At Least We Have Butter

When life starts to feel overwhelming, I try to remember the good things. Increasingly, that means (or includes) butter.

Ah, butter, that glorious concoction– made so simply, and for so long (historically). And yet better than nearly anything newly invented.

It’s the perfect combination of salty and sweet (and, ya know, fat). There was that dark time during the 90s when fat was the enemy and butter nearly vanished; in its place hideous substitutes like margarine, and “buttery spreads,” that, in fact, weren’t, promulgated.

Thank goodness we’ve made it past those days. Butter is back, and I couldn’t be more grateful. (As an aside, however, unsalted butter makes roughly no sense to me. I think, if you’re gonna go for it, you should be all in. Even in baking, a little salt makes it better, doesn’t it?)

It’s hard for me to imagine much that could surpass butter’s life-uplifting qualities. What is better, for instance, than biting into a piping hot roll with a generous dollop of butter on it? And our grandmothers knew it all along. I love Michael Pollan’s advice to only eat things your grandmother (or was it great-grandmother?) would recognize. Clearly, our grandmothers know butter. So I think we should run free and wild with it. Just as they would.

What could possibly make bread (and life) any better? Of course, bread is a whole other issue that I should perhaps avoid. Because now that butter (and fat) are back, bread is the root of all culinary evil. So, now our butter is back, but our bread is fake (a.k.a. gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, with at least 175 sprouted whole ancient grains that cave men and women would recognize). It’s an issue. But thank goodness butter is back, because nothing makes fake bread taste better than good, old fashioned butter.