Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this Monday, December 16th, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here at 430 today.
We're going to welcome in our friend, Amy Vetter.
She is with the Aging and Disability Resource Center of Central Wisconsin, looking forward
to talking with Amy and just a little bit.
Right now we have with us on our hotline, Haley Heintzel.
She is our 77th Allison Darryland.
Haley, how you doing?
Wonderful.
Thank you so much for having me today.
It is always a joy for us to talk to our Allison Darryland.
We have such a blast with this one over the years and the topics we get to talk about
while also highlighting so many of the great things that Wisconsin have to offer.
And this time of year, what better time than to talk about Wisconsin butter?
Absolutely.
Butter definitely makes the holidays better, but I like to say you should make it the best
holiday yet with Wisconsin butter.
Yeah, I agree.
I couldn't not agree more.
Before we dive too deep into it, everything.
Haley, you've been a little newer in this position.
How has it been going?
Have you been enjoying yourself?
It has been really, really wonderful.
I'm actually almost six months into the position, so it feels like I started just yesterday,
but I have been going for quite some time now.
I've been traveling all across Wisconsin and a little bit into the rest of the Midwest.
And it's been really great to be able to represent all of Wisconsin agriculture.
I've learned so much and I've gotten to connect with so many people, students, and otherwise
it's been absolutely wonderful experience.
Really good to hear that.
That's great to hear it.
And I imagine in your, you know, traveling and everything, one of the things you come
across is certainly butter in Wisconsin.
And here in Wisconsin, we are known as America's Dairyland, but what about Wisconsin's butter
production?
I don't think we get to talk about that very often, Haley.
Yes.
So across the United States, butter is made from simple ingredients, just cream and salt.
And if you buy unsalted butter, it's just 100% dairy.
And here in Wisconsin, our dairy cows make sure we have plenty of cream available to keep
Wisconsin's 13 butter processing plants busy, making Wisconsin one of the top two butter
producing states.
All this butter finds its way to grocery store shelves across the country with the average
American consuming six and a half pounds of butter per year.
This is actually at a 50 year high right now in the United States.
Here contributes to Wisconsin's 52.8 billion dollar dairy industry and supports Wisconsin's
dairy farmers and their families of which 99% of dairy farms are family owned.
Sorry, Haley.
I was just buying stock and butter real quick like, wow, that is a good, that's a really
interesting numbers and I don't think a lot of us have heard before that.
Thank you for bringing that to us.
That's really interesting.
How are we, are you using Wisconsin butter this year?
My new favorite way as Alice to use butter has been compound butters.
These are a great way to elevate your next gathering and use up herbs, cheese and more that
you have in your pantry or your refrigerator.
There are so many different flavor profiles to explore with compound butters at home.
Whether you enjoy cranberries and spice, pear and blue cheese or any other combinations
of toppings, they are easily customizable to what you and your family like to eat.
The recipe I have today is a zesty lemon and dill have arty butter.
I've been really enjoying it the holiday season.
That sounds really good.
Some ingredients, it is, it's really, really good.
Some of the ingredients include softened butter, ross, dill, have arty cheese, lemon zest,
fresh dill, a little salt and pepper to taste and warm bread or dinner rolls to put the
butter on.
Any brand of Wisconsin dill have arty cheese can be substituted for the cheese in this recipe
if you can't find the ross stuff in the grocery store.
You can serve this cheesy butter with seafood, dotted on top of potatoes, stirred in distinct
veggies or cooked pasta.
The possibilities are truly endless.
When it comes to using this too, we want to remind you that these recipes and more you
can find at alcindaryland.com, alcindaryland.com, we'll get that information out again before
we wrap up.
What is the best way to buy Wisconsin this holiday season and get that real Wisconsin
butter?
When you're shopping for all of your holiday dairy essentials, make sure to look for the
proudly Wisconsin dairy badge or the number 55 on packaging to identify genuine Wisconsin
dairy products.
Buying local is a great way to help contribute to our local economy and support Wisconsin's
farmers and small businesses.
You can find great Wisconsin butter recipes and more butter tips at WisconsinT's.com slash
butter.
Or like you said, you can head to the alcindaryland website at alcindaryland.com.
Another really exciting thing I have going on right now on the alcindaryland social media
channels.
I'm actually doing a 12-day video series featuring tons of great dairy recipes.
Some of them absolutely have butter as the star of the show, but all of them have great
Wisconsin dairy products in them.
Been keeping up on that.
It's great and some great stuff and interesting stuff too, so not your everyday recipes on
there.
It's really nice.
Yes, some of them are definitely out of the box and they've been really great to
try.
I actually made all those videos on my Thanksgiving break.
My family really enjoyed getting to try all of these different ways to explore Wisconsin
dairy.
I've even tried baking cookies with some cheese.
You'd be surprised.
They're very, very delicious.
All of those butter are really wonderful.
We had a great butter board that had like four or five different varieties of those compound
butter.
They were great for those mashed potatoes or steak or whatever you're eating with your
holiday meals.
So, it's a great option if you're looking to add some more Wisconsin dairy to your plate
this holiday season.
Hayley, I've been fortunate to get to work with I think the past four ounces and each one
of you guys, one of the things that stands out so wonderfully to me is the so much you
know going into this topic and then so many different things that you discover about
whether it's agriculture or Wisconsin in general that you get to share with us.
We really appreciate especially just loving information in general and there's some other
stuff that has come up throughout this so with this topic like how much what it takes
for real butter to be considered real butter and stuff like that.
Yes, it definitely has to be just that cream and salt and that is actually a rule that
was set in place by Congress several several several years ago and that was just a really
important way to regulate butter and it does it has to be cream from dairy cows so that's
an important thing to look out for that's a little bit different from margarine so butter
has that 100% dairy in it which is really wonderful it actually takes 21 pounds or two
almost two and a half gallons of milk to make just one pound of butter so it's a great
way to use up a lot of fluid milk as well and if no one's tried it making butter at home
is actually super super easy.
You just have to use heavy whipping cream you do need something that has a little bit
of a higher fat content in it so whole milk that you're going to buy in the grocery store
has about 3% fat and you're going to want something like heavy whipping cream which has
about 40% fat which is much higher and then you put it in a jar and you just shake it
it takes maybe 20 minutes of shaking it it's a great activity for the kids to pass around
while you're watching holiday movies and at the end you end up with a beautiful ball
of butter that's about 80% fat and then the remaining liquid in the jar is actually butter
milk which can be great for baking this holiday season if you're making buttermilk biscuits
or pancakes or waffles for Christmas morning so there's lots of great ways to use Wisconsin
dairy this holiday season.
And Haley one of the things that I know has been a debate in my family many times is
do we leave the butter out do we put it back in when to take it out you've got a nice
stat on that one too.
It's really important that if you're going to leave butter out that it is salted butter
because the salt helps keep the butter fresh even outside of the refrigerator provided
your kitchen is kept at 70 degrees or lower which is certainly easy in these holiday months.
Once the butter is softened it should be used within about a week or so but I would like
to say if you're going to be using any of those compound butter recipes you do need to
leave them in the fridge because they contain cheese so those need to be refrigerated.
It's a great note and as far as taking the butter out of the fridge 30-60 minutes about
a half an hour before hand gives you that smooth feel to it right.
Absolutely and it will be ready to go at any meal you need it for.
If you are looking to keep your butter fresh for much longer past the holiday season if
you over buy on accident you can also freeze the butter in original packaging inside receivable
bags.
Salty butter can freeze for up to a year so it will be ready to go next Christmas or you
can freeze unsalted for about four months.
It was really interesting that what you mentioned about butter sales not only being at an
all time high but the most popular months for butter which is interesting to me it's
such a year round product.
Yes but they really do peak in November and December each year as home cooks get ready
with their holiday recipes to share with family and friends.
In Wisconsin retail butter sales are 39% higher than average in November and 36% higher
in December which makes sense with all of those holiday cookies but butter really finds
its way on to the holiday table in all sorts of different ways.
This has been wonderful Haley thank you so much for the time today really do appreciate
it now how busy you are where are you going to be next I am all over the place this week
talking about Wisconsin butter I'm in Madison and Milwaukee and La Crosse and oh Claire
this week and then I am looking forward to doing some traveling on the personal side
to visit family I have all across the state so I'll be bouncing back and forth between
a condom lock and La Crosse and oh Claire throughout the holiday season to visit my own family
and then after that heading into the new year I'm actually really excited we are opening
applications for the 78th Alice in Dairyland those will be opening on January 2nd and
I'm really excited to be seeing who is interested in becoming Alice in Dairyland next year.
Yeah I'm really excited I think this is my year Haley I think this is not kidding wait we
encourage you to check that out and looking forward to seeing all the contestants and everything
wishing you safe travels throughout this holiday season and throughout all your travels Haley
and thank you so much for joining us you and yours have a great set of holidays and a happy new year.
You too thank you so much and Haley if people want to find out more information how can they
reach you how can they find out more. The best way to reach me is at the Alice in Dairyland
website at Alice in Dairyland.com stay tuned there'll be a lot more information there about applying
to become Alice if that's something you're interested in otherwise if you want me to come visit
an event or classroom there's some great forms on there to fill out otherwise if you want to
stay up on the day-to-day of what I'm up to you can head to Facebook and Instagram at Alice in
Dairyland I'm posting all the time. Thanks for the time Haley you take care. You as well thank you.
Will have more midday magazine coming up right here and all week long here we're going to be
having some great guests joining us on midday magazine be sure to be with us from four to five
all week long tomorrow and Tuesday we have the Wisconsin Rapids Parks and Rex Department.
Dawn's going to be joining us in part two we're going to hang out with Terry Johns from the United
Way on Wednesday Wisconsin Rapids Mayor Matt Zacharyl will be joining us along with our friends
from Wisconsin Rapids Community Media and we'll spend part two with the Wisconsin Rapids Family
Center. Thursday we're going to visit Rome with Gillian and have some fun with that and our
friends from UW Extension Laura Huber for H program coordinator going to be with us in part two
and then we wrap up the week on Friday at four o'clock in part one with Wisconsin State Senator
Patrick Teston and in part two we're talking Wisconsin Rapids Public Schools with Ron Rasmussen
all week long join us four to five right here on midday magazine.
