Talk About Butter Making

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Since this is the Gallagher year of learning to eat healthy foods (healthy according to ?) and learning new things I present butter making!

First of all I'm learning that anything fast, easy and processed is evil. Well, I'm learning just HOW evil since I always knew processed foods were bad for us. Now we are making the switch from evil pasteurized/homogenized/hormone laden milk to raw milk fresh from the dairy. Doesn't it sound lovely? If you're looking for raw milk in your area you can try this website: realmilk.com

Our local dairy sells raw cows milk for $4 a gallon which I think is much cheaper and easier than keeping our own dairy cow which was our other option. Stranger wasn't very excited about that option for some reason.

I sent Stranger to buy milk at 3:00 in the morning on his way home from work yesterday. I had called ahead and ordered two gallons of milk and a quart of cream. When he got there there was only one gallon left in the fridge so he came home with that and the cream. But he gets home and realizes that it wasn't a gallon of milk. He had picked up a gallon of cream! What do you do with a gallon of cream??? I guess we will be making ice cream, fettuccine alfredo and lots of butter this week. Now doesn't that sound healthy?

To make our butter we started with a quart of fresh cream in our mixer. You could use pasteurized cream from the store and I'm sure it would work just as well. We used our cookie dough paddles so the butter wouldn't get caught in the wire whisks. You can't see them very well because they are white.

It took quite a while to get to the stage where it started separating, 10-15 minutes maybe. Next time we might turn it on high and see if it goes any quicker.

Then only a couple more minutes and it was done!

We got about a cup and a half of butter out of the buttermilk that was left over.

This buttermilk isn't cultured of course. It just tastes like regular milk except that you have to strain the floating butter bits through your teeth when you drink it. That's attractive.

And there's our fresh butter, washed with a little salt added.

It's pretty expensive to make but you know exactly what you're getting. If you don't want to make your own butter from now on at least it's a fun project to do with your kids. Persistence thinks she's going to make cute shapes next time. Wouldn't little cow butter pats be so cute?

Ok, maybe things getting a little too country/crunchy/homeschool/weird around here. I promise some organizing for tomorrow ok? Promise.

Here is some more information on butter making. Have fun!

What are you talking about this week?

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