Not Yo' Grannies Butter

Not Yo' Grannies Butter

Here's what you need:

• Whole Cream, whipping cream (any cream with high fat content)
• Food Processor 
• Salt (Optional)
• Herbs and Spices (If you want to flavour it)
• Colander 
• Sink of cold water
• Jar or butter dish

Here's how you do it:

Pour cream into food processor (watch for that little line that says fill or max or else you could end up with milk EVERYWHERE). 

Turn processor on start at low then up to high. 

Let 'er buck. 

As you work through the stages you will make whipped cream, keep going past that. All of a sudden you will here the change it will sound really wet. It should look like this:

Butter solids separated

Next carefully pour the milk out into a separate container.
Pour butter solids into the colander in the sink full of cold water. MAKE SURE THE SINK IS FULL OF COLD WATER or you can end yup with a big greasy mess.

Butter!

Now time to get your hands dirty, squish, squeeze, pull and mash any remaining milk out of the butter.
Empty sink refill with clean water.
Continue mashing, squishing and squeezing until water remains clear.
Put butter into a bowl if you're flavouring. Roasted garlic and herb is super rad.

BAM! Not Yo' Grannies Butta

Dutch Tomato Meatball Soup

Dutch Tomato Meatball Soup 

Aka Groenten Soep with tomatoes (by my Moeke)
Aka Best Soup in the World (by my kids)
Aka Mama's Time Saver Soup (by me)

So our supper meals basically revolve around our crazy busy lives. Between 4 days a week at lacrosse, Cubs, fire hall for the hubby and bag pipe lessons we are busy! This soup is great to make massive batches of freeze and pull out later, or if you're like me feed your family for 4 days straight. You can even add more other random veggies to it later to change it up a bit, and not have your hubby groaning it's soup again. So here's the lay out of this recipe, I wrote out what I used tonight and at the end what you can substitute if you don't have everything. My Moeke (my grandma) told me once 'to start any good soup you must have onions, carrots and celery'. So I use that as my starting point for everything.

Veggies 

Get a bunch of veggies

Seriously almost anything works (however beets are awful)

1 yellow onion

6 or a large handful of carrots

1 head of celery 

A bunch of potatoes (I think I used about 5)

I have also thrown in... Peas, corn, shallots, garlic, green onions, tomatoes, zucchini, turnips, mushrooms, rutabaga. Seriously versatile.

Meatballs 

1 lbs of ground beef 

1 egg 

1 handful bread crumbs 

Salt and pepper

1 tsp garlic powder

1 tsp onion powder

1 pinch nutmeg (trust me)

Use any kind of ground meat. Beef, pork, Turkey, deer. Seriously your choice of meat is up to you, I won't judge.

Extra stuff 

Olive oil

2 cans of diced tomatoes (if you have them. No biggie if you don't)

Either 2 big cartons of stock or a big pot of home made. Any flavour works

1 can coconut milk give it to the kids to shake, busy for hours. Do not get the 'light' coconut milk its nasty. 

1 package Vermicelli noodles. Skinny rice noodles. If you're making a small pot you can use pasta noodles, but heed my warning they turn your soup into nasty slop in you freeze them.

Bullion if you want choice is yours 

Alright now to the good part, making all my crazy ingredients (and wonky directions) make sense:

1. Heat olive oil in your big pot. 

2. Add your chopped up veggies starting with onion.

3. 'Sweat' the veggies and add a box of stock (or about 4 cups of your homemade stock) so the veggies soften 

4. Make the meatballs and leave them aside 

5. Add diced tomatoes if you want. Or don't

6. Blend up the veggies with a blender or your stick blender (only reason I bought a stick blender) It does splatter so be careful don't wear white. Or don't blend it if you want it chunky, no biggie.

7. Add meatballs to the pot

8. Once the meatballs (they will start to pop up and float when cooked) are cooked add the vermicelli. It takes about 5 min for the vermicelli to soften and cook

To Serve 

(because even though I'm in a rush I still like my food to look pretty)

Put some coconut milk on your soup, yup drizzle that on, see if you can make a picture. A little parsley and boom awesomeness in a bowl.

It's that easy. And soooooooooooo yummy! Its easy to refrigerate or freeze and great for lunches. 

I serve with torn up some bread because we are 'dippers'. Or grilled cheese sammies

Pressure Cooker Beef Stew

Pressure Cooker Beef Stew Recipe

Mmmmmm Comfort Food.
For us beef stew, like chicken soup, is good for the soul! Sometimes though, our preparation is a little wanting ... as in, I totally forgot to take anything out to thaw.
#AmIRight ???

So - that is where the handy dandy pressure cooker comes in handy! We use the Fagor Pressure Canner that also doubles as a regular pressure cooker.