Laura wrote:

Have you ever made butter?  I mean sat down and put whipping cream in
a jar and agitated it enough to make butter?  I did that with the
kids I work with just last week.

Dear Laura,

Ah...the memories!  In 1973 I made butter while attending the Culinary
Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.  It took hours to churn the
milk into butter.  That was hard work.  We used the whole milk from a
local herd.  We used some of that butter for the rolls fresh out of the
over in our bakeshop class.  Talk about heaven...that stuff was
memorable.  We also clarified some of the butter.  For those of you who
still use butter...clarify it by melting it until you separate the whey
proteins and fat.  Discard all that protein (sorry Ilya) and refrigerate
the clear golden liquid.  You can keep it in the fridge for months.
Cooking with clarified butter is what separates home cooking from
restaurant cooking.

I no longer use clarified butter (used to be a staple in my home)
preferring to now use different oils such as walnut, peanut and
different olive blends.

Robert "NOTMILKMAN" Cohen
http://www.notmilk.com