Tribute to Grandma Maxine and butter...

My Grandma has been dead for over a decade but I still remember her crazy outfits and amazing garden.  She was a fabulous soprano and even sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for a number of years.  She'd take me and my sister with her to our great grandmother's house in Idaho for 2 weeks each summer.  She went to Idaho each summer to escape the heat.  These terrible pictures were taken with my first camera using 110 film and flash bulbs.  Geeze. I remember one summer we went out to a Pioneer Village place.  People dressed as pioneers demonstrated how the pioneers would wash clothes and make butter.  This is my sister, Jessica, on the left and cousin, Cherise, on the right.  Sorry ladies.This awful picture is me.  I must've been 9 or some other awkward age.  We're washing clothes with homemade soap.  The evening closed by the pioneer woman pouring cream into a mason jar and passing it around for the audience members to shake it until butter appeared.  She pulled freshly baked bread from a dutch oven and we buttered and ate it.

Anyhoo, on to the point!  The kids and I went to a historical site in our home town and that got us thinking about the pioneers.  I told Maxine about my trip to Idaho as a youth and how we made butter with whipping cream and a mason jar.  She made me promise that we'd try it when we got home.  

So I got out a mason jar, filled it with cream and we started taking turns shaking it.  It got really thick and after 10 minutes, I was starting to doubt whether the two of us could shake a mason jar enough to make butter.  I sat on the couch and started whacking the mason jar on the couch cushions.  After a minute or so, the contents in the jar suddenly changed consistency and there was a big lump of butter in the jar with whey.  I was like, "No way!  We actually made butter by hand!"  I drained off the whey and added a dash of salt and made some toast!

Here's little Maxine with the jar and butter.  Thanks Grandma Maxine for the great summers!!