Exception to Acceptance It is what it is, or is it? What about when “it” is a hardship? Whether the adverse event in question is illness, death, or trauma, researchers at the University of Connecticut Medical School deduced that there are shared emotional themes that individuals and their families experience when dealing with the aftermath. According to the study’s … [Read more...] about Exception to Acceptance
Food for Thought: Butter Storage Techniques
Leading up to the twentieth century, our butter making ancestors developed a number of techniques for storing butter during the warm summer months when milk and cream were in abundance in the era before refrigeration was invented. In Ireland the Celtic people would bury their butter in peat bogs in order to preserve it. These so-called bog butters were preserved by the … [Read more...] about Food for Thought: Butter Storage Techniques
Food for Thought: Butter and Food Preservation
Before the modern year-round dairy operation came about in the twentieth century, dairy makers were bound to following the natural milk producing rhythms of their herd, which meant that copious amount of milk were available in the spring and summer for butter making due to the birth of calves and the availability of fast-growing pasture. With this surge in milk production came … [Read more...] about Food for Thought: Butter and Food Preservation
Food for Thought: The Origins of Butter, Part II
Although the art of butter making started out in a somewhat crude and accidental manner thousands of years ago amidst our nomadic ancestors, it wasn’t long until butter came to be used for more than just a tasty byproduct of storing milk in animal skin sacs that were jostled around on the road to new pasture. In the sixth century, a Byzantine physician by the name of Anthimus … [Read more...] about Food for Thought: The Origins of Butter, Part II
Food for Thought: The Origins of Butter, Part I
Butter was invented by Neolithic people after our Stone Age predecessors succeeded at domesticating ruminants such as goats, sheep, camels, and yaks (cows became domesticated much later in human history). It is believed by many anthropologists that butter was discovered by accident when one day a herdsman, who was using an animal skin sewn into a pouch as a container for milk, … [Read more...] about Food for Thought: The Origins of Butter, Part I