Butter

Dear Polly: Can you tell me how to make whipped butter like the butter they serve in pancake houses? - Carole Whipped butter couldn't be easier! Simply place a stick of softened (room temperature) butter in a deep bowl and whip with an electric mixer until light, fluffy and greater in volume. Scoop into an attractive serving bowl to serve with pancakes or waffles, hot biscuits, fresh bread or anything else that is enhanced by the smooth savor of fresh butter. It may be stored in the refrigerator in a tightly covered bowl.

At the same time that you're buttering your morning toast, you also may be slathering it with the tiny amounts of the flame retardant PBDE. In a study to be published Tuesday in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, researchers found that each of 10 samples of butter purchased at five Dallas grocery stores contained various types of PBDEs. Although it was a limited sampling and the amounts were small enough to be measured in trillionths of a gram per gram of butter, lead researcher Arnold Schecter said the concentration was the highest found so far in food.

Talk about clogged arteries. Hundreds of pounds of butter and 200 gallons of diesel oil shut down northbound lanes of the New Jersey Turnpike in Camden County for about six hours yesterday following an early-morning pileup involving five tractor-trailers and a van. The crash occurred shortly after 2:30 a.m. when one of the big rigs, driven by an 82-year-old, failed to slow down in a construction zone between Exits 3 and 4 in Cherry Hill,...

In the beginning, there was butter. And it was good. But it was high in fat. So scientists came up with margarine and an assortment of butterlike spreads. And while they might not have been as good, they were billed as being more healthful. Yet another product has been tossed into the frying pan. It's called Plugra, made by Keller's, of Harleysville, Montgomery County. If you can believe it, it's a butter, and - we Promise - it has even more fat than conventional butter.

KRAFT TOUCH OF BUTTER SPREAD. 99 cents per box of four quarter-pound sticks, $1.01 per 1-pound bowl, $1.06 per two 8-ounce cups or $2.29 per 3-pound tub. BONNIE: If you use margarine but miss the flavor of butter, Kraft's new Touch of Butter may be for you. Basically, this is margarine with just a touch of butter added for flavoring. Such a little amount of butter was used, in fact, that Touch of Butter contains artificial flavors and no cholesterol. I've always preferred naturally made butter (used in modest amounts)

Having a taste for Butter depends almost entirely on whether you find the comedy of condescension and ridicule a hoot or a very cheap form of amusement. This satire on self-righteous, homily-spewing red-staters and the cutthroat world of butter carving trades almost entirely on making jokes at the expense of others, most of all an obsessed, venal woman who could pass as a kissin' cousin to two prominent female Republicans of the preprimary season ( Butter was made in 2011). Decidedly not a critics' picture, Butter brandishes the sort of snide humor that plays well with a large public, but a fair slice of that audience could well be put off by the whiff of an agenda that's hard to miss.

One of the first things I learned as a chef was how dangerous my job could be to my figure. After a few forays into a new size range for my wardrobe, I knew I had to get a handle on my eating. I still indulged in rich foods, but I became very selective. I wouldn't waste calories on mediocrity. If I was going to eat it, it would have to be real. I used pure butter, never shortening or margarine, for anything I baked. Nothing else tastes like butter, performs like butter or holds flavors better than butter.

Those letters BYOB at the bottom of an invitation mean Bring Your Own Bottle. Usually. But in the case of one local restaurant, they might have meant Bring Your Own Butter. For a few months during the summer and fall, it was virtually impossible to get butter for your bread at Apropos, a Center City restaurant. Maybe if you stood on your head and whistled, or threatened a server with a butter knife, you'd get some. But for the most part, when it came to withholding butter from its patrons, the restaurant stood pat. What Apropos did serve was olive oil. Good, rich-tasting, 100 percent extra-virgin olive oil. Dip the hard-crusted bread in the oil, sprinkle it with some pepper and herbs, and enjoy.

Try this for a recipe: Take 10 Tibetan monks. Seat them in the Hall of Oceanic Birds at the American Museum of Natural History with tubs of ice water. Give them 40 kilos of slightly rancid "yak butter," brightly colored with paint. Turn off the heat, and mix together for one month. Then sprinkle liberally with spiritual homilies from actor Richard Gere, and voila! - exquisitely detailed butter sculptures depicting various Buddhist deities and lotus-flower ornaments.

Ceramics. Wedgwood. Perfume bottles. All on display at the recent Greater Philadelphia Antiques Show at the Fort Washington Expo Center. Except that the $230,000 worth of ceramics, scheduled for sale at the show, ended up who knows where. The van in which they were toted was found emptied and burned in Philadelphia. The Wedgwood butter pats, once used to make fancy designs on pieces of butter, were taken from Booth 310. In the booth right across the aisle, two perfume bottles, each overlaid with silver, also disappeared.