Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Butter Meltdown...

Step 1: Get cream out of the freezer to thaw.

Step 2: Borrow KichenAid stand mixer from SIL to try out.

Step 3: Let cream go round and round in the mixer. After an hour, it still hadn't made butter.

Step 4: Give up and put the now "whipped cream" into the VitaMix (as done before). Butter separates almost immediately.

Step 5: Proceed to mold butter together, realize it probably needed to mix a little more, but too late. Start rinsing butter out in the ice water.

Step 6: Plop the butter back into a bowl to get new ice water. Buttermilk still left in the bowl, splashes all over me, all over the counters, all over the cabinets.

Step 7: Complete and total meltdown. Crying. Hysterical crying. Screaming about how I can't do this. Hubby comes out and tries to be encouraging, but I'm past the point of responding to encouragement. Tears streamed down my face. I fell to my knees at the kitchen sink and just bawled my eyes out. Not to mention my DD had woken up from her nap and I knew could hear me screaming and crying while she played in her crib. I hate that she could hear me fall apart like that.

Why do I think I can do this? I mess it up. ALL. THE. TIME. I drop things. I put the wrong ingredients in. I mix up the jars of sour cream and buttermilk. I spill things.

I'm not a natural. I don't know what I'm doing. I have to spend at least half my day reading and researching and I still get it wrong. I feel like a failure. I want to be good at this. I want to do this for my family, for my husband.

Don't get me wrong. I'm totally committed to this. I WANT to do this. But it's been almost 2 months and I still screw things up all the time.

UGH. This will get better, right? Someday I will be good at this?

3 comments:

  1. I'm glad I sent you to read my blog. This happens to all of us. Everybody. Hardly anyone is a natural--either they learn when they're really little or they go through a steep learning curve just like this one.

    Some days, the butter just won't separate. Some days, everything goes wrong. But as time goes by, they get fewer and farther between.

    You can do it. :)

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  2. I don't do things as 'from scratch' as you're attempting but I've been cooking (and love it) for several years and I STILL mess up recipes. You'll find your niche and the things in the kitchen that you're good at and you'll find your faults too. But overall you'll find your groove and figure out what works for YOU so that YOU can work for your family. For me, I need Audrey out of the kitchen to keep my head straight and that's not always an option so there are times we have PB&J for dinner as a result and it's okay.

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  3. Thanks, girls. I am just such a perfectionist and hate to not be "great" at something right away. I will keep plugging along...it just seems that something as simple as butter should be down pat by now (no pun intended..."pat"...lol). :)

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