Tuesday Adventures: homemade butter & naan

We love naan, homemade jam & butter. Last Fall, Aunt Joyce taught us to make and can tomatoes, juice and jams/jellies so since then, we've been making our own items from scratch. Craig did a batch of peach and a batch of strawberry this week since berries are at their least expensive right now. A few months ago, I came across a homeschool post about making butter. I thought it'd be fun to do with Sophie & Olivia as a science activity. We discovered two things: the vitamix wasn't the greatest tool for the job as it unnecessarily complicated the process (kitchenaid with the wisk attacemt was perfect)  and it's cheaper to make rather than buy ready-made butter. So while at the grocery store today, I grabbed a quart of great value heavy cream. Right before sitting down to feed the twins, I dumped 3/4 of the cream in my kitchenaid bowl, covered the whole thing with a towel- very important if you don't want buttermilk all over your kitchen, turned it on to medium and walked away. When the babies were done eating, I strained the buttermilk and stuffed the butter in a pint jar and that's it. My mom says you can save time oroney but rarely both. I think we come fairly close to both here as the active time I'm involved is minimal. Craig's only real concern was how to measure the butter. Problem solved! We bought a silicon mold from ikea some time ago for freezing baby food portions in 1T squares. Next time, I'll just slightly warm the fresh butter and portion it like the baby food.

My final kitchen adventure of the evening involved an insanely easy dough recipe, cast iron skillet and a stack of homemade naan. This one was more time consuming with letting the yeast feed, dough rise etc. but the active time wasn't bad. It was kind of messy rolling it out until I wised up and rembered we have a small, hand crank pasta roller. Once I was able to get the thickness consistent, it was fast, tidier and fun. Our pesto pizzas tasted great on them!

Pictures later when I get my laptop out :-)