Who’s afraid of the big, bad butter? Not me, and I’m glad to report that the butter tide which has been out in recent years, is now flowing in.

“Butter is back” proclaimed a recent New York Times op-ed piece which cited a large study in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine.

The article reported that people who ate higher levels of saturated fat did not have more heart disease than those who ate less. One doctor stated, “I think future dietary guidelines will put more emphasis on real food rather than giving an absolute upper limit or cutoff point for certain macronutrients.” That doc sounds like he has been listening to Michael Pollan.

We never abandoned butter at our house. I concluded that a product that tastes so wonderful and has so few ingredients (pasteurized sweet cream, salt) could not be a total pariah.

To find out how butter got so maligned, simply follow the money. Big corporate food companies knew they could rake in the profits by making butter a health threat and then marketing their hyperprocessed replacements.

The lobbyists for the food giants must be working on overdrive at the moment to refute the new findings. Expect to see lots of anti-butter attacks in the upcoming media.

Now is the perfect moment to celebrate butter’s return to good graces. We can all rush out to our grocery stores and pick up that delightful seasonal treat, the Easter butter lamb. I think I’ll buy myself a flock this year.

P.S.  Perhaps picking up your butter lamb at the grocery store won’t work if you are not a midwesterner. The tradition originated in Eastern European countries, especially Poland. If you are not lucky enough to have these butter creatures readily available,  consider butter sculpture.

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The following is a fictitious diary. Warning: Shards of reality may appear.

November 3- First snowflakes of winter, how delicate and lovely they look.

December 1- Hoping for a white Christmas.

December 5- One inch of pristine snow blankets the ground.

December 15- Big blizzard moves in.

December 24- Plane tickets home for Christmas canceled due to extreme snow conditions.

January 6- Snow Day

January 17- Ditto

January 28- Ditto

February 2- Purchase tickets for Florida vacation.

February 17- Return from Florida and find snowbanks higher.

March 2- $617 bill from plow guy.

March 13- Massive snowstorm, plow guy’s plow breaks down.

March 24- Everyone’s eyes glaze over at the word “snow”.

March 30- First returning robin spotted on top of a snow covered branch. It looks unhappy.

April 6- Stick “For Sale” sign in snowdrift in front of house.

April 12- “For Sale” sign buried by snowstorm.

May 20- Cherry trees in full bloom; remove “For Sale” sign from front yard.

November 6- First snowflakes of winter, how delicate and lovely they look.

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In addition to being married to the love of my life, I am also married to Mr. Bricolage. (Bricolage is French for do-it-yourself.)

Mr. Bricolage is the name of a giant chain of home improvement stores headquartered in France. My guy epitomizes that name.

In our house, leaky faucets get fixed,  scratched woodwork gets refinished, clogged drains are immediately liberated and faulty wiring gets rewired. It’s as if I live with a crew of expert plumbers, carpenters, electricians and painters. I marvel at my good fortune every time yet another thing goes haywire.

The house I grew up in did not function this way. My father was a wonderful, caring man, but he was not handy; tools defied him. One short story will explain all.

My mother asked my father to put an awning over the back door so we wouldn’t have to stand in the rain or snow when fumbling with the key in the ever sticking lock. My father bought a little assemble-it-yourself aluminum awning, gritted his teeth and managed to get the pieces in place. Next, he measured the space above the door three times to get the awning perfectly centered. He put the screws in place and tightened them to last for eternity.

And then the great moment came when he opened the door. Crunch. He had installed the awning too low, and our back door now opened only 18 inches. Several choice swear words followed.

Here is the most amazing part of the story. The awning was left that way until my mother sold the house over 30 years later. Every time anyone came in the back door, they came in sideways. The groceries were squeezed through that small space as well.

I would have married my guy even if he were not Mr. Bricolage. But what a bonus to be able to walk straight ahead through every door in the house.

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My  mother-in-law, Vera, sent e-mail messages before the computer was invented.  They were called letters, but I recently realized that she probably was one of the inventors of our modern messaging style.

She would write, “The birds messed up the window of the Maverick again this morning. ha ha”. (My mother-in-law was not a lover of wildlife.)  Substitute the smiley face emoticon for the “ha ha” and you have a classic e-mail or Facebook entry.

Another example: “I’ve been grocery shopping at 5:00 AM lately. ha ha”. The translation to that would be “It’s been 100 degrees in Tucson every day and I need to get the ice cream home early or it will melt.”

Vera also was in the vanguard of universal communication. She regarded every letter, to whomever it was addressed, to be available to everyone in the universe. This concept was a shock to me. In my family, a letter was an extremely private missive to be opened and read only by the person whose name was on the envelope. To violate this was the equivalent of a mortal sin.

My mother-in-law kept her mail next to her recliner. She would cheerfully pass around letters for her visitors to peruse. She would also include other people’s letters when she mailed her own letters to us. In other words, she had attachments. I quickly understood that when I wrote to her, I also was writing to the world at large. My letter would go viral.

When I started doing e-mail, my husband, an IT guy, wisely emphasized that I should regard absolutely nothing that I wrote on my computer as private. “I know,” I told him, “your mom taught me that many years ago.”

Post Script: Vera did get a Web TV, a gift from her techie grandchildren, when she was in her eighties. Although she had never typed in her life, she took to it like that proverbial duck to water. ha ha 🙂

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Sex, faith and relaxation are three things that can’t be brought on by hard work. Perseverance in these matters yields extremely bad results; in fact, no results but frustration.

I fail spectacularly at relaxation. Throughout my life various doctors have said to me,  “Learn to relax.” I simply reply, “I’ll give you a million dollars if you don’t think of pink elephants.” If they laugh, they’re hired.

Note that I am not talking about sleep, something that I usually do very well at night and which I know is vital to health. I have not, however, taken any naps since I gave them up at age two. Why would I want to sleep during the day when so many interesting things are going on? Unfortunately, neither my kindergarten nor my first grade teachers shared that view.

Some people excel at being low key and some of us excel at being more like the Energizer Bunny…we’re wired. I probably couldn’t work with one hundred kindergartners at a time if I were a laid back personality.

If relaxation were contagious, I would be in the right company to catch it. My husband tried to snooze in the shower one morning and, luckily, woke up before he crashed. He can take a little cat nap anytime and anyplace. And I also live with the best cat nappers of all, the felines with whom we share our house. Cats have elevated relaxation into a fine art, sleeping an average of fifteen hours a day.

Despite all these splendid role models, I don’t think anyone should place any bets on my chances of becoming relaxed. Vive la difference!

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