I really didn’t expect to find this in the Netherlands!

Hi, I’m Hanna. Five years ago, I moved to the Netherlands from Belarus.

I grew up in a tiny village with literally only about 50 people. My parents had a farm there, where we grew and made most of our food ourselves.

And milk is a story of its own. My dad always used to say, “If you don’t learn how to milk a cow, you’ll never get married.” :)

Dairy was a big part of our everyday diet. We made our own cream, sour cream, tvorog (a type of fresh curd cheese), cheese and kefir from milk, all without any fancy equipment.

I’d always thought of kefir as something typically Eastern European. So I never expected to find it on the shelves of a Dutch supermarket.

But when I bought it for the first time, I have to admit, I was quite disappointed. The taste was only vaguely similar to the kefir I remembered from my childhood.

Kefir is a living, fermented product. However, for food safety reasons, which are of course understandable, supermarket kefir is pasteurised. This means it no longer contains the same diversity of live microorganisms, and the flavour profile is also different from the complex taste I grew up with.

So I decided to start making milk kefir at home again, just like we used to. All I needed was to buy some kefir grains.

I ordered a kit from De Kefir Club, which included live milk kefir grains and everything else I needed. A few days later, my package arrived, everything was neatly packed, and I was ready to get started.

Then, when I made my third batch using kefir grains from De Kefir Club and tasted it, I couldn’t have been happier.

Finally, that familiar taste from my childhood.

Having grown up with homemade dairy products, I was absolutely delighted.

But as an evidence-based nutrition coach, I was perhaps even more excited for another reason.

I’ll tell you more about that in my next post.