Fermenting Dairy at Home – Part 1: Milk Kefir

A couple years ago (already?!) I started hearing about kefir everywhere and decided to give it a shot myself. I had been brewing kombucha for several years, and maintaining a sourdough starter for even longer, so it seemed the next logical step in home fermentation.

Milk kefir (which is not quite the same culture as water kefir, which I also tried but wasn’t a fan of) uses a gross-looking, continually growing mass of bacteria and yeast (which are called grains, but are not actually grains – it’s sort of like a tiny scoby) to ferment dairy milk into a probiotic-rich product that tastes a lot like plain yogurt. You can also use milk kefir culture to ferment coconut milk, which is EXTREMELY DELICIOUS, but I have heard it’s not self-sustaining if you don’t do a dairy ferment every few batches to “feed” the culture with lactose.

(The "grains" - they are admittedly gross looking but like a kombucha scoby, you don't eat them)

Milk kefir is by FAR the easiest home fermentation I’ve ever done. It takes about a day and requires zero special equipment other than a jar and a strainer to catch the grains. You can use it in place of buttermilk or yogurt in recipes that call for either, which is awesome because recipes rarely call for a full litre of buttermilk. Plus – WAY cheaper. Personally I like using it in smoothies because I enjoy the tangy taste of yogurt in smoothies but as blending yogurt turns it back into liquid anyway, one might as well save money and plastic containers and use kefir instead. 

I have tried and ultimately failed to adequately thicken kefir into a more yogurt-like consistency. I’ve used gelatin and chia seeds but it always ended up creating a bunch of extra steps that I could never quite perfect (which is okay because now I know how to make yogurt at home and it’s super easy – stay tuned for Part 2!).

If you have a smoothie habit and dump a lot of yogurt directly into the blender, I would highly recommend fermenting your own kefir instead – it’ll save you a ton of money over the long term, and you will likely not notice a difference in taste or texture.

Here is how to “make” milk kefir:

• Obtain some milk kefir grains – I got mine on Kijiji
• Place the grains in a jar and pour in some milk
• Cover with a cloth or coffee filter and leave on the counter for about 12 hours. When you jiggle the jar and the milk appears to have solidified or has a layer of whey starting to separate, it’s done (it will re-liquify when you strain it). It should also smell pleasantly tangy like yogurt or buttermilk. If it smells rotten or spoiled something has gone wrong
• Strain out the grains and start over. Use the fermented kefir immediately or store in the fridge for a week or two

Note that if you use a metal strainer it may curdle the kefir slightly, which is fine if you’re going to blend it up or bake but if you are planning to drink it straight or thicken to eat like yogurt, this is not ideal, so you will probably want to use a plastic strainer.

You can also ferment milk or coconut milk without grains, if you have an active culture going – this is ideal if you don’t want to have to strain the finished product. Just add a couple spoonfuls of the finished kefir to unfermented milk or coconut milk and ferment similarly. (Don't worry - it won’t grow new grains from scratch overnight).

If you need a break from kefir, just put the grains in some milk in the fridge for a couple weeks. Eventually you need to feed them so they don’t die, but I often put mine in the fridge for a couple days a week when I’m getting too much of a backlog.

Milk kefir is fun, easy, cheap, requires almost no equipment investment, and tastes like yogurt! If you’re new to fermentation I would absolutely recommend it as a starter project.

...and eventually I had to graduate to yogurt making, which will be Part 2 of this post!

Avoiding The Stress Sandwich - or - How I Learned to Stop Complaining and Love the Bus

In my first go-around at university, I was extremely lucky to live two blocks from campus, so I walked or biked to class every day (I also worked on campus for the summers I spent in Saskatoon – no doubt the gas money I saved in university helped keep my expenses low). However the downside of this was that unlike most University of Saskatchewan undergrads, I did not learn to use public transportation. I still had to pay for the bus pass, which I grumbled and complained about very publicly in a RedEye article that we shall not speak of ever again, and proudly never once used public transit during university.

When I went back to school about 8 years later, I applied for a parking pass, because the bus, ew. But seconds before I clicked the button to purchase the pass, I finally started thinking like the engineer my resume says I am:

• I already had to pay for a bus pass whether I used it or not
• I was about to plunk down $400 (plus future gas money) for a parking spot a 20 minute walk from the building where my classes and office were located
• The bus stop was a block from my house, and would drop me off literally across the street from my office
• A bus ride would be 30 minutes, a drive about 15-20 plus another 20 minute walk
• At the time my only guaranteed income for the coming year was $4000

Okay! I should probably learn to take the bus.

I am not exaggerating when I say that taking the bus is probably the thing that changed my life the most in the past few years. (I guess if we want to chicken/egg it, I would never have started if I hadn’t decided to go back to school...) At first I kind of hated it, especially when I had been waiting for 10 minutes on College Drive and then saw my bus go by, full to capacity and unable to stop, meaning another 20 minutes of waiting. Eventually I learned which times of day the bus had a tendency to fill and I’d go shove my way on early at the main pickup point, Place Riel (I also realized that they would usually send another empty bus 5-10 minutes later to pick the rest of us up). I didn’t know where the stops were at first, so pulled on the cord a bit early a few times. But after a while, I started to wonder why anyone would want to drive when taking the bus could be a viable alternative.

Don’t get me wrong – Saskatoon Transit is NOT perfect (though in about 5 years it should be vastly improved! I’m so excited for this!) and there are a lot of places where it makes way more sense to drive a personal vehicle. My sister lives on the opposite end of the city which I’d need a couple transfers and at least an hour to get to, and if I’m going to her house it’s usually a weekend or evening when the bus is running reduced service. Of course I will drive to her house. If a person needs to trip chain all over the place, again a vehicle usually makes sense. But if you need to go directly downtown or the university area during Monday-Friday working hours, it seems to make so much more sense to take the bus.

Of course, in a lot of cases, unless you routinely spend copious amounts of time hunting for a parking spot and/or end up parking a 15-20 minute walk from your intended destination the bus will probably add at least 10 minutes to your commute. I get that some people just can’t give up that time, but I also think it might be not be as hard as you think to add it in. The big question is - why would I encourage something that actually increases my commute time, in a world where time is so precious? In my opinion, the mental health benefits of not driving to and from work are too huge to ignore.

When a person is driving, especially in a city, their brain is in hyper-response mode. A study in Maryland concluded that the brain might be required to process over 1300 pieces of information PER MINUTE when driving 30 mph*. Besides you know, responsibly operating a deadly weapon, you are likely worried about bad drivers, the weather, icy roads, the horrible news you’re hearing on the radio, etc. This is all EXTREMELY STRESSFUL! No wonder people get to work grumpy and exhausted, and get home grumpy and exhausted. Why would you want to do something like that before and after another stressful activity like working for 8 hours?

I eventually realized that a lot of the change in my mood during grad studies was not totally due to the career change I’d made, but the fact that I wasn’t designing my day as a stress sandwich. On the bus, you can turn your brain off and let someone who is trained and paid to drive worry about all those other things. You can look out the window and see what’s going on in the city, close your eyes and listen to a podcast without having to also focus on the road, legally use your cell phone, read a book, etc. i.e., use the commute time to take a break and do something that ISN’T stressful.

Even better, at the start and end of said bus commute there’s probably at least a block or two of walking. And we should all know by now how even just a tiny bit of exercise can shift a person’s mood!

I’m not saying everyone can and should convert to bus commuting tomorrow. I know you’ve got kids to drop off at daycare! I know you have to go to Costco to get gas on the way home (do you really though?)! However, maybe on the days your car is in the shop, or you want to have a few extra after-work drinks, or it’s -40 and you dread the 20 minute walk to your parking spot – give the bus a try. Google Maps and the Transit App make it super easy to see where the bus is and can tell you exactly where and when to get on and off. And the awesome part is that the service is only going to get better over the next decade.

*Stat taken from Tom Vanderbilt’s Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What it Says About Us), referencing Street Graphics published by the American Society of Landscape Architects Foundation

Hooray for... cabbage!?

So this one might be weird but today I’m here to sing the praises of the bagged coleslaw mix!

I am SO OVER the mesclun mix, the “baby” spinach bag. Like, thank you for shipping me a large container all the way from California that often can't be recycled and half the leaves are slimy and wilty. It’s rare we ever use the whole bag at once, but also rare for it to last more than an extra day in the fridge once opened. Result – lots of expensive and well-traveled compost material for the green bin. This is an unsustainable model for getting your greens during Saskatchewan winters in a lot of ways, but it doesn’t have to be like this. I made the switch to cabbage a couple years ago and I’m never going back.

Cabbage holds up and lasts in the fridge for a couple weeks (even after it’s opened). It isn’t delicate and doesn’t require a large special plastic box to transport it (again, all the way from California). Cabbage is also much more nutritious and satiating than lettuce,  AND let’s not forget that a 1lb bag of coleslaw mix is usually $2-2.50 regular price, while a bag of spinach or mesclun will be at LEAST $4. This adds up if you are buying it every week! (This could be even further reduced if you buy a whole head and shred it yourself, but let's start off with baby steps.)

Cabbage is also way more versatile than what I’ll call the “fragile greens”. You can make a salad with it, or soup, or fry it up to eat as a cooked vegetable. You are not limited to mayo-based coleslaw with a coleslaw mix! I usually make a quick vinaigrette with oil, vinegar, maple syrup, salt and pepper, and toss in a few fun things like pumpkin seeds, feta, and craisins – i.e., exactly what you’d probably do with a mesclun mix, just cheaper, and you don’t have to throw it out if you don’t finish it within an hour. Cabbage slaw is especially awesome if you have to bring a salad to a potluck because you KNOW no one will actually finish the salad when there’s Swedish meatballs, perogies, and lasagna on the table, so you can take it home and eat it for lunch the next day.

(Listen, I know I am not a great food photographer, and cabbage is also not photogenic, but this is better than nothing and it was a delicious soup.)

One of the main reasons I use the internet is Smitten Kitchen (as much for the gorgeous and hilarious writing as for the delicious recipes) and I think it’s safe to say that her own love of cabbage has helped inspire mine. Two of my go-to’s she tipped me off to are her Winter Slaw with Farro, and Joshua McFadden’s cabbage soup from Six Seasons (a very good cookbook that I should probably buy). I am also 100% sold on using cabbage as the base for taco salad, don’t even talk to me about romaine. I forget how I initially stumbled upon this recipe for Fried Cabbage with Bacon and Cheddar but it’s super easy and rich and somehow you forget that you’re mainly just eating a pile of healthy cabbage for supper.

I know switching from mesclun or spinach to cabbage for winter salads seems like such a small and insignificant thing – but I swear it’s improved my life! I feel less guilty for wasting food (because there is so little waste with cabbage compared to fragile greens), my salad-based environmental footprint is smaller, I save money, and the dish itself just feels a little more substantial. Sometimes it is these seemingly tiny swaps that actually make a huge difference.

(Okay okay - what about kale? I personally am one of those weirdos who actually likes the taste and texture of kale, but I find there is a time and place for it. Cabbage is just nicer to eat raw, is far less bitter, and you can't buy a $2 bag of prewashed fork-sized kale pieces that you can quickly dump a vinaigrette on and call it a day.)

I built a new habit! (Or, Yoga January)

For 2020 I made a New Year's resolution to do a small amount of yoga every day in January. I wanted to see if it would make a noticeable difference, and also expected it to build a habit. The goal was very simple - do a (ideally different) 10-20 minute YogaDownload class every day and record/rate each class. I have found that starting small like this, and holding my "streak" accountable is a great way to build a habit.

(You might have missed my recent post about how I got into yoga and the classes I use; I forgot to link it on Twitter and the stats currently say only one person has read it - here's the link.)

I didn't quite end up doing a different class every day but I think I tried at least 25 different classes. Near the end of the month I was getting tired of holding myself to under 20 minutes and figured I should not be limiting myself to doing less exercise than I actually wanted (even if it was for science)! Several days during the month I also ended up tacking on a second class after doing my short one, but overall I found it very easy to make myself get on the mat for at least 15 or so minutes every day.

I also found it made a massive and very noticeable difference in my mobility, flexibility, energy, and mental health! Within the first 10 days or so I could do downward dog without bending my knees for the first time in my life. 2/3 through the month I could do a frog squat, again something I'd never been able to do before and just assumed I didn't have the natural flexibility for. January was an incredibly slow month work-wise - I barely cracked 20 hours of paid time in the entire month. This is something that in the past may have really discouraged me, but having some goals for what to do with my time (keeping up my Duolingo streak is another ongoing thing for 2020) made it seem like my days were not total wastes of time.

I continue to love the variety of classes on YogaDownload, and forcing myself to try at least 20 new short classes was really fun. I picked up quite a few new favourite classes and instructors. This list is mainly for myself but if anyone reading this does use YDL (or want to try out the free classes!), the following were my favourite short classes that I did in January:

Morning Quickie - Elise Fabricant (free! no subscription needed so anyone can try this class)
20-Minute Yoga Fix - Keith Allen
Anytime Sun Salutations - Jackie Casal Mahrou (my favourite teacher and one of my very favourite short classes)
Fitness 'n' Yoga: Body Awakening Flow - Ben Davis
Travel Transition Tuneup - Claire Petretti Marti (free! awesome if you've sat all day)
True North Flow - Kristin Gibowicz (Kristin has the best cues for posture and alignment)
Fuel Your Tapas Flow - Kristin Gibowicz
Quick Energy Boost - Keith Allen (this one never feels like it's only 13 minutes!)
Beat the Winter Blues Namaskar - Maria Garre
Brain Break - Ellen Kaye (free AND fully standing, no mat required)
Yoga Break for Writers' Block - Claire Petretti Marti (another free and fully standing class that you can do anywhere)
Stand Up and Stretch - Jackie Casal Mahrou (I didn't actually use this one in January, but it's 10 mins, no mat, and free so I do it lots in hotel rooms etc.)

I can't say enough about how amazed I am that such a short amount of yoga done regularly can have such powerful effects (though in hindsight, duh). My original goal was to just do this for January and see how it went, but I see zero reasons to quit. If you want to start small and try something similar, I'd recommend doing the 10-minute free Stand Up and Stretch class for a few days in a row. I think you'll notice an immediate difference, and might even be inspired to try more!