sweasel.com

Not a very well crafted post, but I had a computer crash earlier and I’m playing catch-up.

It crashed in protest 😉

LOL @B.

Did it drive itself off Beachy Head?

You ‘inoculated’ kefir grains with chicken milk?
and mind you don’t misspell that word or they’ll have you down in irons for being a racist!

Umm, I think I’ll stick with the Pop Tarts, if you don’t mind. That stuff just looks nasty.

I don’t understand. You live in the land of Devonshire clotted cream.

Giving me a stomach ache just looking at it :O~

My wife buys the kefir stuff by the bottle.

By the look of that bowl full of unappetizing gunk, I think kefir is going into the hot dog category.

You know, stuff you don’t want to know what its made from.

Haven’t had kefir in a long while. First discovered it in the mid Seventies in college (hey, it was Southern Cal) and really liked it.

Haven’t gotten the grains to make my own because, as you note, it’s something of an everyday project. I haven’t even committed to making and keeping my own sourdough starter.

You know, guys and commitment.

At various times through decades past, I used bread starters. One was called Amish Friendship Bread, and the other was called Herman. You had to use/feed the starter once a week, and bakers were encouraged to give away some of the starter (maybe we called it “mother” —I can’t remember). One starter was fed with instant potato flakes and it was especially good, though the other one was also quite tasty.

But eventually you just get tired of making delicious, fragrant homemade breads and sweet rolls every week (and your friends start avoiding you). But I still have the recipes, and the recipes for concocting the starter, but now in the dawning of the Age of Aquarius Internet, I’m sure the recipes are out there, somewhere …

Am I the only one who read ‘Herman’ in Deborah’s post only for my brain to add ‘Munster’?

Seems somehow appropriate. Our kitchen often looks like a certain laboratory.

The “fresh bread every week” problem is particularly acute, Deborah, if one lives alone, and doesn’t eat bread at every meal!
However, I have recently discovered recipes using sourdough starter (which, of course, the starters you had were variations of) for waffles and pita bread, and I also realized that I could modify the pizza-dough dry mix I keep in one-batch packets in the freezer by omitting the yeast, then use sourdough starter in place of the liquid when I pulled out a batch to mix it up and make pizza … w00t! Means I can keep the starter active and fresh for those occasions when I DO want to make bread.
Stoaty would probably not approve of my pizza, having been (if I remember correctly) a pizza-making professional at one point in her youth. But it works for me.

Fresh yeast bread. nom nom nom nom nom nom.

Or fresh sourdough bread nomnom nomnom nom.

The supreme being only gave us bread because we couldn’t sit around drinking beer ALL the time.

And Uncle B, no, but I did picture some picklehaube wearing guy with a bushy mustache glaring at me from behind the milk and sour cream yelling “Futter mich Yankee, futter mich!”

The Weasel gave me a Panasonic breadmaker for Christmas a couple of years ago but while we agreed the bread it made was lovely, after a while my digestion decided that it just couldn’t take any more of it.

Also, as Her Stoatliness doesn’t each much bread (is this a ‘girl thing’? Seems awfully common on the distaff side) we got stuck with a lot of leftovers. It seemed to need consuming pretty quickly before it went stale.

I still make bread with it now and again. In fact I’ve just bought some Type 55 French flour to give that a try. If I don’t die of indigestion I will report back.

Looks like cottage cheese. I don’t like milk, yogurt, cream cheese, etc., but I love cottage cheese. I agree this makes no sense.

I like bread, but I don’t have time to do much cooking. Or, more accurately, I choose to spend my time on other things (work, playing with the kids, exercise, relearning German, etc.). When the kids are a little more self-sufficient, I’m hoping to cook more. (They are 6 (almost 7) and 2.)

A breadmaker is your friend Mrs. Peel.
I prefer doing it by hand because I don’t like little weird holes in my loaves, and I prefer loaves to LOOK like loaves because I’m an old bread snob.

But if you’re only interested in the smell and eating, then the bread machines are great. Dump in the ingreedyments and walk away until it beeps or buzzes at you.

So simple even son #2 uses one – and he is without doubt a ‘guy’ when it comes to cooking.

Canned chicken and canned vegetables in his “homemade chicken soup” for GAWDS SAKE! I tell him he might as well just buy Campbells and be done with it.

Are they really, Mrs P? Gosh, time flies…

I hardly ever bake bread at home any more, but I do have the world’s best reason. At least once a month, my wife and I use her church kitchen to bake for their frequent sales. Ten days ago, we made 24 loaves of bread: plain, w/raisins, and rye with walnuts and cranberries. All kinds freeze well, but there’s nothing like fresh warm bread with decent butter.

Uncle B, I’m sorry to hear your digestion doesn’t allow you to partake of this particular delight.

Yes! I’ve been making kefir every day for over a year now. I love the stuff. I drink about a quart a day. My life-long acid reflux disappeared completely after the first week and I lost about 20 pounds in the first 3 months… Amazing what healthy bugs in the gut can accomplish!