Hopefully you caught part one of my adventures in (somewhat) homemade butter-making yesterday. For the record, we don’t use much dairy here because my hyperactive immune system doesn’t love it as much as we do, so we use fresh, homemade almond milk and light olive oil instead.

But since I can have a little bit here and there if I’m super duper extra careful, I thought it would be fun to make butter myself and I’m happy to report it turned out really, really delicious!

It went really well with the (somewhat) homemade bread…

And the pot roast I made using some grass-fed beef we bought and veggies we grew ourselves this year.

And thankfully I didn’t have any allergic reactions, thanks to portion control and the miracles of modern mast cell medicines. 🙂

I learned the hard way not to push my luck…

I got to thinking about how I spent years pouring over ingredients and trying to figure out what was triggering my mastocytosis and how I had to cut so many things out until I was able to get a handle on my reactions. At one point, I only had about five or six “safe foods” which was, well, unbelievably boring and monotonous.

I’ve been able to add quite a few things back to my diet over time, some in larger quantities than others, but some things I just either can’t have or don’t want anymore.

Which is why we raise a lot of our own food (or hunt it or buy it from organic farmers in the area). If I was able to have more dairy there is a local milk supplier nearby I could get my fresh milk from and theoretically I could use it to make fresh, homemade butter.

Not somewhat homemade, but actually homemade!

Of course there’s the cost for that. I mentioned in my last post it cost me almost twice as much to make a pound of (somewhat) homemade butter using Land-o-Lakes heavy cream versus buying the same brand’s butter. Now I did get some buttermilk out of it, but not a lot, so I’m not sure it makes up the difference in cost.

I ran the numbers this morning and our local dairy charges $5.00 per gallon for fresh, raw milk. Out of that you can get roughly 1/4 pound of butter. So it would cost me $20.00 for enough fresh milk to get a pound of butter.

Ouch!

Again, I would also be getting milk out of that deal, so it’s not too bad, considering the health benefits of fresh vs store bought.

Right now I’m spending quite a bit per pound for almonds to make my almond milk and olive oil is incredibly expensive but I don’t really have a choice since I can’t eat dairy regularly anyway. Luckily the hubs is willing to adjust his diet to whatever my needs are and I’ve been able to adjust my cooking and baking to accommodate my special needs.

Still, it’s a shame that those of us who want to eat healthier or have special dietary needs are forced to pay such high prices for quality foods. It applies to medicines as well. All of my mast cell meds have to be compounded using no additives, fillers or “extras” which can set off my reactions. I just need the raw ingredients for everything from Tylenol to Quercetin with nothing else added.

You’d think that would be cheaper but it isn’t. I am forced to pay multiple times the regular price to have less in the end.

So in my case, less is definitely more!

More money, that is. 😦

Oh well, at least the butter came out great.

I’m going to share what’s left with family and friends who can eat it and hopefully enjoy it. 🙂