Penguin – sounds like the grains just needed a bit more revival time to produce thicker kefir. Has the flavour improved too?

Penguin, try tasting it at different stages of fermentation to check the flavor. I harvested some that was way over fermented in the refrigerator today. I put it in there to slow it way down because we weren’t drinking it fast enough and I didn’t want to start another bottle. When shaken it’s quite thick but very sour.

When this 3.79 liters of 1% milk is gone, I’m going to switch to whole milk since the calories are less when it’s fermented anyway. What is labeled here in the U.S. as cream is:
Half-and-half contains 12 percent fat
Light cream contains 20 percent fat
Whipping cream contains 35 percent fat
Heavy cream contains 38 percent fat

Whole milk is 3.5% fat

I wonder if that varies by country?

1.5 liters at a time would be more than I could use. It’s mostly me that drinks it, although my sister drinks some occasionally. My DH will drink a little if it’s not too sour. This time of year I have a batch every 18 hours or so.

Cinque – glad to know my vegemite is doing me good (providing I ignore the salt content).

Cali – We don’t have half-and-half, that’s unique to the US. Probably because we developed a tradition of milk not cream in coffee. Australia was largely a tea drinking nation until WW2 when immigrants from across Europe came to Australia. The Italians bought coffee and showed us the delights of a cappucinio made with hot milk – we’ve been a milk in coffee nation ever since.
Your fat %s for light cream whipping cream and full fat milk are the same here. I don’t think we have a product specifically called heavy cream, but there are a range of creams (usually from the smaller artisan dairies) that produce creams with various fat content (they seem to range from 38-45%). The Fleurieu Peninsula dairy produce pots of jersey cream. It is so thick you have to spread it with knife like soft butter – it’s even such a dark shade of “cream” that it’s bordering on yellow. I suspect that’s a dairy with some very well fed jersey cows.

I prefer reduced fat milk in my cups of tea and I get through about 2 litres (half a gallon) a week that way. But I definitely prefer the full cream milk in the kefir. To get the quality of milk that I want and the right fat content I buy a 2 litre container of full cream and the same of skim milk and mix them together. (These are the most readily available milks from my favourite organic diary.) Now I’m setting some of the full fat aside for kefir and mixing a blended milk with less fat for cups of tea. That’s fine as anything in the 1-2% range tastes right to me in tea.

My FD was a real struggle yesterday but I made it though with just a little over 500cal – approx 30 more I think. Oh boy did I need the extra FD – you should have seen this morning’s brunch:
https://www.google.com.au/maps/uv?hl=en&pb=!1s0x6ab0ccb7520f8a4d%3A0xa43302bcc29140c4!2m22!2m2!1i80!2i80!3m1!2i20!16m16!1b1!2m2!1m1!1e1!2m2!1m1!1e3!2m2!1m1!1e5!2m2!1m1!1e4!2m2!1m1!1e6!3m1!7e115!4shttps%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Flh%2Fsredir%3Funame%3D105021871002743425298%26id%3D6286245007490154626%26target%3DPHOTO!5smount%20lofty%20summit%20-%20Google%20Search&imagekey=!1e3!2s-9bjCZQ7wet0%2FWOBHeLM7OWI%2FAAAAAAAAK2E%2FXqyfps5mf4Q2CeVA1mjC4E0YwhL9EzzEgCLIB&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjU1PSPx8HVAhUDWrwKHVRBBmEQoioIkQEwDg
We went to Mount Lofty Summit for brunch to celebrate a family birthday. We had the breakfast platters which you can see from the photo is 3 layers of cooked breakfast items and pancakes. I ate a restrained amount but a lot more than I usually eat in the mornings. I’m just hoping it doesn’t trigger my appetite until late afternoon.
Mount Lofty is the highest point in South Australia (and about 10 minutes from where I live). http://www.mountloftysummit.com/ On a clear day the view is great. This morning was freezing, wet and misty and we couldn’t see more than 2 metres in front of our faces. But the breakfast was very nice and so was the company.

On the health front I’m glad to report that I’m feeling a lot better today. I woke up alert and energetic, instead of feeling like a an elephant was sitting on my chest. Although, when I say energetic it is all relative – my version of energetic is a whole lot more restrained than most people’s definition.

Hope you are all having a nice Sunday (or Saturday for Cali).

CalifDreamer. Inevitably it does vary by country. For me single cream is 18%, whipping cream is 36%, double cream is 48%. Skimmed milk is somewhere near your 1%, Semi-skimmed milk is 1.7% and whole milk is 4%. None of which I knew until I read your post and checked. I didn’t know about half and half, it is 15 years since I was in California and all that was on offer then was powdered dairy creamer.

The temperature in my kitchen is around 20C/70F and i have harvested at 20 hours, 24 hours and 26 hours. The longer I leave it the thicker it gets. The 24 hours batch tasted better than the 20, but still a little sour. I will try the 26 hour batch, which looks the best, tonight.

Good morning everyone,
Hello to the Monday fasters!

I am still recuperating so I have kept fasts on hold. This is another morning when I can tell I am incrementally better. Lovely.

Sending best wishes out to you all.

Cinque , Great! I luv my Vegemite

Welcome to the 5:2 forum, Sarahwat. I’m not sure that cravings ever go away completely but they seem to be fewer and further between when I haven’t eaten sugar or foods that trigger them. Potato chips and sugary foods are 2 of my biggest weaknesses. I can’t have chips or ice cream in the house without craving it. Cakes or cookies I can have in the house and often freeze them. But chips and cookies call out to me from behind closed doors, especially at night when it’s quiet in the house and I’m sitting here reading or using the iPad.

I bet it was the oily potato cakes that made your stomach upset. Or maybe it was being over full. Our bodies adapt quickly to this fasting way of life and most of us realize we actually feel good with an empty stomach. Eating more than you needed might have reminded you of the old days and your stomach wasn’t prepared for that.

I’m always hungrier when the weather is cold and less hungry when it’s hot outside. It’s nicer to use the oven when it’s colder too and you don’t have to worry about heating up a kitchen that’s already too warm.

Cinque – glad to hear you are making slow but steady steps toward better health.

Sarah, I fell flat on my face with decisions for so many weeks while I learned what I could and couldn’t do if I wanted to lose weight. All of my issues were on the NFDs and not on the FDs. In the end I had to decide that some foods could just not ever go on the shopping list or enter the house. That doesn’t mean I never eat them, I just don’t allow them to be part of normal food at home. They are food I’ll have when I’m out at social occasions if I fell like them. It’s the only way I can keep them “occasional”.
Because of my age, height and low activity level my TDEE is only 1400 calories so being careful on NFDs is not optional for me. Even now that I’m in maintenance I’ve been surprised by how careful I still need to be if I want my weight to remain stable. Unfortunately there is still an occasional binge, but they are rare these days thankfully. It’s taken time to learn that I can’t keep following fasts with overeating. It is normal for major changes like this to take some time.

After 2 meals out over the last 2 days I’m doing a FD tomorrow. I already have a bowl of lentil & vegetable soup thawed in the fridge as my main meal.

Goodnight all.

Good morning all. Its been a week since I last checked in so quickly skimmed through posts. Had a great time with Miss D and friends at the fair although it was blowing a gale and freezing cold. I had my donut….and only one instead of three I would have had in the past.

0.5 kg off goal weight this morning…..gee it seems I’ve been hovering around that for weeks now waiting for the elusive 65kg to show on the scales! The jeans I bought when I first lost weight are now a bit loose so I should try on the size 10 as they should fit now….yay.

Another great op shop find on the weekend – brown fitted leather jacket for $20….another yay.

FD today so it’s good I have a busy day at work.

GDSA – a $20 leather jacket sounds like a find to me too. I’ve been looking for one in my local op shops too, but haven’t found anything I like that fits nicely yet. Well done too on getting to 65kg. I’m glad you had some nice things happen in your week, after last week’s data disaster.

Cali – I rely on soup a lot in colder weather but I just can’t face it in the summer, and I’ve never liked chilled soups either. On the plus side, summer is the only time I can face cold salads, so it’s a good opportunity to eat more raw veg. So I just focus on getting veggies in the form I like for the season.
I do always make my own soup as I just don’t like the flavour or texture of tinned or packet soups. Every time I make soup, I usually end up with at least 3 litres so some always ends up in the freezer. I find this invaluable on FDs when I’m not in the mood to cook even a simple meal. I can just pull single serve container of soup out of the freezer and heat it up.
I do have similar issues with freezer space, as I currently only have a small freezer at the top of my fridge. I have learned how to pack it so that I’m not wasting any space. It always amazes me just how much I can cram into it if I pack carefully. I even replaced my round plastic containers with rectangular so that I can stack more efficiently. I used to have a small upright freezer but haven’t replaced it since it died and I still have a tendency to shop and cook as if I still had the extra freezer space. I don’t want to replace it at the moment though. I’m waiting to see how much space I end up with in my next house before buying new appliances or whitegoods. So I’ll have to manage with my modest fridge-freezer for at least another 6-12 months.

FD for me today, just one pot of tea so far. I definitely ate more food than I needed the last two days so this is a very necessary FD.
I finally have a rain free day here. Still no sun, it’s been overcast all morning, but definitely an opportunity for a proper walk this afternoon. I’m hoping if I wait another couple of hours, the sun might manage to peek through the clouds. I think we get one more fine day tomorrow before the rains return.

Hope you are all having a nice day, fasting or otherwise.

GDSA – sounds like you are getting ready for spring weather with the bikes.
The only tinned soup that I used to eat was Rosella Tomato, but since Rosella went out of business my only tinned soup went off the shopping list. I do sometimes make a roasted tomato soup in late summer when tomatoes are cheap and plentiful, but it’s a lot of work, so I usually only get around to making one giant batch each year and stock the freezer with tubs of it.

I had errands to do in a neighboring town this morning and had an unexpected find in their Salvos store. A thick warm fluffy knitted jumper made from a yarn that isn’t scratchy and it fits and it suits me (trying to get all those criteria ticked off in one garment is a bit of a challenge). I tried to find one early in winter to no avail and in the end I gave up. Now that winter is almost over I finally find something suitable. I guess it means I’ll be ready for next winter.

Lunch was yet another meal out – this time with ex work colleagues in our favourite Asian cafe in the Central Market. I normally have one of their specialties (laksas, noodles or coconut cream curries). But I didn’t want yet another high calorie day so I ordered beef and veg stirfry in black bean sauce and didn’t eat the rice. They always provide masses of veg with their stirfrys so it was very filling. I then managed to get all of the fruit & veg shopping done at the markets and also splurged on some seafood at the fishmongers. I went in to buy a few prawns for a stirfry and came away with the prawns and monkfish and salmon. So I’m going to have to find some fishy recipies this week. I don’t buy or cook seafood or fish often – partly because I’m not that confident about cooking fish well and also because the cost is so prohibitive. Maybe I’ll make fish pie with a mixed root veg mash topping, that sounds appealing.

I have a rare sunny day here so I’m glad to have spent most of the day out of the house. Hope you are all having a good day.

I don’t know how they got there, but around 1990 there were black swans living wild on the lakes on the Dutch/German border. They may be there still, I haven’t been back lately. I go to Madeira regularly – the hills are covered with the Eucalyptus. Our woods here are full of wild boar . which haven’t been native for about 400 years. We seem to be incapable of leaving things where we find them – but I have yet to see a koala on a eucalyptus in Madeira.

We now have more foxes to the square mile in towns than we do in the country, they are very adaptable. In the country areas we have mink. They were never native, have no local predator, no native animal can compete with them and they decimate the local wildlife. We have them because some people who didn’t approve of the fur trade liberated them. We also have people who have re-introduced the beaver and are arguing for the lynx and wolf. Nobody, to my knowledge, has yet suggested the brown bear, which also once lived here.

CalifDreamer, I think I have been harvesting mine too soon. One lot I harvested and put in the fridge popped like a fizzy drink when I opened it. The latest lot had over 50 hours fermenting at about 20C/68F and has continued to ferment since it was harvested yesterday and put in the fridge. I am going to leave the current batch until I am really sure it is thoroughly done. It is taking it’s time because in our glorious high summer we peaked today at 16C/61F. Only two things stop me migrating to somewhere warmer – I am so old that no country will have me and we have four grandchildren my wife won’t leave.

CalifDreamer, for one brief and worrying moment I read 138/62 as the temperature! I have been sitting on 217 for a week. I suspect I am somewhat taller than you. That was my initial target and I had ideas about setting a new target but am still enjoying the initial achievement.

The kefir that 2 hours ago was going nowhere has suddenly divided and I have an enormous amount of grains, many more and I will be making cheese. I poured away the whey and have very little kefir left, but already there is a layer of whey on the top. The jar in the fridge has also obviously continued to ferment and is dividing. The batch I have just mixed has about 1/4 whipping cream in it, left over from this afternoon’s baking. We will see what that does to the thickness. I have yet to make a batch I am really happy with, but am trying different approaches – one will eventually succeed.

Penguin, I’m anxious to hear how the mixed in whipping cream one works. If not thicker, it will certainly taste richer.

Do you like goat cheese? If you do, and if you can buy goat milk somewhere, goat milk kefir is really good. I made it the first time with some spare grains, just in case, but after having gone back and forth between goat and cow milk a few times I’m not too worried about hurting the grains. It doesn’t taste exactly like goat cheese, but has that somewhat gamey je ne sais pas. 😄 It’s about 3 times as expensive as cow’s milk but I guess for the amount we drink it isn’t going to break the bank.

LJoyce, do you have raccoons in Australia?

I did think of one exotic looking bird called a Puffin that they have up in Alaska. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/236x/b0/d6/73/b0d673b8f94192a7248b08b85d968965.jpg

I LOVE bouillabaisse! But I’ve never made one that Imwas perfectly happy with. There was a restaurant in Berkeley, California, Solomon Grundy’s, that used to have a wonderful one. But I can’t find an online recipe for it. LJoyce, here’s a recipe that at least looks the right color: https://cooking.nytimes.com/recipes/12637-mark-bittmans-bouillabaisse It does have fennel, but if you don’t like the anise flavor you could use less or omit it. There are a lot of different recipes for in online. You could just combine them. If you find a good combo, let me know the ingredients. (I rarely measure anything.)

Hi Everyone,
Just a quick note as I am recovering so slowly I am not quite sure I am recovering at all. My appetite has been off so fasting feels inappropriate. I wonder if I will get a fast day in before Thin comes back?
I’ve had a couple of days where I couldn’t face coffee. The other one was okay but today I felt dreadful! Rolled with it though, but that meant nothing got done!

Good luck with your fish soup LJoyce! I hope it turns out wonderful. I just saw a repeat of Rick Stein ending his journey though France on a barge with a wonderful bowl of Bouillabaisse.

Sending best wishes to everyone!

Cinque, we were posting at the same time. I’m sorry to hear you still aren’t feeling well. I hope you’re getting enough rest. I wouldn’t worry about fasting until you feel better. It doesn’t sound like you’re eating much anyway. I hope you start to feel better soon because it’s been going on a long time. I’ll send you some warm weather from California. You need some sunshine!

Morning all. Still overcast and windy here but the temperatures are much milder. It’s amazing just how much difference 4-5 degrees can make.

Penguin, the pernod is definitely staying out – I don’t have any so it’s a moot point. I rarely drink alcohol these days, so I only keep wine, brandy and port on hand for cooking with. Unfortunately I had to give up alcohol a few years ago – the treatment drugs for rheumatoid arthritic can place quite a stress on the liver so it’s better if I don’t add to that burden with alcohol. I will still have a very occasional glass of wine or champagne for a special occasion, but it’s rare.
I agree about cities – access to everything cities offer is great but I haven’t wanted to live there in a while. I’m very lucky where I’ve been living for the last 2 decades. I live in a town in the Adelaide Hills that feels like a village not a suburb, yet I’m only 17km from the CBD. It used to be a lot further, but about 15 years ago they dug a tunnel through the mountain and extended the freeway (motorway), so it cut the time down considerably. It also removed all of the dangerous windy roads and hairpin bends – where trucks regularly lost their loads. I feel like I have the best of both worlds really. Unfortunately there isn’t a flat street in the whole town, which is not a good prospect for me as I age, especially with rheumatoid arthritis to slow me down. There also are virtually no small homes on small blocks of land. My land size is about 1/3 acre and that is really small for where I live. Current council rules would not allow anyone to subdivide a block down to that size (they won’t allow anything under one acre). It helps maintain the lush green uncrowded feel of this area, but it makes it really difficult for retirees who don’t want to leave their homes but struggle to maintain such a large garden. My aunt and uncle live just around the corner from me and are in their late 80s. They are struggling to manage a one acre garden but don’t want to move as my uncle was a stone mason and he built their home, leaving it is still too hard for them to contemplate.

Cali, that chicken coconut curry sounds good – pretty much anything with coconut milk tastes nice I think, it can turn a simple curry into something very moreish – add coconut cream and it really has me swooning.
After tasting my stock I decided to dilute it half and half with plain chicken stock. I like the final blend – I can still taste the influence of orange, wine and tomato but it’s a bit more restrained. The final volume was 3 litres so I’ve put half into the freezer – I think it would be a perfect stock for a paella. I don’t cook with rice because it has such a poor fibre content but I might need to consider experimenting with some of my preferred high fibre grains and see if I can make something like paella using either freekah wheat, pearl barley or kasha buckwheat. Tonight I’ll use the remaining stock to make the bouillabaisse and hopefully it will be nice – if not, it’s going to get the chilli treatment.

Hi to Cinque, GDSA, Merry, Minka, Joffy, Sarah, and anyone else who may be reading but not posting.

Hello all its Friday evening here. Happy day for me as I submitted my first block of assignments to my lecturer for assessment today – 3 weeks earlier than the due date. Fingers crossed I pass and can move on to the next unit asap.

Ljoyce yes I remember driving through the Adelaide hills before the tunnel and freeway was built. I can also recall quite vividly driving through the tunnel for the first time – my first tunnel – I was so amazed and couldn’t wait to go back through again. Im fairly sure we were on our way to Melbourne at the time as 15 years ago seems about right.

I also live in similar circumstances LJoyce with a council requirement for large land size and no sub division allowed but its due to being on a flood plain here. I have a double whammy by living on a corner block so have about 12 times the average footpath/verge to maintain and keep weed free. Im very house proud and cant bear for things to look untidy.

Received some lovely comments at work today regarding my weight loss so another reason for being a happy day.

Im starting yoga class on Tuesday. I couldn’t attend the group class times due to work so the teacher offered to give me one on one classes from her home at no extra cost. Really happy about that and looking forward to it.

Weather is going to be lovely this weekend so will be spending as much time as possible outdoors.

Good morning everyone. I’m actually sitting in the sun writing this – rare bliss. Definitely going to be a gardening day so I can make the most of the weather.

GDSA, it sounds like your week got better as it went along.
Well done on the assignments and the comments on your weight loss.
Enjoy the yoga – I have a dvd of yoga designed for seniors (that’s about the level I can manage) I use this in wet weather. Getting one on one instruction is an added bonus, I really hope you like it. I find it helps with flexibility.
When I used to work in the city, the thing that I always found intriguing was that I could drive in one end of the tunnel in thick fog or heavy rain and come out the other side to fine weather and even sunshine. (No prizes for guessing which side of the tunnel had the bad weather!)

Cali, I’m very happy living close to Adelaide as it’s a small city and you get many of the benefits of access to city based services but without the congestion in traffic and people of the larger cities. (While I enjoy visiting larger cities like Sydney and Melbourne, I don’t know that I could comfortably live there.)
Like you I have a sloping block (quite steep in places) and I rely on a gardener to regularly mow the lawns and slash back the ivy and periwinkle. I’m hoping that within the next year I will have moved down to the inner southern suburbs (5-10km from the CBD). For Adelaide the city centre is not high crime (Apart from that caused by alcohol on the few streets with lots of bars and nightclubs. Basically if you stay away from Hindley St and the area around it at night you’ll probably be ok – Hindley St is Adelaide’s equivalent to Sydney’s Kings Cross – on a smaller scale of course. The areas of the CBD where people live are fine – these are the streets closest to the rim of the CBD and adjacent to the parklands that surround our CBD. The worst property crime rates seem to roughly follow the socio-economics of an area, with the far north and southern suburbs being most affected by both poverty and property crime (burglary, graffiti and property damage etc). In wealthier areas there is a lot less property damage, but you still have to take precautions against burglary.

I’m doing a FD today. I actually worked out roughly how many calories were in a bowl of my bouillabaisse. It is about 1190kj (283cal) for 500ml – as it’s a hearty soup this is plenty, so I’ll have it for dinner tonight.

Have a lovely weekend.

Hi All,

I’ve been fasting today (Saturday) as a 6:1 experience instead of 5:2 this week. I’m up to my ears in more assignment deadlines and I’ve yet to work out how to handle that stress without eating! At least I choose healthy options though know I’ve consumed way over TDEE so haven’t been weighing either! Today’s FD is a relief, that’s for sure! I was kind of in a snack mode of feeding and I’m enjoying the peace of being free from that! Okay, now off to prepare my cottage cheese and strawberries that will be my dinner! To both those fasting and those on a non-fast day, here’s to all of us eating with care, awareness, enjoyment and feeling nourished in the process.

Good evening all. Absolutely beautiful sunny day today, was wearing just a singlet and thin pants by 11am. Spent the day doing yard jobs and am feeling quite worn out now with aching arms and legs. A bit the same as you LJoyce by the sounds of it and I also finished the day with an Earl Grey tea. Those blackberries sound quite nasty indeed.

Minka all the best with those assignment deadlines and hoping you find some stress relief. Now that I have a few free weeks before my next unit of study commences I will concentrate on reaching goal weight. 0.4kg to go as of this morning.

Time for bed. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of the weekend.