Kefir

[raweater]

One of my raw recipe books say how to make kefir from nut milks, so I bought a Kefir starter kit at the halth food store only to find it's made with powdered skim milk. Would it cause any problems? I don't reeally mind a small amount of dairy, especially if the benefits of the kefir outweigh the very severe health problems caused by dairy, but we're talking about a bit of powdered milk as the last ingredient in the kefir mix.

So will it work anyway? Should I return it? Where could I find vegan kefir starter stuff?

Thanks

[Bobbie]

You could buy real live kefir grains which would make nut milk kefir a few times but they would die if you didn't keep them in dairy milk. They wouldn't keep growing. So you could buy some and ask a friend who isn't vegan, who drinks milk every day anyway, to keep them in milk for you. If you could persuade them to use raw unpasteurised milk instead of the usual, then the tiny amount of milk left on the grains when you used them for your nutmilk shouldn't cause you any problems. (Unless you have a major casein-intolerance as in autism - they're affected by using clean pans that have had dairy in them!)