cream of mushroom soup only has 7g net carbs per 1/2 cup! Who knew?
I let it continue cooking for another hour and a half.
At that point, I cut the pork roast into about 4 chunks and dumped in the leftover vegetables from the other day, then let it cook for another half hour to let them all heat through.
The finished product?
So yummy and super easy, too! 👍
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My water kefir, Feb 16
Today I had to cycle my water kefir.
I always have 2 quart jars working, helpfully labeled 1 and 2.
Jar 1 is the initial kefir ferment & Jar 2 is the 2nd ferment. Here's a pic of the kefir "grains" at the bottom of Jar 1:
I put "grains" in quotes because kefir is not a grain like wheat or rice is. Grain just refers to the size and shape of them. Kefir is actually a clump of yeast and bacteria that feed on sugar. A list of the most common species of bacteria and yeast in water kefir grains can be found here:
When it's time to cycle my kefir, I take the fermenting cap off of Jar 2, put another lid on it, then stick it in the fridge. More in a moment about what I do with it.
I then pour the contents of Jar 1 through a mesh strainer into another jar, which will become my new Jar 2. Here are the kefir grains draining in the strainer:
Meanwhile, I rinse the previous jar 1 out and then put in 1 tsp of brown sugar and 2 Tbsp of plain white granulated sugar. The brown sugar is there because it still has some molasses in it - that's why it's brown - and thus has some extra minerals in it that white sugar doesn't have. And the kefir like the minerals.
I dump the drained kefir grains into jar 1 and fill it with water then stir it up until the sugar dissolves. Then I put the fermenting cap on it and set it and the new jar 2 in my fermentation station.
There they will stay for 3 days until the kefir have eaten the vast majority of the sugar in Jar 1 and it's time to cycle them again.
Meanwhile, Jar 2 begins its 2nd ferment. During this stage, the bits of kefir that made it through the strainer (basically bits that hadn't yet clumped together into "grains") eat up the remaining little bits of sugar in the water.
Theoretically, I could just have Jar 1 sit for 5-6 days and end up with the same result, but that's not good for the health of the grains themselves. Some of them would starve to death and the population would shrink. I've already got my grains on a subsistence diet - the usual amount of sugar per quart of water is 1/4 cup, but I use just a little over half that amount (1/4 cup is 3 Tbsp) - because I don't really want my colony to get so big that I can't keep up with their kefir water production! I am monitoring the amount of grains I have and if they start to diminish, I will feed them more.
What do I do with the resulting kefir water after the 2nd ferment?
- I use it to hydrate the chia and flax seeds I use in my morning smoothie.
- I use it to fill my smoothie cup to the fill line after I've put all the other stuff into the cup.
- If I end up with too much of it after all, I can use it instead of plain water to "rinse out" my smoothie cup after I drink it and drink that. (I do this so as not to waste all the good stuff that sticks to the side of the cup when I drink the smoothie.)
- I plan to begin using it for the initial soak of my sprouting seeds and beans.
- I use it in cooking. Tonight, I used it instead of plain water to "rinse out" a can of cream of mushroom soup I put in with my pork roast.
- I'm sure I will find more uses for it. As I do, I'll post them to the blog.
Some people put the 2nd ferment into a tightly sealed jar or bottle and create a fizzy soda-like drink. Usually when people do that, they add some sort of flavoring to the kefir water before beginning the 2nd ferment, such as lemon, mixed berries, ginger, or whatever. I don't do that mostly because I have a SodaStream to make fizzy water when I want it. Maybe I'll try it sometime, but for now I can't be bothered. 💁
Current research shows many benefits to including probiotics into your diet to improve your gut biome. Since doing this, I have found my digestion has improved, my "daily constitutional" has become more regular, and my overall health has improved. Sure, I have a head cold right now, but it's not nearly as bad as what Brianne had last week and not as bad as what I usually come down with. Is this because of the probiotics? No way to tell for sure, but it certainly doesn't hurt!
To finish up, I'll include this link to a list of 9 evidence-based health benefits of kefir: https://authoritynutrition.com/9-health-benefits-of-kefir/
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