LET ME SHARE YOUR BURDEN

Like motor vehicles thrive on black gold, I need white gold to function best. 

My love of milk and dairy products is so well-known that there's this standing joke amongst family and friends that I should move to the Midlands and marry a dairy farmer to have an endless supply of milk, yoghurt and cheese.

Heidi may have played a role or just resonated with my innate workings.

Thought I had tasted it all when, in 2016, while living in KwaZulu-Natal, I was gifted a little cauliflower-looking organism from the Caucasus that also thrives on milk.

I took it home and fed it, and in turn, it multiplied and made me a drink that tasted like yoghurt yet with a hell of a lot more live cultures and millions of probiotics.

I lost my little friends somewhere along the way in my move back up to Gauteng, and I've been hoping for us to reconnect. 

Yet the price of Kefir grains is insane, especially considering how rapidly they grew and how readily I shared them with others simply because I ran out of food for them?!? It's like paying thousands of rands for a kitten when people give them away for free!

While investigating Kambucha - and once again struggling with the price of a SCOBY, which sounds just as hungry and eager to grow as Kefir grains, only they prefer tea instead - stumbled upon a video tutorial to grow one's own.

And there and then, I had an "Aha" moment. 

Theoretically, if I consider the process of growing a SCOBY and my recent experimentation with yoghurt making, combining those two thoughts could produce multiple batches of Kefir.

I bought my favourite kind of Kefir drink again but first checked the ingredients on the back to confirm that it was the unadulterated product of the original thing.

Next up, I mixed it with milk and let it rest in a warm, dark place overnight, and it worked! I've been drinking new batches of Kefir daily ever since.

Unfortunately, it has not produced any grains yet. I checked Wikipedia, and they are convinced it won't either. 

So I'll still have to find someone who has a little colony of their own and, much like myself many years ago, would gladly share some in the hope that I'll feed them, too.

Yet, in the meantime, I'm making the best of my original little bottle of store-bought Kefir. 

I've been feeding it loads of white gold, thus allowing it to continually multiply into that ancient drink and renowned elixir of long life.

At this pace, I'm going to reach a hundred-and-twenty or at least die while trying, and I'm starting by fortifying my gut health again.

WORDS: rhodenel©7DEC2024 

PHOTOGRAPHY: rhoderuth©7DEC2024