Not sewing related, but wanted to share!!

We've recently joined The Community Farm's Supermarket Free Challenge - which you can read about here and the guidelines here.

I joined the farm as a volunteer just before Christmas - and thought seeing that I'm promoting this challenge - I can't very well not do it myself! I promise that this blog won't be taken over with foodie posts - but I guess it does all fit together with the sewing project too? It's all linked to sustainability, re-learning traditional skills and enriching different areas of daily life?

I'd seen a clip of the Fabulous Baker Brothers on TV a while back where they had made butter. And since signing up to the supermarket free challenge - I remembered this and fancied having a go. I found a link to this 'How to' on the Guardian and after posting about it on Twitter - was send this link by the lovely 'Margo Darling' who is in pursuit of 'The Good Life' which you can read here.

So inspired by this I had a go...

And it was GREAT!

Here's what I did:

You need some double cream (this was bought from a farm shop) a jam jar and some salt. Make sure the cream is at room temperature - this means you don't have to shake it for so long. I used half a 285ml pot as I was just seeing if it worked first of all - and the jam jar wasn't very big! (you can make bigger amounts with a food mixer).

Shake, shake, shake (shake your booty, shake your booty! - as

KC & The Sunshine Band would say!

It will make a sloshing sound to start with and then after about 5mins it will stop sloshing and you'll notice that it has 'thickened' And it will look like this!!

I added a bit of salt at this time and gave it another shake.
Then pour out into a sieve. Looks like scrambled egg!

Squeeze, squeeze, squeeze out the buttermilk! This can be saved and used in bread - or drunk apparently?? We put it in some bread. If you leave the buttermilk in the butter it will turn sour and taint the butter.

Looking more butter like now... You can see the buttermilk at the bottom..