We have been buying delicious raw goat milk from a
local farm for awhile now, but recently found another source that is cheaper and also has a closer pick-up spot. This new farm also offers raw cow milk and I thought it would be fun to get some of that so I could skim the cream off the top and make butter. Well, it was fun, but I think we did something wrong because the butter we got was not so great. We mixed and mixed and mixed the cream and nothing much was happening, so I switched to my hand mixer to see if that would help, and it still took
forever. Finally after about 30 minutes (I think it's only supposed to take 5 or 10), our cream split into half butter and half buttermilk.
We did our best to strain all the buttermilk out of the butter, at which point we were supposed to be able to knead the butter while rinsing it with cold water. For some reason our butter was still so mushy that there was no way anyone could have kneaded it - it would have been like kneading mayonnaise. So, after all our efforts, this is what we ended up with:
A very small mound of very mushy butter - not too impressive. It did taste pretty good, but after a couple of hours was turning brown, which means we did not get enough buttermilk out and it was starting to go bad. Bummer. I don't know how to get out more buttermilk than we did, though. I imagine we'll try it again to see if we can get better results, but I'm pretty disappointed with our first attempt. The buttermilk, however, did make some delicious pancakes!
Emma had a show at Deanna Rose this weekend, and afterwards we decided to stick around and do a little fishing. Steve and I were bragging about our fishing skills, and we were both sure we were going to catch more fish than the other. We got a pole and he went first. After quite awhile, he hadn't caught any fish so I told him to hand it over and watch how it was done. I couldn't catch any fish, either, even though the little kids by us were catching fish all over the place! Emma wasn't interested in fishing, but we eventually persuaded her to try it. About two seconds after she dropped her worm in the water, she had caught a fish! In the end I think I caught three, Steve caught two, and Emma caught eight! So much for our fishing expertise!
We have been buying delicious raw goat milk from a local farm for awhile now, but recently found another source that is cheaper and also has a closer pick-up spot. This new farm also offers raw cow milk and I thought it would be fun to get some of that so I could skim the cream off the top and make butter. Well, it was fun, but I think we did something wrong because the butter we got was not so great. We mixed and mixed and mixed the cream and nothing much was happening, so I switched to my hand mixer to see if that would help, and it still took forever. Finally after about 30 minutes (I think it's only supposed to take 5 or 10), our cream split into half butter and half buttermilk.
We did our best to strain all the buttermilk out of the butter, at which point we were supposed to be able to knead the butter while rinsing it with cold water. For some reason our butter was still so mushy that there was no way anyone could have kneaded it - it would have been like kneading mayonnaise. So, after all our efforts, this is what we ended up with:
A very small mound of very mushy butter - not too impressive. It did taste pretty good, but after a couple of hours was turning brown, which means we did not get enough buttermilk out and it was starting to go bad. Bummer. I don't know how to get out more buttermilk than we did, though. I imagine we'll try it again to see if we can get better results, but I'm pretty disappointed with our first attempt. The buttermilk, however, did make some delicious pancakes!
Emma had a show at Deanna Rose this weekend, and afterwards we decided to stick around and do a little fishing. Steve and I were bragging about our fishing skills, and we were both sure we were going to catch more fish than the other. We got a pole and he went first. After quite awhile, he hadn't caught any fish so I told him to hand it over and watch how it was done. I couldn't catch any fish, either, even though the little kids by us were catching fish all over the place! Emma wasn't interested in fishing, but we eventually persuaded her to try it. About two seconds after she dropped her worm in the water, she had caught a fish! In the end I think I caught three, Steve caught two, and Emma caught eight! So much for our fishing expertise!
4 comments:
I love the look on Noah's face as he points to the goat!
Hope your butter is better next time! When I worked at a Waldorf school, the kids made it by putting the milk into a jar and all taking turns shaking it. Then the teachers put a screen instead of the lid and poured out the milk so that the butter was left.
Remember when you caught that snapping turtle?
Emma looks so proud of her fish!
We were out there a couple weeks ago and Kaitlyn and Jaime caught a fish.
Hopefully your butter turns out better next time.
It looks funny to see Noah standing like a big kid! I love Emma's fishing clothes!
Mom
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