Cultured, Raw, Grass Fed Butter

* We linked this post at the Hearth and Soul Hop at Hunger and Thirst *

Butter -- it makes everything better.  So what could make butter better? Culturing it!  Our farmer friends who provide us with delicious raw milk recently fired up their cream separator, which is something we'd been eagerly awaiting for a long time.  At our fist opportunity, we picked up half a gallon of the delicious stuff and after using a quart for various other things, we decided it was high time we had some real cultured butter around here.  Here's how we did it (Check out Nourishing Traditions for more details):

Update:  Here is a really great video about how to make butter from raw milk that I'll be following next time.  I think her method is better than this one (I didn't know about washing butter until I watched it), so I'd say try that one first!

Dude2 -- Dinner in 20 Minutes Flat (2/23/2011)

I had to work late today, so I ended up only having about 20 minutes to get something made for dinner. Time to improvise! On the drive home, cream of spinach soup sounded pretty good, so I went for it. I'm sure I have recipes in some of my cookbooks for this, but they are all currently packed so I had to wing it. I'd say it came out pretty good, but it could have been a bit thicker. If you try it, maybe cut down on the stock by about a cup, or add extra spinach.

Menu for 02/15/2011 - Pasta Carbonara with Prosciutto (Dude1)

Pasta Carbonara with Prosciutto

This is one of the wife's favorites and now we can eat it without guilt now that we use real food and have been de-indoctrinated regarding fat. There's nothing like raw heavy cream from a grass fed cow : ) This is also an extremely fast and easy meal to throw together.