Ghee Whiz

After reading the MDA post Are All Butters Created Equal?, I became convicted that I need to work on my butter sourcing. I'd been using my grocery store's Nature's Promise Organic Butter, at $4.39/lb. However, it's likely grain-fed butter, so as far as I can tell I'm not exactly doing us favors by consuming it (though it's still better than conventional butter). My mom picked up some Kerrygold butter (which is grass-fed, and much lauded by Mark and MDA commenters) at Trader Joe's for us a couple of weeks back, so I'm excited to have that as a stock in our fridge. Then I was reading the MDA comments on the butters post, and I realized that there is organic grass-fed ghee out there - in glass (not plastic) jars, no less! The conjugated linoleic acid! The Vitamin K2! I immediately felt the, "Want!" urge after reading all of those reviews about the incomparable taste and texture.

But...I'm still working on the idea of a $400 grocery bill for August. This is where my budget reality and my nutritional fantasy life collide. So I cut myself a deal: At the end of August, if I am still under budget, I will probably order some of this ghee. Though judging by the reviews, it looks as though I might as well be ordering butter laced with crack cocaine. ;o)

Kitchen Wishing

My kitchen is a pretty standard operation. I have some duplicates of a couple of appliances due to gifts, but all in all, nothing fancy. I don't even have one of those KitchenAid mixer stands with the dough hook attachment that some folks seemed to think were part and parcel of a newlywed registry. All that said, I'm starting to get a mental list going of some items I'd like to add to my primal kitchen. (No word yet on what I'm going to do with my massive, pretty much now retired rice cooker.)

• A preseasoned enameled cast iron skillet
• A preseasoned cast iron dutch oven
• An ice cream maker - because I want to make my own sugar-free/sweetener-free ice cream with organic heavy cream and real-food additions (fresh strawberries, etc.). Nothing in my supermarket comes even remotely close.

Of course the prices on the cast iron are astronomically high, but reportedly they are heirloom quality - lasting well beyond 20-30 years or more.