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I’m slowly working towards some simplicity within the home, but hey! It’s a lot of hard work!

I love having a go at growing my own veges and always use herbs fresh from my garden. I try to plant from seed whenever I can and have learnt to save and share my own seed for the following year. I make Award Winning preserves and pickles; and my husband brews Award Winning boutique beers as well. I love to stockpile and try to limit quick trips to the shops. I dabble in bread making and enjoy making my own stocks too.

I enjoy feeding my family good hearty meals, nothing like those tiny restaurant stacks you have to look for on the plate. My husband maintains our vehicles and machinery and we both enjoy fabricating on a small scale mostly relying on metal & timber recyclers for any materials needed.


While I don’t always have time to reply to comments, I love reading them. I hope you enjoy your stay and I hope you learn something new because I love sharing what I learn, and I'm always looking for another new skill myself.

Cheers!

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Kefir fizzy for the weekend

I recently wrote about my adventure with Kefir Water....and making my fizzy drinks.....
Well, I think I've done it! Yep, I think I have finally mastered a few techniques that will keep me in good supply of fizzy drink. I like my soda...I can't help it...I like the bubbles...lol

Experimenting with Kefir grains 

Straining the Apple & Blackcurrant Juice
which I added Kefir grains to for 48 hours.

Orange from the juice and rind of 1 orange
Quince from 1 tablespoon of Quince jam added
Passionfruit from some really old Passionfruit jam
Apple & Black Currant from Juice with grains added
Cherry from some preserved cherries

Lots of Kefir grains after straining

These ice-cube trays fit a good tablespoon of Kefir grains
Storing Kefir grains in the freezer.
(You can also dehydrate them, which I will do next time I dry apples)
All of the flavours were lovely and mild..don't expect the same strength of a store bought soda as *they are laden with lots of chemicals for colour, sweetener and flavour......*They can't be good for you.

With the orange Kefir; I won't use the rind of the orange again as I needed to add too much sugar to sweeten it, and this kind of defeats the purpose of all those good pro-biotics. So I think I will be able to cut out most of the sugar in the orange drink if I only use the juice next time.

I have one jar of preserved cherries left from the back of the cupboard...I'm so glad I found a use for them, I think they lost their prime for ice-cream a few years back.

I'm so happy I have worked out the Water Kefir...I wonder what flavour will be next?

6 comments:

  1. Looking good! Do you mind giving specifics on any combos that you find work well? I was doing a 2nd ferment in juice but it was tasting very alcoholic. I have a ton of grains now, they seem to multiply faster than my milk grains did and I didn't know you could freeze or dehydrate them, I should try that, as I have killed off my milk grains twice now, don't want to do them with these!

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  2. Oh no, I have some of both grains frozen now, as I have heard that they can die off for unknown reasons...For the second fermentation I only leave the fruit in the Kefir for 24 hours, no longer...but adding jam seems to be a good way to go for me...and I have plenty of it in my stockpile.

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  3. Wow, that is fantastic! I've never touched kefir grains and I want to try to use them. I'm a little scared, though - the whole process makes me nervous!

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  4. Little Home in the Country: hey Sherrie, it really is worth trying....I wasn't sure at first, but it never hurts to try new things...

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  5. I would love to try water and milk Kefir also, but cannot find it around here. How do you get a start?
    Kim

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  6. Hi Kim, here is a great link with loads of info on finding Kefir grains internationally.
    http://www.webaware.com.au/ferment/finding_kefir.php

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