A healthy gastrointestinal tract is alive with microorganisms—enzymes, fungi and bacteria—more than three trillion of them by some estimates. A full three and a half pounds of flora, working away in perfect balance to keep us healthy. Introduce antibiotics to the scene, and that balance is thrown off. A toxic environment has been created. Digestion of protein, fats and carbohydrates suffers. The immune system is damaged. Vitamin absorption is compromised.
With renewed commitment to replenishing my antibiotic-ravaged gut, and having received a lovely care package from Vermont, I’ve been brewing new life. My kitchen has been alive with fizzing komucha and kefir this week, and kim chee (a fermented cabbage concoction) has graced my dinner plate. Each offers a uniquely diverse array of flora. The more the merrier, it seems. Eating and drinking fermented, microorganism-rich foods like kefir, kombucha, yogurt and kim chee is the single most effective thing we can do to create a healthy digestive tract. Healthy digestive tract, healthy body.
This might have been the strangest care package I’ve ever received, but surely one of the most thoughtful:
- kefir grains to start my own batch of kefir;
- a kombucha mushroom (a “mother”) to start a batch of kombucha tea;
- a quart of homemade kim chee;
- and instructions and good wishes, too.
The kombucha mushroom (the mother), tucked into a small glass jar, was rather unconvincing. Taking a leap of faith, I placed what looked like a pile of congealed mucous or primordial goo on the surface of the sweet, black tea in a one-gallon glass jar. Alive with at least thirty microorganisms (bacteria and yeasts), it will do its magic for the next two weeks, yielding a gallon of fizzy kombucha. (If I’m lucky, the mother will calve a daughter, and my kombucha will live on for another batch, and another after that.)
It’s a funny thing, how, without very much thought, we’ll drop $5 or $6 dollars at the food coop for products like yogurt, kefir and kombucha, never realizing how utterly simple it is to make them at home. If I’m honest, I’ll admit that I was a bit skeptical buying those products, thinking they might not really be any good for me. I wonder now how that belief, or lack of belief, affected their healing potential in my body, even if they were alive with organisms.
There’s no doubt in my mind that what’s brewing away on top of my fridge right now—a quart jar of kefir and a gallon of kombucha—are alive with microorganisms. The kefir, which only takes a day or two to ferment, tastes delicious compared to its store-bought imitator (too sweet and strongly flavored, presumably to cover up the tartness of the kefir itself). When I drink it, it’s easy to envision the life I’m introducing to my body. It tingles with life.
My kombucha will brew for another week or so before I get a taste, but I inspect it daily. The mother is doing well, and the brew smells plenty stinky, just like kombucha. I take that as a sign of success.
Alas, the gift of kim chee. I do believe it’s good for me, but I’d sure like to enjoy it more than I do.
All of this activity has filled me with hope. I may have a few more months on antibiotics (or less if my Lyme disease continues to improve as dramatically as it has in the last few weeks) but I know that I’m doing everything I can to take care of myself in the mean time. And that feels really, really good.
Any suggestions on what to do with kim chee?
I’m pretty fond of Kombucha, despite the jelly fish looking mother… kefir on the other hand is not one of my favs. Unfortunately, my recommendation for the kim chee is feed it to the dogs… Anything fermented is your friend – from pickles to sauerkraut. It’s really, really easy to ferment greens (like kale) at home, but again it’s one of those acquired tastes, and I’ve never acquired it! I wish I had more skill and taste for fermented foods… I mostly go for yogurt and miso as probiotics. You can also add spirulina to your recipes or cook with tempeh – they say it is a great meat substitute. And raw milk, homemade yogurt is easy and oh…so…good! I like it because I can stir in my own preserves and make all the flavors I want without the tons of sugar that store bought yogurts have (even the organic ones!)
Thanks for pointing out the other fermented foods I’m not thinking about, like pickles and miso. I’d love to find a list of the organisms in each — why, I’m not sure, but probably just to satisfy my curiosity. Until this recent awakening, I hadn’t been thinking about different foods having different microbes to offer. It’s fascinating!
My favorite way to have kim chee is have it swirled into chicken soup — perfect for this transitional time between seasons when we’re needing tonic-like foods — though the kim chee can be substituted for any dish where you’d use sauerkraut. For making kim chee at home, I like to use bok choy with some shredded carrots tossed in for a slightly sweeter, less pungent fermentation.
I’ll give the chicken soup idea a try. I assume the soup shouldn’t be too hot, since the high temperature would kill the microbes. Perhaps I’ll try making some of my own this summer and experiment a little with the recipe. Bok choy and carrots sounds nice.
I find it sad/funny that we know so little about our food that a company like Danone can invent a name for a probiotic: Bifidus Regularis, and sell it to us like there haven’t been live cultures in yogurt all along.
It’s crazy how Industrial Dairy strips milk, divides it up, replaces what they took out with new laboratory replacements and sells it back to us as better than the original stuff. And all the ways they get us to pay for water. The crazier part is that we believe it! Look at how one of the new brands of Greek yogurt claims to have so much more protein – of course it does with all the excess water drained away!
I wish I was more fond of Kombucha and kim chee myself. Fortunately, I’m really fond of yogurt. You’re lucky to live so near to so many great sources of raw milk.
Another thing people seem to have forgotten; if you’re afraid of raw milk but want the best quality milk, you can pasteurize milk yourself easily. Licensed raw milk has to meet a much higher standard than conventional and if you buy it direct from the farm, has not been mixed with milk from any other farms.
Buying this and pasteurizing it yourself at a lower temperature for a longer time than ultra pasteurized (like most commercial organic milk) you’ve got the best of all worlds. High quality milk with the cream (which you can skim yourself) and the structure of the milk will still allow you to make butter, yogurt and cheese easily.
You raise some really good points about food marketing. Thinking back many years to when bread became “enriched,” nobody ever questioned why it needed to be enriched—because of all the nutrition that had been stripped out of it in the first place. Wow! Pasteurizing at home. That’s something I never hear anyone talking about. How easy it is to forget what a simple process pasteurization really is. It’s a great reminder (although I’ll happily continue with my raw milk source). Your comment is a blog post unto itself! Thanks!
That’s a great idea to swirl the kim chee into the soup – I can’t wait to give it a try.
What a wonderful gift from Vermont and you have my wheels turning. I do pick up a kombucha at the grocery store every so often but haven’t thought about making my own. Kimchee is tough for me too but my husband embraces it straight from the jar. Will you be able to post some of these recipes?
Sure, I can post the recipes. I hesitated to do that right away, since I’m still learning (and haven’t harvested the kombucha yet. It’s a fun process, having things brewing in the kitchen!
I’ve heard of Kombucha tea but don’t know what it is. All these comments (and your writing) are very interesting. I would love to know more. I do not trust what the “world” serves us. Yes, please write more, add pictures and recipes… pretty please…. ;)
Kombucha is just sweet tea (usually black), fermented. You should be able to buy it bottled in your local coop or health food store, but don’t expect to love it at first! It’s very healthy so, if you acquire a taste for it, you should definitely try making it yourself. I’ll be sure to post some recipes, photos and more detail about both kombucha and kefir when I’m a little bit more experienced. So far, the kefir has been a big success, but the kombucha has not finished brewing. Stay tuned!
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