Bottling Kefir "Pop"

I've decided that I really like kefir. Both milk and water kefir. I have to be more careful with milk kefir because it becomes sour much more quickly than water kefir does. But it does make a good tangy drink. I've been adding fruit to mine to make it more palatable and it will be a while before I even try to give any to my DH. However, when it is too sour for me to drink, I use it for soaking. I love it when healthy things have more than one use!

- Side question- Could I use water kefir to soak things? Is it as helpful digestive as milk kefir? Is it as healthful?

Moving on, I love water kefir, it is really tolerant of things that you do- like forget it for a while. Lately I've been distracted by school and baby stuff so cultures and kitchen have been on hold for a while. My water kefir is so fogiving as long as i refrigerate it.
I recently took a batch of kefir juice to two different parties. It was a big hit at both where plenty of people (and kids) at the combination of the too who eat Standard American Diet. At one party I brought the Kefir (Raspberry Apple) in a 1/2 gallon mason jar, but to the other I contained it in a pitcher. For my own use I have decided that if I can, I like to put it into screw-top glass soda bottles.  (I prefer these because they fit on the kitchen shelf with my glasses.) I use a funnel to get the kefir in once it is mixed. After which I cap them, often using a towel to hold tight. Then, I leave them on my counter top for about a day (when it is cold in the house sometimes it goes two). I like to do a two part kefir to one part juice ratio for most juices. This also enables the kefir to eat the juice's sugars without making it too tart. They do become carbonated, so I always open them over the sink if they have been sitting for more than a day. I have not taken enough notes to find out exactly what time and ratio and whatnot equals what result (note that Kelly suggests 18 hrs), I also try to store them in the cardboard carrier. They do start to hiss if they are ultra-ultra carbonated, which is a serious warning to let out some "steam" and refrigerate them immediately if they are capped properly. This I know from experience because one exploded on me. The picture above shows what happened to the bottle. Since it was in a carrier, there was no glass anywhere else, the kefir created a little sticky mess, but significantly less than I anticipated when I discovered the explosion which occurred while the house was unoccupied. 

Let it be noted that I have found a new favorite mixture- Strawberry Lemonade! I love real strawberry lemonade which is nigh impossible to get anymore. (Though really Applebees does have a version that I enjoy). I avoid lemonade when we do go out because usually it is powdered junk full of imitation flavored high fructose corn syrup.  Sadly, lately I have been craving some. (That and I am too cheap to buy lemons). Though this is not quite the quality of my dad's really strawberry lemonade [made with 1 cup freshly juiced (not crushed) local lemons (usually thawed from when we home froze it), 1 cup white sugar, 1 gallon water, and crushed and sugared fresh strawberries].  This is pretty good. It is dark since I tried the kefir with rapadura instead of evaporated can juice. It has (when the quart was about full) roughly a quarter cup of lemon juice (I didn't measure I poured and tasted) and cut strawberries in their juice (thawed from this summer when I cut and froze them). I think that it will taste better with kefir made from cane juice so I did half and half for the batch that I will be making tonight or tomorrow morning. You can see the strawberries in the jar on the left which I used for a glass. One of the best parts was eating the strawberries when the juice was gone. It was fantastic.
[By the way Mom, this is really easy. I'm hopping that when you visit you can make kefir if I am incapable. It will be on preferred help list.]
 If you are wondering about why or the safety of this venture, check out Kelly the Kitchen Kop's posts on kefir. She is the one who got me started. By clicking on her name you can see the post about how the amount of alcohol that the product contains is extremely negligible. 
Have a blessed Good Friday and Easter!

Milk Kefir

Last week I traded some of my water kefir grains for milk kefir. Though I'm not sure that grains is an accurate name or description for either one. First of all they aren't really grains. They are living, breathing, eating,  hopefully reproducing living organisms that ferment something and in the process carbonate it and make it an ultra-digestible, disease-fighting pro-biotic beverage.  Really, water kefir grains look like the "grains" of silicone that come in shoe boxes after they have absorbed a bunch of water, except the kefir can become larger, (the size of a pea). Milk kefir grains look like cauliflower. Yes, they really do. The only difference is that they are more milky-translucent than the dull white tinge of cauliflower and they have a slight gel-like appearance.

But, Today is the day! Admittedly I'm a litter nervous. Really I shouldn't be because I have tried plenty of other weird/ kookie/ hippie/ "crunchy" things before. Seriously now, I make and eat my own yogurt and keifir pop, and will eat home canned fruit that has that "this-has-begun-to-ferment" tingle to it.  (No lectures please. Baby and I are healthier than plenty if not most pregnant women I know who eat the Standard American Diet. Beside, I'll just ignore you the way I learned to when I was a teenager, except my pregnant self will try not to be annoyed and not to hold a grudge.)

So here it goes!

Batch 1 tastes ... tart and sour, which is perfectly acceptable. Tarter than I'd like at this point. Plus it is seperating a little and I don't rally like that texture. (I hope that this problem is not specific to fresh milk.)  I'll either get out some fruit to add and maybe a bit of stevia or I'll use it for baking.

Batch 2 is made from AE whole milk. It tastes ... Like thin plain yogurt: tart, but not overly so. Rather smooth. I stil think that I'd like to doctor it up for a bit. So that it is more of a drinkable thick beverage than a sippable one. Since I keep sipping at it I know that I find it appealing and will get used to the tartness.

Yeah!

By the way Mom, I hope that you are reading all the posts about cultures, because you may be taking care of them while I rest after Baby comes. If I end up taking antibiotics I will be requesting them in an effort to undo all the negative effects of the antibiotics.

Third Trimentster begins

We are now beginning the third trimester. Thank goodness too! The last week has been an eventful one! Let's start with Wednesday. For the entire day Wednesday I felt like Baby was pushing out with all the force that Baby could muster. At the end of the school day I thought, "I really hope that this doesn't last for 3+ months!"
It didn't. The next day our school went on a field trip. All day we walked around a farm and a 1875 era rural town. It was a lot of fun. Even Baby seemed thrilled since Baby was extremely active all day. Even that night when I was trying to sleep Baby had not let up much, but the craziness was lessening. Then, what felt like a knee or an elbow, but possibility anything, came up from the bottom left side up my abdomen to the top left side, then back down till it reached the middle of the right side of my abdomen. Since then, instead of kicking (I'm assuming) down near my left leg, Baby has been kicking closer to my right rib.
Friday after school we had a school event followed immediately by Justin's niece's birthday party. When I walked in she whispered to her other aunt, "Rachel has a baby in he tummy!" much to our amusement.
On Saturday, I can't remember what baby did but we went to a shower for one of my friends. On Sunday, Justin and I went on a walk for a little over half an hour. It began to become uncomfortable towards the end as it felt like baby sank down into my pelvis. For the most part it just made walking less enjoyable and more difficult. Pretty sure that I began to waddle a bit. 
On Monday I went on a walk. for about half an hour. That night baby had the first case of hiccups that I could feel, at least that is what I figured it was. this was down on the left side. It was a sutble rythmic feeling.

Belly Picture 6

It's March! That means it's time for a new belly picture! Is it just me or is Baby growing leaps and bounds?

On another note, things are going well. I've been a pit more tired lately, caved to many more sugar cravings than I'd like, and still eat more than I've ever thought that I could.

Though I do get heartburn occasionally, it is rally not an issue. The itching, however, has gone through the roof. My DH laughed when I couldn't scratch due to having food all over my hands and then when I sighed with relief after washing my hands.

On another note, Baby is not going to keep growing at this rate right? I really don't want to keep gaining weight at this rate.