Fresh fruits and veggies

I am a member of two neighborhood vegetable co-ops. It's great. $10 bucks gets me a big box of fruits & veggies every other week. So I end up with two boxes since I belong to two of them. I bought a used vita-mixer, which is a blender on steroids, and I blend up a lot of delicious meals. Some are weird, like the cabbage-cucumber gazpacho. Not so good...

This morning I had a cold grapefruit, strawberry, peach, orange, apple, and lime smoothie. Yum. It was tangy and delicious.

The Express News published an article about Chuparrosa Farm which is a local farm that is also a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA). Members support the place financially, and enjoy the fruits of harvest and other benefits including delivery options and an occasional members-only dining experience at the farm.

CSAs and Chuparrosa are interesting concepts. My co-ops shop at the veggie wholesalers (Most of which are clustered around 1500 S. Zarzamora), so what I get is arguably the same as what I could buy at HEB. The Chuparrosa members have the benefit of shaking the hand of Robin and Peter Bowman who grew the goodies. Check out the article by Loydean Thomas. There is also an associated list of all the Farmers Markets around San Antonio sorted by day of the week.

Gang of Pour's Vinegar making page

I dabbled in vinegar making for awhile. Once I got things started, I could just add a little wine from whatever was left over in the bottle. That was some excellent vinegar... easy, too.

Gang of Pour - So, You Wanna Make Vinegar, Eh?

The Joys of Kefir

I started making Kefir a few years back. Kefir is very much like yoghurt, but it is much easier to make. There's no boiling, cooling and worrying about everything being perfect. Basically, you just dump more milk on top of the leftovers from the previous batch, cover and leave out a day or two. I enjoyed it becasue it tasted good and because it provided a hhost of probiotics including lactobacillus acidophilus, which is the main good guy responsible for making yoghurt.

If you are interested in Kefir or Kefir-making, visit Dom's Kefir in-site. He's like the J.S. Peterman or Charlie Papazian of Kefir. He balance the romance, the histiry, the art, and the science of Kefir. His site is overflowing with interesting stuff. And also how to get started.

I ignored my kefir for a couple of weeks and effectively killed it. I don't recommend that.

Here's just a blurb from Dom:

"Kefir is a refreshing cultured-milk beverage, which originated many centuries ago, in the Northern Caucasus Mountains. The word kefir is derived from the Turkish word keif, which loosely translates to good feeling or feeling good.

Kefir has a uniform creamy consistency, a slightly sour refreshing taste, with a mild aroma resembling fresh yeast. Kefir also has a slightest hint of natural effervescent zesty tang. There are an assortment of approx. 40 aromatic compounds, which contribute to the unique flavour and distinctive pleasant aroma of kefir.

Traditional authentic kefir can only be prepared by culturing fresh milk with Kefir grains. Kefir grains are not to be mistaken for cereal grains this is to say that the grain part of the name is a misnomer. Kefir grains, or kefir granules if you wish, are in fact a natural-starter or natural-mother-culture. "