Probiotic Chocolate Ice Cream – Fig Water Kefir – Vital Choice Salmon – Sprouted Flour
October 27, 2009 By 12 Comments
Enjoying "God's Natural, Organic, Whole Foods, Grown Locally, In Season"
My Tuesday Twister posts are my weekly round-up of what’s going on in my kitchen and our lives, as it pertains to real food. So here we go – I’ll catch you up on what’s twisting in my kitchen this week!
To participate in the Tuesday Twister Blog Carnival, visit this post. See you there!
- Probiotic Chocolate Ice Cream – I’ll let you guess the magic probiotic ingredient in this creamy chocolate ice cream! The ice cream was yummy – probably not as creamy as I would have liked, but until I get a cream separator rigged up for our goat milk, this is the best I can do. I do add avocado and coconut cream to the mix to boost the creaminess, and those do a pretty good job. Speaking of that magic probiotic ingredient (kefir), I have been eating quite a bit of it, along with coconut oil, for their anti-viral properties. (This is the gross part, please skip to the next item if you’re not interested in my ailment.) You see, I broke out in a cold sore on my lip, right at the site of a hot soup burn. My cold sores are quite big outbreaks. This is the first time I have not medicated it with the prescription cream I’ve been hoarding since college (remember that, Mom? I’ve still got the tube!). Well, I think the kefir and coconut oil are better healers as my lip is recovering FASTER than ever! Edit: Here’s the recipe: Probiotic Chocolate Ice Cream.
- Fig Water Kefir – I continue to play around with flavors of water kefir. So far, everyone likes a plain vanilla water kefir, but that doesn’t stop me from trying other things. We’ve tried: raisin-vanilla, date-vanilla, fig-vanilla, and lemon-ginger. A friend has tried dried peach and her family really liked that! The flavoring is done during a second ferment, which produces a more bubbly drink, one of the reasons I like the extra step. But plain vanilla is pretty good, too!
- Vital Choice Salmon – My order (which I mentioned last week) arrived, and as everyone says, Vital Choice canned sockeye (red) salmon is out of this world!
- Sprouted Flour – I took my Vita-Mix over to my friend Jami’s last week, where we did a comparison grinding of her sprouted spelt berries. We compared my Vita-Mix with her countertop appliance (but I can’t remember the name of it! Jami?) that really is not a grinder even though the makers claim it to be, so the results were not surprising. Hands down, the Vita-Mix produced soft, fine flour, while the other appliance produced coarse, inconsistently sized meal. Speaking of sprouted flour, I’ve begun sprouting a big batch of spelt to restock my pantry with it. It is very handy to have around, because once the flour is made, baked goods can be created without soaking (the sprouting does all the work of soaking and more). See Sprouting Grains for instructions and more information.
So, that’s it for me – what’s twisting in your kitchen? To participate in the Tuesday Twister Blog Carnival, visit this post. See you there!
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I’m trying hard to use up the skulk of squash my CSA has provided this month. This soup uses local, in season foods and is very, very yummy!
http://localnourishment.com/2009/10/16/october-harvest-soup/
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I just got a $35 gift certificate to Cultures for Health for my birthday and water kefir is at the top of my list! A couple months ago, I tried growing my own kombucha SCOBY, but sadly it failed. Since then I’ve read that water kefir is easier and more consistent than kombucha, so I’m going to give it a try. Do you know if it’s safe to drink while pregnant?
Emily – I don’t know! That is a good question. Let me know if you find out?
I hope you will be sharing the ice cream recipe. I’ve been pondering how to turn the kefir into ice cream but haven’t attempted it yet. Good to know about the kefir and coconut oil for cold sores.
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i have a friend who also gets cold sores and she says since she started eating yogurt every day, and stopped eating most nuts (which are high in the amino acid arginine, while dairy is high in lysine which is known to potentially reduce outbreaks/severity of outbreaks) her outbreaks have stopped!
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Eggs and quinoa are high in l-lysine, too. But I think eating high l-lysine foods is more of a preventative. A relative takes l-lysine pills when she gets a breakout and they work almost overnight, although I don’t know what the dosage is.
emily and Larisa, I have also heard about lysine – and I’ve taken the supplement both as treatment and prevention, but never noticed that they made a difference. I’m telling ya-I get BIG ones. If I described them to you, you’d be grossed out and never visit gnowfglins again.
I’ve been enjoying green tea water kefir lately.
Andrew – How do you make green tea water kefir? Put the grains in a sweet green tea, similar to Kombucha? Please enlighten me!
Pro-biotic chocolate ice cream?! Is it my turn to come visit soon?
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Doesn’t freezing kill the probiotic culture? That is what I have always heard about frozen yogurt and assumed it would be the same with kefir.
Kara – From what I’ve read, kefir is still viable when frozen. One of the ways that people preserve their grains, when they’re taking a break from culturing it, is by freezing. Even if some of the bacteria or yeast don’t die in the freezer, probably some or most do not. Any time I’ve read that kefir does not last someone is talking about a long-term deep freeze (and ironically, others claim their kefir grains survive the deep freeze). If the former were true, I don’t think it would apply to making homemade ice cream, especially if you were to serve it right out of the ice cream maker. Rather than being “deep freeze” it is “soft serve” as it just barely achieves a soft frozen state before serving. So… I think the bacteria/yeast are still active, or at least most of them. That’s my conclusion anyway. Thanks for asking. What are your thoughts?