MAKE YOUR SUMMER A HEALTHY AFFAIR… by including homemade probiotic beverages, drinks and food like buttermilk, carrot and beetroot kanji, some fermented foods like curd, kefir, sauerkraut, kimchi, water mango pickles etc,…a mixture of apple cider vineger, lemon juice and water is great for improving gut bacteria!

IN the muggy summer heat preceding the monsoon rain, I don’t know about you, but I’ve got liquid diets and cool, sour, sweet, or tart things on my mind…to feed my soul, which is under so much stress these days, never mind why, the usual insane reasons. What we drink and eat plays a key role to being happy and what makes me happy is seasonal and local; mangoes are here of course along with cucumbers and drumsticks in plenty…but to combat the heat these days I’m focusing on our traditional country coolers like in Goa it’s a damn good idea to skip breakfast and have the rice gruel of “pez” or “kanji” mid-morning. More about these later but these days I’m making a fine art of serving buttermilk–thin, tart, and more flavorful sometimes with lemon juice mixed in, red rock salt or even better, black “sanchar” salt.
Drink buttermilk on the rocks if you wish…just a dollop of curd, water, swirl with a kitchen churner (I have a wooden one, best). Serve. Skip the salties and sweeten with honey if you wish for an equally cooling lassi. But I like my buttermilks alternately spiked with lemon juice of course, or cucumber juice, mango juice, tomato juice. Combo buttermilks are real pick-me-ups. But the austere wee tart buttermilk is fine with me, in Gujarati homes, buttermilk is often tempered in bit of ghee, mustard seeds, curry leaves, maybe a dry red chili, pinch hing and it goes with a light-hearted moong kichadi for a summer lunch. By all means, you may add a tablespoon of ginger juice or fresh green mint leaves juice or coriander juice or celery juice in your favorite buttermilk. Whatever herb catches your fancy.
Buttermilks are part of the best gut-friendly beverages you want to drink to keep your gut or microbiota or intestinal flora happy! Check it out. That’s because the primary ingredient, dairy curd is a fermented food. Instead of the popular addition of refined white sugar to a bowl of curd to clear the palate after a meal, try curd with a teaspoon of honey (not sugar-fed bee apiary honey but real jungle honey). Curd is most flavorful when freshly made and a little tart. Buttermilk is practically fatless.
How else to beat tiresome, muggy heat? Well, so many of us forget to hydrate ourselves by drinking just plain wholesome clean water; if you’re sweating it out, accept a glass of water when it is offered. It fact, Indian hospitality in most homes traditionally will see water being served to all who drop in or come calling – first thing, and the water stored in a red or black mud matka is coolest and more thirst-quenching than any spine-numbing refrigerated water from the refrigerator! Although the temptation to come from the outdoors and gulp down chilled water is very tempting…remember the principle that what is cold will warm you up while hot, warm or room temperature will cool you down.
SUMMER TIME comes with troublesome infections and stomach collapses, and it’s wise to go by traditional advice about what to put into your mouth by way of beverages or food. Up north India or down south India, if you’ve noticed we eat more fermented foods, call them probiotic foods if you wish. Buttermilk is probiotic, so is north India’s lip-smacking Punjabi “kanji” made of fermented blackish red carrots-beetroot, or even the Konkan coast’s kanji of rice called pez in Goa (spiked with slices of brine pickled green mango called chepnim, plain or stuffed with enticing masala)…ever tasted a “methi pez” (fenugreek soaked in and cooked)?

Basically it’s good rice cooked for dinner, what’s left is soaked overnight in water and the next morning, you have a fermented rice lightly sour. The fermentation builds up vitamins B complex, vitamin K. You combo with your rice porridge with something and relish it. In Malaysia and Indonesia, they have a morning elevenses porridge called “bubor cha cha” in which red pinto beans, black lentils, and black rice are soaked overnight and cooked up the next day with coconut milk… a dreamy, most nutritious food redolent of the leaves of the pandan leaves. Probiotic food? I should think so.
Other probiotic foods – mostly fermented foods, with yeast or primarily with a host of live good bacteria in them, teeming to make your stomach a happier place to be. Probiotic foods have the benefit of improved digestion, also what is called bioavailability of nutrients, better absorption, and altogether an important reinforcement of immunity. Think about all this. What you drink and eat makes a difference to your energy levels which will improve acidity is down and alkalinity rules your bodily system. In fact, a Harvard University study has confirmed how eating more fermented foods reduce compounds related to inflammatory processes in body beautiful and that’s what we want, don’t we.
OKAY, make a note, other probiotic foods for happier summer time…curd and yogurt we are all familiar with, the most common ferment food we eat in most homes; then there’s “kefir” which is Turkish in origin (the word keyif meaning “feel good” – basically rich in lactic acid from the Lactobacillus family, most fermented foods like this are said to detox body biology and good for the liver. Then, there’s kombucha tea of Asian origin which is bred symbiotically with “scoby” and has a yeasty, sweet acid soft bubbly taste on the palate.
Who doesn’t like the German sauerkraut (fermented cabbage, carrots, turnips, raidsh) or the Korean Kimchi (napa cabbage ) there’s goat sheep cheeses to be eaten fresh, raw, the probiotics bacteria of thermophilus, bifudus bulgaricus acidophilus. Then the Japanese umeboshi or fermented Japanese fruit apricot or plum, dried, salted you will find it in bento meals and served with some kinds of sushi, god for protecting the nervous system.
Also think apple cider(said to control blood pressure, bring down cholesterol, weight; the soybean products of tempeh, miso, and natto…knass of eastern Europe is fermented rye/barley beets…there dark chocolate is too said to be fermented food, and so is rejuvalac. The idea is to reduce all foods said to reduce pH improve pH, and prevent the development and growth of pathogenic bacteria, the bad guys in bacteria of bacteria.
If you think this summer heat has drained you down into fits of listlessness and lack of energy, hey, put some probiotic foods in your eating habits and go for buttermilk, best and most economical for us in India! You may also make your own curd and kefir if you wish, just get the cultures from someone who is doing this already.