Making Butter is Stupid

Yesterday Zach and I were dreaming about living in a little house on a lot of land, on a quasi farm out in the boonies where no construction workers will jackhammer on the street 25 feet from our house while I'm trying unsuccessfully to nap.

The conversation reminded me of a sidenote on my friend, Stephanie's post about how she knows how to make butter. Of course, when I read that, a woman with her hair pulled back under a hankerchief, sweating over some huge churn contraption immediately came to mind. Then today I realized, there's no way Steph would do that- what does it take to make butter?

Google search: making butter at home. Huh. Nothing to it. Just shake, drain, and rinse. This would make a good little preschool science project. Mia can help me roll around a jar, and I'm sure she'll think it's cool to see it go in as a liquid and come out all lumpy. I know she'll love eating it. All three of my girls have taken great glee in covertly munching on straight butter at some point. Little Danes.

So during the twins' nap, we went to the store and got some heavy cream. Which cost probably twice what pre-made butter would have cost, but what the heck... we're making some butter today.

We get home and start shaking. The babies are awake, and want to join in the fun. Except whenever they get the jar, their idea of fun is to just sit there and hold it in their lap. We spent a good hour shaking (and not shaking) that jar. Four stories, one diaper change, three tantrums, and two time-outs later, it finally changed. To gloop. I poured the gloop into a bowl and drained the buttermilk into a cup for some later use- probably some delicious buttermilk pancakes tomorrow morning. Okay, probably in our cereal tomorrow morning.

Then it was time to press the liquid out, add cold water, and press again- repeating this until the drained water ran clear. So I went over to the sink and started. And just like she does every day when I'm standing at the sink, Anya squeezed herself between it and me with her chubby little arms upstretched. Whine, whine, whimper, whimper. I lugged all thirty-two pounds of her back to the living room and tried to find her something to do. Twice. In the end, all three of them were in the kitchen playing "stuff the sister in the cabinet," and I was on finger-squishing patrol.

I think I got around to rinsing the stuff eight times before a big glop of butter fell into the sink as I was distractedly draining. The liquid wasn't running off completely clear, but by this time the girls had emptied everything out of every accessible drawer in the kitchen and were finishing with the toybox in the living room, so I figured enough was enough.

There is a little tub of homemade butter in my fridge. We went out for dinner.