Butter Shortage

Day 230

Making Butter

The Farmer's Market still has no Biodynamic butter, apparently they don't have enough milk to make it. When they have plenty of milk they make skim milk and use the cream to make butter. So they were out of skim milk too - the two products are linked. In desperation I bought 2 tubs of cream and decided to make my own butter!

Paris Creek Biodynamic Cream

I simply added the cream to my food processor with the plastic blade not the metal one.

Wizz for ages untill the mix looks like scrambled egg. At this point the curds and whey separate -

 (I remember that from little miss muffet)

I used wooden spatulas to squeeze out the excess liquid

This takes a bit of patience, it is a bit tricky but not hard, doesn't take that long.

  

It is so satisfying to see the end result - it looks just like the butter from the shop!

You end up with butter - on the left, and butter milk - on the right.

The butter milk is actually quite creamy still, and I just add it to pancakes. The butter tastes great, but it has started to smell slightly off - like smelly cheese... So I am keeping it in the fridge to hopefully prolong it's shelf life. I am not sure how long the cream was in the fridge before I made the butter. I guess it's important to use fresh cream = sweeter smelling butter.

Haloumi, from Fleurieu Farm, farmer's market mushrooms, and olive tepanade, with garden salad.

Scrambled egg with parsley, coriander, tomato, and greens from the garden. (The tomato was picked green and has been on the kitchen bench for weeks, and finally it is red and delicious).

Breakfast Pancakes

Pancakes made with the buttermilk from butter making, Paris creek milk, our eggs, Lauke's flour and farmer's market LSA mix.

Pancakes served with Mark and Lisa's pears marinated in lemon juice overnight, topped with pantry icing sugar - (that was lurking undetected for a while)

Served with Muntries jam.

Pears and Phaedra's home made yoghurt - what a treat!

Stir Fry Dinner

Bamboo shoots top left, lemon grass top right, ginger bottom right, all home grown and ready for the stir fry.

We had to dig up our neighbour's bamboo that has taken over our vege garden , so to make it more positive, we decided to try eating the bamboo shoots. But they are evil looking critters - see top left of cutting board. They look like little horns, and are tender in the centre but hard as laminate on the outside.

The lemon grass I purchased from the farmer's market, and is the first time I have used this from my garden, it is now of a size that is able to be harvested.

Galangal root from Steve Poole's garden - it tastes and smells like a very mild ginger, but is much tougher to cut, it does not have the same spicy heat that ginger has, but unlike ginger, it will grow well here, I have planted some in my garden.

Stir fry end result.