Win Some Counterculture
This contest is now closed! Thanks for all who participated. The winner will be announced on Wednesday, Sept. 16th!
So, maybe you’re one of those back-to-basics types who has caught the wave of traditional foods and is enticed by the notion of making your own sourdough, sauerkraut, and yogurt. Perhaps you’ve read about the benefits of fermented foods, including their high amounts of vitamin K2, B complex vitamins, and probiotics, which are crucial for gut health and immunity. At any rate, you’ve probably found, like I did early in my journey, that these probiotic foods are generally not for sale in your neighborhood grocery store, and if they are, they are very expensive.
Kombucha, which sells for about $3.00 for 16 oz is a luxury for most of us, yet with a starter it can be made for about $0.50 per quart!!!! Live sauerkraut, pickles, and relishes (nothing like the products sold in the condiment aisle) sell for around $6.00 for 8 oz. at my local health food store. Do you know how many cabbages I could buy for $6.00???!!!
Good quality yogurt and kefir are very expensive as well, and what better way to transform pasteurized milk (for those who have no access to good quality real milk) then to culture it, renewing its enzyme content and breaking down the proteins making it much more digestible?
Perhaps you’ve been trying to lick a soda habit but can’t seem to live without something bubbly to drink. Well, you can culture your own probiotic soda using water kefir grains!
All of these cultures and more are available at Cultures for Health, a fantastic small business by a mom and fellow Portlander who delivers exceptional service and quality. I’ve worked with CFH several times and am always impressed by their amazing customer service! I’ve worked with other mail-order culture companies who have been less than prompt in their shipments, and I am so glad to have found CFH (and for the record, CFH is a paid sponsor of my blog (and I am earning a small amount for running this contest), but I found them long before that time, and would rave about them regardless! You can see all of the other paid sponsors whose products I LOVE on my resources page).
Well, now you have a chance to win 3 (count them) cultures: 1 water kefir starter, 1 sourdough starter of choice, and 1 yogurt starter of choice!
There are several ways to enter and win, and you can do all of them if you wish!
1) First and foremost, to be eligible, you must sign up for the contest by clicking on the link below:
2) You get an extra chance to win if you become a follower of mine AND Cultures for Health on Twitter. If you are already a follower (thank you!), please Tweet about this contest! Either way, please leave a comment and tell me what you did!
3) One more chance to win if you write a little post about this contest on your blog and send some link love my way. You know, link to this post. Send me the link or leave it in the comments section!
4) Another chance to win if you go to the Cultures for Health website and “window shop”. Tell me what yogurt starter and what sourdough starter you would choose if you were the winner!
5) Another chance to win if you Stumble Upon my post about this giveaway.
6) Be my Friend on Facebook and tell all your Facebook friends about this contest by having your status include a link to this contest! Then comment and tell me about it! And while you’re at it, become a fan of Cultures for Health!
7) E-mail 5 friends who may be interested in this giveaway, sending them the link to this post. Then comment about it.
So there you have 7 chances to win something that will SAVE YOU MONEY for a long time to come!
The contest details will run Friday, September 4 through 12 midnight PST, Thursday, September 10th. The winner will be announced on my blog Wednesday, September 16th!
Sorry, due to the shipping restrictions this contest is limited to US residents only.
Good luck!
If this is confusing, please feel free to leave a comment!
Kefir for Kids
Kefir has always been a mainstay in my family; but up until now, the kids usually only had it in smoothies once or twice a week. Since I always have plenty of kefir on hand, I figured I needed to step it up and serve it more often. Again, reading _The Body Ecology Diet_ reminded me of the immense benefits of kefir for healing and restoring the microflora of the gut.
For the past two weeks or so, our bedtime routine has included a glass of kefir. Rich in protein, minerals, and probiotics (not to mention many other things: go here for more info), kefir is the perfect bedtime snack. Its high calcium and magnesium content calms the nervous system and the profuse amount of probiotics helps to digest dinner!
I’ve noticed that both of my sweet kiddos (Jonathan dodged the camera in the picture above, but you can see his orange straw representing for him!) LOVE their nighttime kefir. It couldn’t be simpler to make. Here’s what I do:
I use 3 simple ingredients: stevia, alcohol-free vanialla, and raw goat’s milk kefir (for info on how to make it and get starters,check out my resources page). Cinnamon is also a good addition. Basically, any sugar free “spice” you like can be added, but my kids are into vanilla and/or cinnamon right now. Trader Joe’s sells an alcohol-free glycerine-based vanilla extract for a little over $3.00.
Night-night Kefir
1 cup of goat kefir
8 drops stevia
1/8 tsp alcohol-free vanilla flavor
1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)
Serve it with a straw (doesn’t every kid love a straw?!?!) and know that your kids will have incredible nourishment throughout the night.
Since giving her the kefir nightly, my daughter has slept soundly through the night (whereas before she was waking up once or twice screaming for something to eat or drink).
Incidentally, this is an awesome “good morning” drink as well! I sometimes just have a glass of kefir in the morning and find that often it’s all I need for several hours.
If you haven’t already, I highly recommend investing in a milk-kefir grain. Read the links I posted above; this drink is amazing.
