What Carl really needs ...

I’m betting that Carl Niehaus’s cortisol levels must be through the roof as the relentless stresses of being an ex-spin doctor on the ropes and on the run take their toll on the poor bugger’s health.

His penchant for expensive, gourmet cuisine would have done little to prepare him for such trying times. I read the other day that he had been locked in a meeting with his now former boss Gwede Mantashe for several hours. Picture yourself spending several hours in a room with Mantashe, just you and Mantashe, all alone. You could die from slow, monotone madness; Gwede’s voice is truly a deadly, dreary weapon.

The good news for Carl, and it’s a 100% un-spin-doctored truth, is that I can help him rebuild his severely compromised immune system and take the strain off his battered adrenal glands. And this Carl will doubtless appreciate, it will cost him nothing.

What Carl really needs is kefir. Legend has it that the Prophet Muhammad passed this stuff on to his disciples, and for thousands of years kefir has in turn been handed down through the generations as a restorative tonic.

Think of kefir as yoghurt on steroids. It’s a culture that you use to ferment milk, producing a tangy powerhouse of friendly yeasts and multiple good probiotic bacteria, along with a froth of proteins and B vitamins. It’s a potent superfood and all you need is a few cauliflower-like grains of kefir.

Making kefir is really easy — just pour milk over it and leave it to ferment for 24 hours. Don’t worry about temperature. I prepare mine every morning, waking up to a gooey mass of curds and whey that I respectfully sift through a colander to save the culture for the next batch. Into the fermented broth go a banana, cinnamon and a spoon of omega-3 oils which blends up into a delicious, nutritious, foaming smoothie.

You can buy kefir (the drink not the culture) in some supermarkets — Mooiland dairy even makes a goat’s milk kefir. But there’s nothing quite like making your own, trying out different milk and kefir combos. I get fabulous results with Weleda dairy’s raw organic milk. If you increase the ratio of kefir to milk you get a delicious cream-cheese.

The kefir grains keep reproducing, so over time you build up more culture than you need, which you can give away to family and friends, spreading the nutrient-rich joy around.

So the challenge is to find someone who has some. And that can be harder to find than Helen Zille’s sense of humour, or Julius Malema’s … (many options here).

I have some. And I’m happy to share it with Carl, ever grateful that I will never again have to read any more of his sycophantic, drooling, Zuma-worshippping shite.