Sometimes, buying cream in bulk is too good of a deal to pass up. For about the price of two cups (470 mL) of heavy cream at the supermarket, you can pick up a half gallon (8 cups) at the local wholesaler. But, unless you're cooking for a party, that's a lot of cream to use up before you hit the expiration date. After you've made a couple cream pies, clam chowder, and topped your angel food cake, you realize that you've only used four cups of cream! What do you do with the rest?

Well. . . I make butter. I suppose I'm obliged to talk briefly about how butter isn't actually bad for you and how natural saturated fats can actually be beneficial to your body and, maybe, even necessary for good health. I'll try to keep it short: In an earlier article on the topic of Saturated Fats, Cholesterol, and Heart Disease, I wrote about the misinformation concerning saturated fats (the family of fats that butter belongs to) and questioned the link between cholesterol and heart disease. Scientific studies that make a distinction between natural fats and processed fats show that previous evidence that linked fat consuming with obesity and heart disease may not be as straightforward as the commonly believed notion that fat consumption increases weight gain and the risk of heart disease.

More and more often, as studies are being conducted more accurately (by not lumping processed fats with natural fats in the same category of study), it is being shown that there is either no correlation between natural fat consumption and obesity and in some cases an argument can be made that the consumption of natural fats can actually promote weight loss! Cholesterol has been "feared" in the last thirty years because it is suspected to be an indicator of heart disease. However, as study after study shows that blood serum levels of cholesterol are less accurate at indicating risk than a meteorologist is at predicting weather two weeks in advance.

In fact, cholesterol is a fundamental building block of the human body necessary for proper operation of our brains, maintains a healthy digestive system, is a fundamental building block for many hormones, and serves as the body's main healing agent. It is in this capacity (as a healing agent) that has perhaps caused the most confusion in the understanding of how cholesterol works in the human body.

When large amounts of cholesterol are found in the brain of someone afflicted with Alzheimer's disease or who has suffered a stroke, is the cholesterol the cause of the problem or is it there because the body is trying to fix a problem? Many researchers are beginning to believe that what is readily accepted in the medical community (that cholesterol contributes to heart disease, strokes, Alzheimer's, etc.) may in fact be a misinterpretation of the facts. Cholesterol is often found in the plaque that forms on the interior lining of arteries, but more and more researchers believe that the cholesterol is being used by the body to fix damage cau...