There are many adjustments I’ll have to make living out west in a small town after having spent five decades in large metro areas in the Great Lakes region. Case in point: butter. Specifically the aspect ratio of sticks of butter. The butter of my childhood came in long skinny sticks, and I knew nothing else until we started staying here at the condo and buying groceries. Here, the butter is in short chunky sticks. This was amusing when we were visitors, but now it’s my life. I can eyeball a tablespoon of butter from an Eastern stick, even when it’s unwrapped, having learned from the lines marked on the packaging, but have no idea about these Western blocks. Not that I do that much cooking that relies on precise butter measurement, but still I feel confused and out of sorts when confronted with this weird butter that is now my only option. Or rather, will be my only option once we run out of the Eastern stuff we transported out here in the big cooler with dry ice.
P.S. I was amused to learn from this Marketplace article that the Eastern sticks are referred to as “Elgins”, the city I was born in, and the others are “Western stubbies”.
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December 23rd, 2015 at 1:02 am
I thought it was sticks of butter vs. cubes of butter. Having grown up with cubes, it’s always strange for me to come across a stick.