Working with the kefir

I do not have pictures of the kefir, when I get a chance I will post some.   So how is it going with the kefir making?   Very well.

I am working the kefir heavily and this means my grains have more than doubled since I got my grains.  I have grains to spare now and if you want some, drop me a line and I can give you some.

Many people drink it kefir, but this does not appeal to me, it might work as part of a smoothie, but on its own it does not do it.  I like the tang of the kefir better than the normal yogurt flavour and I am trying to eat 250 grams of kefir yogurt per day.  

I am letting it get quite firm and then I separate out the grains.   Once the grains are out, I strain it through a jelly bag to get it to a fairly thick consistency.   There are two consistencies a I aim for, one about the consistency of yogurt or sour cream, the second the thickness of ricotta.

I process between 1.5 and 1.8 litres of milk every 24 to 48 hours.  The jars I use can hold up to 2 litres but the grains take some space and I leave some space at the top.   For the yogurt consistency I get about 50% of the volume of the milk I started with.   For the ricotta consistency it get about 35-40% of the volume of the milk I started with.

The kefir has more or less replaced all of our yogurt, sour cream and soft fresh cheese uses in the house.   It works very well as a replacement for sour cream, and has a much lower fat content.  I work with 1% milk, which means my sour cream consistency kefir has about a 2% milk fat content.

The ricotta consistency kefir is about 3% milk fat, making it a very low fat fresh cheese.    I could make it firmer still by pressing out more of the whey.   Adding a bit of salt and herbs and you have a very nice cream cheese.

Meanwhile, I am getting all this whey, what do I do with it?  I am throwing it out because I have no idea what I can use it for.  In a quick internet search, I have some interesting uses for it.  I guess I will not longer be throwing it out.

Cost of yogurt consistency is about $2.30 a litre, for the fresh cheese consistency it costs about $3.40 a kilogram.   This is dramatically cheaper than what it costs in the store and it is better for me.

Why did no one tell me about this place?

I apologize for the bad photos as my smart phone camera sucks

 I was walking down Johnson Street and thinking I needed to do something about lunch when I stumbled on Skinny Tato.   I saw that it was Polish food and given my background as a Baltic German, Polish cuisine is a cousin of the food I grew up with.

I have been dreaming of having a Russian restaurant in this city, the Baltic German food experience is most heavily influenced by the Russians.   In the absence of Russian food, Estonian, Finnish, Swedish or Polish is the next tier of home cooking for me.  To suddenly find a Polish restaurant made me stop and walk in.

The owner is a friendly woman originally from Poland 25 years ago.  She spent 24 years in Edmonton and has been here for the last year and opened the restaurant seven months ago.   The space is nothing fancy but that does not matter where there is good food.  There are only seven tables and total seating for just over 20 people.  My fear is we will be seeing lineups soon enough here.

The menu was short but what I expected.  Potato pancakes, cabbage rolls, perogies, and goulash were all there on the menu.   I happen to love a good potato pancake and I will never get bored of goulash, so I ordered the goulash filled pancake.   It came with a cup of soup to start which was wonderful, though I can not remember exactly what it was now!  It was a tomato soup with orange in it, sounds a bit off, but works really well.  I am going to have to consider the orange/tomato combo in cooking.

The funny thing is I just made potato pancakes and goulash for dinner on Sunday night so ordering it for lunch today allowed me a very good comparison.   The meal is a single large pancake with the goulash inside it.   It reminded me of the look and feel of meals I have eaten in Poland, Finland, and Estonia.

The pancake was light and crispy, better than most of the ones I made on Sunday.   The goulash was mildly spicy but reminded me that a good goulash has a bite to it and I have been keeping mine too mild.   The goulash was also light, though that is the wrong.  My goulash on Sunday was bordering on stodgy, this was the opposite.

The potato pancake with goulash came with two small salads out of a choice of four on the menu.  I chose the potato salad and the Skinny Tato salad, which is a light white cabbage based slaw.

The potato salad was the best I have ever had in my life, period.   It has all the stuff I would put in a potato salad, but the results are amazing.   Light and refreshing are words I would never connect with a potato salad, but that is what comes to mind when I think of it.

I am not a fan of cabbage based slaws.  Whenever I get them I simply give them to Sheila but since I was alone I ate it.   It was light and refreshing (yes I am repeating myself) and I could have eaten a whole bowl of it for lunch.  It was the perfect rendition of a Polish style cabbage salad/slaw.

Sharlotka Cake

I had to have the desert as it was a Sharlotka cake.   It is very reminiscent of the sort of cakes my Tante Nata used to make.  It was good and not overly sweet and something I do not think I could make

Once again to my question of every restaurant, could I do better at home or would it be easier?   No.  I might be able to equal the pancake and goulash, but the soup, salads and cake are beyond what I could do.

Kefir grains

I am looking for kefir grains so that I can start marking kefir yogurt again.  For a couple of years I had an active kefir culture going and I enjoyed the resulting product.  I even made some cheese from it.

The process is easy enough, you take the grains. put them into a canning jar with milk filled to the 3/4 mark and leave it out but not in the light.   After 24 hours you have your kefir yogurt.   You then strain out the grains and save them for your next batch.   The stuff you just made you store in the fridge and it will keep for a few days.  

The resulting product is a runny yogurt that has a strong tang to it.    It works really well in any sort of drink you want to make with it or on top of things like granola.   The stuff is also supposed to be wicked good for you, but that does not interest me as much as I like to eat it and work with it in my cooking.

The grains are small rubbery nodules, they are also a living bacterial culture.  When you make kefir yogurt the amount of kefir grains you have increases over time, this means you have grains you can share with others.   You can also kill your grains if you do not look after them properly.   This is what I did and that was the end of my kefir days.  

So, this is my request, if anyone out there knows of a source of kefir grains here in Victoria, please let me know so that I can go back to making kefir.

Apple Festival on Saltspring

This year's Saltspring Island Organic Apple Festival is this coming Sunday  and you should start at the Fulford Harbour Hall.  Last year they had 296 varieties at the hall.

There are orchards opening their gates elsewhere on the island, details at the Fulford Harbour Hall.

Panel talk on Food Security

This should be an interesting talk, the people involved are certainly broadminded and open to thoughts and ideas.   I do find that some parts of the Food Security Movement are close minded and see this is the latest campaign to attack the "System"

A Transition Victoria Food Group Networking Event / Panel Discussion:

This will be an opportunity to network with others in Food Security, to learn about and get involved with Transition Food Group Projects, Upcoming Events and Happening .

The panel discussion theme is: "What steps can we take to be food secure?"

• What are the actions to increase food security short, medium and long run that we can take?
• How can we connect the groups and organizations actively promoting food security and connect to them?
• What public policies do we need to support greater food security?

Panelists:

• Carolyn Herriot, The Garden Path
• Philippe Lucas, City of Victoria Councillor, and Victoria Downtown Public Market Society (VDPMS)
• Gabe Epstein, Gorge Tillicum Urban Farmers (GTUF)
• Linda Geggie, Capital Region Food and Agriculture Initiative Roundtable (CR-Fair)

Moderator: Anthony Sanna, VIVA-Raw and Ambrosia Conference and Events Centre.

Admission by donation. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Panel discussion starts at 7:15 p.m. Come early to network. Refreshments will be provided. Limited seating.

To volunteer or offer your assistance in the planning of this event, please contact Food Group Coordinator Linda Chan at 250 380 6383 or lindaschan@shaw.ca

Please feel free to offer suggestions on the types of activities and topics etc that you would like the Food Group to do in the future.

Delicious - a local Victoria TV show on Shaw

Since I do not get cable, I never see local cable TV, ever.   This is particularly odd for me as I am often one of the people asking questions on Voice of BC.

It was only the other day that I heard about the show from the host Aaron Hall.    I know Aaron from his interest in local governance issues.

The show is called Delicious and is short episodes focusing on the food scene in this city.

Here are some of the episodes

Gluten Free Bagels

Delicious presents Gluten-free Bagels from John Quick on Vimeo.

Fernwood Bites


Delicious presents Fernwood Bites 2011 from John Quick on Vimeo.

Wannawafel

Zucchini Madness

So finally the freaking zucchini plants are taking off!  Now comes the age old question, what do I do with them all?

We have eaten in stews, we have grilled them, we have made them into noodles, we have eaten them raw (well Stephen has, not me).   Where to now?

I could go out and give them away anonymously - drop on your drop step in the middle of the night.   Sort of a drive by zucchining.

To the more serious take on all this, how can I store or preserve them for the winter?   For a few years now I have been trying to come up with ways to preserve the excess zucchini but I am not having much luck in that.  

I have shredded and frozen them with the intent of using the zucchini in the winter in zucchini bread, but ultimately it just sits there at the bottom of the freezer aging long enough that I end up throwing it out.  I have tried drying them, but the resulting chip is bland dry and does not seem to re-hydrate well.

I have tried looking online but very little has come out of that other than what I have already done.   Pickles do come up, but I am not a pickle person and zucchini pickles really do not appeal to me.

Ideas?