What could be better?

I love butter. I want my butter all fat and all full of flavor. Give me real creamy butter or deprive me of it. I won’t hold high anything in between.

For a person who loves butter this much, you’d think I’d try to make it sooner. But neither did I know I could, nor how. As with a lot of things, it’s more special when it happens at the right time. (Haha…I crack myself up.) This butter would not be here if we did not have leftover heavy cream that we did not want to consume in one sitting of strawberry with crepes. I don’t know, I just didn’t want it to go to the dairy purgatory and find out later we have a bad cream. And it was such a nice “experiment” with excellent results.

I remembered reading about people putting heavy cream in a gallon bottle and shake it until the butter forms. We don’t have that kind of bottle and I wasn’t about to labor for it that long. I also read that you can use your hand mixer and I can deal with that. So the cream transformed from this:

To this:

To something that resembles butter, which I thought would never come:

Then into butter AND liquid (I read in some places that this is buttermilk):

Oh, hello!!!

And it went right into my toast.

I will add that I only got a bite of this because before I knew it, Dan finished it.

And what did I do with the remaining liquid (buttermilk?)? I used it to soak chicken tenders. Nothing’s wasted.

If you’re up for it, here’s you need to make (unsalted) butter:

• Heavy cream
• Hand mixer or stand mixer
• Deep bowl (the liquid will start to splatter once the butter starts forming)

And all you need to do is beat the cream until butter forms. For about 10 minutes, I think. I lost track of time. You’ll see the yellow butter form. Don’t stop the first time you see it. Mix it further for about 5 minutes until the solids separate in clumps from the liquid. After that, you just need to squeeze out the liquid (I used clean hands) and transfer it to a container or measure it out in tablespoons or cups as you wish.

You can also put the butter in a separate mixing bowl and add salt and whatever spices and herbs you like, then roll it in parchment paper. I think homemade butter would be perfect for making butter with herbs.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE TASTE of homemade butter? SO GOOD. I might have to make butter for our toasts from now on. It’s worth the effort, definitely.

The truth is: I’ve never had artichoke until a week ago in Hawaii. After being here on earth for 30 years. One of the morning shows yesterday had a health/fitness guy guest who kept talking about the benefits of fresh coconut juice and the host asked “Uhm, okay, but how do I actually open that?” [pointing to the shelled green coconut] And I never occurred to me that there are people who don’t know how to open a coconut, take the flesh of the coconut, and get the milk from the coconut. How some people react when faced with a green coconut was how I reacted upon the pressure to prepare artichoke. So I’ll forgive you now if you look at me with that questioning look of “Did you live under a rock?”

The thing is, I felt for artichoke like how I would feel if you put a newborn baby on my lap. I’d think it’s incredibly cute but what the heck do I do now?!” Panic! And I’m serious (and just to abate those who know me personally: I am not pregnant, ok?) when I say that.

Make no mistake, they’re undeniably amusing to look at and photograph, but I had no clue what to do with them. Never bought them so I never made anything with them. We’ve had the canned ones to make dips but never the fresh one.

When our friends in Hawaii (our awesome hosts) served us a steamed artichoke as part of dinner, I took the opportunity to taste it and learn how to eat it. The latter is definitely important or I would have tried to cook it until the whole thing is soft!

I think I cut it too much by the stem. What do you think?

When our friends prepared the artichoke, they boiled it with garlic between the leaves. But they weren’t garlic-insertion-happy as I was:

Can you say ARTICHOKE CONCENTRATION CAMP? But it’s pretty!

I added the juice of half a lemon in the water, plus salt, peppercorns and ground pepper.

I’m not sure what the heck I was thinking! Is that enough water?

Oh well. I get distracted by its beauty.

I don’t know if it’s cooked either.

Perhaps overdone?

It didn’t taste half as good as what we were served in Hawaii, and don’t tell me it’s because it was in Hawaii! Haha. This was a jumbo artichoke that we got from sprouts. It wasn’t as fleshy as I thought it would be. Any ideas why? Is it because it’s big?

I’d love to cook more artichokes but I still sit here helpless as to what else we can do with it. Do you have any suggestions? Should I get the smaller ones? Do I just boil them? With what? For how long? Point me to your recipes! I would love that. I see all sorts of recipes on the internet but most of them are for the canned artichokes.

We’ve only had the artichoke with mayo. Someone suggested a thousand island dressing. I’m open to more choices. :-) Thanks!!!

Aloha! We’re back from our vacation and we’re slowly easing into reality. The luggage bags are half-unpacked. That in itself, is a great feat. It’s hard to wake up again in hot Arizona, staring at the ceiling and doing rock-paper-scissors to see who needs to get up first (just kidding!!!). We were so spoiled with homemade meals from morning till evening by our friends in Hawaii. In fact, not only have we expanded our food selection (steamed artichokes with mayo, papaya with lemon juice, strawberries with agave nectar, etc.) but also our waistlines! Hahaha.

When I found my cooking mojo again, I made this chicken stew-ish dish that I grew up with in the Philippines. I would ask for “tinola” and stake my claim on the chicken legs with the skin. I was not concerned about extra weight then, obviously. These days we’re trying to be healthy. So instead of chicken with all the delicious skin, I cooked chicken tenders. I used soy sauce in place of fish sauce, but I would always recommend using the latter when you have it in your kitchen. All in all, it was close to the real thing and Dan liked our evening viand:

It’s a nice combination of the texture of chicken and that of chayote, and this is perfect with rice. Dan has never eaten chayote before this and I’m glad he liked it. :-)

Here’s the step-by-step cooking photos:

Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.

It’s really a super simple dish to make so please, help yourself to the recipe!

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