Kefir Two Ways

Kefir is hands down one of the best ferments for supporting the gut! While fermented dairy kefir is about 98% + lactose free some people still have a hard time digesting dairy. You’ll need to obtain Kefir Grains in order to make your kefir. We suggest ordering grains online from Cultures for Health or GEM Cultures .

With that in mind here is how we do Kefir both with dairy and without dairy! Make sure to read our notes at the end about keeping your grain cultures happy and healthy!

MILK KEFIR (DAIRY)

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon kefir grains

• 8–16 ounces of milk (Goat or Cow: Organic, Non-Homogenized, and Raw are best.)

Instructions

1. Add 1 tablespoon kefir grains to 8–16 ounces of raw milk in a jar with a lid. 

2. Let it sit on the counter at room temperature for 24–72 hours depending on how sour you like it. You can taste it to check.

3. Shake a couple times a day to keep fresh nutrients available to the grains.

4. Strain the milk so you can keep the kefir grains to make a new batch.

5. Put the strained kefir in a jar with a tight lid and keep it out of the fridge for a few hours. This will increase fizziness.

NOTE: The grains multiply. You can share them with friends or keep growing more. They work better if you keep them outside of the fridge. If you need to take time off from kefir, you can place them in some fresh milk and then put them in the fridge indefinitely. Once you are ready to use them again, rinse them off and begin the process from the beginning.

COCONUT KEFIR (NON-DAIRY)

Ingredients

• 1 Tablespoon kefir grains

• 8–16 ounces of full fat canned coconut milk or you can get young Thai coconuts and use the water and scrape the pulp and blend to make your own coconut milk

Instructions

1. Use the same recipe for original milk kefir; just replace the dairy with coconut milk. 

NOTE: Make sure to put the grains in dairy milk every 2–3 batches to keep them happy and healthy.

Fermentation and the Human Microbiome Resource List

The First Annual NYC Fermentation Festival was a couple weekends ago here in Brooklyn, NY. It was a fantastic turnout and filled with amazing vendors, workshops, and more! Erin Cramm and I taught on Fermentation and the Human Microbiome this year at the festival and we wanted to share out list of favorite reads and more on this topic with you. So here are our picks and we hope you get a chance to enjoy them as much as we have!

Erin’s List:

I Contain Multitudes - Ed Yong

Food Rules - Michael Pollan

Gut - Giulia Enders

The Human Super-Organism - Dr. Rodney Dietert

Brainmaker - Dr. David Perlmutter

This is Your Brain on Parasites - Kathleen McAuliffe

The Gene - Siddhartha Mukherjee

Cheryl’s List:

The Art of Fermentation - Sandor Katz

Wild Fermentation - Sandor Katz

The Good Gut - Justin Sonnenburg

The Symbiont Factor - Dr. Richard Matthews

Cooked (Book & Netflix Series) - Michael Pollan

An Epidemic of Absence - Moses Velasques-Manoff

Missing Microbes - Dr. Martin J. Blaser

The Human Microbiome: How to keep your gut happy!

Contraband Ferments is excited to be hosting a new series of blogs this year! We will keep posting recipes and DIY fermentation for you, but we are also adding a series of blogs dedicated to the Human Microbiome, Gut Health, Herbal Medicine, and more!

Our first blog of 2016 is by the amazing Karen Puyleart. Karen and her husband started their cooking blog, Purely Primal, in 2010 after changing their diet in 2009.  She is currently working toward her Masters in Human Nutrition and Functional Medicine. And is based in Vancouver, Washington.

----

The Human Microbiome: How to keep your gut happy!

A major key to great health is keeping our guts happy!  Did you know that over 70% of our immune system is in the gut? Our gut is home to trillions of bacteria who help us to digest food, produce energy, and support our immune system, just to name a few of the important jobs they do. However, there are many things that can damage our gut flora and this in turn keeps our bodies from functioning at an optimal level.  

Besides a poor diet, many other effects can hinder our guts. These include, medications, chronic stress, chronic infections, lack of sleep, toxins in products we use, and toxins in the air we breathe.  When gut health is compromised then nutrients cannot be properly synthesized, too much oxidative stress is created, and enzyme activity can become impaired.  Basically, our cells become unhealthy and in turn we get issues such as autoimmune diseases, chronic infections, allergies, brain dysfunction, acne, and hormone dysregulation. This is a very short list of problems that can occur.  There is so much more.  This is why attention to our guts cannot be overlooked.  

As a nation, we are not getting better. The U.S. has one of the highest cancer rates in the world. Over 65% of American’s are overweight or obese with 1/3 of all diabetes diagnoses being in teens.  Junk food is everywhere, is easily accessible, and the quality is poor.  However, I feel with attention to just these five areas below, our health can improve tremendously.  Below are a few simple ideas in each of these categories that can help get you started on a journey to better health.  This is my own personal take on what has helped me and others who have sought my help and here I share it with you. I hope you can learn a few things from it to gain a better understanding of your own health.   

Food – Eat anti-inflammatory, nutrient-dense foods. This means lots of vegetables, fruit, lean protein, good fats, herbs, spices, lactofermented sauerkraut, and drinking lots of water.  Avoid junk food, food that comes in a box, sugar, gluten, dairy, and GMO foods.  Plan meals for the week. Keep a food diary to watch for patterns.

Sleep – 8 hours is recommended for recovery for our brain, recovery from exercises, more energy, and strengthening of immune system. A few tips for better sleep are avoiding both electronics and eating right before bed.

Stress- To reduce stress, a few tips are to schedule some personal time for yourself each week, consider meditation, and perform random acts of kindness!

Exercise – Exercise keeps us healthy and feeling younger.  To get more, schedule workouts like anappointment, find a friend to exercise with you, and if you have a sedentary job try to move each hour.

Environment – Toxins are all around in the beauty products we use, the air we breathe, and the foods and medication we put into our body. A few ways to reduce toxins are to stop smoking, avoid drinking excessive amounts of alcohol, research ingredients in the products you buy, know where your food comes from, recycling, and reusing.

Here’s to a more healthful you!