Tidbit Thursday - Butter Up!

I'm pretty sure baseball season has started.  I think I heard that on the radio the other day.  Our house avidly follows hockey and not so much, well, anything else at all, really. 

Unless you count cooking shows.  But I doubt you do.

I am, however, an avid follower of butter.  Real butter.  I know, I know, I will surely get a thousand e-mails now, extolling the virtues of margarine and the evils of butter.  But here's the deal:  the way I see it, there is nothing in butter that wasn't there several thousand years ago, when butter was first invented.  It hasn't changed.  What changed is that people are sitting instead of moving.

At any rate, I digress.

A significant portion of the time, butter, when purchased in full pound blocks, comes with a label that looks something like this:

These markings are a tremendous help in measuring this golden gem of goodness.  I don't know about you, though, but I don't keep my butter in it's wrapper.  My shortening and lard, sure, but not my butter.  I have a pretty butter dish for that.

My sister-in-law gave it to me for Christmas one year.  It matches my canister set.  And my frog scrubbie holder.  I love it when everything matches.

So here's what I do.  If you have a butter keeper, you may already know that it's easiest to remove the butter from its package when it is at least fridge cold, if not frozen.  That way, absolutely none of the butter will get stuck on the wrapper and you won't be kept up at night, fretting about the teaspoon of butter you wasted.

Or maybe that's just me.

I mark the butter as soon as it gets popped into the dish.  If I still have the wrapper, it is very easy to use as a guide.  If I have gotten a little overzealous with my recycling program, I eyeball it.

Not literally, that would be gross.

If you are not quite comfortable with that, go ahead and use a ruler.  Here, I've marked off every quarter cup.  If a recipe calls for a third of a cup, just triple the recipe and don't worry about it.

Message me if you don't think that's feasible.  I am available for cooking donations with no more than 20 minutes notice. 1. 2.

Tidbit Thursday - Butter Up!

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