• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

Michelle's blog

Food allergy and food intolerance, freefrom foods, electrosensitivity, this and that...

  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • FreeFrom Food Awards
  • Foods Matter
  • Walks & Gardens
  • Salon Music
  • Home
  • Blog
  • About
  • FreeFrom Food Awards
  • Foods Matter
  • Walks & Gardens
  • Salon Music

Kefir on offer

04/11/2020 //  by Michelle Berridale Johnson//  6 Comments

My pot of kefir, brewing gently, and my nearly empty jug of ‘brewed’ kefir

A quick search of this blog reveals that I have been posting, on and off, about kefir since 2011 – and that the kefir that I have posted about has always come from Sue Cane, our gluten free beer expert. Sue originally inherited the grains from her dad, a great kefir enthusiast. So, one way and another, they must have been going now for knocking on 50 years. Well, maybe a great longer as we don’t know (unless Sue does?) where they originally came from.

Anyhow, after a gap of some years on my behalf, when I stayed with Sue during the gloriously free months of the summer, she gave me another small pot of grains. I brought them back to London and decided that if I was going to ‘do’ kefir again, I should ‘do’ it properly, as I did some years ago, with raw Guernsey milk – thus giving the grains the full range of bacteria to work on and produce the ultimate nourishing elixir.

(Obviously this would be absolutely not be an option for those who are allergic to cow’s milk, but a significant proportion of those who just find pasteurised cow’s milk difficult to tolerate do well on raw cow’s milk. And of course you can also make kefir with goat or sheep milk , both raw and pasteurised. Although it makes no logical/medical sense, while there are no restrictions on buying raw goat or sheep’s milk, raw cow’s milk can only be bought ‘at the farm gate’. (Thank you dairy industry.) For anyone wanting to read more about raw milk – and indeed A2 milk – see this section on the FoodsMatter website.)

But back to the kefir. I ordered my milk from Hurdlebrook Farm…

… and off I went – or, strictly speaking, off went the kefir. In the few months since I brought it back from Sue it has all but tripled in size and is now seriously outgrowing both its pot and my capacity to eat it.

So, if anyone would like a ‘starter pack’ I would be more than happy to send you one in the post. Either email me or put a comment on this blog with your name and address and I will send it off.

If you have made kefir before, you are away. If not, check in to this post on which you will find Sue’s great little video telling you how to do it . And/or check in to this article by Gill Jacobs on the FoodsMatter site.

You can perfectly well make your kefir with ordinary supermarket milk (although do try to go for organic and non-homogenised) but if you want to go for raw milk and you are nowhere near Somerset where Hurdlebrook have their Guernsey herd, the Raw Milk Suppliers website offers you dozens of suppliers all across the country.

I probably have enough to send out two small pots so, if you are interested, send me your details as soon as possible.

close

Check your inbox or spam folder to confirm your subscription.

Category: Alternative/Complementary Health, Food, NutritionTag: #HurdlebrookFarm, #rawmilk, #SueCane, #unpasteuriedmilk, acquiring kefir grains, FoodsMatter website, Gill Jacobs, growing kefir, kefir, kefir and raw milk, Raw Milk Suppliers

Previous Post: « Gobsmacked – and very, very touched
Next Post: Could worms (helminths) protect against COVID? »

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. DAVID E MARSH

    05/11/2020 at 17:09

    hi Michelle,

    I’m staying with my friend Chandra at 10 Rock a Nore Road Hastings TN34 3DW and she wd love to take you up on your kind offer… if it is not already too late…
    Thank you very much indeed.
    I thought you might like to see my latest article on Silver, so here it is !

    http://www.positivehealth.com/article/infections/colloidal-silver-master-antimicrobial-antifungal-and-antiviral-agent
    “A teaspoon a day keeps the Dr away” !

  2. Michelle Berridale Johnson

    05/11/2020 at 17:40

    Great David – happy for it to find such a good home! I shall look forward to reading the silver article. M

  3. Jason

    06/11/2020 at 17:19

    Nice article Michelle, i love kefir but have never tried making it myself.
    Recently tried making injera from teff but it went horribly wrong. Maybe you could have a go at that. Teff is a delicious gluten-free alternative to wheat.

    Here is a nice recipe to make pancakes/crepes using teff flour. Your readers might find interesting: https://www.offeroasis.co.uk/blog/crepe-recipe-naturally-gluten-dairy-free

  4. Michelle Berridale Johnson

    07/11/2020 at 16:52

    HI Jason – you should have a go at Kefir – it is so easy. A great deal easier than injeera!! I love teff – a brilliant flour but I must admit that I have never tried the injeera – I tend to use it with other flours which works really well.

  5. Janet C B Woodward

    12/11/2020 at 20:04

    Doesnt time fly when you are having fun? 2011?
    Do indeed remember the early days of discussions of kefir.
    Waves to you all from happy retirement.
    Stay safe & well

    Janet & fur assistant Flora the kitty
    (the late Smokie passed in 2017, aged almost 20)

  6. Michelle Berridale Johnson

    12/11/2020 at 22:08

    And you too Janet! Lovely to hear from you.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Recent Posts

  • FSA – on the allergy case
  • Homeopathy – a second string to our vaccination bow?
  • Sad, sad news
  • Are COVID vaccines safe for those with allergies?
  • Disastrous Brexit fallout for medical cannabis users

Search this blog

ARCHIVES

Blogroll

  • Allergy Insight
  • Better brains, naturally
  • For Ever FreeFrom
  • Free From (gluten)
  • Freefrom Food Awards
  • Gluten-free Mrs D
  • Natural Health Worldwide
  • Pure Health Clinic
  • Skins Matter
  • The Helminthic Therapy Wiki
  • Truly Gluten Free
  • What Allergy?

TOPICS

Disastrous Brexit fallout for medical cannabis users

Thanks to the tireless campaigning of a group of  ‘epilepsy mothers’, lead by Hannah Deacon, the mother of Alfie Dingley, and her consultant, neurologist Professor Mike Barnes, a change in the law in 2018 allowed the prescription of medical cannabis for children with certain rare types of epilepsy, those in chronic pain and for those …

The trouble about gluten-free oats

Oats are delicious – oats are nutritious – they contain high levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants and are an excellent source of fibre – they do not contain the protein gliadin, the gluten fraction that coeliacs need to avoid – they add texture to gluten free baking and are easy to cook with. Few …

Happy, if distanced, Christmas!

After this very strange and, for many people, horribly difficult year I wanted to wish you all a very peaceful, safe, healthy and hopefully happy Christmas. And offer you a little allergic chortle. Those of you who used to receive the FoodsMatter magazine will remember all of Christopher’s wonderful allergy related cartoons – the caption …

Good news for those with peanut allergy

The news may be grim on the virus front but there have been two bits of good news this month for those with peanut allergy. Earlier in the month The Journal of Allergy and Immunology: In Practice reported on on a trial which demonstrated that peanut oral immunotherapy is still effective after one year of …

Is it time to subject Vitamin C to serious scientific scrutiny?

Ever since 1970 when the Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling claimed that gram dose vitamin C supplementation could prevent and alleviate the common cold, the argument has rumbled on – how effective can vitamin C supplementation be for respiratory infections both mild (such as the common cold) or more acute (pneumonia and, maybe, COVID19). The evidence …

Share a meal

Yes, indeed – what a lovely thing to be able to do – and one that we have been deprived of for all too long. But, we don’t have to be. Over lockdown my good friend Sarah Stacey, who lives in a tiny village in Dorset, started cooking meals for a poorly neighbour. Talking to …

Copyright © 2021 · Michelle's Blog · Michelle Berridale Johnson · Site design by DigitalJen·