homeade butter
yes, it's true you can make butter at home. And in fact that is precisely what I did this morning. Thanks to a dear friend, my sister Lucy and I now enjoy delicious raw milk from a farm nearby. Upon opening my mason jar there is a thick layer of the best cream you have ever tasted (I would drink straight cream if it wasn't 50 calories a tablespoon!) . Not only have a been skimming this cream off to pour in my morning (mid-morning and afternoon) coffee, I now discovered that you can also make it into butter. I find it very fascinating to try to make the things from scratch that we normally just pick up from the grocery store.

So to make butter what you do is:
pour the fresh cream into a kitchen aid mixer and set to the highest speed it will go. It will take about 20 minutes but after the cream whips it eventually breaks and forms butter and buttermilk. When this happened I just strained the butter with a sieve and caught the butter milk in a jar. I then placed the butter on a sturdy paper towel and pressed out the remaining liquid. The result was a thick, beautiful yellow clump of butter that I promptly put into a container. You must press the butter into the container to remove all the air so that the butter doesn't spoil. Thanks to our modern (overly processed) store bought butter you never have to worry about spoiling (eww). Isn't it interesting how the things we eat now-a-days can last forever and not spoil? I am starting to think that this is a red-flag. Maybe I'll try to make sure everything we eat doesn't have a long shelf life. The more we process food the worse it is for us. (So stepping back off my soapbox) After all the buttermilk was pressed out (you can save this butter milk and use it later) I placed a thin layer of cold water on top of the butter to keep all remaining air out and then I popped it in the fridge.

Wow, that was too easy. (NEW: scratch what I said about the mixer and throw it in the blender on higher...it's so much faster like 10 min tops!)

So on my quest to try to make everything homemade I can check this one off my list!