Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Monday, August 16, 2010
Out with the Old...In with the New!
Yesterday we cleared out the tomato plants. It was hard to do. I brought them up from wee-little transplants barely 10 inches tall. They were just too out of control. I didn't prune them and they overtook the entire garden! As you can see here...
Before |
After |
Posted by A City Girl 0 comments
How to Make Butter! (and Buttermilk)
Howdy from the homestead! We made butter this evening. With just a bit of heavy cream and a few common household items, we shook...and shook...and shook...until all of a sudden we had butter! It is sweet and creamy — by far the best butter I have ever tasted. And as an extra bonus the dairy gods gave us a bit of buttermilk too!
- Heavy Cream
- Clean Empty Jar (with a tight fitting lid)
- 1-2 Clean Glass Marbles
- Plastic Wrap
- 2 Small Mixing Bowls
- Spatula (needs to be able fit into the jar)
- 2 containers: 1 for Butter, 1 for Buttermilk
- Pinch of salt (optional)
- Fill the jar a little more than half way with heavy cream.
- Place a marble or 2 into the jar.
- Cover the jar opening with some plastic wrap and then screw on lid tightly. This prevents lingering scents in the lid from making the butter smell/taste strange.
- Shake the heck out of the jar for about 15-25 minutes. It will be easy at first, then it will be harder to move the marbles around. Sometime after the 10 minute mark you will see a definite separation of butter and milk and the cream will no longer coat the inside of the jar. Shake for 2 more minutes.
- Use the spatula to help strain the buttermilk out of the jar into one of the containers.
- Fill the two mixing bowls half way with cold ice water.
- When you have all of the buttermilk separated, place the butter into the first mixing bowl to rinse. You can use the spatula to knead the butter a little and get the buttermilk out of any pockets in the butter.
- Transfer the butter into the second bowl for a second rinse.
- Place the butter into the second container, strain any water remaining, and mix in salt to taste if desired.
The salsa jar I show in the first photo gave me 1/2 cup of butter (shown in the photo above) and about 1/4 cup of buttermilk.
The photo above shows the two butter containers (on the right) I have filled so far, and the container of buttermilk (left). I have used about 1/4 gallon of heavy cream so far and it gave me 2 1/4 cups of butter and about 1 1/2 cups of buttermilk. I am really happy that this process creates two products I can actually use. There is no waste (unless you are on a diet). Tomorrow I will make some buttermilk biscuits with the fresh buttermilk. Wahoo! I can smother them in homemade butter!
Posted by A City Girl 0 comments
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Today's Harvest: PEPPERS
Today I grabbed a small bell pepper and 4 Anaheim chiles from the garden. My husband is making his famous salsa tonight and these are my little (very little) contribution. It is such a cool feeling to eat the food I have grown from the garden.
In other exciting news...
Posted by A City Girl 0 comments
Friday, August 13, 2010
Somethin's brewin in the kitchen...
Home brewed beer is (finally) coming to the homestead!
I purchased a Mr. Beer kit for my husband's birthday last week. Apparently it was the perfect gift because he has been camped out in front of the computer looking at all the types of beer he can make ever since. And I think this is the first time I have ever seen him actually READ instructions. I may have created a monster.
It really couldn't have been easier. They break it down into easy-to-read steps. I think it took 30 minutes to clean the equipment, boil the wort, and find a cool spot to let it sit for a couple weeks. Meanwhile, we are saving all the glass amber bottles we can get our hands on. The kit comes with 8 plastic liter bottles — which will work fine — but we'll use glass. It feels more substantial in your hand and beer just tastes better out of a glass bottle.
Next time you hear from me on this subject, we will be bottling our first batch!
Posted by A City Girl 0 comments