Remembering oleo margarine

Was the Wisconsin dairy lobby the reason we had to buy white margarine and mix it with a blob of color when I was a child? Then it came in a plastic bag and we mixed it by squeezing (still a child's job). Then finally it looked like butter and you could buy it that way. Now, they were right, it was pure garbage, and I'm happily back on butter, but that's the power of an industry. Artisan butter? Might try it. There are law suits.

http://blog.pacificlegal.org/minerva-dairy-challenges-wisconsins-anti-competitive-artisanal-butter-ban/

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/ohio/articles/2017-04-20/ohio-butter-maker-sues-wisconsin-over-enforcement-of-law

http://fortune.com/2017/04/13/kerrygold-butter-wisconsin-lawsuit/

https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2011/09/22/the-politics-of-yellow/

BulletProof coffee—new word

It’s coffee with a dollop of butter. Supposedly energizing. These directions sound way over done.  But since I prefer Half n Half in my coffee, a bit of butter wouldn’t be a stretch.  I’ve even tried coconut oil. I use decaf, but might try this.  The blender idea sounds good. Remember when butter was demonized? Remember when white margarine came in bags, with a color button so no one would be confused that it might be butter.  As a child, that was my job to mix the butter—it was great fun.  Then came sticks and tubs; then came the warnings about how bad it was for us.  I switched to butter about 2-3 years ago. Everything tastes better.

5 Steps To Bulletproof Your Coffee

#1 Make coffee: Brew coffee as you normally would.  Make sure it’s the right kind of coffee. [ad for a type], read this post to find the best coffee in your area. Use a brown paper filter.

#2 Pre-heat blender: Boil extra water and pour it into a blender while your coffee brews to pre-heat the blender.

#3 Froth: Empty hot water from the now pre-heated  blender and add the brewed coffee, butter, and MCT oil.  Blend  until there is a thick layer of foam on top like a latte. A Blend-tec or Vitamix blender will do it quickly, a normal countertop blender takes longer, and a hand blender works ok if you don’t have a real blender.

#4  (optional) Add cinnamon, vanilla, dark chocolate,  or a sweetener like Stevia, erythritol, or xylitol (this is technically a sacrilege if you use awesome beans, but some people love their mocha…)

#5 : Put on a satisfied look and enjoy the high performance buzz from your creamy mug of Bulletproof Coffee as you watch your chubby, tired coworkers eat low-fat yogurt and twigs for breakfast.  It’s almost unfair.

Why I switched to butter

In my living room I have a ceramic butter churn, patented in 1910 that was my grandparents. It looks like a small cement mixer and was run by a generator, or by a crank handle. My grandmother would make 5 lbs of butter in it, and they used it in a week (family of 6), but ate very little meat.

Due to advertising my mother switched to "oleo" around 1948 because she was convinced it was healthier. It was the children's job to squeese the package of white glop with the yellow dye button, because the dairy lobby prevented selling margarine that looked or was packaged like butter. But my parents lived to be 88 and 89, so I guess it didn't gum up the works too much. Just high blood pressure, colon cancer, prostate cancer and heart disease. Whether that was the margarine or the genes, we will never know.

Buy real food

I've started buying butter. It's because of the ingredients list on the package: cream, salt. Have you ever worked your way through the list of ingredients on margarine? Oh sure, it has zero cholesterol, but what's that other stuff? How do we know it isn't going to gum up the works down the road a few generations. The latest thing I saw at the market was "spreadable butter by Olivio" which was more expensive than butter but had about 1/3 the cholesterol. In recent years one of the problems with margarine was increasingly the fat content was reduced--that's done by adding water and that affects cooking and baking. I've seen margarine with a fat content as low as 35%.

My grandmother's butter churn, Superior, 1910 . It could make 5 lbs of butter, and that would last about a week. Grandma didn't care much for meat, but obviously liked rich cream sauces, soups, and baked goods. Although the farm house had no rural electricity, they had a generator, and that wheel on the side, although it could be hand cranked, had a belt to attach to the generator.

I remember when Mom started buying margarine. There was a huge advertising campaign for it, and it was cheap--and white. Yes, I think it was against the law (dairy lobby) to make it look like butter. So you got this white blob and added a little packet of color. It was the job of the youngest daughters of America to stir that mess up and then it was scooped into a dish. It had no flavor as I recall--just greasy. Then there was a big improvement. The white stuff came in a bag with the yellow dye inside. Squishy, squishy twist and shout. This was also a kid's job. Eventually, margarine came in blocks like butter, then tubs and somehow it was made to taste better. I still prefer butter, and since it actually tastes good, I think you use less.