There are some kitchen projects that begin with careful planning and then there are ones that begin with simple curiosity. Mine began with a carton of heavy cream, a food processor and the thought, ‘I wonder if this really works? Can I really make butter?

Twelve minutes later, I wasn’t just looking at a bowl of freshly-made creamy yellow butter, I was imagining the countless hands that had churned cream long before electricity, grocery stores, or neatly-wrapped sticks waiting in the dairy case. For a brief moment, my modern kitchen felt like a bridge to another time – to butter days.

It’s remarkable, with today’s technology, how easy it is to make butter. Not only does it taste fresh and, well, wonderfully homemade it’s also satisfying to the soul to create something like my ancestors.

Historical Trivia: In the 1800’s when wagons headed west, the women would milk the cows in the morning before they moved on for the day, load up the milk in barrels tied to the sides of the wagons and the motion from the all-day movement resulted in butter at the end of the day.