Sunday 10 January 2010

In praise of butter dishes ...

Its odd how not only do sometimes the simplest of things bring pleasure, but that they merit a mention at all. To that end I give you the humble butter dish. Ah the butter dish, when they went out of fashion, indeed when they were in fashion we cannot say, but like old fashioned ice-cream scoops there is something altogether 1950's housewife about them (in a good way). They are cosy, farmhouse relics from a world that never was, before fridges, the ghastly invention of margarine and possibly even worse, spreadable butter.

Just before Christmas my flatmate and I went to see Julie and Julia, the film about the New York blogger who sets herself the challenge to cook her way through America's first TV chef, Julia Child's encyclopedic cook book. Meryl Streep was wonderful (has she ever been anything else?) and though the film we really nothing more than a beautiful love letter to food and Paris, it was blogger Julie's belief that just about any food that tastes good, tastes good because its laden with butter that stayed with me. My sentiments exactly! You can shove your size zero, you can keep your washboard stomach, because there is absolutely nothing that tastes better than butter ... in your face Kate Moss!

I've just had toast with butter from the butter dish I mentioned in my last post. One word - sublime. Once you've had proper butter, left out of the fridge, from a butter dish, you realise just how vegetable oil infused the spreadable substitutes are, and you know you'll never go back.

Image courtesy of John Lewis.

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