Let's talk about my diet, shall we? See, lately, it sucks. More precisely, it lacks deliberate choices. More than half of my dinners in the last week have been a) nonexistent or b) napkin-wrapped leftovers from a colleague's focus group, consumed at my desk (only once did I neglect to actually remove the napkin 
before biting into the sandwich). The rest of my lunches and dinners all came out of random tupperwares in the freezer which I'd vaguely labelled "curry", and have primarily featurd beans, eggplant, tomatoes, and too much cardamon. It's a good thing I had that pressure cooker obsession a while back
Given such a haphazard approach to nutrition of late, you would think that I'm going to start stressing about it, no? Except, not, because you see, there's magic in the form of kefir in my fridge, and every morning, I have a glass of it. I mean, google it, will you? (But ignore the third link down, counting non-indented links, because that site has repeatedly helped themselves an image from my archives, using my bandwidth, nice, no? The first time, I politely asked for it to be removed. Last month, I replaced the image with this and it stayed on the site for a couple of days before disappearing - which was nevertheless a much faster response than when I politely emailed. What? I know I'm childish and petty and all that, and I never do anything so blatant to all the myspace users who love to steal the Quebec City in December pictures - popular lot, those, go to December 2004 in the Archives if you want to see them - and I've happily signed copyright releases lately, and even given permission for entire stories and pictures to appear in print without compensation because this is just a hobby, not my job, but still! You have to ask! And preferably not have a fad-oriented site that tries to sell stuff! And use your own damn bandwidth, not my brother's!) (what, you think I have a server sitting in my basement? I don't even have a basement.)
Ok, that parenthetical aside (is it less petty if I hide it in parentheses? I'll go ask Lynne Truss) got away from me, go back to the kefir google results, and look at the picure(s) below... Anything that will make the majority of my blog 
readers go "gross!" has got to be good for you, no? (did you get to the part where it's considered a hangover cure because, you know, fermentation, alcohol, hair of the vodka bottle?) Look at it! curds, whey, alive! When you put it in a plastic bottle with a tight screw top lid (like, say, an empty goat milk bottle), the bottle starts to swell! And then, I put it in my gut, where all those bacteria do... something, I guess. Hey, I would think my stomach bile would kill those suckers, but I'm not going to mess with the propaganda here.
Truth? You couldn't pay me enough if I didn't like it. It would be like that time I bought a big container of powdered Greens +, because, well, I'd walked by it a million times in the health food store and I was curious and the per volume price on the *big* container was so much better. The first three times I 
had some, I pretended I liked it. I tried to come up with something better to pretend, to make me like it, after that, but I drew a big blank. Then, I started using it as an incentive: go to the gym, escape the Greens +. Point being, I wanted to like it, I hated it, and I should have bought the small container, because even that, I would have chucked most of it.
But for months now, I often have a jar of kefir working away on my counter. I got my first culture from Kevin in November sometime, but I managed to kill it. (If you read the googled stuff - *I know*, okay? I don't even have chlorinated water, so it takes a special talent. I know you can't kill it by drying it, freezing it, or ignoring it for ages, but it died, ok?) Fortunately, in the meantime, Kevin acquired a different culture that not only survived three weeks in bicycle saddlebags (there's something so fitting about a kefir culture living in saddlebags, no?), but the belly of two airplanes, and sometime in January, he gave me some. And it's still alive!
And living on in my gut, I guess. I don't understand how these things work. I do know that I buy into this idea of not using antibiotics unless absolutely necessary because I think they'd mess up my own balance. My sample is just one: me. I've never had antibiotics (first luck, then conscious choice and an understanding physician and of course more luck), and no (sorry! I know you don't want to know!) yeast infections either, ever. Yeah, I know, quick, change the subject. Ok... ummm... ok, enlarge that picture on the left, of the kefir grains. At the size I uploaded the picture, you're looking at the grains about five times actual size. Canon Rebel XT, baby. Not mine. But whatever. Cool camera to play with (not that I've yet found any substantial differences from the Rebel yet, beyond location of some controls and post-capture image handling - and that particular one, I think the original is better but perhaps more battery consuming).
WRT subject line of this entry: also true. Tasty.
Posted by Johanna at March 29, 2006 09:54 PM