Butter

Is it coincidence that the word "butt" hides in the underbrush at the beginning of the word, considering that is just what we worry about if a smidge of fat lies upon our toast and don't eat too much of that anyways, carbs, y'know?  When did a piece of toast become contraband?  And honest to cod's swallop, there are times when I Like Plain White Bread Without Any Frickin' Fiber in it.  I get enough fiber through incidental ingestion from all the cat hair around here as it is, and could possibly yak up a hairball myself.

Thick white toast, buttered; thin Italian white with sesame seeds, toasted crisp and buttered; sandwich white bread toasted, allowed to cool and then buttered but the butter stays on top of the surface and therefore the toast is crisper on the outside, fluffy in it's inner core.  Butter it when hot, and it can turn soggy which is okay, too, especially with eggs.  If you want a small, simple treat, this is what you do with toast, whether is is at breakfast or part of an orchestrated sandwich: butter it right to the corners.  That's all.  Take the knife and glide right into each corner making sure you get it in there.  It will make such a difference for whatever else happens that day, you will remember that you took the extra minute to reveal a secret unknown to most of the cooking world, this thorough buttering.  It makes a difference whether sandwich or toast, I promise you will notice it.

I can't tell you the last time I had toast, the guilt at eating bread makes me shudder amid the other errors of the day.  And buttering anything has to have a hard copy signed affidavit of due causa.  Yet my mother fried everything in butter, slathered it on sandwiches before the mayonnaise, and used it as a salve when I burned myself which is genuine useless folklore.  The slab was never refrigerated neither summer nor winter but slept inside a Tupperware rectangle of translucent white plastic on the counter.  We all lived, and the ones who didn't expired not as a result of bacterial poisoning but of other, more medical causes.  I didn't know butter was usually refrigerated until I was married.

The quarters of butter reside in the special butter compartment of the current refrigerator, if softening is required the microwave newfangles it so.  I use it rarely except as an adjunct to the olive oil, for sometimes a buttery waft of creamery essence lifts the sauteed whatever into a song of happy.  When I bake, it is the only fat used: margarine is a Frankesteinian monster composed of oils, hexane, hydrogen gas, and a final bleaching to rid the product of a dank, greyish cast.  I remember that the margarine we got from the dairy truck came with a tablet of bright orangey coloring to be mixed in so it wasn't so scary.  It ranked right next to Starlac, that economical dried milk of the fifties pushed on modern housewives as a stand-in for fresh, wholesome milk.  Any kid will tell you what that stuff tastes like.

A bowl of popcorn tastes as exciting as church without the golden unctuousness of butter.  I use an air popper, dump the popped kernels into a large bowl and pour a melted half stick of butter in a thin drizzle so that I hit as much of it as I can.  Then you add salt, I use Morton's since reading that because of the sea salt craze, iodine deficiencies are showing again.  Now, laugh away, but I eat it with a spoon like you would cereal; since becoming a computer kid, I like fingers to be clean for the keyboard's sake and therefore like being able to switch back and forth between the two, without washing hands every three minutes.  Not having a television, I watch stuff online, so the laptop becomes my entertainment center while I fuel my inner child with popcorn.  I also use chopsticks to eat potato chips for the same reason.

Butter in a pan will give a grilled cheese a lovely crust, or frizzle the edges of small pancakes into a lacy chewiness amplified by the delicate measure of maple syrup on top.  Rich in vitamin A, butter provides zinc, copper, manganese, and more selenium per gram than wheat germ or herring; the fatty acids in butter assist brain function, skin health, and support the immune system.  So butter that bread, it's good for you; your brain, which basically runs on fat and sugar, will thank you.

The moon was spectacularly bright last evening, all shined up in luminous silver.  It hung in the early morning sky during the commute to work, still alert, a cold blaze of radiance in the ever-lightening blue dawn.  I saw oceans underneath pulled into lunar tides, ropes hauled, nets gathered, and centuries of people walking the dirt of earth; they were toiling, hammering metal, beating the odds just as you and I do each day when we wake and resonate, moving through life.  Waves of torsos, from Ichabods to Utnapishtims, rise and fall through the conundrum of time, coming round again in proof of faith towards eternity.  A little butter can't hurt.  Good night, sleep and dream.