Kefir Madness

Sometime when I hit my forties I started encountering a symptom I’d never in my life before experienced: the ever-present notion that I had to burp. It was heartburn, of course. All through my twenties and thirties I’d eaten what I pleased, without remorse or a thought to the aftereffects. Suddenly I was being required to consider the potential pH level of my digestive system at every turn, and to cast dark, suspicious glances at that innocent glass of lemonade or an innocuous marinara, lest they disrupt my tummy’s delicate balance and leave me sleepless and belching all night.

Pills helped, of course, but who wants to pop pills all the time? Over time I found I could regulate my system more effectively by both watching my diet and eating yogurt. The yogurt seemed to settle things down considerably, thanks to its probiotic bacteria and its dairy. I found that when I’d go on vacation, especially, where I’d not have full control over what was going into my meals, eating a little cup of it in the morning would keep my stomach calm and steady for most of the day.

Then a few years ago, I discovered kefir in the grocery store. Like yogurt, kefir is a form of fermented milk. It’s simply less like pudding in consistency, though, and more like a slightly melted milkshake. I grew to prefer the stuff over yogurt, actually—I liked the slightly tart taste, and preferred swigging the stuff down to dealing with all those little plastic yogurt cups.

When last year I started on a medication that expressly forbade me from using any kind of antacid medications, I had to step up my kefir ingestion. I was bringing up two quarts of the stuff from the store rather than one. The weeks when I couldn’t find any at all—it’s in most of the supermarkets, as I said, but it’s still not so mainstream a product that store managers would panic when they run out—would send me into a tizzy. So although it very much sounded like the sort of thing the hippie-dippy parents I knew growing up might do, I started looking into making my own.

The primary thing that convinced me to take the plunge was the cost. I was shelling out four to five dollars for a quart of kefir at the supermarket. Milk, on the other hand, is local and fresh here, and can be had for about two dollars a half-gallon. A starter culture of kefir would only cost a couple of bucks. Sold! So in the spring I purchased some starter grains (grains are what the bacterial cultures that make kefir are called) and was on my merry way.

The grains arrived in a tiny Ziploc bag. They didn’t look like much. The instructions informed me I should pour the contents into milk and let them hydrate. I did so, feeling all the while like I was embarking on raising sea monkeys.

For a couple of days I strained out my tiny little grains as instructed, and changed the milk. I’d cover the jar with a rubber band and paper towel and leave it on the kitchen counter overnight to ferment. I was waiting for that moment when magically the grains would expand and start turning the milk into delicious (and slightly alcoholic) kefir. It didn’t take long in coming. By the third day, the grains swelled from pea-sized globules of nothingness into all-consuming colonies of sticky bacteria that looked very much like glossy heads of cauliflower. The kefir they produced, as they consumed all the lactose, came out thick, whiter than white, and sweet-smelling. I was on my way.

After a few days I had enough to start making smoothies for my breakfast meal. All I had to do is drop some frozen fruit in the blender, add a little sweetener, fill it up with kefir I’d been collecting every morning, and let it blend. The result was even better than the stuff I’d been buying in the store. If I get bored with strawberry, I can switch to raspberry. Or blueberry. Or pomegranate. Or I can just squeeze in some chocolate syrup. Or I can add coconut, or honey, or vanilla. It all tastes good.

So I’ve been very satisfied with this particular aspect of kefir making. It’s healthy, it’s easy, it’s cheap, and I get the satisfaction of having done it all myself, with the aid of some friendly bacterial colonies.

What I didn’t count on, however, is how rapacious the kefir grains are, or how rapidly they reproduce. It really only takes about a tablespoon of the grains to produce a quart of kefir a day, and I usually only make a pint. The little quarter-teaspoon of starter grains I used rapidly burgeoned into roughly a half-cup of huge, hungry, slimy cauliflower heads that were demanding, Audrey II-fashion, that I FEED THEM, SEYMOUR.

I’ve gotten ruthless in culling the colonies. Originally I was trying to give the things away to locals—I was even willing to attempt to dehydrate grains in order to send them long distances, if necessary. Apparently no one is as crazy enough as I to grow his own kefir, however. (Wonder why?) So now, when the grains get too big and aggressive, I’m ruthless about splitting the colonies in half and tossing a good deal of milk-hungry bacteria into the garbage can.

Even with that, I’ve still got kefir coming out of my freakin’ ears, man. I have enough to make more smoothies than I can possibly drink in a week, and still have leftovers. So every new recipe I’ve tried lately has used kefir out of desperation and a fear that the stuff will take over the kitchen more than it already has. Anything that requires kefir’s cultured cousins, buttermilk or sour cream, I now make with kefir. Kefir ranch dressing. Kefir gingerbread. Chicken stroganoff with kefir. I make pancakes with kefir. Brownies with kefir. Scrambled eggs with kefir. It’s gotten to the point where Craig will sniff with suspicion at anything I make and ask, “This has kefir, doesn’t it.”

Don’t get me wrong. I love the stuff still. But my nightmares now all involve alien bacterial colonies, ruthlessly replicating as they stretch out their cauliflower-like tendrils to force mankind to do their bidding. Their quest: world domination. Their headquarters: my kitchen counter.