I hadn't looked at the mail that came on Saturday until Sunday afternoon and smiled when I saw my issue of Saveur.

My mother also ate only butter and pushed the margerine off on us until we were about 10 or 11 and actually really noticed and complained. The butter always sat on the counter in a ceramic butter bell and I actually used to open it and take a finger-full.

When I buy my butter now, it goes right in the freezer and comes out one quarter at a time. This is because of an experience with rancid butter at my mother's place just prior to her passing away.

World's best pound cake, Elizabeth? Could your arm be twisted for the recipe?

Coming soon. (When I have time to type it in.)

I grew up believing in bacteriology and refrigeration and was always amazed that in some kitchens, butter sat out, uncovered in some, covered in others. What's the story, L/EL, is this a local phenomenon? Does butter have a secret antibiotic installed, or just the ones the farmers say they don't feed the cows?

All I know about butter and refrigeration is when my husband and I used to canoe camp in Quebec and I took butter (which I squished into a plastic squeeze tube that you could close at one end), by the end of the week the butter that was left had gone bad. It wasn't that hot either.

Personally I buy unsalted butter as the taste is not significantly different and I do a good deal of baking.

A humorous story though... my parents tell stories of growing up eating the oleo stuff that came with a tube of yellow food coloring to make it look like butter. Makes me shudder to think about it.

I buy salted butter, as I don't notice any significant taste difference for cooking and baking, but I prefer the salted butter for putting on bread.

I became addicted to Kerry Gold butter when I lived in the UK. Luckily I can find it here at Wegmans. It's just so much better than Land O'Lakes and other American butters. Plugra (?) is also wonderful, but not for everyday use.

Kerry Gold is great butter with a sublime taste (Wegman's is wonderful!). Yes- organic cows fed a natural diet yield better tasting butter. And yes, if you're using butter as opposed to the fake stuff, you should be able to taste the difference.

I for one look forward to seeing the pound cake recipe!

I grew up in a household with real butter, switched over to unsalted in my own household, but I had to have both salted and un- to keep my children happy. They learned to discern which was which by color, but when in doubt would ask: "Is this the real butter?" To them the real butter was salted.

I cut a stick of butter in half and always keep that much on a little plate in a cabinet; even in the summer it does not turn rancid. Hard, cold butter is difficult to use and you also end up with lots more (calories! fat! cholesterol!) than you do when you spread room temp butter. I have tried to economize and use the Giant brand, but it doesn't taste good and it has actually gone bad out of the fridge AND in. I've tried the Irish butter and some from the farmer's market, but those always taste rancid to me.

As a native of the Dairy State, I swear by all things butter. However, I recall that my parents would pack us into the car for a trip over the border into Illinois. Mother need to have her oleo because she read somewhere that it was "better for us." This being the 1960s, oleo was naturally banned for sale in Wisconsin. It has changed since but it was fun acting the scofflaw as a kid, albeit from the backseat of the car.

Ever since Grandmom used to feed me English muffins with Breakstone's Whipped Butter, nothing else has compared.

Used to sneak bites off of the Cabot unsalted butter as a kid. Now I'm a huge fan of Presidente (on bread).

Julia Child and her love for butter used to remind of my own grandmother...

I heard margarine can sit out in the open and not get spoiled at all.

Voodoo Pork's rule number 7: Anything that doesn't go bad was never good in the first place. Yes, margarine can't techincally go bad because that's how it was born. It just doesn't exhibit the signs of rancidity, because all natural components have been stripped from it, so the first indicator of its oxidation is mutant free radicals roaming around your blood stream that your body can't remove because they are molecules that don't exist in nature and therefore have no natural enzymes to break them down (thinking of trans- instead of cys- forms there). The same goes for processed vegetable oils that have been refined, cracked, fractionated and bleached -- all the natural anti-oxidants and vitamins have been removed to give it an infinite shelf life. Now that can't be good. When virgin olive oil gets old, you can smell it. Same with any cold pressed oil, such as flax or sesame. Margarine should not ever be in your kitchen or your body. Good butter from grass fed cows has natural anti-oxidants, Omega-3 fatty acids, and CLA, a natural anti-cancer fatty acid that regulates protein and fat metabolism. GIGO, garbage in, garbage out. Feed cows junk and you get junk milk and butter.

Sam Seesa I will steal your English Muffins whilest you are looking at the foot ball on ESPN tlevision! Woosh!

I've got three 1lb tubs of unsalted butter from Trickling Springs Creamery in my fridge. One is out on the counter, soft. The other is chopped into cubes for cooking and the third is "on deck".

I believe it is scandalous and a crime against humanity that only the French enjoy butter without remorse...

Many years ago, I read a science fiction story in which the food police were very real and all fat had been outlawed. There was an underground movement named for Julia Child that clandestinely cooked with butter.

Some day we'll have to have a Top Ten in honor of sf stories that feature food. To Serve Man and Soylent Green would have to be the first two. :-)

Finally JayC Amercains give the French our corect appreciation after we giev you a nice revolution hand and then woosh it comes back and revolts on us too. But it is well now. Drive the scraps of enlgish cookiery memory into the ocean and don't be like the planet of the Apes movie and embrace the New World of Butter that is your real liveration!!! Le beurre est roi ! La cuisine anglaise est pour des porcs et des Anglais ! God bless you JayC.

Love Voodoo Pork's Rule # 7 ... and wondering what the other rules are! Have some been referenced in this conversation before?

MD Canon: Do you realize what you have done by asking about Voodoo's other six (or more) rules are? Why, even now, I can picture him in the halo glow of his banker's lamp at his rolltop desk ... feverishly penning all of the rules. He may not post them here on this thread; oh no, he will save them and spring them upon us when we least expect it and/or when it suits him. [OK - I was masochistically, perversely, yet excitedly wondering about them as you were!]

Psych! That's the only rule, but thanks for playing. I wouldn't try that with OMG though, I'm sure he's got a more elaborate schematic of heaven and hell than Dante or Kevin Spacey. His blog has been untended for some time too.

He's become a mythic figure for us all.

My baby-mama got some Kerry's Gold butter today. I can't believe this blog got me to buy expensive butter. Looks like community college kids, daddy needs his butter.

(carefully tightens helmet strap)~ Earth Balance ersatz butter actually tastes good now that I'm recovering from a life of fine butters. At Whole Foods in regular density and whipped. Even makes smashed red potato of satisfying creaminess with enough butter note to please without needing Lipitor. Many of my onboard molecules are from Breakstone, Plugra and Kerry, but I like it...and this no-cow cold-pressed oil stuff is...(*ducks*)...VEGAN!

Elizabeth, all weekend I have been thinking about an early posting to this blog where you referenced that the blogmeisters told you not to expect much action on the weekends. Boy, were they wrong. This blog has been jumping no matter what the day of the week. I know though that the reason for its success is in large part due to your willingness to work what appears night and day. The other reason this blog is so successful is that it has become home to some of the most entertaining, amusing, witty group of wackos to be found. I include myself among the wackos.

Just wanted to say that and to also say that I am still convinced that Voodoo Pork is Owl Meat Gravy in disguise.

Thanks! Remember, you guys are going to have to carry the blog when I'm on my road trip. Do you think single OMG with girlfriend is clever enough to turn into Voodoo Pork with wife Amanda and different tone of post? Although it is a little like Clark Kent never being around when Superman is.

"Although it is a little like Clark Kent never being around when Superman is."

Funny how that was exactly my thought about the situation. But that begs the question - is OMG Superman & Voodoo Pork Clark Kent, or the other way around? Figuratively speaking, of course.

pierre ... your "whoosh" is both curious and intimidating ...

I'm flattered a little, but Clark Kent, he never gets the girl, which is okay because Mrs. Pork frowns on me dating. :) I see it more as blog-nature abhorring an owl vacuum. Plus my dark secret is that I had knee surgery (so un-Man of Steel) and have had lots of sitting down time that will end soon. My super power is knowing exactly which size leftover container leftovers will fit in and getting high scores with small words in Scarbble.

What??? You're not going to do road trip posts? How can you leave your "children" for all that time with no posts???

I will do posts, of course. I haven't missed a day since I started April 18. But how many I can do depends on whether the mid-West has discovered the internet yet. And I will have to get the blog police to post comments, a power I hate to turn over to anyone.

See if you can talk your bosses into getting you a wireless broadband gizmo for your laptop. The photographers have them.

Yes, if I had a laptop. I could borrow a Sun laptop. If my daughter would let me bring anything except one change of underwear on the trip.

Zoot alors! chowsearch you are killihng yourself! We French eat more butter cheese and milk than any people and have less heart attacks than your people combined with their horrible corn soy oil atrocite! Fine butter is good halth and also you will have a more happy life! Investiaget he science, it is true. You are deceived by the megacorporations and corrupt goverment. BUtter is life, get life!

It may not be applicable to butter, but a Frenchman of my acquaintance once said that no country with strong health laws could produce good cheese.

"country with strong health laws could produce good cheese"

Which reminds me of a really funny epsiode of Chef! where Gareth (Lenny Henry) had to go underground to obtain some unpasteurized English Stilton to serve to Albert Roux.
That show was a real riot!

You mean to tell us the Wonderful Mac can't take a broadband card? How odd.
(Once again the blog goes in an unexpected direction. We will take over.)

I'm sure it can. But will The Sun want to get one for a Mac?

Janet: "I'm going to use the U word... [barely audible whisper] unpasteurized."

I also liked the one where Gareth is in France for a cooking competition and is short a bottle of his secret ingredient, a top-notch English wine. He sneaks off to a small French store and the owner laughs at him, saying that the English don't make wine, the French do!

Unpasteurized stinky cheese...come to papa. If the cow/sheep/goat is fed natural stuff and no crap (hello, grass diet), that milk won't need to be pasteurized (and yes- it'll taste good).

It's not the natural butter that'll have you needing Lipitor, it's the hydrogenated (trans) fats full of crap you shouldn't put in your body, and of course, that other man-made killer (step forward High Fructose Corn Syrup) coupled with all the preservatives, additives, and "crap" that permeate food.

I used to love getting a biere and sandwich Camembert for lunch in Paris. I could never find Camembert here that compared to that in Paris. Perhaps one reason is that all the cheese here has to be pasteurized and that kills the flavor. A few years ago I ordered a selection of rare unpasteurized cow, goat and sheep milk cheeses directly from France via Fromage.Com. Expensive yes, but also VERY super good. Unlike anything you can get here, they ship it overnight. Oh yeah.

Patrick is right on target about unpasteurized cheese. There is a place that makes delicious unpasteurized cheese up the way in the Lancaster area. Organic, grass fed, unpasteurized, it's the perfect food. I get five pound blocks of it that never seem to go bad. Anyway, it's delicious cheese and the healthiest available anywhere. Check them out.

http://farmsteadfresh.com/

Perhaps one reason is that all the cheese here has to be pasteurized

Actually, I don't think cheese here has to be pasteurized if it's aged long enough, but it's still not possible to get young unpasteurized cheese.

you are a good egg mr. pork! I am missing home. sad whoooooooooooosh!

Today, I was at the Whole Foods in Mount Washington, which carries raw milk cheeses. The cheeses are aged at least 60 days, in lieu of being pasteurized, per the Whole Foods website, here. No doubt the selection pales in comparison to what you can find in Paris -- but it's bound to be cheaper than having to pay for overnight shipping.

Yeah but go to Fromage.Com and peruse. It's definitely food porn. They have a cheese library. Oh baby.
"How can anyone govern a nation that has 246 different kinds of cheese? "
-- Charles de Gaulle

Ah, Silver Lake. Don't forget to try Alegria, Canele, Intelligentsia, LAMill, the cheese shop and the gelato place across from Sunset Junction.

I hit them all back in November and would be interested to read your experiences there.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter