Making Homemade Butter

Well, Summer is underway and we are having a great time doing the different things on our Summer list. Since the last few days we have been busy going & doing, today's activity of making homemade butter was perfect. We could sit on the back porch, talk, & relax while completing our butter making!
Let me just say, making homemade butter is one of the easiest and most rewarding projects ever! Keep in mind that I have lots of boys and boys LOVE to eat, so butter was something they would be interested in since making butter = making food to put the butter on!
We started out with 3 simple things: a recycled applesauce jar w/ lid, a dishtowel, and heavy cream (2 1/2 cups). We poured the heavy cream into the jar a few hours before we were actually going to make it, so that the cream would be at room temp and make butter more quickly. When we were ready, we all went to the back porch so we could sit outdoors and shake, shake, shake! And that is what we did! Basically, we sat in a circle and passed the jar each time one of us got tired. Of course, being boys, they were competitive, which in this case was a good thing! So they tried to out-do each other and shake longer than they would have normally.
Initially the butter seemed to be turning into whipped cream, but after about 10 minutes, we began to see that clumps were forming and we were pleased with that. So we kept shaking and chatting! After 20-25 minutes the butter was completely whipped and ready to transfer to another container to refrigerate.
I was expecting to have to drain off excess liquid (buttermilk), but we must have whipped it more than necessary because there wasn't any at all! Not a drop! So, instead, we salted it a little, stirred it, tasted it, of course, and then put it in the refrigerator. Easy & Super delicious!
If you try this yourself, you may have to drain off the buttermilk. If so, all you do is tilt the bowl with the large clump of butter, drain the milk off, and then use a rubber spatula to work the butter into a mound, draining off more liquid if necessary. The buttermilk can be used in any way that you normally use buttermilk (biscuits, muffins, etc...)and then you can refrigerate the butter or eat it right away! Some people rinse their butter to get all milk off for fear of spoiling, but if you plan to use it pretty soon, don't worry with that!
Overall, I would say the butter-making was a huge success and a great lesson for my children (and me!) about where butter comes from, the work it takes to make it, and the truth that all things homemade are SO much better than store bought! I hope that you will make butter with your family soon!

Yummy Concoctions

Before I really took the time to learn to cook well, I was one of those people who always followed a recipe (if cooking from scratch) or opened a box and followed the directions there. I certainly was not one to stray away from what I was instructed to do or add in ingredients that I thought would taste good. Nope, I was a complete "rule-follower" when it came to cooking!
Thankfully, that's no longer who I am! I figured out that once you know how to make a few good sauces, you can come up with all kinds of delicious meals that your family will love. For example, as I was thinking over what I was going to make for dinner, I wanted to use some turkey sausage that I had made about a month ago and put in the freezer. (Basically, ground turkey mixed with some seasonings and pattyed out like little breakfast sausages.) The last time I cooked some of it, I realized that instead of being a breakfast type of sausage, it tasted more like the sausage you would find in a good italian soup or pasta dish. Since I didn't have a recipe to go from, I decided to use some trusted ingredients and see how it would turn out.

I started with finely chopped garlic (3 cloves) and butter (about 1-2 TB) and sauteed that in a skillet a bit. Then I added in the sausage and cooked it until done. At this point I poured in an almost full qt of chicken broth and a can of petit diced tomatoes. For seasoning, salt, fresh ground black pepper, basil, parsley, and a dash of oregano. I didn't measure these, just sprinkled them in, but if I had to guess I'd say maybe a tsp of each. While that was simmering, I boiled a pot of water and cooked some whole wheat rotini noodles until al dente. After draining the noodles, I mixed them in with the sauce (about half a box), poured in 1/4 cup of heavy cream, and then sprinkled in about a 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese. Delicious! Served with some crusty french bread and a salad, it would be even better!

The point I am trying to make is that you can take a sauce such as this, add in whatever meat you want (or none), your favorite pasta, and sprinkle on your favorite cheese and there you have it - a delicious and easy meal completely ready to eat in about 30 min or so! And just as a side note, my boys devoured this! I'll have to double it next time!