Homemade Butter Recipe:

What you need:
1 Ball Jar (any size- I like the quart size but you can use a smaller one if you want to make less)
1 Large pinch of Salt
About 15 minutes of your time

Fill one ball jar half way with Heavy Whipping Cream. Put a lid on it and tighten it. Let sit out at room  temperature overnight- or for approximately 12 hours. This is to aid in souring process.

After your patient wait. Grab on to the jar and add a large pinch of salt to the cream. Then with one hand on the top and bottom of the jar shake with decisive churns. Not too quick, think of it as sudden pulses timed at about once every second. (This does not have to be exact- I didn't do exactly that, but I write this to let you know you aren't jiggling it constantly)

When you start to wonder if you should open the lid or you will miss it, don't. Just keep going. It happens really quick- it goes from regular liquid to whipped cream and then to butter surrounded in buttermilk  with the jerk of the jar. When you see a conglomerate of light yellow butter in the middle (slightly bumpy and odd looking) you have it! You made butter!!

Butter is forming and swimming in a soft pool of buttermilk

Butter in jar after I emptied out the buttermilk

Empty the liquid (which is buttermilk) into a separate jar using a funnel. Rinse your butter with water making sure all the buttermilk is out, as this will cause spoilage. You can kneed it under the water, I would use cold though so it doesn't make your butter any softer than it already is-this will be slimy, but you could just lick your fingers off!! :P After the water that comes off of the butter runs clear your butter is good to go.  Transfer to a butter mold or smaller jar if you choose. Store both butter and buttermilk in the fridge. If you want a soft butter- you can leave part of it out for easy-creamy spreading. Grab your toast and slab on your homemade butter! Or better yet- just grab a spoon! YUM!

Have you made butter before?? Do you have any tips or something I left out?? Be sure and let me know. If you have even considered it you really should- it is SO easy that you'll just want to keep it up!

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The Flavor Bible: The Essential Guide To Culinary Creativity, Based on the Wisdom of America's Most Imaginative Chefs
by Karen Page and Andrew Dornenburg
380 Pages
Cookbook, Culinary Reference Guide
Awards: IACP Award- Winning Authors of What to Drink with What you Eat

This is insanity, insanely amazing for sure! The Flavor Bible was written as a reference type guide for when you have several ingredients but enhancing their unique flavours for the best culenary experience result is just beyond you. How does it work? Well, you figure out what you are interested in working on, for me that means what I have in the fridge that I need to eat, or sometimes what I buy on impulse at our amazing Saturday Market and then blunder because I have no idea how it should even be cooked. After you have your ingredient/s you check out what pairs well with it, and for each ingredient or spice there is a crazy long list that you can drool over and choose from. And probably designed especially for me, there are sometimes parings to avoid and they are also listed, YAY!

There are also sections titled Flavor Affinities where you can plan a trio of yummy delight, or the " understanding [of] what herbs, spices and other seasonings will best bring out the flavor of whatever it is you're cooking" (p. 33). I can't wait to try some of the ones I see listed! More than a cookbook, this is a reference guide that any person who likes their food to taste good would enjoy. The Flavor Bible lists so many options for most ingredients, many times probably saving you the trip out to the store for that unnecessary item, and that extra candy bar (for the road, you know!).

Most of the book is what the authors call, Flavor Matchmaking: The Charts, but there are two other chapters as well. The first chapter is titled: Flavor= Taste + Mouthfeel + Aroma + "the X factor": Learning to Recognize the Language of Food. And really it is a great chapter emphasizing the importance of things such as saltiness, temperature, bitterness, texture, and pungency. I was intregued by "the X Factor" and that is how the food affects us emotionally, mentally and spiritually.

The second chapter is called, Great Cooking= Maximizing Flavor + Pleasure by Tapping Body + Heart+ Mind + Spirit: Communicating Via the Language of Food, seriously that is a great title as well! This Chapter discusses things such as " Understanding the Essence of the Ingredients", the " Understanding the Essence of the Moment" (p. 25)

This really is a great one, in so many ways! I actually think it is "practically perfect in every way" haha, that is no joke though, it is exquisite! Check out this video below and then you will want it even more :)

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Also, do you have products (meatless type) that you consume on a regular basis and are super pumped about?? Share those too. Are there any supa-cool things that your kids really like? Are there any really good ones a your meat-lover guest? I am going to write and share mine soon....because sharing is so very good for everyone, yah??

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More-With-Less

I know that a kick is a kick, but as far as kicks go...I really hope this one lasts. I just got my "More-with-Less" A World Community Cookbook in the mail that I ordered from amazon.com. written by Doris Janzen Longacre.
I am amazed at the information in this book, so I'll tell you about it, because that is what I do!

It begins by explaining what less with more actually is, that it is not about not enjoying what we eat, it is not about starving or being less creative with our meals. It IS about "simplifying [our] meals in order to reduce food expenditures...while in no way depraved of tasty, nutritious food" (p.12). The author goes through a list of reasons this should be done, including topics such as: World Shortages, North America: Five times as Much, Overspending Money, Overeating Calories, Overeating Protein, Overeating Sugar (my HUGE downfall), Overeating Processed Foods, and Over complicating our Lives.

I was amazed at how much information was in these sections which I had not fully thought about, but that I completely see the point of. I love America, I love the beauty of it all and the incredible people and diversity in our country...I do not love our need to enjoy the richness of it all and expect "someone else" to do something about the world's poverty. It is easy to continue on just buying things at the expense of others when you do not know what you are doing, and who it affects, but when you do know...well, that then is another story. I used to think that what I did with my money, my time and my donations really did not have a big affect on anyone but my family and I. Now I have just figured out that what I do does impact, it does change others, and that I can choose to have a positive impact on others, and not live in luxury at their expense.

Today as I was reading the reasons to change what we eat, and how to do "more-with-less" and in reading I realized something that bothered me. In the Overeating Sugar section, where the author writes about how, " much of the land used for sugar beets and cane could produce crops far more beneficial to a hungry world. Sugar provides calories, not a smidgen of protein, vitamins, or minerals"(p.17). This immediately made me picture the times of kings and queens where the royal family would be sitting in a huge elegant dining hall and the people they were serving were rioting outside their castle walls because they were not receiving the foods that they needed in order to survive. I have also heard of feasts that the wealthy had where they would cause themselves to puke up what they had eaten in order to continue on eating the delicacies of the festival. Ahhhhh! This picture happened many times throughout history because the people with less are the easiest to ignore, and it is happening now as well. We as Americans are the wealthy, even if we only have enough food to eat and a place to sleep...we are the wealthy! This is a blessing that I feel was given to us for a reason, and that reason is not to see how much we ourselves can indulge, but what impact we can have on the people around us who do not have. I realized that I need to look out of my castle walls, and reach out to the people that are hungry, week and just need something, anything. Yes, you can see...conviction has captured me, and I am oh, so thankful. Guilt is rotten but conviction....that is one of the huge blessings of having a functioning conscience.

I realize that helping those who lack is not a "calling" or a gift, or a different way of "spiritualizing" it away so that we can continue to do nothing about it....it is what we are told we need to do. It seems Jesus made it all SUPER clear in Matthew 25: 31-46...when he talks of those who actually knew Him...read it, I guess I see it pretty much as life and death, it is what we will do if we really do follow what he is asking of us...I guess unless we long to hear the: "depart from me! for you do not know me". This is not religious, it is not pious...it is obedience, and that is what God is continually working with me on OBEDIENCE.

Anyway, I know it is hard to read something like this...well, really know that it is hard to write something you are feeling convicted about because you fear the readers to assume that you are saying you have it together, or that you are trying to get them to do it, or the grand 'ol one "preachy". At this point though, I am beyond worried about what people will think, I figure if you really know me, you'll know what I am like. So, just know, this is my conviction...not yours, unless you feel it should be and then, well it is yours too. right?

So yeah....that is probably the most conviction anyone has gotten from a cookbook....but there you have it... I'm fully convicted.
oh...and about this same type of thing...you gotta read Paris' latest blog entry: March

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