I have some Kefir if anyone wants it

Iristxo

I'm not sure if any of you have heard of Kefir or what do you think of it or whatever but I have some if anyone wants it (free of charge of course). Collection only, Dub area

El_Dangeroso

I'm in Galway unfortunately or I'd totally collect it.

Why are you giving it away? All that vitamin K2! What type of milk is it made with?

EileenG

I love kefir, but it's in the Polish section of all the shops here in Dublin, so not worth going far to get.

trash.heap

This is the first time I've heard of Kefir!

Is it something you could give to a toddler in place of some diary products? My ds is very mucousy all the time, and I'm beginning to think it may be due to the enormous love of cheese and yoghurt he has developed!

Do you buy a starter pack of Kefir and 'grow' your own, or is it ready to eat? Can you add flavours to it? Would it be good as a substitute for his morning snack of fruit/berries and seeds?

And, if I were to go to a Polish shop for it, how do I pronounce it? Keh-fur?

Piotrr

You can give kefir to children over 1 year. It is ready to eat, much like yoghurt, but not as thick and with its own specific taste. You can add all kind of flavours/fruits, you can also use it instead of milk to your muesli/cereals. Its being pronounced as something like "keh-feer".

Jarren

trash.heap wrote: »

This is the first time I've heard of Kefir!

Is it something you could give to a toddler in place of some diary products? My ds is very mucousy all the time, and I'm beginning to think it may be due to the enormous love of cheese and yoghurt he has developed!

Do you buy a starter pack of Kefir and 'grow' your own, or is it ready to eat? Can you add flavours to it? Would it be good as a substitute for his morning snack of fruit/berries and seeds?

And, if I were to go to a Polish shop for it, how do I pronounce it? Keh-fur?

No probs

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kefir

http://www.howjsay.com/index.php?word=kefir&submit=Submit

Iristxo

EileenG wrote: »

I love kefir, but it's in the Polish section of all the shops here in Dublin, so not worth going far to get.

Really? The actual live granules?

Iristxo

Temple_Grandin wrote: »

I'm in Galway unfortunately or I'd totally collect it.

Why are you giving it away? All that vitamin K2! What type of milk is it made with?

Cow's milk unfortunately. Can't get it "working" with soya milk. I thought maybe someone would want it but if no-one wants it, i'll eat it.

EileenG

Iristxo wrote: »

Really? The actual live granules?

No, tubs or bottles of it in ready to eat form.

El_Dangeroso

Iristxo wrote: »

Cow's milk unfortunately. Can't get it "working" with soya milk. I thought maybe someone would want it but if no-one wants it, i'll eat it.

Cow's milk is definitely better than soy any day of the week.

I'd love to see if I can make my own with sheep's milk..

spinandscribble

Whats the nutritional value of this stuff? What sort of thing is it?

Iristxo

EileenG wrote: »

No, tubs or bottles of it in ready to eat form.

What I'm giving away is the granules, for people to make their own.

I suspected as much. No point in selling the granules, one-time customer who never returns.

Iristxo

spinandscribble wrote: »

Whats the nutritional value of this stuff? What sort of thing is it?

Lots of info in the internet (sorry, I don't mean to be unhelpful but I really can't go digging all the info up right now). Absolutely brilliant stuff, according to many.

Iristxo

Temple_Grandin wrote: »

Cow's milk is definitely better than soy any day of the week.

In what way? I'd appreciate it if you elaborate.

Temple_Grandin wrote: »

I'd love to see if I can make my own with sheep's milk.

Do you have the granules? It's supposed to work with sheep's milk. Do you have access to fresh sheep's milk? Of course it also works with the supermarket tetra-pack milk.

El_Dangeroso

Iristxo wrote: »

In what way? I'd appreciate it if you elaborate.



Do you have the granules? It's supposed to work with sheep's milk. Do you have access to fresh sheep's milk? Of course it also works with the supermarket tetra-pack milk.

Soy will mess up your thyroid. It's no coincidence that the Japanese only eat on average 2tbsp of fermented soy a day and always with fish broth. The iodine in the fish broth counters the effect of the soy. Amazing what people knew before they even looked through a microscope.

Iristxo

I've heard mixed reports about soy alright and I'm not particularly fond of it myself. I don't drink it (well I do not like milk too much in any form really) and I started giving my kids rice milk but then I heard it has small amounts of arsenic. In any case I do not like the high content of (natural) sugar in it, it's natural but its still sugar.

However dairy is mucus forming and a lot of people are lactose intolerant and in fact casein is a protein that is supposed to mess up our bodies in more ways than one? Am I correct? I have read this, is it true?

Iristxo

trash.heap wrote: »

This is the first time I've heard of Kefir!

Is it something you could give to a toddler in place of some diary products? My ds is very mucousy all the time, and I'm beginning to think it may be due to the enormous love of cheese and yoghurt he has developed!

Do you buy a starter pack of Kefir and 'grow' your own, or is it ready to eat? Can you add flavours to it? Would it be good as a substitute for his morning snack of fruit/berries and seeds?

And, if I were to go to a Polish shop for it, how do I pronounce it? Keh-fur?

Hey. I hear dairy has that effect alright (the mucus one). If you're near Dub don't buy a starter pack, I'll give you some of mine, free of charge and it goes on forever unless you stop changing the milk on it. My children (3 and 1) don't like the flavor of it (like natural yogurt, too bitter) but I blend it with some fruit (banana, apple, pear, whatever) and a natural sweetener (stevia or whatever). You can also add some berries or seeds or whatever to it, I sometimes put the seeds (sunflower, pumpkin, sesame, flax, hemp) into the kefir and sometimes in the porridge.

HTH

Iristxo

spinandscribble wrote: »

Whats the nutritional value of this stuff? What sort of thing is it?

Good Bacteria

A large part of your immune system is actually dependant on sufficient good bacteria/flora. Some of their main functions are to generate serotonin which regulates intestinal peristalsis and for other body functions. The good flora aid in breaking down food for certain nutrients absorbtion, producing acids to keep candida in its harmless yeast form, and along with sufficient stomach acid being one of your first lines against food bourne pathogens. Digestive problems are all to common these days with over-prescibing of anti-biotics, steroids and so on which deplete your good flora.

Im not very fond of expensive capsuled probiotics most are pretty worthless and the jurys still out if most actually help replace. The best way ive found to replace the good flora directly is through the use of fermented foods/drinks such as kefir, sauerkraut or any other fermented vegetables. Their are multiple different kinds of kefir so if your intolerant to milk then theirs water, coconut kefir etc. The above helps directly boost your good bacteria populations but you must still feed them with fibres such as rice bran, oat bran, FOS and seaweeds all help feed the intestinal flora whilst also having a whole host of other benefits such as providing the vitamin b groups.

http://www.juicingforum.co.uk/digestion.php

Just one of the very many sources out there about kefir

El_Dangeroso

Re: Dairy, Khrystyna would agree with you there, she doesn't like dairy for her own valid reasons.

I'm sort of ambivalent about it. It doesn't effect me, it's a handy way of getting fat soluble minerals, including K2 MK-4 in butter which is really important to health and otherwise very rare in the modern diet.

I do think that using casein as your main dietary protein is a terrible idea. But you can mitigate the effect of the casein you do eat in cheese by choosing raw goats cheese which is a different type of casein to cow.

Also fermented dairy such as yoghurt, kefir and soured cream have health benefits too. So ferment where possible.

Iristxo

Temple_Grandin wrote: »

Re: Dairy, Khrystyna would agree with you there, she doesn't like dairy for her own valid reasons.

I'm sort of ambivalent about it. It doesn't effect me, it's a handy way of getting fat soluble minerals, including K2 MK-4 in butter which is really important to health and otherwise very rare in the modern diet.

I do think that using casein as your main dietary protein is a terrible idea. But you can mitigate the effect of the casein you do eat in cheese by choosing raw goats cheese which is a different type of casein to cow.

Also fermented dairy such as yoghurt, kefir and soured cream have health benefits too. So ferment where possible.

I've been battling with myself over this for ages. I don't like dairy at all, I really don't. But the milk we buy is organic. Re soya, as we said it has its own set of problems, plus I can't buy organic and calcium-fortified, so it has to be non-organic. As soya is one of the mos GM foods in the world, buying non-organic is not really something I like. I still haven't figured out which one is the least of two evils. But I need it in liquid, un-fermented form for the kids, they love their milk. And they need it for the calcium. We stay away from cheeses and the amount of butter we eat is very, very low.

trash.heap

Hi Iristxo,
Thanks for the offer, but I'm nowhere near Dublin.
I'll check out the Polish shops...if I could get it ready-to-eat for the first 'try', I might consider investing in some grains.

My mum used to make her own Kombucha, by growing a giant mushroom in the cupboard...all us kids thought she was mad! We definitely seem to turn into our mothers as we get older:rolleyes:

Iristxo

trash.heap wrote: »

Hi Iristxo,
Thanks for the offer, but I'm nowhere near Dublin.
I'll check out the Polish shops...if I could get it ready-to-eat for the first 'try', I might consider investing in some grains.

My mum used to make her own Kombucha, by growing a giant mushroom in the cupboard...all us kids thought she was mad! We definitely seem to turn into our mothers as we get older:rolleyes:

I'd love to get Kombucha "mushrooms". I'd post it but I really don't know how I could do it to "keep it alive" in transit.

Sapsorrow

Since when do bacteria produce seretonin in the gut?? I never heard mention of this. Surely seretonin wouldn't be able to affect peristalsis directly (as in by making physical contact with the gut mucosa) as I can't imagine it can be absorbed from the colon unless someone has gaps between the tight junctions? Endogenous seretonin does regulate peristalsis alright, have you heard anything about this Temple?

EDIT: Never mind just found this: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7926490

Which makes a lot more sense, the article is a bit misleading I think, there's quite a difference between a bacterium producing and secreting it's own seretonin and stimulating the gastrointestinal cells to upregulate production of endogenous seretonin.

Sapsorrow

Iristxo wrote: »

. As soya is one of the mos GM foods in the world, buying non-organic is not really something I like. I still haven't figured out which one is the least of two evils.

As far as I know tesco value soya milk specifically states it is non-gm. Also I'm open to correction here but I am fairly sure within the EU you can't market a food product which would have such a high GM load as gm soya milk would?? Also I'd imagine they're fairly savy that way, they know soya milk consumers are going to generally represent a more health conscious portion of the population so I seriously doubt they'd muck up they sales potential by using gm beans.
Aldi are selling Alpro soya milk for 85 cents these days anyway.

Iristxo

khrystyna100 wrote: »

As far as I know tesco value soya milk specifically states it is non-gm. Also I'm open to correction here but I am fairly sure within the EU you can't market a food product which would have such a high GM load as gm soya milk would?? Also I'd imagine they're fairly savy that way, they know soya milk consumers are going to generally represent a more health conscious portion of the population so I seriously doubt they'd muck up they sales potential by using gm beans.
Aldi are selling Alpro soya milk for 85 cents these days anyway.

Well Temple says soya isn't good and cow's is better "any day of the week". Now that is not the way I have ever understood it specially when you take into account the casein etc. But then again all my believes bar one or two have been challenged since I started visiting this forum so I really don't know which is which any more In actual fact my husband is at this very same moment roasting a leg of lamb. I suppose time will tell us which is which... As I always say we're guinea pigs really.

Sapsorrow

Iristxo wrote: »

Well Temple says soya isn't good and cow's is better "any day of the week".

I wasn't saying whether one was better than the other I was simply commenting on the previous post about gm content of soya products.

Iristxo

khrystyna100 wrote: »

I wasn't saying whether one was better than the other I was simply commenting on the previous post about gm content of soya products.

Yes i know, thanks

Sophie15

I have some kefir grains too, if anybody want some of them.

bauderline

Just got mine today from a helpful guy in work who told me about them...

1 Litre of milk in a glass jar in a dark cupboard.. we will see what comes out in ten days time...

How long can the resulting "yoghurt" be stored in the fridge ?

P.

Iristxo

bauderline wrote: »

Just got mine today from a helpful guy in work who told me about them...

1 Litre of milk in a glass jar in a dark cupboard.. we will see what comes out in ten days time...

How long can the resulting "yoghurt" be stored in the fridge ?

P.

10 days? Where did you get that info from? Or are you joking? You're supposed to strain it daily, or every second day max...

Sophie15

10 days, in the dark!

You're going to kill them!

Well, if they die, get back to me and I'll provide you with new grains.

bauderline

Well the guy I got them from has been growing them for quite some time, he seemed sure that this was the approximate length of time for 1 litre, he said I should keep an eye on it and when it turns to a yoghurt like texture then it is ready... I guess it takes a little time to convert a whole litre of milk... smells good so far... like yoghurt !

Sophie15

Keeping an eye on them etc is good advice.
But typically, the yoghurt should be ready before 10 days. If you exceed the required time, the yoghurt will turn into cheese and the whey will separate from the cheese.

The fermenting time depends on the amount of grains that you have.

Personnally I would recommend to be a little less ambitious and start by making a pint of yoghurt, which should happen sooner than 10 days.

In any case the probiotic yoghurt is very good for you and you should feel the health benefits very soon. Make sure to tell us about it when you've succeeded with your culture.

Good luck!

bauderline

Don't worry I will. Going home shortly to check on progress after 48 hours....

El_Dangeroso

Where can I get these fellas in Galway? I want to make some fermented coconut water.

Joansy

Does anyone know of someone with spare kefir granules in South Donegal region? There are several of us here looking for some.

spupazza

Does anyone has water kefir grains?
I live in swords,Co. Dublin.

Thanks

phnompenh72

Hi guys.. just an FYI.. I have kefir grains in Galway to give away.. just PM me or reply to this thread.. Kefir loves to find a new home :-)

Lillylilly

Does anyone have any kefir grains in Dublin to give away?

fealeranger

Anybody got this in Cork/Kerry area. Is it any good to treat Psorassis?

aarthyk

ruairiosborne wrote: »

Hi guys.. just an FYI.. I have kefir grains in Galway to give away.. just PM me or reply to this thread.. Kefir loves to find a new home :-)

Hi, Do you still have some grains to share ?