Magical Butter!!

 In our quest to get rid of horrible nasties from our diet, one of Dave's stumbling points was his beloved margerine....he has always insisted he hated butter and would never touch the stuff until I kindly pointed out all the rubbish that goes into marg....only thinking of his health!! We tried Olive oil in the freezer....didn't really work and so he bravely tried some different shop bought butters and found that he could get used to Goats butter and maybe actually quite like it....

Going a step further and doing a little bit of kitchen science with the kids as well, we then decided to have a go at making our own butter to see how that would taste.......well... it's like a little miracle all of it's own (I'm easily impressed obviously!!) There's must be some kind of wizardry that turns a carton of double cream into some very delicious butter...surely? No, actually it's just a bit of effort and maybe ending up with arms like Popeye!

Your own homemade butter in a few easy steps...

1. Half / Three quarter fill a jar or tub with double cream (must be heavy or double to work) making sure it has a tight fitting lid.
2. Shake, shake, shake while doing a little jig around your kitchen...sharing the shaking is a great idea!
3. The magic happens in stages....first the cream goes thick, then gets to the point that it feels like it's not moving at all...keep shaking..
4. Next it starts to loosen a bit and if you open the lid to have a peak it looks a bit like curdled cream or scrambled eggs..put the lid back on and keep shaking..
5. Suddenly you hear liquid noise again and you know that the process is nearly done, this is the cream splitting into buttermilk and butter. You can now stop shaking...hurrah!
6. Pour out the buttermilk to use in baking or drink. B loves this on his cereal.
7. Take out your lovely lump of butter in your hand and just rinse under a cold tap giving it a gentle squeeze to get any more buttermilk out.
8. Pop it in a bowl and add salt to taste.
9. Pile it onto a thick slice of homemade bread.......heaven!!

I know this is probably no cheaper than buying butter but there is something special about making your own....and we can safely say that not many people will beat you at an arm wrestle if you do this every few days!!  

Strawberries and Cream time....

We just happened to be driving around the other day and suddenly a shout went up from behind me ...'Mum, Mum the Pick Your Own is open, can we, can we??' Of course this means strawberries...I have to admit to never being a big fan of strawberries or soft fruit in general but there is something deeply satisfying about being able to go and pick fruit and then either eat it or make something truly scrumptious from it straight away. The weather up here has been pretty awful in the last couple of weeks so I was keen to get some before the crops were ruined by all the rain! 

The kids merrily picked two punnets full and then spent the walk back to get them weighed concocting some recipes to make when they got home. After a quick diversion to pick up supplies from the supermarket, I was banished from the kitchen and the chefs got to work.....well I was impressed!! E went for the understated strawberry and cream option, nicely sliced with added icing sugar to make the cream thick and sweet....delicious! B went for a more sophisticated shortbread, with strawberry puree and cream expertly drizzled over the top....delicious again!  For someone who claims not to like strawberries very much these were very yummy!! Maybe my tastes are just changing.....

Very proud chef!

The next day we had one punnet left so this was made into 'Quickest Strawberry Jam', a great recipe from the lovely Jamie Oliver. Ours didn't turn out like normal jam, a lot runnier but with the whole fresh strawberry taste still there rather than just a sugary one....delish. On homemade bread, with homemade butter (yes we did make it ourselves, I'll do a blog post on this next!!) it felt really great and tasted even better!!

Maybe strawberries aren't that bad after all!!

Parsley Cubes...

Just for something a bit different, we had our first organic veggie box from our local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme last week (Growing Well ) We were quite excited to see what goodies there would be in our share and maybe find some things we wouldn't normally buy. We had some spring greens, spring onions, rainbow chard, swiss chard, and a rather large bag of parsley.....mmmm what do you do with a whole bag of parsley??!!

After using some in a pasta sauce, some in chard soup (great recipe here..Lentil and Swiss Chard Soup ) there was still loads of it left! So rather than waste any we decided to freeze most of it in little handy cubes, ready to be popped into soup, stews etc whenever needed.

Chopped and put into ice-cube trays, top up with water

Tada...little cubes of herby goodness!!

 I wonder what we get this week......

Wild Garden.... Wild Food!

It has been said that our garden is a complete mess......well, of course, there is a very good reason for this...we're not growing weeds, we are growing food!!

Yesterday Dave decided we would go on a little wild food hunt around our (very messy!) garden and we managed to find three ingredients to try out.. dandelion leaves, ground elder and garlic mustard.

The ground elder went into a very yummy omelette for lunch (recipe from Downsizer ) and eating this is also a good way to get rid of this invasive plant from your garden!

The Garlic Mustard leaves were shredded and put on top of a delicious homemade pizza last night, it can be used a bit like spinach, just sauteed a little to wilt it down and put on top.

The Dandelion leaves are still sitting here.... I know I should have come up with some ingenious idea to use them but they just don't appeal to me at all, probably after tasting an extremely bitter one a couple of weeks ago!!

Of course there are still nettles around (and lots of them here!) so they have been picked and left in a bucket of water to make some organic liquid feed for the veggies.

So out of mess and mayhem came some little yummy, good for you rays of sunshine!! We will definitely be using our little book of Food For Free by Richard Mabey a bit more this year.    

This is healthy.....right???

Dave has just done the annual Keswick to Barrow walk, 40 long miles mainly on tarmac raising money for a fantastic local charity Alices Escapes (blatant plug!) So being the ever faithful wife I went off in search of healthy, energy boosting, easy to carry foods for him to take along with him. Of course, dried fruit and nuts...perfect! In actual fact he didn't actually eat any of them along the way so we were left with this lovely big bag of reasonably healthy yumminess...

or so I thought.....

Since we started trying to eat healthier I think I've turned into the label police!! What is Sulpher Dioxide and what is it doing on my supposed healthy dried fruit???

Well according to Natural News this is used as a preservative, not only in dried fruit but jams, wine, fruit juices etc etc..... In other words we seem to eat a lot of it probably without realizing!

They also go on to quote.. ' Sulphur dioxide is a preservative that is used to make dried fruits look better by preventing fruits from going brown. It helps to keep fruit moist and extends their shelf life. However, sulphur dioxide has been linked to asthma attacks, stomach problems and lower respiratory tract symptoms. Due to its composition, sulphur dioxide is a major air pollutant and has significant impact on human health when breathed in or ingested.'

(Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/031786_dried_fruit_sulphur_dioxide.html#ixzz1v1cILeoB)

Great!! Well... this packet will get eaten in our house but I will definitely be checking out all the so called 'healthy' foods from now on!!

The Dilemma......

Not really relevant but I love Highland cows!!

We're having a bit of a dilemma at the moment... cutting out processed food and eating healthier, more natural foods is great and going well but how far do you go? If you've read our story above you'll know we are pretty much skint at the moment so where do we draw the line between money and good food? To be honest I don't really know the answer!!

The more we read about what goes into our food and how food is produced the scarier it gets, there seems to be critics at every corner, one says to eat only organic, one says to eat only pasture-fed, one says to eat only local, one slams the whole lot and says eat anything you like because you're going to die anyway!! (ok I made that one up but you get the point!) The problem we have is that organic is just so highly priced it's mainly beyond our budget, we are living on very little really and so the dilemma begins......

We spent about ten minutes in the supermarket yesterday (yes we still have to go there sometimes!) discussing the merits and downfalls of cows milk versus goats milk, then organic versus non-organic, then onto local versus not local.....  we'd still be there if I hadn't got stressed and just went for the usual non-organic cows milk we've always drunk!!

So no real decision made yet, this is one that we'll just have to figure out as we go..........