Cousin Roger and the Kefir

Heh.

Cousin Roger came over from across the road today.  He came in with a beer in one hand and some paperwork that he needed some help with in the other.  After The Husband got the paperwork fixed up, Roger sat back to visit a while and tell us about the date he had lined up for this evening. 

Just prior to Roger's arrival, I had been straining today's batch of kefir.  The kefir is making faster than I want to drink it, and I've been pawning off the extra on anybody who will take it.  My "reserve" jug in the refrigerator was too full to hold today's batch, so I poured up a big glass of the chilled kefir to make room in the jar and set it aside while I did the straining.  Before I got around to drinking it myself, Roger came in.  I remembered that he'd said he'd been having a lot of heartburn, and I asked him if that was still the case.  When he said that he was still suffering with it, and eating antacids like candy, I handed him my glass of kefir and said, "Here, drink this.  It might help your heartburn if you can choke it down."

He looked suspicious.  "What is it?"

"Fermented milk.  Be a big boy and drink it, and if you like it I'll send some home with you."

"Hell, I'll try anything if it'll help," he said, and he turned the glass up and chugged it like a beer.

A few cusswords later, he handed the glass back to me, and went on talking about antacids.  He said he recently heard that eating too many antacid tablets could cause constipation.  "And you know," he said, "come to think of it, I'm not real regular."

I said, "Well, you might be regular by tomorrow."

We shot the bull a little more, then Roger went home.  (He didn't ask for any kefir to take home.)  The Husband left to go pick up The Grandson.  My telephone rang just after he left.

"Let me speak to The Husband," Roger said.

"He's gone to get The Grandson," I told him.  "What do you need?"

"Listen, tell him NOT TO DRINK THAT STUFF," Roger said.  "I didn't even make it across the yard good before it hit me!"

"Oh, no!  What happened?  Did you puke?"  (After he drank the kefir, I wondered if it would react with the beer in his stomach and blow him up like a toad, but I didn't mention this to Roger.)

"Naw, I didn't puke," he said.  "I had to come in and wash my clothes, though!"

Heh.  Silly Cousin Roger.  He was kidding.

I hope.  ;)

Early Progress

I managed to get The Husband out of the recliner this morning by threatening to go to shopping for a new lawn sweeper without him.  He got up, put on his shoes, and off we went.  We shopped, had lunch, then came home and started assembling the sweeper.  It wasn't as bad as we expected.  Either this model was easier to assemble than the last one, or the instructions were better.  In any case, I swept up most of the remaining leaves in the yard and dumped them in the garden.  After that, I prepared another row for "no-till" gardening.  So far, I've done about half the garden, and that's all that may get done this year.  I'm worried that I started too late, that the soil won't be soft and ready in six weeks when it's time to start planting.

While we were shopping, I noticed that the garden center had gotten in some plants.  I bought a package of brussel sprout plants and a Mediterranean White Heather.  I set them on a patio chair while we assembled the sweeper.  It wasn't long before The Husband said, "Look at the bees in the heather."  Sure enough, it was crawling with honey bees.  It amazed us that they discovered the heather so quickly.  We tried to figure out where they were coming from, but couldn't. 

The broccoli plants I started last week are growing well.  It took them about three days to sprout.  I've got my Ott sewing lamp shining on them, hoping to give them enough light to keep them from getting leggy.  The brussels sprouts may have to join them under the lamp.  We've had pretty weather for the past couple of days, but it's supposed to get crazy again tomorrow or Monday.  Have I said, yet, how sick I am of this winter?

Onions & Broccoli

Last week at the get-it-all store, I picked up a bag of Siberian iris roots, a bag of daylily roots, and a sack of onion bulbs.  I intended to plant the onion bulbs in the beetless end of the horse trough, but when I poked my finger in the dirt I discovered it was frozen solid about 1" below the surface.  I put the bulbs away until yesterday when the weather made me feel like I ought to be gardening.  I also set out the iris and the daylilies, and started a batch of broccoli seeds. 

That little bit of digging made my out-of-shape self a little bit sore in the get-along when I got out of bed this morning.  After breakfast, I decided the thing to do might be to work the soreness out.  So I put on my gloves and my hat and went outside to pick up limb debris from the ice storm, rake some leaves, etc.  The Husband came out with his chainsaw, and together we worked all day.

We are already regretting it.  Every significant movement is accompanied by an agonized groan.  We may not be able to get out of bed in the morning.

But the yard sure looks better.  The flower bed along the back of the house has been taken over by ivy, but I got in there and raked and ripped and pulled as much of it out as I could.  Now, that bed is down to bare, rich dirt.  If I can keep it that way until it's time to plant flowers, it'll be lovely. 

Crazy Weather

When I left off writing last week, I'd just spent a weekend doing outdoor gardening.  It was warm enough that I sweated without a coat.  About 4 p.m. Sunday, I looked out of my kitchen window to find ice forming on the trees.  By the next morning, the trees were so heavy with ice that they were bending and breaking. 

Monday afternoon, as I was in the kitchen, pondering what to do about supper, I heard a CRACK! like a pistol shot, and a WHOOSH! and a sound like a thousand martini glasses crashing off a shelf.  I ran to the window in time to see the last of the ice shards cascading to the ground, right on top of the crippled leaf sweeper I'd parked under the trees.  The leaf sweeper was flat as a pancake under a huge limb. 

It snowed Friday night, came down pretty fast for a while, but only piled up a couple of inches, altogether.  Today, the temperatures rose, the snow mostly disappeared, and we have been hearing ice raining out of the trees.

And I've just been piddling around the house, thinking about how all that good moisture is going to flatten the leaves I've piled up in the middles, and soak the straw and newspapers and alfalfa pellets I've put atop the rows, and make my garden a rich paradise by spring.  ;)

More Straw

It has been warm here for the past couple of days, but tomorrow the weather is supposed to get crazy (again).  I wanted to put more newspaper and straw on my planting rows before it starts raining.  My boss has been saving her newspapers for me, as has Nanny, and so yesterday when I got busy in the garden I had enough newspaper to finish using up the straw  I bought last weekend.  Those 10 bales of straw covered about 3-1/2 rows, probably 1/4 of the garden. 

Since The Husband was going to town this morning, I sweet-talked him into going to the farm store for more straw.  While he was gone, I hitched the lawn sweeper to my 4-wheeler and started gathering leaves from the yard to dump on the garden, thinking I'd rake it into the middles for weed control.  I made about 4 trips from the house to the garden before the sweeper quit working.  The Husband arrived back at home with a truck bed of straw about that time.  We took the sweeper apart and discovered that a plastic gear had cracked in two places, and some of the teeth were worn down, and it apparently doesn't have enough oomph to turn the brushes.  I searched online and called stores; evidently, replacement parts of this sort are not available.  Looks like we'll be shopping for a new lawn sweeper, and it needs to happen in time to let me get more leaves on the garden before spring arrives.

We unloaded our 10 new bales of straw and started distributing it down the rows.  Ran out of newspaper again, and quit.  The Sunday paper might finish up the straw bales. 

I Should Be Planning

My sister gave me a gardening calendar.  It says that in January I ought to be ordering seeds and starting seeds for cool weather crops.  I guess since it's almost the end of January, I'm already behind, eh? 

The priority right now is getting the no-till method cooking.  I ran out of newspaper before I finished even one row last weekend when the weather was nice.  Folks are saving newspapers for me this week, so maybe I'll be able to finish two rows this weekend.  It looks like it's going to take about 5 bales of straw per 75-ft-long row, so I'll have to lay in more straw, too.

I bet you're wondering how the pineapple upside-down kefir cake turned out.  It would have been better had I remembered to add baking powder and salt to the flour.   :\  The kefir had just enough leavening power by itself to make a dense cake with a texture almost like cheesecake.  But we're eating it!

Kefir

One cold, drizzly day last fall, a friend and I went to a butter- and cheese-making class at a local farm.  During a break, we overheard a gentleman telling another gentleman that he had been drinking some stuff called "kefir," and that since he had been drinking it, his blood pressure and cholesterol levels had gone to normal, and he had not had any trouble with heartburn.  My friend and I looked at each other with our ears perked up.  Both of us have been eating over-the-counter antacid tablets and capsules for years.  My friend even takes prescription-strength heartburn medicine.  We insinuated ourselves into his conversation, trying to find out what kefir was and where we'd get some.

It turns out that kefir is fermented milk.  The fermentation process begins with kefir "grains" - they're not a true grain; they just call them grains because they're grainy - little clumps of bacteria and yeasts.  The man said that we could order them in dehydrated form online, or he would give us some of his grains (they grow over time and produce enough to share).  I decided to order some grains and have been making kefir since October.

Kefir has a consistency that is much like buttermilk.  It tastes a little like buttermilk, too, or plain yogurt.  I kind of wrinkled my nose up at my first taste of the stuff but quickly got used to it.  I'm addicted to it now.

I can't personally testify to kefir's effectiveness in lowering cholesterol or blood pressure (there are studies online that you can read, both pro and con).  I CAN personally testify to almost complete relief from heartburn when I drink 1/2 cup of kefir on a daily basis.  I can also testify to a serious reduction in irritable bowel symptoms.

I can also testify to the fact that it makes KILLER cornbread.  Seriously.  KILLER.  Just use it in place of the milk in the recipe (you might need a little more kefir than milk to make the batter wet enough because the kefir is thicker).  The taste is not much different, but the texture is heavenly.  There are also recipes online for making loaves of bread with kefir.  I tried it, both with whole wheat flour and with all-purpose flour.  Because it has to sit for a long time to rise, the kefir flavors the bread much more strongly than it flavors the stir-it-up-and-cook-it cornbread.  Kefir bread is dense and tastes a lot like sourdough bread.  The crust is a little tough, but it's good.

Of course, cooking the kefir robs it of its probiotic properties, but it's a good way to use up surplus kefir.

In two minutes, a pineapple upside-down cake made with kefir will be coming out of my oven.  I bet it's going to rock.