Homemaker Monday: Cooking With Butter (or Butter Substitute) Without Burning It!

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YOURS: This week's "YOURS" goes to Jerri over at Simply Sweet Home! She posts a really fun recipe showing how to make a side or main dish of potatoes in foil packets! Take a look...


I thought these would be great fun for me to have ready for the kids when they get home for lunch, so I am going to try this this week. These packets can be adapted for onmi's and vegans alike, so I love them! For Jerri's entire post, click HERE. Thank you so much, Jerri, for linking up with us and sharing your great idea. Don't forget to take the "I Was Featured" button from my left sidebar if you'd like!

Now...onto the next part of the featured Homemaker Monday post. Last week I said that I would actually be applying the featured idea for Homemaker Monday to my life and that I would report to you how it went. Last week's feature was Kristin over at Frugal Antics of a Harried Homemaker (I can definitely relate to this name!). She posted a recipe for instant oatmeal and I LOVED this idea, as we are trying to get away from processed cereals. I tried it, and here's how it went...

First of all, for the exact recipe, go ahead and click HERE. The first step was to blend oatmeal in a blender. Because I had a lot to blend, I decided to use my food processor. Here's what it looks like after being processed...


Secondly, the recipe called for quick oats, but I only had regular oats, so I had to make that substitution. After mixing up the recipe, I put on a kettle of water to heat...


...then poured it over the oatmeal mix, added two teaspoons of vegan buttery spread, soy milk, and raisins, and dug in...


It was delicious! Now, I believe that because I used regular oats and not quick oats, and because I used the food processor and not the blender, this did turn out a little grainy. It tasted super-good, it's just that the texture was a little off. I'm sure if I would have been a better instruction-follower, it would have been perfect. On my grocery list for this week...quick oats! Thank you so much, again, Kristin, for changing my life just a little for the better this week!

MINE: I love a good buttery taste in my sauteed foods just as much as the next person. I've been able to find awesome vegan buttery spreads, with no trans fats, so I haven't had to miss out on the rich buttery taste I love so much. That being said, it is hard to saute with butter because it burns so easily. A dish can quickly be ruined in a second by a burnt butter taste. Here's how I fix this problem. If a recipe calls for 2 tablespoons of butter to saute, I use one tablespoon butter and one tablespoon of a heat-resistant oil, such as olive oil. I also have recently been introduced to a new kind of oil out there, avocado oil...


(This brand is obviously made in Mexico.) I love using it because avocados are so good for you, it has a neutral flavor and it can be heated to up to 400 degrees! Sauteing things like this leaves the food with a rich, buttery taste, but the risk of burning the butter is nil! Here's one of my favorite things to saute...


...The kids LOVE this stuff! Just remember to warn them that it takes about 23 minutes for a special chemical in asparagus to get to the urine stream and things will smell a little bit funky during bathroom trips for a while. It can be a fascinating study for little boys (and girls)! Hope this works for you!

OURS: Okay, let's see what all of you wonderful homemakers have for us today. Have fun checking out all of the other links and don't forget to leave comments. We all love the comment luv!



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