(Not) Cookie Reviews: Week 3

I didn't think it'd happen so soon, but I can't buy another box of cookies just yet. So instead, this week, after reading a little article about them in the New York Times, Thalia and I tried peanut butter and pickle sandwiches—small ones, because we both thought they'd be terrible. I mean, I've known about them for a long time and know that they're popular with a lot of people, but I thought that at the very least the fancy McClure's garlic dill pickles we had in the fridge weren't the kind of pickle people mean when they say they like them on peanut butter sandwiches. And maybe the unsweetened peanut butter wasn't the right peanut butter, either. We both took our first bite at the same time, like two kids jumping into cold water. We needn't have worried, as we both liked this sandwich so much I made another one for us to share, with our last two slices of bread. 

Thalia's review: the picl tastes like jely or huny on the peinutbutr.thats wie i love it!

My review: The vinegary, garlicky pickles did serve very much the same purpose as tart jam or jelly, with the added benefit of being crisp-crunchy and salty. It's such a natural combination—peanuts, salt, sour—it's a wonder it's not more common. I'll definitely be making these again, though I'm sure I'll be enjoying them as little afternoon snacks rather than, you know, lunch.

Actual cookie reviews will return next week! And be sure to check Step into My Thimble for more from Heidi and Maeve in Dubai!

Cookie Reviews: Week 2

Heidi and Maeve's Operation Eat All the Cookies continued this week with some real lovelies, including a hazelnut chocolate wafer cookie made in Italy that sounded so up my alley (despite Maeve's description of it as being "sort of made out of oil") that when I saw the very same ones at the local "gourmet" store today I picked up the box to try them myself. Indeed they were tasty and rich, and appropriately small.

Thalia's surprisingly subdued choice this week are Natural Nectar Cocoa Lady Fingers, made in France. This is the same brand, I see now, as last week's Choco Dream Cookies.

Thalia's review: its swet and shugry! [Ed note: I'm struggling with the urge to copyedit. Thalia is actually learning editing and proofreading marks in her class at school, so I might begin doing some gentle corrections in future reviews, see how she reacts. I don't want to discourage her from writing, of course, but I think she's ready for it.] 

My review: These are narrower and less flat than store-bought ladyfingers I've had in the past, and a little more dense and uniform in texture, though still very light. The cocoa aspect, as you might expect, is very mild. They'd be good in a dessert in which they're soaked, but for straight eating I think I'd prefer the plain vanilla type, just for the purity of its sugar flavor.

Continuing with the oats theme from last week, my choice was Gille Sweet Oat Crisps, made in Sweden.

Thalia's review: ther crisp and fin.thar fary fary gud.thar kindof braln on the egis.

My review: Love these. Crisp-crunchy, airy but substantial, with simple and comforting oat and browned-butter flavors. There's also a slight baking soda flavor that is not unpleasant. They're sweet, almost caramelly, and I'd like to try one with some good blue cheese or a sharp Cheddar. I had mine with white wine after supper, but tea in the afternoon would be even better.

Please feel free to join in the cookie-reviewing fun. Heidi suggests using #cookiereview or just let us know if you're doing reviews in the comments so we can link up. 

Cookie Reviews

My friend Heidi and her six-year-old daughter, Maeve, have started reviewing store-bought cookies—for the fun of trying the interesting, mostly British cookies available in her local (Dubai) shops and as writing practice for Maeve. My six-year-old saw their reviews and spied a good opportunity to eat more cookies while doing "writing practice" herself. Heidi suggested we do a back-and-forth on our respective blogs, so here we go. Her post, "Operation Eat All the Cookies," is here, at Step into My Thimble. Our reviews follow, with pictures by Thalia.

First up are Trader Joe's Oatmeal Cranberry Dunkers, which we happened to have and which I suppose would be my choice even though we'd had them before.

Thalia's review: dunkers haf wit choclit designs on them. they are bumpy and sumoof. they are swet. they are good wif milk. i love them.

My review: White chocolate drizzle melts on contact with fingers, which is annoying. I'd say they'd be better without it, except that that would make them less addictive. These are hard, stale-seeming cookies with a mild spice flavor. Softens with a brief dip in tea.

Thalia's choice, Choco Dream Cookies, is more urbane because we were in the fancy-ish Open Harvest Co-op near our house, in Lincoln, Nebraska (yes! we moved to Nebraska about three months ago!). Heidi, I didn't realize these were "choco" until I looked at this picture—odd indeed. I'm not sure where they were made, but they are probably Euro.

Thalia's review:  i love dem a lot. the edges are scalupt.the choclit luks like a pichr wif a fram. i hope i can haf it ugen.

My review: These are just like the more common chocolate-topped butter cookies you'll find in any supermarket (I can't remember the brand, but they come in dark and milk chocolate varieties), but the fair-trade chocolate part of these is much better: smooth, dense, almost chewy, and guilt-free. There are no unexpected ingredients in the crisp butter cookie base, but I always seem to sense something like coconut or some other nut flavor. These are good. I ate almost the whole box. 

Stay tuned for more, and see Heidi's blog for the next installment from Dubai.

Sanjeev Kapoor's Potato, Banana, and Pomegranate Chaat

I just came across a picture of a chaat I made a couple months ago and thought I'd share the recipe now. It's from Sanjeev Kapoor's first U.S.-published book, How to Cook Indian [Food], which I worked on a bit for STC in late summer. The book is well worth checking out when it's released in April—it's absolutely loaded with fun, authentic, but do-able dishes from all over India. I especially liked the chaats, of course.

Aloo Kachalu Chaat
Serves 4 to 6.

This is only slightly simplified from Sanjeev's version.

1 1/2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt, or more to taste
1 teaspoon tamarind concentrate
1 teaspoon chaat masala (see Note)
1 large ripe banana
2 potatoes, boiled, cooled, peeled, and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 sweet potato, boiled, cooled, peeled, and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 hot green chiles, minced
1/4 cup fresh pomegranate arils
Handful of fresh cilantro, chopped
1-inch piece fresh ginger, cut into thin julienne

In a large bowl, whisk together the lemon juice, salt, tamarind, and chaat masala. Add the banana, potatoes, sweet potato, chile, pomegranate, and cilantro and toss to coat. Taste and add more salt if necessary. Pile on a platter and scatter the ginger over the top. Serve at room temperature.

Note: The spice mix chaat masala can be purchased at Indian grocery stores, or you can mix up some of your own, or just sprinkle in a little coriander, cumin, and ground cayenne. Sanjeev's chaat masala: 1/4 cup coriander seeds, 2 teaspoons cumin seeds, 1 teaspoon ajwain, 2 or 3 dried red chiles, 3 tablespoons black salt (which I think is rather a lot), 1/2 teaspoon citric acid, 1 teaspoon amchur, 1 tablespoon regular salt, and 1 teaspoon ground black pepper—whole spices toasted and ground and then everything mixed together. Makes 1/2 cup.

Bulk Valentines

After last year's ill-advised adventure in elaborate preschool Valentines made weeks in advance (and the heartbreak that ensued when we found out that the class Valentines were not to be addressed to individual students, nor were they to contain any sweets), this year we made it easy on ourselves and did our anonymous cards assembly-line style.

I taped two sheets of 9-by-12-inch watercolor paper down on the table in front of the kid, and masked off six rectangles on each with tape, plus a border all around the edges. She just painted over the whole thing every which way (I painted some too), let it dry, then peeled off the tape and I cut them up into cards. Then I taped together some rubber letter stamps spelling out "THALI" and had her stamp each of them one night before bedtime; we untaped and added the final "A" at the end. Done.

She can write her name, of course, but I weighed the benefits to her of practicing her handwriting on twenty-eight cards against the possibility that it would make her mom go absolutely mad, and so she stamped.

A Pretty Good Way to Hem Jeans

Not at all food related, but I thought I'd post this anyway, along the lines of my little invisible zipper tutorial from way back, on the assumption that perhaps not a lot of people know how to hem jeans. Hey, at least it's content.

Almost all of my jeans have needed to be hemmed—I'm just that kind of shape, I guess. That is, not willowy. This is how I do it so I don't lose the nicely frayed and washed-in factory hem.

1. Fold the hem to the outside so that if you were to fold just the hem back down toward the floor it would be the length you want. In this picture, the red line will be the final length of the pant leg. Press well.

2. Put a jeans needle in your machine if you have one, and an edge-stitching foot if you have one. I've recently started using the edge-stitching foot whenever I can—it just makes it easier to sew a straight line—but it's certainly not necessary here. I don't use any special kind of thread here, but you could use heavy-duty if you'd like. I used a dark blue in the needle and a dark gray in the bobbin. Using a slightly longer stitch than usual, sew right next to the turned-under edge of the original hem. Depending on the jeans and your machine, it may get tricky as you go over the side seam and inseam. Go slowly, and help it along by turning the wheel manually if necessary. If you can't get over the inseam, don't force it: cut the threads and continue by hand.

3. In this case, I did have to stop before I got to the inseam because it was too thick to fit under the presser foot, even when it was raised (these are men's jeans; I haven't had this issue with my own), so I sewed that part by hand with a doubled thread, a long needle, and a thimble.

4. Using a regular presser foot and switching the needle thread to light gray (if you want to be fussy about it), line up the left edge of the foot with the line of stitching you just made, and sew a line of zigzag stitching (scribbled in red here) all the way around the pant leg.

5. Cut off the folded edge as close to the zigzag stitching as you can, being careful not to cut the stitching and being extra careful as you cut through the thick side seam and inseam so your shears don't go where you don't want them to.

6. Sew another line of zigzag stitch that extends just over the cut edges to keep unraveling to a minimum; note that you're sewing through two layers of seam allowance here.

7. Turn the zigzagged edge up to the inside of the pant leg and the original hem to the bottom. Press the bejeezus out of it, using lots of steam.

7. By hand, tack the seam allowances up to the side seam and inseam to keep them from flopping out.

8. Press some more, and you should have a pretty good-looking hem that you'd have to look closely at to see wasn't the original. You may have to press them again after they go through the wash, you may not. You could also, I suppose, take them to a dry cleaner and ask them to hit the hems with the professional steam iron.

Just in Time for Christmas Eve

A couple of oldies but goodies from the hot drinks book are featured today on STC Cooks: mulled wine, and broiled dates stuffed with curried cheddar, apple, and walnuts. I'd almost forgotten about those dates, but I may just have to indulge. Especially since I still have a few of the amazing selection of a dozen or so very different varieties of dates my dear friend Heidi sent us from Dubai, where she's lived for almost a year now. Win!

Contest at STC Cooks

Y'all should head over to STC Cooks and enter their cookbook giveaway by November 30. Just tell them about a memorable Thanksgiving and you could win a stack of really nice food books—they're good; I've read most of them.

Kimchi Ferment-along-a-thon!

Please join me and my publisher peeps over at the new STC Cooks blog for the first in a series of posts about making kimchi, Korean fermented cabbage and daikon (or other vegetables; here's a fun list of kimchi types—and some good-looking recipes—from Saveur to spark your imagination). Kimchi is one of the easiest preserves to make yourself: after giving the cabbage and other vegetables an overnight soak in a simple salt brine, you mix them up with a chile powder–orange paste, stuff them into a jar, and just kind of let the whole thing sit there until it tastes good, four or five days. Unlike, say, fermented dill pickles, there's no day-to-day maintenance required. You just leave it alone for a while, then screw a lid on and stick the jar in the fridge. It'll keep for weeks, very gradually becoming a little more sour.

Lots of readers (we hope) are going to make their own kimchi along with us, so if you've been wanting to be part of an enormous online community of enthusiastic cabbage and radish fermenters but didn't know where to start, here's your chance!

Thanks, Internet

D. had to go to the ATL for a book event tonight, so it's just us girls tonight (and our guard dog, Cooper). We had a nice meal inspired by this post and recipe for aloo simla mirch (potato and sweet pepper curry) on one of my new favorite blogs, The Perfect Pastry. "Supper was better than I thought it would be," proclaimed the four-year-old, but I knew it would be good even with my (minor) changes: I just put one slit serrano in and kept it aside for my own plate, I grated in half a tomato I had sitting around, and instead of making fresh all-out curry powder I used a little of the stuff from Taj Mahal and then coarsely ground some cumin and coriander seeds. Served with some leftover spiced brown basmati with some peas. Oh, it was wonderful. Thank you, Margie.

After supper, I turned on a movie, thinking maybe T. would kind of fall asleep on her own, saving me the whole drawn-out bedtime routine—we were both so tired this afternoon—and I could get some work done. Not a chance. We sat on the couch, huddled together, gripping our girlie nightgowns, totally engrossed in the extremely manipulative and simplistic but highly effective Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron, which I'd seen on a list of a few recent non-snarky movies for youngsters blogged on Sweet Juniper!. (Thank you—really—Sweet Juniper! writer.)

For my part, once I managed to separate the Spirit Matt Damon voice-over from the ADM Informant! Matt Damon voice-over recently experienced, I was fine. T.'s reaction was a little more complex: She was sobbing through most of it—with sadness as well as happiness—but she would not let me turn it off no matter what happened. Or even turn down the volume so the sappy (but again, highly effective) Bryan Adams–Hans Zimmer score wouldn't get to her so much. This movie was intense for a kid, veering from euphoric relief to wrenching heartbreak every ten or fifteen seconds. Seeing T. parsing all that was almost too much for me. She enjoys the long form—Ponyo, which I find incredibly slow for an animated feature, has been a favorite of hers for a couple months—but I've never seen her so thrilled about a movie. She couldn't stop talking about it afterward. We watched all the DVD extras, and I learned how to sort of draw Spirit, Stallion of the Cimarron, and she colored him red and green, and then she ran and got lots more paper and announced that she was going to make a movie about the horse. "But it's going to be different. It will be shorter. And no people will try to ride him, because wild horses aren't supposed to be rided. And the good guy will use a rope to get apples from a tree for all the horses." (And there was something about a strip'ed pebble.) She added, "I think you're going to like this movie. Half of it will be scary, and half of it will be good." Which sounds perfect to me.

Note the tissue handy. (And that's my wine, not hers.)

Some Lunchbox Inspiration

I just noticed that Hugh Acheson's new place in the ATL, Empire State South, seems to have opened, and the menus are up online. It all looks intriguing, but I'm especially delighted by the tiffin box lunches: you pay a deposit for the tiffin, take your lunch to work or wherever, and then return the tiffin. The meals themselves sound great, and I'm definitely going to steal many of those down-home ideas for T.'s lunches. (I also love the little half-cup canning jar of what looks like a yogurt of some sort in the second picture.)

I'm glad this came along, because today's box lunch for T. would appear to be the work of an insane person: a couple pieces of leftover sushi from her supper last night (I was getting some sliced turkey in the deli at Kroger; she spied the premade sushi and insisted on that for her meal), a turkey sandwich, and about a pound of grapes.

As a side note, I'm wondering where the restaurant got its supply of tiffins. I'd love one (or two), but retail is pricey! Anybody know of a good source for those?

Questions and Errata

There's something missing in the Cardamom Plum Jam on page 116.

Indeed, a line got dropped. The plums should be pitted and diced.

In the Tomato and Basil Jam with Sherry Vinegar on page 176, what do you do with the apple–lemon–tomato juice mixture?

Yikes, a whole paragraph is missing. After you cook the apples and lemon in the tomato juice for about 15 minutes, it should read: "Dump the tomato solids into the bowl and place a sieve over the bowl. Pour the apple and lemon mixture into the sieve and press as much of the juice and apple pulp through the sieve as you can. Discard the solids in the sieve."

Where do you add the lemon juice in the Nectarine Jam on page 107?

Add the lemon juice with the nectarines and sugar—you just put everything in at once and cook it till it looks like jam, which is kind of the beauty of this particular preserve.

Can you substitute one kind of vinegar for another in the pickle or salsa recipes?

No, please don't, unless you're using a vinegar of a higher percentage acidity than the one called for in the recipe. Otherwise you could compromise the safety of the pickle or salsa by lowering the acidity (that is, raising the pH), which could make it unsafe to can in a boiling-water bath.

Is that how you spell Seebee?

Well, that's embarrassing. It's Seabee. As in "sea," where the navy is.

Where else can you find citric acid?

I just noticed that the local health/gourmet food store here, Earth Fare, has citric acid in the bulk spices section for $9.99/pound, which is a little bit more expensive than yogurt-covered pretzels. So if you have a Whole Foods or some such near you, try the bulk section.

Imagined Asked Questions

It's fig, glorious fig season here in Georgia, and while looking at the two fig preserve recipes in my book I realized I hadn't made something clear. Some figs, as many of you probably know, are—like some tomatoes—not quite acidic enough to can in a boiling-water bath unless acid is added; here I use lemon and lemon juice, in quantities that should be—and have been, in my experience—sufficient. (The USDA/NCHFP, e.g., suggests 2 tablespoons lemon juice per quart of preserved figs in a light syrup; my recipes each make 4 half-pint jars and call for 1 lemon and 3 tablespoons, respectively.) What I didn't make clear is that the lemon or lemon juice in those two recipes (slow-roasted fig preserves with lemon, and honeyed fig jam with sesame seeds) is necessary for preservation purposes and should not be viewed as optional. These preserves, like most in the book, are low in sugar, so you need the added acid to make sure the pH is in the safe range. If you don't have lemon juice or aren't comfortable making a not-sugar-saturated fig preserve, these recipes make such small quantities that you could certainly just skip the canning and keep them in the fridge, from which they'll quickly disappear.

Padron Peppers

This was a really special treat for me: fresh Padron peppers from Mill Gap Farm, via Athens Locally Grown. Olive oil in a hot pan, plus plenty of coarse salt. (The National here in Athens sometimes serves them like this as a tapas.) You eat everything but the stem. The flesh and seeds are tender, pleasantly bitter. Some are hot, some mild, but they're never sweet. They just taste like little explosions of chile and salt. I don't often get all rhapsodic about foods, but these, last Thursday night, with a glass of cold white wine, were transporting. We need more of these in our lives, all of us. I get the impression they're not easy to grow, but can we please try?

Asked Questions

I thought I'd post a few of the canning questions I've gotten from folks over the last several weeks, posed here or on Facebook or by email or in person. If you have more, leave them in the comments, and I'll post again with answers if I have them, and eventually I'll figure out how to put an FAQ page on this blog thing. So here goes . . .

Where can you find citric acid for canning tomatoes and tomato sauce?

Some health food stores carry it, as do some Indian groceries (where it may be labeled "lemon salt"). It's available online from Amazon, Kalustyans, and Leeners, among many other vendors. If all else fails, you can use lemon juice or Fruit Fresh, which is citric acid stepped on with ascorbic acid and anti-caking agents (see the quantities for lemon juice and Fruit Fresh in the recipes in the book).

Do you have to dry off the flat jar lids after they've been in the hot water and before you put them on the jars?

No. Just slap ’em on.

Can you forgo peeling the tomatoes for sauce and just blend them up, skins and seeds and all?

Sure. Just wash the tomatoes really well first (there are more bacteria on the surface of the tomatoes, obviously, though those will be killed during the long processing time in the canning pot).

Can you can pesto in a boiling water bath?

No. Pesto is not an acid food (it has a high pH), and so it's not safe to can it in a boiling water bath. Freeze it instead!

What are your favorite things to preserve?

Sour cherries, all-purpose tomato sauce, salsa verde, and grapefruit marmalade are some of my favorites. They're extra-fun to make and delicious and useful.

Are your recipes approved by the USDA?

No. As far as I know, the only recipes officially approved by the USDA are the ones published in its handbook and online at the National Center for Home Food Preservation. The USDA is not in the business of evaluating or testing recipes to be published by private companies; the agency has developed its own recipes, and those are the ones they officially stand behind. That said, all of the canning methods described in my book conform exactly to current USDA standards for processing: I don't advocate the so-called open kettle or inversion method, I ask you to sterilize jars in boiling water rather than in a dishwasher or oven, processing times are totally in line with the USDA's recommendations, and so on. Fruit preserves in my book are significantly lower in sugar than those made by standard recipes, but when fruit (which is high acid) is canned using reliable methods sugar is not necessary for preservation purposes. The canned pickles in my book were tested for pH levels at several stages in the process—before processing and several days or weeks later—and packing and processing times conform to those recommended by the feds (in addition, temperatures were checked during processing using the method required of commercial canners by the FDA). If you still have concerns about a recipe—mine or any other—you can always send it to your local extension agent to ask if it looks okay to him or her. And, as always, use your judgment when opening and using a canned food, whether it has sealed properly or not. If anything doesn't seem right to you, toss it!

Kid Lunches

We don't usually eat this much pasta! I guess I just had a craving for it, or rather for the ease of it, as I was a bit under the weather last week. As usual, you can see details in the Flickr set here. If T. were rounding up the highlights, she'd mention the peas and carrots (which she requested), the Asian pear, the edamame, the potstickers of course, the tomato (as I was filling her box, she said, "That tomato smells so good!"), and the chocolate chip cookies. Lowlights would include the lentils, lychees (which she loved until this year), fresh cheese with "not-real" (translation: cooked) cherries, and that horrid raw carrot.

Pictures of the Gosford Wine Event

My friend Clare Adams took these lovely pictures of some of the food at the tasting and book signing the other night, and I thought I'd share them here with her permission. Rinne brought the summery flowers and let T. arrange them in those cute apothecary bottles.

I had tons of help filling tacos, pouring little cups of hot-pink cold beet soup, slicing bread and spreading it with fresh cheese and butter, scooping out single-cherry tastes of clafouti, and even dumping good crunchy tortilla chips into my big old butter-washing bowl for dipping into last year's super-spicy salsa verde. I didn't do a thing all evening, now that I think about it, except enjoy myself.

Rinne's sister, Lucy, who has the soul of a high-end caterer and the work ethic of an early American settler, arranged everything invitingly on two big wooden farm tables, with pretty paper napkins (Ikea, I think), rough linens, ironstone plates and platters, and in some cases simply dry waxed paper sheets (my beloved Kabnet brand, which I'd gotten to hold the tacos). And Lucy kept those tables looking spiffy and abundant all night long. D.'s coworker Anne and her daughter showed up during preparations and instantly set to work making tacos, refilling platters, and basically doing everything I'd expected to be doing.


T. helped me trim the little threads from the cards—she cut the corners off most of them too. (Here's a bad preparty shot I took of that cake, showing my genius cutting job in all its forty-eight-tiny-slice glory:)

It was a great time, and I felt very lucky to have been able to meet so many people who are enthusiastic about cooking and eating—and canning.

Tonight at Gosford Wine

Just a quick reminder that tonight at 6:30 is the wine and preserve tasting at Gosford Wine on Baxter Street here in Athens. (With any luck there will be books to be had as well.) Hope to see you there!

Cultured Butter

A while back, I became smitten with Vermont Butter & Cheese Company's cultured butter. It tasted like no other butter I'd ever had: funky, earthy, but delicate and just a little tangy. It's hard to describe, but the butter was different enough from regular butter that T., who is four, claimed not to like it at first (it's grown on her since then). I tried culturing some cream with buttermilk, but the result was bland—not right. I'd read about piima butter, made from a Scandinavian-style culture derived from the butterwort plant that is apparently similar to the culture used in buttermilk, acidophilus. Descriptions of it sounded like what I was going for, so eventually I broke down and ordered a little jar of piima culture from an outfit called Moonwise Herbs, which unfortunately ships the ready-to-use (not dried) culture only in cooler months; however, there are lots of other places online that sell piima.

The flavor of butter made with cream cultured with piima is amazing. And it's so, so easy to make this at home—that is, once you have a bit of culture. The culture will keep for a couple weeks in the fridge, or you can freeze it for months before refreshing it by mixing it with new cream and letting it ferment for a day. Just remember to save some of the cream for next time before whipping the rest into butter. Instructions that came with mine say it's best to use pasteurized cream so that the character of the culture remains consistent over time. For those of us in Georgia this shouldn't be a problem.

Cultured Butter
Makes about 7 ounces, depending on the fat content of the cream

2 to 3 tablespoons piima culture
1 pint pasteurized heavy cream

In a nonreactive bowl, stir together the culture and cream. Cover with plastic wrap and set aside to culture at room temperature (or warmer) for 12 to 24 hours. The mixture should thicken, sometimes a little and sometimes a lot, depending on the temperature and probably other factors that are mysterious to me. This time it thickened a lot:

Scoop a few tablespoons of the cultured cream into a lidded jar and save it for the next batch. I just put this straight into the freezer, where I'm told it'll keep for months:

Whip the cream with a mixer or an immersion blender. I think you could do this in a food processor, but I don't have a regular-size one and the cleanup would surely be more intensive than with a mixer or immersion blender. Keep whipping past the thick-whipped-cream stage to the point where the solids separate from the liquid, slowing the mixer speed down as this happens:

Holding back the solids (the butter) with your hand or a sieve, pour off as much of the liquid as you can. This is cultured buttermilk. I usually get about a cup from a pint of cream. Here I've transferred the butter back to the first bowl, but you could do this all in the same bowl start to finish:

Put a few handfuls of ice and some cold water in the bowl with the butter:

Use a spatula or wooden spoon to stir and knead the butter with the ice water. The water will become milky as the remaining buttermilk is kneaded out of the butter. Holding the butter (and any ice cubes) back, drain off the cloudy water. Add more ice and clean water and keep kneading to wash out the buttermilk, draining and replacing the water and ice until you can knead the butter and the water stays relatively clear:

Drain again and pick out the ice cubes, if there are any that haven't melted. Knead the butter some more, pouring off the water that comes out. Keep kneading and draining to remove as much water as possible. I imagine there are more effective ways of getting all the water out, and they probably involve butter muslin, but I just knead, drain, and then sort of pat the butter with a paper towel until it looks pretty dry:

Stir in salt to taste, if you'd like, then pack the soft butter into a container and cover with waxed paper (or wrap it into a log in plastic):

Refrigerate. This butter will last at least a week, and can be used . . . however you'd use butter. This butter turned out fairly light in color, while other batches have been brighter yellow. My mom tells me it has to do with what the cows were eating, along with the fat content of the cream. Of course, you could always color it with juice squeezed from a carrot that's been grated, milk-simmered, and squeezed in cheesecloth, as T. and I just read about in Little House in the Big Woods, but that seems like a lot of trouble to me.

Oatmeal Two Ways

Steel-cut oats for the kid, with blueberries, agave nectar, sliced almonds, and milk. For me, sambal oelek (fresh chile paste), scallions, cilantro, a splash of soy sauce, and garlic, fried in olive oil until crisp, then drained on a paper towel—one of the best breakfasts ever, I think: spicy and hearty but also fresh-tasting enough to have in midsummer. McCann's makes quick-cooking steel-cut oats now, and I can't discover how they're made and whether they're as good for you as the long-cooking ones, but they taste exactly the same and are done in about 10 minutes. I suspect they're pre-steamed. Does anybody know?