Homemade Ghee

I don't know about you, but I have always had an aversion to all foods "diet."  

Diet sugars taste like chemically dirt. 

Diet milk tastes like white water. 

Diet butter tastes like the plastic tub it comes in.

Diet cream cheese tastes like paste. 

Diet desserts taste like their cardboard packaging. 

It just never made sense to me....

Why eat a bunch of diet foods, when you can just eat a small bit of the real food?  If you eat 2 boxes of diet cookies, you are still overeating...

But like every young, overweight girl, I fell prey to the media marketing of girls needing to have a body that looks like an 8 year old boy.  I ate my fare share of everything diet, sugar free, and fat free.  Those foods never satiated my appetite and always left me hungry and craving more food, as well as craving REAL food.

As I got older and started to have so many health problems, I always knew that my problems were somehow connected to diet despite what my doctors were saying.  I spent hours researching about all the harmful pesticides on and in our foods, the genetically modifying of crops, the chemicals, preservatives, and additives that are in so many of our foods.  I really started becoming mindful of what we ate, choosing organic over conventional, as well as drastically reducing the amount of processed foods we ate.  We started eating real foods. 

I found that eating a small portion of real food kept me energized and full for much longer than a large portion of diet foods.

One thing I have always had a love affair with was butter.  Real butter.  

Mmmmmmm!  

Paula Deen has it right on the butter part for sure. 

Butter became a staple in my kitchen once again.  However, it was used in moderation, just like everything else.

But then the food allergy/intolerance tests came back and I had to eliminate dairy.  

I have felt so much better since going dairy-free, and can definitely tell a difference in my overall health if I have dairy.  Bleh.   I miss cheese and butter. 

But then I hear about ghee. It's butter that has been clarified, thus removing all the milk solids which contain the lactose and casein, which most people are allergic and intolerant to.  I gave it a try and was happy to find out that I was able to tolerate it.  YAY!!!  I could have butter back.  

If you have ever purchased organic ghee from grass-fed cows, you know it can be pretty expensive.  I was paying $7 for an 8 ounce jar at the grocery store.  Ouch! I figured that it couldn't be that hard to make, so I found a recipe and tried it on my own.  

It turned out just as good as the store bought stuff!  I was so happy.  

I followed the DIY Ghee Recipe from Nom Nom Paleo exactly and will make it over and over again. Because I'm so busy and ghee keeps for a long time, I tripled the recipe, using 3 pounds of organic grass-fed butter.  It make a quart size jar, plus filled up my little 8 ounce jar from the grocery store.

Supposedly, you can keep it at room temperature, but I keep it in the fridge just to be safe. 

I was surprised how easy it was to make.  This is one DIY project that is worth the minimal time and effort!