Thursday, January 27, 2011

1/26/2011 - Day 11 - Cabbage Soup + How to Make Homemade Butter

Wednesdays are my regularly scheduled yoga days, so I usually don't get home until almost 8pm. When I got home all tired & sweaty last night after class I was greeted at the door with the gorgeous fragrance of comforting cabbagey goodness! DBF made the MOST delicious cabbage soup I have ever tasted!!! (I'm so spoiled :) ) Local organic bacon from Skagit River Ranch, local organic carrots, potatoes, cabbage, & onion from our Full Circle Farms CSA box plus chicken broth we had chillin' in the pantry & magic! (Oh & I think it also had butter in it, which is also pretty much synonymous with magic.)

We ate our soup with a slice of french peasant bread from Great Harvest bakery which is delicious, but unfortunately the ingredients they use are not local or organic. Booo! I guess we'll just have to only buy their bread as special occasion treats & buy more sustainable bread going forward.

After dinner we had about 5 serving-sized bowls of leftovers to put in the fridge! YUM! I'm a little daunted by the fact that we have another whole box of produce from the CSA scheduled for Monday, it's already Thursday & we STILL have half a cabbage, a pound & a half of potatoes, greens, a full head of lettuce, green onions, celery, & a bunch of other veggies in the crisper drawer! We need to get moving & eat more veggies!!!!

I also made a big batch of home made butter while watching a movie on the couch last night with DBF. I'm looking forward to the fresh deliciocity this coming week!

Homemade butter recipe:
  1. Pour heavy whipping cream in a jar with a tight lid (leave plenty of room in the jar). This week I used heavy cream from Twin Brook Creamery.
  2. Add a little salt if you like (not too much! I think I use about 1/4t per 4-5oz of cream)
  3. Shake it! Shake it, shake it, Oh oh! Shake it like a Polaroid picture!.. Seriously, just keep shaking! (It's good exercise :) )
  4. After about 20-30 minutes of shaking, peek inside the jar at what you've got going on. You should see at least some chunks of butter forming & floating in the watery buttermilk. Or if you use a REALLY high fat cream (like I did last night), you may just see a jar full of butter which is even better!
  5. If you still just have a puny amount of butter in the jar, repeat steps 3 & 4 as many times as needed.
  6. Drain off the buttermilk (if applicable) & you have butter! Ta-da!
  7. Optionally, you can "wash" your butter to remove any buttermilk residue (recommended if you want to leave your butter out on the counter). To wash butter, use your hands to make a ball out of the butter & run the ball under cold water while kneading it between your hands until the water runs clear. (Note: this will get butter all over your hands :) )
There you have it! It's super easy!
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2 comments:

  1. SusieJanuary 27, 2011 at 9:42 PM

    To make it even easier, you can put the cream in a food processor, turn it on, and wait until it's the proper texture. Everything else is the same. :)

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  2. ErinJanuary 28, 2011 at 8:36 AM

    Susie, thanks for being my first commenter!!!!!!!

    I know you can make butter in the blender, mixer, or food processer, but A) I like the exercise of shaking it & B) it doesn't dirty any dishes because I just keep the butter in the jar I made it in. :)

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