buttermilk

Dale had received an ice cream maker from his mom for Christmas.
Then our landlords gave us an herb garden, a pizza kit, and a mix for
pancakes. (We have the coolest landlords in the world, we really do.)

We had lots of fun making pizza and planting the herbs, and decided
we wanted to make vanilla ice cream. So, I stopped at a store and
bought rock salt, ice, and some half and half. (Next time we use
cream.) I also picked up a quart of heavy cream because I had a
sneaking suspicion that I'd like to make butter in the near future.

While I waited for Dale to figure out how to make the ice cream, I
snuck into the fridge and grabbed the cream so I could make butter.
I had discovered that beating it with a mixer is far more efficient -
and easier - than doing it with a blender. So, this time around, I
grabbed the biggest bowl I could find and dumped about 75% of the
quart o' cream into it. Then began mixing at high-speed.

Within ten minutes I had whipped cream. Within fifteen, I had VERY
THICK whipped cream. It had poufed out with air, so I placed a good
portion into a separate bowl so I could keep whipping without
plastering myself, Dale, and the new ice cream maker with white
fluffy stuff.

About 20 minutes had gone by, and suddenly I had chunks of yellow
things in my whipped cream. Yay!! I added salt, and shortly
thereafter I reduced the speed of the mixer to low, pushing the cream
into the beaters with a soft spatula and watching the buttermilk
begin to settle at the bottom. I poured it off, and continued,
pouring off more and more as I went.

Well, I ended up with roughly a stick or two of butter and smooshed
it into a plastic container for safekeeping. I also ended up with a
half-pint or so of buttermilk. Probably closer to a pint. I stuck
this into the fridge and forgot about it until this morning.

Buttermilk - especially homemade, chunky buttermilk - is very tasty
and I love eating it because of the chunks. They're basically little
mini pieces of butter submersed in slightly salty yellow milk. I'm
sure it's horrible for me, but I LOVE this stuff!! You get this
liquidy num nums and then - whup, what's this? Butter? In my
MILK?? YAYYY!!! Smoosh, smoosh, smoosh on the tongue, ahhhh...

Okay, off to drink/eat/smooth more!

~nv