Tuesday, November 22, 2011

butter!

so in looking at food blogs and following links to other blogs and then to other blogs, i've found some pretty awesome easy recipes.  last night i made butter!  BUTTER!  i mean, i basically knew how it was made, i just didn't think it really was that simple.
my friend dawn lent me her mixer for the holidays since i don't have one that works.  and to thank her for letting me use her mixer i made a trial batch to give to her!

so to make butter, all you do is whip whipping cream until it turns into butter.  like 15 minutes.  i made it while i was doing some dishes.  here's the whipping cream.
and i loooove the color of her kitchenaid!  it's awesome!

it's getting there!

BUTTER!!

i added sea salt to it for a big crunchy salt taste and popped it into a canning jar.

yay!  i'll be making more for thanksgiving dinner!!

Saturday, November 19, 2011

canning trade...

a couple of weekends ago i got together with my friend sarah, who used to be my manager back in the day at barnes and noble.  sarah is awesome!  she's a totally fun girl who is into canning and cooking!  she also has her own blog, which she is much better keeping up with than i am with mine!
but i hadn't seen sarah in over 10 years since i quit b&n.  we've been friends on the facebooks and have kept in touch and we both thought that having a canning trade was a good way to get together for lunch, catch up and TRADE FOOD WE HAVE CANNED!  i just started canning this year, so i didn't have much of a selection to give her so i gave her 2 jars of marinated veggies (they're small jars!), a jar of blueberry jam and a jar of grapefruit blackberry honey jelly.

we both showed up at blue c sushi with gift bags of jars!

she gave me pear butter, rhubarb ginger jam and peach rosemary jam.

i had a great time at lunch and found out that sarah and i have lots more in common than i thought.  we'll be organizing a game night to get together and start learning how to play mah-jongg!  i'm so excited!  and about once a year i go to eat sushi at blue c.  i think it's such a funny way place to eat sushi.  it's one of those conveyor belt sushi places.


i decided i wanted to try the peach rosemary jam with some veggies on pork, so i baked the chops with the jam and sweet onions and tomatoes and put it on rice.  IT WAS DELICIOUS!  

sarah...you totally have to try your jam with some kind of meat.  it was such a good combination of sweet and savory!  you did a great job on the jam...i'm gonna have to make some next year!
i'm really looking forward to hanging out with sarah again for some photography or games!  YAY!  let winter begin!!