Hope Butter, a go-to ingredient for Twin Cities bakers and chefs, is made in a time-honored way: By hand, in small quantities. "We're thumbing our noses at the whole corporate thing," said co-owner Victor Mrotz. "You know, the one that says the only way to produce food is in million-pound batches." Mrotz and his spouse, Kellie, bought the business in 2001, rescuing a vintage farmer-owned co-op from extinction. Gene Kruckeberg, the creamery's butter maker since 1964, merges his skills and cream from Hastings-area farmers into a tangy, ultra-creamy butter that in five short years has become a dairy case superstar. About 5,000 pounds of butter-- waxed paper-wrapped, in single-pound bars of either salted or unsalted -leave tiny Hope, Minn., (south of Owatonna) every week.
Hope Butter is widely available in Twin Cities supermarkets and natural foods co-ops.
When the Minneapolis Institute of Arts opens the doors June 11 on its new wing, the museum will have a brand new period room. Not some haughty 18th-century Parisian salon, but a completely outfitted 1926 Bauhaus kitchen, designed by Margarete Schutte-Lihotzky for a home in Frankfurt, Germany, the first such room to be installed in an American museum.
