...and butter

Two posts in one day?!  Yep. I'm on a roll! No pun intended. <wink>  I thought I'd also share my butter-making experience while I'm at it. Bread and butter go together, right?
We buy our milk straight from the dairy, so it's raw, unprocessed, unpasturized, and cheaper. And it tastes more like a cow. But in addition to these properties, it also comes with the cream. You know what that means? Freshly-churned butter. Oh yes.
Since we buy our milk in bulk (5-6 gallons a week), and there's usually about a pint of cream per gallon, the cream racks up pretty quickly. Unfortunately it often goes to waste because between mom and I we don't always manage to find the time to churn it. But I am hereby turning over an old leaf and simultaneously heaping upon myself more "regular" work... Thursday is not only going to be bread day, but it's going to be butter day, too. Like I said, bread and butter go together. Unfortunately that's an awfully huge workload for one morning (not to mention lunch duty), and it may require a little  schedule re-vamping, but it shouldn't be too bad once I get into the groove of it.
So in keeping with my current mood of sharing, I suppose I should tell you how I make butter, right? Well there's actually not much to it. There's a thousand different methods, too. But just in case you are curious, my particular method involes a blender, a bowl, a spoon, some plastic wrap, and a measuring cup or three. Oh, and did I mention cream? It is the most important ingredient, really. Sometimes the only ingredient, too, unless I'm making salted butter.
Pizza Angel's butter method:
Pour cream into the blender and turn it on. Easy as that.
I just let it run till I hear it change from a steady hum to a higher pitch hum and thump-thump. That's when I know it's "broken," as I say, from whipped cream to butter. Then I just fish out the clumps of butter with a spoon and put them into a bowl. I drain the buttermilk away from the butter solids as much as possible, pressing the butter solids together to squeeze out any excess liquid. After I've satisfactorily drained the buttermilk, I run the butter under cold water to "wash" it until the water I squeeze out of the butter doesn't look milky anymore. Then I line my measuring cup with the plastic wrap and press my butter into the cup so I know how much butter is there. Then I wrap it in the plastic and put it in the fridge. Voila! Butter.
I actually don't usually salt the butter because I don't usually think about it, I guess. I don't think it affects the flavor THAT much (though obviously it does some), but some people get bent out of shape if I serve them up unsalted butter. <shrug>
Did you know that the real reason for salted butter was originally merely for preservation purposes?  You know, from back in the days before they had refrigeration and such. But apparently people must prefer the flavor of salted butter, because they still make it that way! It sure makes life confusing sometimes though...