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I made some butter
Thursday, 8:34 pm
By Kate
Feb
07
2008
A week or so ago, the blogger known as Crunchy Chicken went and did something rather unusual. She made her own butter, in her own kitchen, without any special tools or gizmos. And she made it sound like so much fun that I wanted to try, too. I bought myself some heavy whipping cream for something else, but knew that I didn’t need to use all of it. So...whatever I didn’t use would be reserved for butter making.
Tonight, I made my own butter out of 1 cup of heavy whipping cream. Following Crunchy’s directions, I left the container of cream out on the counter for about 4 hours. Then I poured it into a mason jar with a securely fitting lid.
Then...I shook the jar back and forth. Not too vigorously, but slammed the cream up against both ends of the jar with a pretty good jolt. It took about 2 minutes before I had a lot of thick whipped cream in the jar. I kept shaking. At about the 6 minute mark, I had some kind of solid chunk in the jar going “thunk-thunk” against the ends of the jar as I shook.
And, at about 8 minutes, lo and behold, the sides of the jar cleared off, the solid chunk in the jar was bright yellow and it was surrounded by a thinnish white liquid (whey).
I poured the whey into another bottle and kept shaking. More whey separated from the hunk of butter. I poured that off and repeated a few more times until no more whey showed up in the jar. At that point, I had this:
I still have to complete Steps 9 and 10 of Crunchy Chicken’s directions, but I was so thrilled I had to take pictures and show you. I Made Butter! And I gotta tell you, this stuff tastes so good...makes the grocery store stuff resemble yellow cardboard by comparison. Who knew that making butter could be so easy? I didn’t even break a sweat. Oh man, this is tasty stuff. I can’t keep my fingers out of the butter jar.
Four down, two to go
Thursday, 2:59 pm
By Kate
Feb
07
2008
Last night, in a moment of astonishing personal grace, I smashed two dinner plates. While I washed dishes by hand, my soapy fingers lost their grip on one plate. It flew out of my fingers like a little flying saucer and crashed into another plate that I’d just put in the dish drainer. Both shattered. That’s the first time that I’ve broken a dish in a very long time. I guess I made up for lost time.
While the lad was home for vacation, he also broke two plates. Just before he left for school, he cleaned his room and brought down an armload of dishes and cups. He and Abbie got themselves tangled up on the stairs and rather than take a tumble down them, the lad simply dropped what he had in his arms. Fortunately, only two dishes broke. But still.
So, out of six dinner plates, I’m down to two in a fairly short time span.
I had two patterns that were complimentary—three of each dinner plate pattern. But for reasons only they seem to understand, my dish manufacturer (Pfaltzgraff) retired my very favorite dish design two years ago—only four years after it was introduced. And trying to find replacements is like hunting (and finding) hen’s teeth. In other words...they very nearly don’t exist any longer through any outlet. My other pattern is still available, but I really don’t have all that many pieces in that pattern aside from the two remaining dinner plates and a couple of bowls. Since I only have two dinner plates left and much of my other dishware is in the retired pattern, that sort of leaves me betwixt and between.
Perhaps it’s time to start over. I’ve been thinking about it ever since I discovered that my favorite pattern was retired. And now that I have in mind to repaint and redecorate with new colors and whatnot, this may be the time.
I’ve been eyeing this pretty pattern for a few months now, since I learned that my favorite pattern was discontinued. If I’m going to do anything about it, I probably should snap to it before Pfaltzgraff retires that one, too.
I haven’t really made up my mind yet, but something needs to be done soon, with only two dinner plates left in my cupboard.