2008-10-20 - 8:33 a.m.

...butter...

This morning I watched mt stepfather carve down our Canadian butter so that it would fit into our German butter dish. It's interesting to note that butter comes in so many different shapes and sizes.

Canadian butter is basically the same shape as German butter, but longer.

French butter is the same shape, only smaller.

I ate Irish butter in Germany, and it was a little shorter than German butter, but not as short as French butter.

American butter is the perverse outlier, coming to you in one long tasteless stick. (In fact I never realized butter could have flavor until I moved to Europe).

I don't remember Swedish butter. I think I wasn't eating butter back then (see previous paragraph about not realizing that butter could have taste).

I don't know about English butter because I've only stayed at Blighty's, and she uses Danish butter, which is shaped like a small brick. All other butter I've had in England was at B&B's or uni cafeterias where it came in individual portions (I used to think that they were way cool when I was about eight. Now I find those little individually wrapped portions pretty darned tedious.)

Now would be the time to mention differences in flavor. Open the flood gates of comments from K who is very passionate about unsalted butter. I rather liked the French stuff that had sea salt mixed in with it, and I think that popcorn is far superior with a tiny bit of salted butter over the top. But give me a fresh baked German vollkorn broetchen with creamy butter - oooh and I can understand the passion.