Cultivate a Culture

Milk Kefir Culture (Picture by A. Kniesel)

I love all things natural, and fermentation is part of the natural process of making foods more digestible.
To ferment food, you need a culture that contains some kind of yeast. The fermentation digests sugars in your food, making it easier for you to digest it after. Most of these foods/drinks contain extra nutrients as well.
I'm currently cultivating a sourdough culture and a milk kefir culture. The sourdough culture I've had the longest, and I started from scratch myself. The kefir culture I received from a friend.
Both only take a couple of minutes to keep up, and I bake my bread with it and can get wonderful homemade yogurt from it.

For sourdough, all you need to do is mix some flour and water, about the same volume, and feed it a little more flour and water twice a day while stirring it. Bread does take longer to rise, and will taste a little sour, but that's the point! It's more natural and it's healthier.

For kefir, you'll need to find someone who can give you some of the initial culture. Then you just leave it in a jar of milk for about 2 or 3 days, strain and drink. No maintenance really. 

At this stage of my life, my cultures are my babies. I feed them, nurture them, try to create the best environment possible to support their growth ... and then eat them.

Naturally, recipes for using these cultures take up more than 5 minutes, and thus have no place on this blog. But if you'd like to know how to bake the bread or make a nice shake, comment and I'll let you know!