Butter Churning Skill Share

On Monday night, our daring dairy divas Cheenius and Butter Boy, after honing their churning technique at home, presented their butter knowledge to an eager group at a crowded Transition Charlottesville Skill Share session. The presentation was fantastic, complete with expert commentary, audience participation, butter trivia and jokes (we learned there are no funny butter jokes), and buttermilk shooters. We tasted the final product on tasty Great Harvest bread and those of us who paid attention to the email and brought containers (thank you for your spare, Rachel!) took home some of the freshly churned gold. Your intrepid reporter’s favorite aspect of the evening was learning about making butter in a jar: pour in some cream, shake it for about 25 minutes — OR throw the jar in a backpack and go for a hike, ride a horse, mountain bike, etc etc etc — and boom, you have butter. Look for a Haute Pasture Research Experiment Report on that soon.

Thank you Cheenius and Butter Boy for a delicious evening!

butter cream

(we started with this)

churning the butter

(then we took turns churning)

shaking the jar

(and we took turns shaking)

butter in the churn

(we peeked a couple times for status updates)

antique butter stamp

(we did not use Cheenius’ antique butter stamp)

jar of almost-butter

(the jar butter is almost done)

bread for our butter

(butter vehicles)

jar of butter

(it’s ready!)

butter from the jar

(the jar butter)

rinsing the butter

(rinsing the churned butter)

butter

(we did it! let’s eat!)

My favorite recipes right now

Obviously all my readers come here for the recipes, so I thought I’d share my two favorite recipes of this winter. They are both quick and easy to make, healthy, and really delicious. Give them a try and let me know what you think!

  1. Spinach and Chickpeas. Mr. HP and I had this simple dish at MoVida in Sydney last month, and it was our favorite of all the creative small plates we tried–and we tried many. (Second favorite: the flan. So good.) The menu listed the ingredients, which we noted for later research: chickpeas, spinach, garlic, cumin, paprika, sherry vinegar. Plugging those into Google yields many hits, and some background (from the Boston Globe):

    In the Andalucia region of Spain, writes Jeff Koehler in the book “Spain: Recipes and Traditions From the Verdant Hills of the Basque Country to the Coastal Waters of Andalucia,” spinach and stewed garbanzo beans (as they’re called there), are popular tapas fare. Traditionally, crusty bread is pounded with toasted garlic to make a paste, which is stirred into the dish.

    The recipes Google showed me seemed very similar, so I picked Mark Bittman‘s version. I omitted the bread, and when I didn’t have paprika on hand I doubled the cumin, which works–but it’s better with paprika. I recommend a bit of salt, too.

    This was dinner tonight:
    Chickpeas and spinach

  2. Peanut Butter Vegetarian Chili. Again, Google comes up with many search results for peanut butter chili vegetarian, but you need look no further than the first hit.  I’ve made this Peanut Butter Vegetarian Chili from Eating Bird Food several times now to rave reviews among family and friends. It’s healthy, filling, and the flavors work so well together–you don’t taste the PB or cocoa powder. Apparently I didn’t take any chili pictures but those on the recipe page are prettier than any I’d take anyway. It’s a great winter dinner!

In closing, here are some sheep:

sheep