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Butter is my new favorite food. Not ingredient, food. Generous Servings now uses only homemade butter in all our cooking, which gives you another reason to have one of our croissants or scones--they are more homemade than almost anything you'll ever eat.

It is very fun to have a bowl full of ten pounds of butter, as you can see:



And it is very good for moisturizing one's hands. This is not to say that my butter recipe development has been without frustrations. There has been a lot of cream thrown out of the mixer onto the floor. One time the cream never turned into butter, although I mixed it for about an hour and a half (usually it takes 15 minutes). That evening our cleaners happened to be working in the kitchen, and they asked me several times what I was making. I kept saying that I was making butter, and they would look dubiously at the bowl full of cream, which never looked remotely like butter. The next time they came, I was making cultured butter, which requires me to sterilize all the implements I use, so I had an array of big pots of boiling water, alcohol swabs, thermometers, and spoons balanced precariously to prevent their bowls from touching the counter, and a whole area of the kitchen blocked off. Again, the cleaners asked what I was doing, and I said I was making butter. At this point, they think I'm delusional.

One of the unexpected difficulties of selling food is dealing with the packaging. It's taken me a long time to figure out the best way to package the butter: what shape should it be in? where do I get the right kind of foil? how big should the label be? And that stuff is expensive, particularly if you aren't buying it in huge quantities. But the Micro-Market is opening in less than a month, so today I made some big decisions and ordered the equipment I need to scale up this project.

How can you get your hands on some of this great butter? I'm glad you asked. At the Highland Micro-Market (MiMa), of course! I will be there with lots of butter, along with other local producers selling vegetables, fruit, herbs, meats, honey, eggs, and more. We've been spending lots of time getting ready for the MiMa, so we really hope to have a great turnout when we open! Heck, just come for the free butter samples. The MiMa will be held every Thursday from 2-6 pm, starting May 14, on the Generous Servings patio. Check out the website: www.HighlandMiMa.com. We'll have an option to order your butter, too, so you can be assured that I won't sell out if you're coming toward the end of the market. Stay tuned for that.