Pasadena Housewife

Brownie Points posted a tutorial last week on how to make your own butter. Gavin and I tried it this weekend. It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in the kitchen.

You whip heavy pasteurized (but not ultrapasteurized) cream using the wire whisk attachment on a KitchenAid mixture. You whip it until it turns into whipped cream, and then just keep whipping until it breaks down into little yellow bits of butter in buttermilk. Pour it into a cheese-cloth lined bowl, squeeze the buttermilk out, put the butter in one jar and the buttermilk in another.

Two pints of cream makes a pint of butter and a pint of buttermilk.

This is pretty handy, because I make this chicken finger recipe about once a week for the kids, and it uses just about two cups of buttermilk.

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Update: This buttermilk doesn’t come out quite as thick and rich as the buttermilk I’ve been buying from the store, so the chicken finger recipe didn’t turn out as well as it usually does this week. I think I’ll stick to store-bought buttermilk for chicken fingers. The butter, on the other hand, is great.

I use this extra extra-large shower cap to cover bread dough while it’s rising in this big bowl. Smaller see-through hair dying caps are good for covering normal-sized bowls of leftovers in the fridge when you want to be able to glance through and see what is inside them.

I found this idea in Nancy Silverton’s Breads of the La Brea Bakery.

My sister on beauty cream commercials.

(Thanks to Anne Bonney for the caption idea.)

It was $5 at a garage sale across the street.

It’s going to live in the kitchen next to the kitchen rack. This is where the person reading out loud to the chef sits.

Here’s a link to the poem posted right above it.

Sometimes I love to be just sick enough that I can lay in bed all day drifting in and out of naps, finishing a couple of books and starting a new one while Gavin brings me Dayquil and water and tea and fruit on a plate and then takes the boys out to do something fun. I like to look out the window from my bed and watch the birds sitting in the trees while the house is quiet.

When I’m cooking and cleaning up around the house I like to listen to books on tape from the library.

Happy Valentine’s Day! I love you so much.

I went outside as it was getting dark to unpin the laundry from the clothesline. While I was folding it and setting it in the basket, I looked up and saw the moon through the branches of the big tree in our back yard.