Tuesday...and I'm thankful for the rain!

Since planting the first garden bed over the weekend, I almost forgot to water it yesterday.  Call it old age or whatever, I mean I did turn 4-0 a few weeks ago, but these types of things slip my mind.  I'm a bit out of practice too having our "winter" off.  Speaking of the mild winter, I am still getting massive amounts of beautiful swiss chard from my garden!  It never wintered over.  A friend is picking some up tonight, we've been using it in our smoothies and I will get some frozen by the weekend because there is just too much to use fresh.  It's something completely apart from anything else I've done to go put a seed in the ground and watch it become a plant and then to be able to feed your family and even others with it.  It's magical!

Want to know what else is magical?  Heavy cream.  I am completely in love with the stuff these days.  Since I discovered how easy it is to make butter, I've been on a mission to find organic heavy cream.  Not an easy feat for some reason.  Half and half?  No issues but not heavy cream.  But I've discovered a creamery that sells direct from their farm half gallons of cream.  Half-Gallons.  Hurray for me.  And I went right to work making butter.  This stuff is so thick you could almost use it as is but I still made some of the most delicious and beautiful butter I've ever had.



I made about 3 pounds of butter out of 2/3 of a half gallon and I got 2 full cups of buttermilk as an extra.  And that is a wonderful perk because it adds a wonderful flavor to most any recipe. It's not the same as cultured buttermilk so don't think it can replace it in a recipe.  And I had no idea that sour cream really was sour cream.  Oh my...now I have to be able to let some of my actually spoil.  I don't know if I can manage it or not.

Really, I feel like I've stepped into a whole new world.  One filled with piles of mess in the kitchen as I head from project to project to project.  I'm trying to get myself on some sort of schedule now that bread making, butter making, wheat grinding and a host of other jobs fill my already jam-packed day. Wait, jam?  Oh yes, it's almost that time of year too!  I am making so much strawberry jam this year that I'll be sick of it.  It was the first thing that went from my canning stock this past year, so I know it was in demand.  That and black raspberry jelly.  It takes a lot of black raspberries to make jelly, not jam, but the result was amazing.  I will have to make some of that too!

Well, for now, the butter is made, the bread is rising and I think the coffeemaker just beeped.  Time for a few minutes of caffeine infused downtime for this busy lady.