Home Grown

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“If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.” — Julia Child

She is so right. I have always believed eating real whole food is better for your body that filling it full of chemical concoctions that mimic real food. Do you know that most margarines are only one molecule away from being plastic? Have you ever seen what happens to a tub of margarine when it is left out in the heat for weeks? I’ll tell you what happens – nothing. It won’t spoil. It won’t grow mold. Ants and other insects won’t eat it. If bugs won’t eat it why are humans eating it?

I ask you, in the words of Hugh Jackman as Leopold, “Fresh creamery butter. Is there anything more comforting?”

No. No there is not.

Also it isn’t something that is hard to make on your own. If you have the milk available from which to skim or separate the cream or have a source for the milk and cream you are miles ahead of everyone else.

A friend shared some heavy cream with me last week. A gallon!

Look how beautiful! If you do much reading you’ll know that the best butter comes from slightly soured milk. I let this milk stand on the counter to come to room temp then I let it sit all night, covered of course, before making butter with it the next morning.

There are many ways to turn the cream to butter. With a churn. Shaking a jar. Whipping it by hand. I took the easy way out and used my stand mixer.

In goes some of the milk. Not too much at a time as the liquid will splash and splatter and your kitchen will be a mess. I used my splash guard and still needed to throw a clean cloth over the entire thing because of the mess that splashes out of even the tiniest of openings.

The cream will first whip to whipped cream. Light and fluffy and with a little sugar is the topping we all love for fruits and desserts. After it reaches the whipped cream stage keep going and you will see it begin to break into what looks like little clumps. This is the butter. The fat molecules hiding in the cream.

As it breaks you’ll need to stop and pour off the milk that collects in the bottom of the bowl. This is what some people call ‘buttermilk’. It is the milk left from making the butter. Use it for making bread or biscuits or milk gravy. Do not confuse it the cultured buttermilk that is thick and creamy and lightly soured. They are not the same and cannot be interchanged.

Once the butter is coming together you’ll want to wash it. This washes out the remaining whey so that your butter will last longer without going rancid. It will go rancid, even in the fridge. It’s not margarine and it doesn’t have chemical additives as preservatives.

As the mixers continues to beat the butter pour in a half of a cup of ice water – don’t put the ice in the butter – drain the water from a jar of ice water. This water will mix through the butter and pull out with it the whey trapped in the folds of the butter.

When you pour the water off and add more to the butter it will look like this. Slightly whitish. Keep rinsing and pouring off until the water pours off clean. That means your butter is ready!

Look at that huge clump of butter. It is washed and ready for packing into butter molds, crocks or other storage containers.

I use a combination of several things. My butterbell which sits on the counter at room temp. My big 2lb crock. A little butter dish for the fridge. What you don’t see is the six 16 ounce freezer containers that I filled with butter and put in my freezer for later use.

The gallon of heavy cream whipped up some serious butter. I poured off about 16 ounces of ‘milk’ and the rest was butter.

Making butter is something that kids will love to do with you. They can shake the jar and watch the butter come up in lumps. They can also help spread it on warm bread and enjoy a great treat after making the butter.

Try it. I’ll even look the other way when you buy that carton of cream or heavy cream at the grocery store. I won’t peek! And I’ll applaud your efforts when you show me your buttery goodness!

Give it a try. I dare you!

I won’t force you to read the next bit. I am going to rant a little about milk and the scare tactics used to control you. I need to step up on my soap box for just a minute.

< rant>

Stop being afraid of butter and cream and whole milk. Stop letting the USDA and the FDA use scare tactics to control what you eat and feed to your family. Most importantly stop being afraid of raw dairy products. I implore you all to do your own research. Seek the facts of wholesome complete nutrition filled with living enzymes and healthy proteins and fats. Please stop wasting your money on commercial products that are dead nutrition and seek out those people around you locally providing top of the line nutrition in small home operations. It is the commercial producers with all the milk being dumped in together that create the environment for bad things to get into the food supply. Milk is pasteurized so that products that aren’t as clean as they should be won’t make you sick. If you have ever walked into a large dairy operation you would be sick to your stomach by what you see. Pooping doesn’t stop. Urinating doesn’t stop. Cows keep doing what they do even while on the milking floor. If a farm have 300 cows to milk do you really think they wash all 1200 hooves, all 300 udders, all 1200 teats? They don’t. And that crap is in commercial milk. They filter it and pasteurize it to kill the bad germs so you won’t get sick. While the bad germs are being killed all of the good enzymes are being killed to. Even the flash heating changes the milk proteins. This change makes it hard for the body to digest it and often the result is what so many people are calling lactose intolerance. Fresh raw milk and milk products do not cause those lactose issues in most people suffering from it. The living enzymes are what make it good for you and help your body to digest it. Don’t be afraid. Stand up and refuse to be a child that the gov’t has decide needs to be told what it can and cannot eat. You control your food. No one else has that right.

< /rant>

Stepping down now.

Think about it.

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Service to this blog has been interrupted due to the to purchase the very last Motorola Droid 2 in our local Verizon service area.

Today’s regularly scheduled adventure into homemade butter will return tomorrow.

w00t!

When I was a kid I had never had pear preserves until my momma remarried and we went to live in Georgia. My stepfather’s sisters made pear preserves – as well as any other preserve they could find the fruits to make – every summer. We always ended up with a few jars. The jars were usually pushed to the back of the bottom cabinet on the right side of the kitchen sink. You had to go looking for them where Momma would hide them if you really wanted them. Back then I was afraid to reach my hand back far in the dark recesses of that corner cabinet where light rarely ever strayed. If there was a jar back there then I would take the broom and try to drag it forward. It was worth every bit of effort but obviously not worth reaching into the dark for. Go figure. In later years when Momma and Daddy had pear trees yielding fruit Ethel and Pinkie would come down and fish all day, pick pears and later there would be those jars of pear preserves in my mommas kitchen.

My stepfather’s sisters, “the Walden girls” as many people affectionately called them: Blanche, Hazel, Ogal, Ethel, Pinkie, Annette and Ruth, knew how to make something good from anything you handed them. The family grew from very poor roots on a farm first in Jefferson County, Georgia and later moved to a more prosperous farming area in Glascock county. They learned to cook (and wash, and tend children, and farm and go to church) from the hands of their mother, Mrs. Jeannie, who I never knew as she was gone to be with Jesus by the time we came into the picture.

R to L: Pinkie, Ethel, Ogal, Hazel, Blanche, Mrs. Jeannie

Blanche, the matriarchal sister, the ‘mother’ to them all as the oldest girl, when she spoke you moved and there was no two ways about it, made the best Brunswick stew I have ever eaten in my life. Hazel could bake a cake or pie that would make you cry and then ask for more. Ogal played the piano. I can’t remember her cooking anything but I know she did. She was just the sister we were around the least. Annette lived in Wisconsin on a dairy farm with her husband and children and we didn’t see her often but she and her girls could cook up storm. Ethel and Pinkie lived back over in South Carolina, where we hailed from, and we saw them the most. Both could make pear preserves that made your mouth water. As young adults, we knew if we could get our hands on pears and take them to Aunt Ethel she would return us jars of beautiful pear preserves. Even as recently as a few years ago she would make the preserves.

Coveted jars of dark amber syrup covered pear slices served in the winter with grits and hot biscuits is a meal worth a king’s ransom. I can close my eyes and see the jar and hear the sticky suck of the fruit as the fork pulled it away from the others making its way to your plate.

Seriously. You haven’t lived until you eaten old fashioned pear preserves. Not those pale colored jars of pear slices or butter that remind one of applesauce. I am referring to the pear preserves of the deep south where the fruits are sugared and left over night. The syrup cooked down thick and slow until it is reminiscent of molasses in color and in flavor of the pears is intensified and magnified a hundred times. The pears of my childhood were so rich and so dark I remember being amazed when the fruits were eaten and the jar was emptied. I had always thought the jar was brown and not clear like the jars my grandma had always used. It seems silly now but it is the truth. I thought the canning jars were amber glass and it never occured to me the fruits and syrup were actually amber inside.

Jars: Preserves, Syrup Glaze, Jelly

I know the secret inside those jars and I want to share it.

Pears, fresh from the tree. Kieffer pears to be exact. You want to pick them when they are just a bit green and the flesh is still firm and crunchy. They may not be the ‘best’ pear to eat off the tree according to some people who claim to be experts on the subject of which fruit is best for what but ask any kid in the south about a slightly green pear and eating it fresh from the tree and you’ll spend a while listening to description of the crunch and burst of juice in your mouth. I don’t care for soft pears. I like them crunchy like an apple.

Peel and core a sack or two of pears fresh from the tree and cut them into slices. For every 2 quarts of sliced pears cover with one pound of sugar. Cover and let the pot stand overnight. At least 8 hours. 12 is better. You should come back to a pot of pear slices floating in the melted sugar and natural juices of the pears.

On slow heat cover and simmer the pears until they are almost translucent – stirring often so that they don’t stick on the bottom and burn. Once cooked remove the pears from the syrup and set aside. Allow the syrup to simmer until it is reduced almost by half. Return the pears to the syrup and bring back up to a slow boil. Spoon the fruits out into hot sterile canning jars using a slotted spoon. Once the jars are packed full with the pears top with the syrup to 1/2 inch head space. Process pints and quarts for 25 minutes in a boiling water bath.

There will be plenty of syrup left in the pot once the pears are spooned out. Ladle it into hot jars and process it along with the jars of preserves. This syrup will make the most amazing glaze for duck, goose and pork when slow roasted. Add some hot chilies and garlic and brush it over the meat in the last 15 minutes of roasting.

I just make myself hungry and my stomach growled!

That’s not all.

The pear peels and cores will make lovely jelly you can use the same for meat glazes. Add the peels and cores to a large stock pot and add water about 2/3 the depth of the contents in the pot. Let is cook slow until the cores and the peels are mushy. Strain the juice and set the pear pulp aside for your chickens to have as a treat later.

For every 1 pint of juice add 1lbs of sugar. Add 1/2 cup of lemon juice to clarify the pear juice. Bring it to a slow boil and let it cook down slow. The green state of the pears, the peels and the cores leaves them rich with pectin. The pectin is what makes the fruit syrup turn to jelly. Let it cook slow and don’t rush it or it will burn. Use a cold plate to test the gel state. You’ll know you are getting there when the boiling syrup cannot be stirred down and you think it may escape your deep kettle. Pull it off the heat and let it set a few minutes. A minor little skin will begin to float on top and you can spoon off any foam easily. Ladle in to hot sterile jars. Apply lids and rings. Process in a boiling water bath for 10 minutes.

Thanks to my sweet friend, Valerie, who let me pick pears from her trees. Thank you ever so much!

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