I must admit I fell down about one month after I started drinking them, one year ago. I had to have the vegetables steamed and without any fruit or my stomach would get upset. I know. I know. Raw vegetables are the way to go. Needless to say I did not look forward to them and so left them by the wayside in my freezer with a promise to get to them…soon.

Fast forward to today. Kefir grains are where it’s at. Kefir grain’s definition is “What is it?” It looks like cauliflower, except it grows in milk. You can’t grow it from seed, someone has to sell it or give it to you. It does produce curds and whey, as it eats the lactose in milk, turning it into lactic acid. If you shake them up–curds, and whey and milk– you get kefir, a probiotic milk type that can be incredibly sour. So why am I telling you this?

Kefir is very healthy for you and is a perfect medium for fruit plus smoothies. Its sourness perfectly blends different tastes allowing for an incredibly healthy smoothie to be made. Each one is slightly different depending on what you have in the house at the moment. Today I added 1 cup of sage tea, 1/4 cup grated carrots, 2 bananas, 1 tsp cinnamon, 3 large strawberries, 3 cups kefir (whey and curds shaken together), and 1 packet Truvia. It was simply marvelous tasting. A little on the tart side, but another packet of Truvia would have solved that problem.

I chose to drink 3/4 glass of the above concoction and use the rest as a base for my fluffy green shake. I added one large collard leaf and blended away for a 2-3 minutes. Voila! Fluffy green shake that is green without the chlorophyll taste and is delicious. Also the collard green did take some of the tartness away, so no additional sweetener was needed.

Now, I probably will not drink a green smoothie every day; perhaps every other day suits me fine. So give kefir grains a try and see if you aren’t able to combine many healthy things with it.

Ever hear of the green smoothie diet, or making a fluffy green shake? If you have then you know just how to feed red worms or squirmies to get them to their maximum potential. To make a green smoothie you first coarsely chop vegetables. Remember a blender doesn’t have the power ability of a coffee grinder. Otherwise you could put in whole vegetables and you would be fine. Next, put these vegetable pieces into a blender, covering it halfway up with water. You puree, then grind and grate your vegetable mixture until it is the consistency of a thick or thin shake. Think about it. The red wrigglers do not have to work very hard to eat the food, so they will reproduce very rapidly.

Now you just have to worry about providing enough food (green smoothies, egg shells, and shredded cardboard) and harvesting the vermicompost on a timely basis to keep up with the multiplication of red worms. What was once an enjoyable hobby has turned into a production worm farm. Dividing once, and then dividing again. Each multiplication is actually a doubling in a matter of days.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be this way. There is a way to control
the growth of your red worms. Tomorrow I will show you how to maintain a balance of keeping your worms multiplying, but you not going nutso in the process. Think about it!