I have a new favorite food. Something I find myself looking forward to almost all the time. I’m ecstatic to tell you about kefir-based smoothies. I’m making the kefir from raw organic milk, and it’s unreal. I’ll get into how to make your own kefir later on. But if you can get your hands on it, the sour yogurt-like food will add another dimension to your health food menu.
Admittedly I’m just touching the tip of the iceberg atm, but have caught a glimpse of the potential myriad of options kefir can offer. (And before you judge, you absolutely can say “myriad of.” Haha…Don’t know what you do with that bit of trivia, but there it is.)
For most of my adult life I have stayed away from dairy products, and for good reason. I grew up with chronic digestion issues that kept me out of school quite a bit, and more importantly, kept me from having a lot of fun. When I was a teenager a doctor recommended I take a month off from dairy products and see what happens.
About ten days into it my indigestion (including extremely painful cramps & the Jeckyll & Hyde appearances of constipation and diarrhea) decreased by about 50%!!! And stayed there. Good times, except for years and years after that I missed out on the potential good things that can come from milk products without replacing them with other more natural sources. In the past several years I’ve been doing exactly that by getting calcium & the other common milk-associated minerals & vitamins through natural greens.
But as it turns out, a lot of health experts are discovering how good for the body RAW organic milk can be (a lot of them already knew!!), and especially when fermented in a particular way to make kefir. I’ve experimented with raw milk once or twice before and my stomach did fine with it. I’m about a week into consuming it daily and feel good overall…definitely not worse. If anything, better. But it’s early, so time will tell.
The key difference is that the milk is NOT PASTEURIZED. Pasteurizing milk is a lot like cooking your fruits and vegetables…the inherent goodness gets destroyed and it becomes a shadow of its former state. Only with milk, it seems to be worse because allergies & other adverse reactions may develop as a result, whereas you don’t see too many people breaking out in a rash or running to the nearest toilet because they ate steamed asparagus.
Like taking acidophylus capsules or any sort of probiotics to add good bacteria to your stomach, consuming kefir is a great way to obtain the good bacteria from a whole, natural food source, and it appears to be more potent than the supplemental method. More on all this later…for now….the smoothie because I’ve gotta run:
Mix the following approximate measurements in a blender:
- Liquid base = half cup kefir, half cup raw organic milk, half cup clean water
- 1 ripe avocado
- 1 to 1.5 frozen bananas (peel ’em, then freeze ’em)
- Half cup or so frozen raspberries (organic if possible)
- 1 scoop vanilla plant-based protein powder
- 1 tablespoon flax seed oil
- A handful of raw spinach leaves
Don’t worry about adding everything here! You could probably remove half this stuff and make an equally delicious smoothie. But as it stands, this tastes as good to me as any milkshake or smoothie or yogurt made from junk food or pasteurized ingredients that I have ever had. You can also add a couple dates to it. Try blueberries or strawberries instead of raspberries. Etc.
Get into it!! At this moment I like it even better than the chocolate smoothie (did I just say that?). Let me know what you think.
Have a great day!