There are few perfect things in this world, and one of them is your common everyday pound of butter, cool in its box, printed in blues and greens with pleasant images – a farm, a farmer, a cow at a fence – and divided into quarters wrapped in immaculate paper as neatly tucked and folded as a soldier’s bunk, each section as easy to slide in and out as if riding on soundless rollers, like drawers in a filing cabinet, two two-drawer cabinets placed side by side, the files packed in manila, clean and fresh, with evenly spaced dividers arranged by a tablespoon. To press it to your cheek and then, with a fingernail, to carefully lift the triangular folds at each end, one end at a time, and then, without tearing the paper, to open the final flap and find there butter, yellow, pure, and flawless, too good to be true.
Photo: Rose Water & Orange Blossoms
Don’t tell your heart and cholesterol how pure and good this really is – tho it really is.l.
Yes, look at the French. They eat sticks of it, and they are lean and healthy. Butter is magic.
What a perfect paean! Beau is totally on-board with this–he’ll eat a stick, wrapper and all…sigh…
That’s FUNNY.
Had to look up “paean.” Never heard of it. OK spill it. These words just roll down from your mind instantly to your fingers onto the keyboard and voila? Just incredible. Awe struck.
The result of more hours than I can count with my nose stuffed between the pages of a book. I just love the richness of the English language….
When I grow up, I want to be just like YOU.
Butter is the real deal. I sat in a movie theater last night and ate popcorn with “what passes for butter”. It got stuck in my throat..WTH is that stuff, anyway ??
Grandparents were immigrant dairy farmers. We never had margarine/ fake butter in the house. It would have been an insult. Still is.
Sorry, I had to chuckle at your first paragraph. And do you remember 15 years ago plus, that margarine was supposed to be better for you and then research suggested a full stop?!
Go back even further…to Oleo. It was only created to be more “spreadable” than butter..You could leave it out all day and it wouldn’t spoil. Not far from petroleum, I’d say. Tasted like crap, but it did spread easily..I had it at friend’s homes.
I’m embarrassed now that I tried to convince my parents to eat that *#@% instead of butter back in those days. I guess it’s a choice of heart disease or cancer. Choose your demise with butter or margarine. I’ll take butter any day.
Me too!
Butter has no carbs, right?…eat as much as you want. It’s good for you.
That’s right!
Anthony was a dairy farmer – can’t wait to read/show him this post!
He’ll love this!
Back in the 70s and 80s my mother replaced butter for margarine and milk with some sort of boxed s**t. It was “new and improved” and supposedly better for you. I tried to bring the margarine into my home as a new bride. Didn’t happen and I’m now thankful so small concessions. Glad I didn’t listen to the egg theory either.
Butter rules!
It does!
having grown up on butter because my mom had lived on a farm and was sick of it, I now love butter with a passion……….
Did all of us on this string grow up on a farm? Amazing.
I grew up surrounded by farms. My mom and dad lived on farms–and I grew up on margerine not butter–because my mom did not like butter–I think she had to make it one too many times.
Now, that would do it….
Reblogged this on On the Homefront and commented:
sometimes it is the simple things that are best…………..
butter is magic. it is one of my favorite colors, ‘butter yellow,’ and i used to eat it from the stick when i was a child.
Memories, this brings back…
And don’t forget to leave the wrapper on before you press it to your cheek.
Laughing. You did that?
Naw…it was just my imagination running wild. But really, all this pressing the butter to your cheek smacks a bit of “playing with your food.” My mother would not have approved.
We grew up with a milk cow (Esmerelda). Mom patted butter into an oval shape, like a big potato. Not yellow in real life, but a rich, cream-color. Just part of life on the farm.
My grandma did the same (pat butter into oval shape). You bring back such memories. Thank you Sandy
And it does fill the knooks and cranies of an english muffin nicely.
-Alan
Oh Yes!
Gee, I thought I was the only weird person who took a certain secret pleasure in the paper packaging of those sticks of butter.
You are standing with us in a long line!
And maybe a loaf of warm, fresh, pristine bread to go with it?
OMG, Yes!
Takes me back to my Grandmother’s kitchen where the scents of cinnamon, vanilla and everything good was always simmering or baking with – what else – butter! My big shouldered Swedish Grandpa used to slab it on homemade bread with equal portions of sweet chokecherry jelly — he’d grin as he ate it. Ahh … butter!
I’m drooling! And it’s only 5:24 am.
Sometimes, the best pleasures to be found around are the simplest.
So true!
I love butter. 🙂
Oh, so me too!
My Mom was the Queen of Butter…