It's Like Budda'

Day 13:  Make Butter

We have come a long way from the little house on the prairie days.  Technology affords us so many conveniences that would be hard to imagine going through life without.  Some of my personal favorites would have to be the development of indoor plumbing (hooray for flushing toilets and hot showers!), microwaves (ours is humming away in the kitchen as we speak), and of course the good old world wide web.  But with so many grandiose achievements, it can be easy to overlook the small but vital conveniences of daily life that past generations have gone without.  Among those is store bought butter.

Whether you like it in a tub, or as a stick, or even as a spray, one thing is for certain, butter is delicious.  Would a tall stack of pancakes at IHOP have the same appeal without the precisely scooped dollop of butter resting precariously on the summit?  What would corn on the cob be if not accompanied by the stick of butter with the unmistakable concave indentation across the top?  Two words, butter cookies!  Any way you slice it, butter is a staple to classic American cuisine.  But could it be even more delicious if it were home made?  I decided it was about time I found out the answer to that question.

The process of making butter is relatively simple.  All you need is cream and a container, such as a jar, to shake it in (or a mixer to beat it if you want to take all the fun out of it).  Here is the procedure:

Step 1: Pour the cream into the jar
Step 2: Shake the jar vigorously
Step 3: Switch arms and repeat step 2
Step 4: Shake it some more
Step 5: Think to yourself, "I've been shaking it a long time, surely it must be butter by now!"
Step 6-12: Just keep shaking, just keep shaking, just keep shaking, shaking, shaking
Step 13: Watch the solids finally collect into real honest to gosh butter
Step 14: Drain off the buttermilk (and save it to make some delicious buttermilk pancakes to spread your        delectable homemade butter on) and enjoy your tasty handy work.

So, is making homemade butter really worth all the effort.  Well, it was certainly the smoothest, creamiest, freshest condiment I've ever spread on a roll.  Unfortunately though, in this particular situation I fear convenience will win out.  The last thing I need to squeeze into my morning routine is a quick round of churning before I can butter my toast.  However, don't rule out some seasonal shaking to to add that little something extra to the holiday dinner table.