Thursday, February 18, 2016

You Can Make Better Butter

Better butter? Isn't butter already delicious? Yes, it is! But, there has long been the controversy over which is better for you.  Butter or margarine?  It's all about the cholesterol.  I'm not going to go into all the 'butter versus margarine' arguments. There is plenty to be found on the internet about that, and you can do a search  yourself if it interests you.



I've always prefered butter over margarine myself. I didn't prefer the price though. When you are feeding a large family on a single income, you try to stretch every dollar.  So, our family used margarine. Except for special occasions, like Christmas, when I would splurge on a block of butter to use for Christmas dinner.  Now, with this recipe, we can have our butter all the time!
This makes butter into a spreadable, keep in the fridge, cook with it, delight! It results in a butter that has 1/2 the saturated fat, which is the bad thing about butter. In this recipe I used olive oil which has more monounsaturated fat than other oils, but you can also use safflower oil, which has the highest percentage of polyunsaturated fats of all the oils. Which is good. Other oils to try are sunflower, soyabean, canola and peanut.

Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Adventure on the Trapline.



Some of you may recall that we own property in northern BC.  It is part of a huge trapline that my husband manages.  Most falls find us packing up the truck and heading north for a couple of months to live in our little log cabin up there. It  has become a springtime trip as well now as my husband, Trev, is retired and we can come and go as we please. 
It is a beautiful place. Our main cabin is located beside a lovely lake and I enjoy looking out the window at the scenery while I crochet and knit to my heart's content. As the cabin is quite remote, we have no electricity, no running water, no access other than by rough trail. It isn't everyone's 'cup of tea', but we love it. You can't get much more 'back to basics' than this. I wanted to share one of our adventures with you. This took place 2 years ago after we had been at the cabin for 2 months and were heading home. I shared this with our Facebook friends in bits and pieces, and my father in law was kind enough to save it all and make it into a single document. (Thanks, Ken!)