Throughout the pandemic, we've been given quite a bit of food. There are a lot of places around here that give out free food to help ease the burden the pandemic has taken on families. My family has been fortunate to not experience that need, however, we still frequently become beneficiaries of the food. I feel guilty, so I try to utilize the food well and do my part to give back to the organizations that are helping out in the community.
Our neighbor volunteers at a food pantry in a different county sometimes, and at the end of the day, he gets sent home with a lot of leftover food. Several times in the past year, he has shown up at our house with a cooler full of stuff. It's been such a wonderful blessing, but it's also been pretty funny because we've been given some very unusual items - like 24 boxes of Triscuits and 10 lbs of dried cherries. It definitely gives me the opportunity to be creative.
Last week our neighbor brought us a gallon of heavy cream. We put it in the fridge, and I planned a few menu items for the coming week that call for a half cup here or there, but I worried we’d have to throw the rest out (it was two days from the recommended “use by” date).
In the middle of the night on Friday, I suddenly remembered that I know how to make butter. Several years ago, the cost of butter was really high (as a former dairy employee, I have a habit of watching the fluctuating prices of dairy products and eggs), so I bought a bunch of heavy cream on closeout for 20¢ a pint after Thanksgiving, and I made my own butter and froze it. We used homemade butter for nearly a year.
The other night I got really excited when I realized I could make butter. I could use the whole gallon of cream! How resourceful! How domestic! Plus, I recently bought a Blendtec which would be superior to the Ninja I formerly made butter in.
Since I couldn't run the blender in the middle of the night, I got straight to work early Saturday morning (right after eating a fabulous breakfast sandwich that utilized some of the ten pounds of American cheese a different neighbor brought us) (seriously with the food! Remember the bananas of five weeks ago?) (no complaints here... just awe at the food that comes our way).
I made the butter in the Blendtec. It didn't do as well as I thought it would - in fact, it was quite touchy with the cream, and I had to pulse and stir a lot more than I ever did in my Ninja.
It got the job done, though. Nicky was intrigued and wanted to try making some of his own butter in a shaker bottle.
I ended up with three pounds of butter, and I also made a batch of honey cinnamon butter.
I separated the buttermilk and froze it in 1/2 cups portions. I saved some cream to set aside for banana pudding.
It's actually pretty fun to make butter, so I'm glad I thought to do it. It's thrilling when it finally becomes "butter." It happens so quickly! One second it's cream, and then BAM! It separates into butter and buttermilk, and it makes me feel powerful. "I told this cream to be butter, and it obeyed."
Nicky was pretty proud of his butter, too. We used his to make grilled cheese sandwiches... with the aforementioned cheese.
The whole process, with everything I made, took about an hour and a half from start to finish. I thought, "Hey, that's not too bad!" until I remembered that I bought four pounds of butter from Sam's Club last week for $6.98. Making homemade butter isn't such a money saver when butter is that cheap. So basically, I worked at the rate of $5 per hour, and then my dear hubs spent a half an hour cleaning up after me.
I'll just keep telling myself that is was so much fun because you can't put a price on fun!
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