Make Your Own Butter. Seriously.

I have been horribly neglectful, dear reader.  I know.  You've missed me terribly, haven't you?  Things have been very chaotic around here lately.  My parents came to visit (Hi, Mom!) and since then we've been busy planning for some fairly major life changes that are coming at us.  All super hush-hush, so don't even bother guessing.  Some of you know some of it, a few of you know all of it, but if any of you spill the beans, I'll kick you in the kneecaps.  So there.  And, no, it isn't what you think it is.  Or is it?

Anyway.  I have waxed poetic before on the joy that is butter.  Not margarine, which certainly has it's place, but real, honest-to-goodness butter.  Butter is awesome.  Not in a Paula-Deen-put-butter-on-everything kind of way, but if you're baking or cooking "real food" (not from a box), butter is a must-have.  Example:  Roast chicken?  Sure, you can do that with margarine, but it's SO much better with butter.  Fresh baked bread?  Go ahead and slather that slice with margarine if you must, but why?  Save the margarine for the boxed potato, pasta, and rice side dishes and for the endless slices of toast you give to your kids.  Everything else, use butter.

Now, real butter is expensive.  And while butter should consist of just cream and possibly salt, a lot of the ingredient labels I've read say that it also includes "natural flavorings".  What the hell?  They put butter flavor in the butter?  This makes no sense and scares me a bit.

So, today, I'm going to show you how to make homemade butter in less than 20 minutes, cheaply, and get an awesome arm workout in at the same time.

All you need is:

• Heavy whipping cream.  I got a half-pint at Walmart for less than $2.
• Salt, if you want your butter salted.  Your choice.  I won't judge either way.
• A jar big enough to allow your cream to move around freely.  Putting a half-pint of cream into a half-pint jar probably won't work very well.  I used a quart jar today, because that's what I had clean.

Now, about the arm workout part of this.  You know those As-Seen-On-TV Shake Weight things that you used to see on the infomercials all the time?  The ones that prompted lots of masturbation jokes?  This will do basically the same thing for free and you'll have butter at the end of it.  If you don't feel it in your arms and abdomen by the time you're either doing it wrong or in much better shape than I am.  Either way, shake harder next time.

This is so easy......

1.  Pour your cream into your jar.

Cream in a jar.

2.  Add salt if you want.

3.  Put the lid on the jar.  (It's sad I have to even mention this.)

4.  Start shaking.

Still just cream in a jar.

 5.  After about 2 minutes, you'll see the cream is coating the inside of the jar without running back down.  Keeping shaking.

This isn't going to work, is it?

6.  After around 3 or 4 minutes, if you open the jar, you'll see this fluffy goodness.  Essentially, this is simple whipped cream.  Try not to eat it all.  Keep shaking.

7.  After 6 minutes or so, you'll notice that your cream isn't sloshing around as much anymore and is starting to glob together on the sides of the jar.  Keep shaking.  Shake it up. Shake it down.  Shake it side to side.  Put on some dance music and really get your groove on.

I know.  Just keep shaking.  Trust me.

8.  This is what it would look like after 8 minutes or so.  Just keep shaking.  At this point, you're going to start doubting me.  You're gonna think I'm a little loco or that you've done something wrong.  Nope.  Keep going.

Pretty, but not quite there yet.

9.  Just keep shaking, just keep shaking.  Just keep shaking, shaking, shaking.  What do we do?  We shake!

10.  After 13 to 15 minutes (I lost track), you'll start hearing sloshing again.  And you'll see that you're starting to get some lovely lumps of butter in your jar, surrounded by liquid.  Keep going.

There's something happening here......

11.  Give it a couple of more minutes of shaking and then you can stop.  You have my permission.

That actually looks like butter now.

12.  Dump the contents of the jar into a sieve, being sure to have something below to catch the liquid.  Trust me.

BUTTAH!

13.  Yay!  You made butter!

14.  That liquid that was left over?  You know what is?  It's BUTTERMILK!  And this is good timing on my part, since I'm making breakfast for dinner tonight and I think it's time for some buttermilk pancakes!

Buttermilk!  A great free by-product of the butter!

15.  Put your butter back into your jar or some other storage container.  Keep it in the fridge.

Gorgeous, isn't it?

16.  Save the buttermilk, too.  Drink it or use it in recipes.  But, you know, you should probably chuck it out after a couple of days, so use it quickly!

And the equally lovely buttermilk!

And that, dear readers, is how you make butter.  A couple of notes:

1.  You can stop shaking before the butter starts to separate from the liquid if you must.  You'll end up with a very light, whipped butter-type product.  I've also had that happen if I stop shaking for too long and then start back up again or if I keep shaking past the separation stage. 

2.  You can use a mixer to do this and avoid all the shaking.  I don't own a mixer, so that's not an option for me, but from what I understand, you just dump your cream and salt in the mixer, cover it with plastic wrap (it'll splatter, don't say I didn't warn you), turn it on and let it do it's thing.  But, I'm a bad ass without a mixer, so I do it the hardcore way.  Shake, baby, shake!

3.  The REALLY hardcore butter people will tell you that you have to rinse the butter in an ice bath and press it and blah, blah, blah. That's fine if you're a purist.  Frankly, I don't see the need.

A half-pint of heavy cream yielded me a half-cup of buttermilk and probably somewhere between 1 and 2 cups of butter.  All for less than $2 and 20 minutes of effort.  Not too shabby!

Go forth.  By some cream.  Shake the cream.  Make some butter.  Then bake some bread to put the butter on.  Or pancakes.  Whatever.

Grungy Plastic Bowls? Help Has Arrived!

Do you ever get to the point where you look around your house and say "Damn, I really need to clean X, Y, or Z"?  Or, in my case, you look at the calendar and realize your parents will be here for a visit in a week and you say to yourself "Holy shit!  I really need to clean X, Y, AND Z!"  (Hi, Mom!)  Yeah, that's where I'm at this week.  Lots of little projects that need to be tackled; nothing overly concerning on a day-to-day basis, but stuff that's been bugging me for a while and needs to be taken care of.

Like the state of our plastic bowls.  Now, for the most part, we don't use Tupperware or anything like that.  If we do have leftovers, we store them in Pyrex.  The only plastic storage containers we have are for my flours and other baking supplies.  And, of course, we have the obligatory plastic kiddie bowls.  You know, the ones you give to kids when you don't relish the though of cleaning up broken ceramic every time the 3 year old wants some goldfish crackers.  The ones your 8 month old can throw across the room and not kill the cat in the process.  The ones you can just chuck onto the top rack of the dishwasher and not worry about.  Right?

Before

After!

I honestly don't know how these bowls got this filthy.  They only get used for oatmeal, cereal, bananas and other fruits, and dry stuff like chips or the aforementioned goldfish.  But damned if they weren't gross.  I blame the bananas.  If you don't rinse/wash off banana slime instantly, it gets nasty and becomes a pain in the ass to clean.

This is what three of the bowls looked like before my experiment.  Please note, these had just come out of the dishwasher on the pot-scrubber cycle.  So, yeah, they're pretty nasty, aren't they?  Especially the pink bowl on the right; I'm still trying to figure out what the hell happened there.

What you're going to need for this is fairly simple:

• Bleach  (STANDARD BLEACH DISCLAIMERS:  NEVER, EVER MIX BLEACH WITH AMMONIA!  DON'T DRINK THE BLEACH!  WASH YOUR HANDS WELL AFTER USING BLEACH!  DON'T LET YOUR KIDS PLAY WITH BLEACH! In short, don't be an idiot, okay?)
• Liquid dish soap
• Water
• Large bowl, large enough that you can submerge the dirty bowls in.  NOTE:  You can do this directly in the bowl you're wanting to clean, but these bowls are so small, I thought that submerging them in a larger bowl would be preferable.

Let's get those bowls clean, shall we?

1.  In your large bowl, put a squirt of liquid dish soap.

Does anyone else think Palmolive is a really pretty color?  No?  Just me?

2.  Dump in some bleach.  No, I didn't measure it.  Just dump some in.  Probably 1/4 to 1/2 cup.

 

3.  Add enough water to cover your grungy bowl.

Suds!

4.  Dunk your dirty bowl into the water and made sure it's completely covered.

Seriously, look at the gross.

5.  Microwave on HIGH until the water is hot and starting to bubble slightly.  I did 5 minutes.  (Common sense alert:  Never put metal in the microwave!)

6.  After nuking, let the water cool for a bit (please, don't burn yourself; I don't need the guilt) and then remove the bowl and rinse well.  Repeat with the rest of your bowls.  I just reused the same cleaning solution, but add a little more soap and bleach each time.

Definitely better, but still a bit dingy!

7.  If needed, give the bowl a good scrub and rinse well.

That's better!

Look!

Clean!

SO MUCH BETTER!

What are you waiting for?  Go clean some bowls!  Or cups.  Or whatever.

DIY All-Natural Citrus Vinegar Cleaner

Have you ever used a store-bought cleaner and then felt like you needed to shower afterward before touching your kids?  Did you just feel icky and contaminated?  Or, did you dutifully wear your rubber gloves to avoid the standard disclaimer of "may cause skin irritation"?  Do you feel like you need a face mask to keep you from passing out from the fumes?  And have you ever wondered if there is a better, safer, more natural way to clean?

Well, there is.  Lots of ways.  Today, I'm going to tell you about one of my favorites.

Citrus Vinegar.

It honestly doesn't get any easier than this.

You will need:

• A jar (I use a quart-size canning jar)
• Citrus peels (Clementines/mandarins work great since they are so easy to peel.  Plus, they're good to eat and kids love them.)  I figure I can usually get between 10-15 peels in the jar, but don't worry, you don't need them all at once.
• White vinegar.  (For an added punch, you can use the cleaning strength white vinegar, but regular food-quality vinegar works fine.)
• A spray bottle.

And that's it.

 1.  Place however many peels you have in your jar.  Again, you don't need to fill it all at once, so there's no need to try and go through a dozen mandarins in one day.  You can fit more in if you cut them up first, but there's really no need to do that.

2.  Pour some vinegar over the top of the peels, just enough to cover them.  Put the lid on the jar and stick it in your pantry.

3.  Whenever you get more peels, add them to the jar and cover them with vinegar.

4.  Once it's full, let the jar sit for at least 2 weeks.  I've let jars sit for months without a problem.

This jar has been in my pantry for about 2 months.

5.  After at least 2 weeks, strain the peels out and put the vinegar in your spray bottle.  If you have room, top off the bottle with straight vinegar.

And that's it!  This cleaner cuts through dirt and grease like there's no tomorrow.  The scent is a tangy citrus smell, but it's not overpowering and dissipates fairly quickly.  Vinegar also has anti-bacterial and anti-fungal properties and can help repel ants (more on that in a later post).  Best of all, it's all natural, so  it's safe around food and pets and you don't have to call Poison Control if your kid decides to drink it!!!

You are gonna love this stuff!

The Gardening Chronicles, part 2: The Installation and Prep

Greetings, dear readers!  It's time for the second installment of my adventures in gardening.

EDIT:  I've obviously got something whacky going on with the font formatting.  I don't know what the hell I did nor can I figure out how to fix it.  Hopefully all will be back to normal with my next post.

After a few delays, we finally got around to installing one of the raised beds last weekend.  This involved prepping the ground beneath where the bed was going to go, digging holes for the posts, putting the bed in place and leveling it, installing the wire mesh, etc, etc.

A few important things we learned:  

1.  Green nylon landscaping mesh (apparently used by idiots during sod installation) is horrible, nasty stuff and a total bitch to dig up.

2.  Using a weed whacker through a bunch of succulents is the equivalent of taking a shower with green water.

3.  Wire mesh is out for blood.

4.  You can have a cheaper alternative to a problem, but sometimes convenience is worth more than what money you would save.

5.  Your almost 3-year-old daughter will find a rock, name it "Rocko", and insist that he sleep in her bed at night, forcing you to make a bed for Rocko out of a pop tart box and a wash cloth.  True story.

My first order of business was to prep the ground where the first bed was going to go.  This turned out much more difficult than it should have been and I freely confess to finally not giving a shit and walking away from that particular task.  My thought was I was going to take a garden hoe and just clear out as much of the weeds (we don't really have grass) off the plot as I could.  It wasn't absolutely necessary that I do it since I'm taking further precautions against weed invasion from below anyway, but I wanted to do things correctly from the beginning.

What I didn't count on was that whoever laid our sod originally some used green nylon mesh shit to anchor the sod.  Now, I have no idea if this is common practice or not.  All I know is that it's a pain in the ass to deal with when you're trying to clear some land.    I also encountered some scary pieces of glass and the remnants of a tree.  Our "soil" (and I use that term very loosely) is also very hard, except where the gophers have been, then it's nice and loose.  We also had some type of succulent plant growing through and under our back fence from the neighbors yard.  I decided to weed whack that bitch down and was immediately covered in green goo.  Fun times.

After half an hour of working with the hoe and making little progress, I finally grabbed a shovel and just started turning the dirt and then leveled it off as best I could.  It was a total pain in the ass, but I'm very glad that I was smart enough not to try for an in-ground garden.  That would have been nightmarish.  

I then turned the project over to Hubby.  He decided to reinforce the sides of the bed with an extra support post at the halfway point on the long sides.  Then, we went out and marked where the holes needed to go, he dug the holes, and we got the bed in and leveled.

Little helper!

Once it was in, Hubby installed some wire mesh at the bottom and stapled it to the inside of the bed.  We used a 20-gauge, 1 inch hexagonal mesh weave, galvanized poultry netting.  The purpose of this is to hopefully keep our gopher friends from coming up into the garden beds from underneath while still allowing water to drain out.  Hubby made several blood sacrifices to the garden during this part.  Wire mesh will bite you, people!  Be careful!

Once the wire mesh was in, I lined the bottom of the bed with several pieces of cardboard.  This will help kill the weeds underneath the bed, but still allow water to drain out.  Also, cardboard supposedly attracts worms, which I would love to have in my garden beds.

Finally a use for all the old Amazon boxes in the garage!

Now we were ready for the dirt.  Originally, I had gotten quotes from several landscaping companies, but they were all very pricey, $200+, for soil and delivery.  Then, on the advice of a friend, I checked out the local municipal composting facility and was pleasantly surprised to see I could get a top soil/compost blend for $40 ($20 for each bed).  Not too shabby, right?

Except.

Except that 1) It's sold loose, not bagged, 2) We don't have a pick up truck, and 3) Trying to transport 48 cu feet of soil from the driveway to the backyard would be a total pain in the ass.  The composting facility would deliver, but it would cost an additional $120 and we'd still have nearly 2 tons of loose dirt sitting in our driveway.  We could rent a pick up, but again, we'd be looking at more cost and still the loose dirt in the drive way problem.

After much discussion and calculation, I finally opted to be bad and buy bagged soil from Lowes.  This way we would be able to put it in the trunk and then carry it to the back yard.  A bit more expensive to be sure, but oh so much easier.  I know, I know, I took the slacker way out.  I hang my head in shame.

My calculations came out that we would need approximately 48 cu feet of soil total, which worked out to 8 bags per bed (3 cu feet per bag).  I opted to get 7 bags of gardening soil and 1 bag of compost, which I would layer on top of the soil.  More expensive than the municipal composting facility, but Hubby was able to get enough for 1 bed into the car in one trip and he was able to move them back to the beds without too much hassle.  It also made it very easy to get the soil into the beds; a few quick slashes with a blade, dump, and you're done.  I had the bed filled in about 20 minutes.  And, since I didn't fill the bed to the very top, I had a bag of soil leftover!  Woot!

Pretty!

Stay tuned for the next installment:  The Planting.  I got stuff in a couple of days ago and it's touch-and-go at this point; there's some definite transplant shock going on.

Have a great day!

Not Your Grandma's Chicken Noodle Soup

Ah, chicken noodle soup!  One of the ultimate comfort foods, but probably a pain in the ass to make, right?  Yeah, you can always open a can of soup, and that certainly has it's place, but sometimes you just want something a little more substantial.  Am I right?

For some reason, I was always daunted by the thought of making chicken noodle soup from scratch.  I don't know why.  I had images of chicken carcasses and mounds of chopped vegetables and who the hell has the time for that?  Maybe you're the same way?  Well, never fear!  This is a quick and easy way to make a pot of delicious chicken noodle soup!  Your grandmother would probably be horrified by some of the shortcuts I'm going to show you, but we can keep those our secret.

In the interests of full disclosure, I have absolutely no recollection of either of my Grandmas ever cooking chicken noodle soup for me from scratch, but I'm sure if they had, it would have been delicious!

You will need:

• A 32 ounce thing of chicken broth.  I use Swanson.  Or, if you are so inclined and have some lying around, use homemade chicken broth.  Whatever floats your boat.
• A can of canned chicken breast.  I think it was 13.5 ounces, but it may have only been 12.5.  Either way, one of the big ones.  And, yes, I'm serious; we're using canned chicken.  Don't drain the chicken, though.
• A can of sliced carrots, drained.
• An onion, chopped.
• White cooking wine
• Italian seasonings (an herb blend containing oregano, basil, thyme, rosemary, and marjoram and maybe some other shit)
• Salt and Pepper
• Half a bag of egg noodles

Optionals:

• One or two packets of Swanson Flavor boost
• Celery, 1 stalk, chopped
• Minced garlic

How easy is this going to be?  Well......

1.  In a large stock pot, sautee your onion (and celery and garlic if you're using them) in a bit of olive oil until tender.  A note on the celery:  I love celery in chicken noodle soup, but that's the only thing I ever use it in.  I don't like it raw and no one else in the family will eat it either.  It's silly to buy a thing of celery when I'm only going to use 1 stalk, so I usually just don't even bother with it.

Yup, that's onions.

2.  Dump in your chicken broth and undrained can of chicken.  Season to taste with the Italian seasonings, salt, and pepper.  While you're there, add in a glug or two of white cooking wine.  Just because you can.

3.  Simmer this on low for at least 15 minutes to let the flavors come together.

4.  Dump in your drained can of carrots.  At this point, taste your soup and if you feel it needs more flavor, add the packet of Flavor Boost.  Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't.  Just remember that stuff is VERY salty.

5.  About 30 minutes before you're ready to eat, dump your uncooked egg noodles and turn heat up to medium.  They'll cook in the broth and be super yummy.  The noodles should be cooked after 20 or 30 minutes.

That's it!  Super easy!  This is something the whole family likes, even Eleanor.  The boy also had a few noodles, some chicken, and a couple of pieces of carrot last night and really like it.  You could also add in other vegetables, like frozen peas or fresh mushrooms, if you want.