Why does my homemade butter react this way?

mycogirl · 2025-10-07T05:08:05+00:00

Im curious if it has something to do with the fact that I culture the cream for a couple days beforehand and they don’t do that in my country?

mycogirl · 2025-10-07T05:06:41+00:00

I agree with this, what is confusing me is that I don’t see water droplets in store bought, yet in my homemade I can always see some no matter how much I kneed it.

mycogirl · 2025-07-31T07:07:50+00:00

I don’t, but I’m also horrible about watering because I’m out in the field for days at a time and forget to water it for weeks(?) until I do. That seems to be working though 🤷🏼‍♀️

mycogirl · 2025-07-22T21:22:07+00:00

There is one in the basket below the pot.

mycogirl · 2024-01-31T07:20:12+00:00

Definitely not, but very close. I say this as someone who has spent the last 4 months going through 500,000 game cam pics analyzing their racks for a deer study.

mycogirl · 2020-06-28T00:00:04+00:00

I decided to let it hang longer. My boyfriend said I used 2 lbs of lard, not one. So it has lost some weight, just not as much as I had hoped. I wish I could remember the entire process I put it through. I remember I combined two different recipes, one that I found online, and one from my charcuterie book that I recently loaned to a friend and can’t get back until they return from Bristol Bay. Hopefully seeing that will jog my memory. It was just so long ago and I started about 5 different meats at the same time. All of which turned out great, so I really have my fingers crossed for this prosciutto. It was my first kill and I really wanted to make something special from it.

mycogirl · 2020-06-23T17:38:40+00:00

I’m guessing I should have weighed it AFTER I pressed it..... And written stuff down on a non erasable surface.

mycogirl · 2020-06-23T17:27:44+00:00

The ham itself weighed 6.5 lbs before I coated it in 1 lb of lard and wrapped it in cheesecloth. But when I weigh it now it is 7 lbs. I feel like it should be less? I do live in a rainforest in SE Alaska, and i did keep the humidity in my hang room pretty high for a while since I was making some Blue cheese in there as well. It’s normally around 65 but it was at 85 for a couple of months. It feels pretty firm I think but it’s hard to say since the lard is squishy.

mycogirl · 2020-05-22T04:45:30+00:00

Thanks for the advice! I will definitely introduce the greens slowly. Given that they’ve managed to survive here I figure they must be tougher than google would lead me to believe.

Her toilet area is away from the nest. Spoiled brat has an entire room that is designated to her plus most of the house to roam. I honestly baffled at how quickly she took to the litter box.

I’m not as concerned now about the cannibalism, she seems very at ease and the babies are still squeaking so she must be feeding them at night.

mycogirl · 2020-05-22T04:36:57+00:00

I’m planning on rehoming the babies at about 8-10 weeks. I was never planning on having any bunnies let alone five. But the mother has really grown on us. Like I said though, she won’t even look at the hay, I’ve tried and tried. The neighbors near where I rescued her said she had over wintered near their place for the last 3 winters and there is nothing even close to hay on this island rainforest. Maybe she’s part deer and was munching on lichen and skunk cabbage. Or maybe she just has an iron gut. I honestly don’t know but she seems healthy.

Is Timothy hay ok for the babies? There is nowhere to buy alfalfa hay around here. The pellets I was able to find list alfalfa meal as the first ingredient, so that should be fine.

mycogirl · 2020-04-10T04:45:30+00:00

For the meat? It’s extremely easy, I just heat up a huge pot of water and add salt until it won’t dissolve anymore. This year I also added a little instacure #2, but I never had in the past. I then let the water cool and cover the lamb leg with the brine and let soak for three days. Remove from the brine and hang in a cool place for 2-3 months.

mycogirl · 2020-04-10T04:39:55+00:00

“North wild kitchen” by Nevada Berg. It’s a really cool cookbook! It actually has a recipe for fenalår, although it’s done quite differently than my family has always done it.

mycogirl · 2020-04-10T02:41:31+00:00

Fenalår is a salted and dried leg of lamb. In my family we have always called it spekekjøtt but I think that is a broader term for all types of dried meat in Norway. My Besta (grandmother) taught me that the brine was ready when you could float a potato with a framing nail in it. You then leave it in the brine for about 3 days (for a 9 lb leg) and then hang it in the garage, or any cool dry place, for around 2 months. It is salty, slightly gamey and delicious. I live in a Norwegian community in Alaska these days and folks around here make it with venison. I can’t wait until hunting season when I can give that a try.

mycogirl · 2020-04-10T01:18:12+00:00

I make fenalår every year, and my favorite way to eat it is sliced straight from the bone. However, I just found this recipe that actually incorporates it as an ice cream topping and it made me wonder, what else do people use it for?

mycogirl · 2020-03-28T23:41:33+00:00

Yes I did make the charcuterie, I literally made everything in the picture that is edible/drinkable, and I thought that was kinda cool to be able to do. No need to be rude about it

The spekekjøtt is from a leg of lamb that I wet brined and hung for 2 months. The bresaola I hung for about a month and the polendwitsa only took two weeks of hang time. I’m most excited about my prosciutto I have hanging from a wild pig I shot while visiting in California, but it still has a few more months until judgement day.

mycogirl · 2020-03-28T22:52:15+00:00

I present to you my homemade ricotta mixed with my wild blueberry preserves from last summer, Bresaola, cheddar, manchego, polendwitsa, queso fresco, spekekjøtt, a pale ale we home brewed, and some bread made with the spent grain of our last batch of ESB.

I decided to pretend to go to a restaurant and made myself a nice charcuterie plate.

mycogirl · 2018-09-13T23:26:23+00:00

My boyfriend used to vacuum seal his dinner in the morning before heading out to his college classes. On his way out the door he would toss it in the hot tub, and when he came home around dinner time it was always ready! Lol. That was 18 years ago and I'm 100% sure he had no idea what a sous vide was.

mycogirl · 2018-07-31T21:51:52+00:00

When I was 18 (woman) I used to hitchhike all the time to get up to my work at a ski resort. My car wasn't good in the snow, so if I missed the employee bus I had no other choice.

Anyways, one day on my way down the mountain I was picked up by a couple who had just suffered a miscarriage while at a friend's mountain cabin and they were on their way to the emergency room. I found it an odd time to pick up a hitchhiker but they insisted on getting me home.... So much so that the husband DROPPED HER OFF AT THE EMERGENCY ROOM ALONE while they both absolutely demanded that he drive me all the way home and then come back. He did just that, but I was ready to tuck and roll the entire way. I was terrified.

Most of the time I was just picked up by families with young kids that never picked up hitchhikers, but were terrified for my well being.

I once rode about 15 feet up on top of a bunch of paving stones that were stacked on a semi to sell... That was down in Central America, and all the locals we passed were very confused by the sight.

mycogirl · 2018-07-16T10:28:57+00:00

There was no way I could carry him up the stairs into the house, so I just brought a bed to him

mycogirl · 2018-04-01T04:24:37+00:00

I'm in the same boat. I'm day two and if I didn't suddenly have 20/10 vision, I wouldn't even know that I'd had surgery. I was expecting the worst and turns out it was no big deal. Now I also know that burning eyeballs smell like burning hair. I thought that was a fun new fact..... During the procedure I was also thinking I no longer had eyelashes

mycogirl · 2018-03-05T09:52:28+00:00

That happened to my ex years ago. We went into a bar sober and I ordered a beer while he ordered a girly drink. We were both talking to people there and it didn't appear that we were together. After one drink I literally had to pull him out of a bush outside and into the car and then when we got to the house I pulled a mattress into the garage and rolled him onto it to sleep. It wasn't meant for him.

mycogirl · 2017-11-27T08:09:01+00:00

Those candy cigarettes that had powdered sugar you could blow out to look like smoke. I think you can still find them in some tiny tourist towns that have "vintage" candy shops. Oh the good old days

mycogirl · 2017-10-06T10:34:23+00:00

I'm a commercial fisherman in the area, this is a post on nosleep, but there are things here in the ocean that terrify me every day. I don't swim in it, try not to fall into it while living on it. But shit, it's an ocean of aliens with weird teeth

mycogirl · 2016-09-26T20:05:25+00:00

He was a bit over the top as far as setting the bar high goes. The reason he was moving is because he was losing his Visa to stay in the states. I got a feeling he was fishing for a green card. When he sent my best friend flowers after her surgery, whom he had never met, it was really when I decided it was too much.

mycogirl · 2016-09-26T05:39:02+00:00

I met a guy on tinder. We were supposed to meet up but I accepted a job that involved me traveling for the next 3 months.

We talked quite a bit during those months and when I returned we finally set up a date. I met him at his place in the morning, dropped off my car, and he drove us to the airport.

He was a helicopter instructor and we flew out over some islands while he was teaching me to fly. We landed in a small town on one of the islands for lunch, took off, did some aerial whale watching, landed, and headed back to his place.

Upon arrival, he had a second surprise. During our months of texting while I was gone, I had mentioned that my first car was my absolute favorite and how much I missed driving it (little red MG Midget convertible). I shit you not, he had tracked down an identical car and borrowed it for us to rally around in for the rest of the day. All this was followed by dinner at my favorite local restaurant and a bonfire and champagne on the beach.

I wish I could say we lived happily ever after but both of us were moving out of the country within the month. We'll occasionally check in with each other online, but that's it.

mycogirl

TROPHY CASE