Butter.

In agrarian societies, historically, February is the time when ewes ( and I suppose other mammals) begin to produce milk in anticipation of the coming lambs. It's also a time when winter stores are at their lowest and the milk of other animals most welcome.

New life, growing light and the hope that Winter may soon be replaced by the much easier days of Spring are all entangled in the beginning of February. Groundhogs, mother goddesses and planting are all here.

Today also happened to be the day that we made our butter for the week. Several of you ( hello! you!) have asked how and why we make our own butter. I'll start with the how....

I use my handy, almost never silent KitchenAid Stand Mixer. But you can make butter in any closed container too. An empty jar, martini shaker whatever. These directions are for the mixer.

Start with one quart heavy whipping cream at room temperature, go ahead let it sit on the counter for an hour. It won't spoil and your butter will taste better. Open it up and let it breathe.

Pour the cream into the bowl of the mixer and fit the mixer with the whisk. Starting on the slowest speed, turn the mixer on, after it is up to speed you can increase to one of the middle speeds. Now leave it alone.

1. After 10 minutes you should have something approaching soft whipped cream.
2. After 15-20 minutes it will be denser and more yellow. Turn up the speed to high and put a towel over the whole thing. Once the curds start to separate from the whey it gets messy.

3. In about 5 minutes you will see the foam get drier and start to deflate a little. Turn the mixer back to Medium.

4. Keep peeking at it, when it looks like cold lumpy oatmeal, turn it off. It doesn't take long to go from whipped cream to butter. This is the point where I like to add salt, some people do not. I add about a 1/2 teaspoon.


. Look Ma, Curds!


5. Now you have curds and whey ( buttermilk). The curds will mostly stick to the whisk, but there is quite a bit in the buttermilk too. Pour the whole thing into a square of cheesecloth placed over a strainer and a bowl. Let it rest a minute.

6. Pick up the cheese cloth and squeeze as much of the whey as possible out of your butter. Some people rinse the curds before squeezing. I don't I like a little of the taste and smoothness of the whey to stay in the curds. Rinsing the curds will will allow you to keep your butter longer. We don't have to worry about butter storage around here, it never lasts longer than a week. So give it a good squeeze.



7. You now have a nice fist sized lump of butter

8. and about a pint and a half of buttermilk. We store our butter in canning jars in the refrigerator and on the counter. It can also be frozen. We keep the butter milk in the refrigerator and use it in baking for the week. Anything left at the end of the week goes into the freezer.




Now, why do we make our own butter? It tastes better, we know what is in it, and it's a damn fine science experiment that never gets old. Truly miraculous every single time. Every time I think, "oh no", it won't work and every time we get butter.

It's also a nod to the women who came before me, who churned by hand. It's a small way to help us remember where our food comes from. And especially on a winter day it's a tiny bit of bright yellow sunshine that helps remind me that better days will come, the sun will come back a bit more everyday and no matter how crappy I feel like things are, the small luxury of fresh bread and good butter cannot be denied. So that's why I make butter.