Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

Everybody saw this coming.

People really shouldn’t expect the government to help after they watched the GOP drown it in a bathtub.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Republicans: slavery is when you own me. freedom is when I own you.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Anne Laurie is a fucking hero in so many ways. ~ Betty Cracker

Come on, man.

The republican caucus is covering themselves with something, and it is not glory.

White supremacy is terrorism.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Fear or fury? The choice is ours.

There are consequences to being an arrogant, sullen prick.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

The real work of an opposition party is to oppose.

Not rolling over. fuck you, make me.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

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Butter Lamb (Open Thread)

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Well, this year’s butter lamb* was a bit more…bovine than I intended:

I considered some reconstructive surgery, but my husband said it’s FINE, and in a few hours, it’ll be hacked to bits and consumed on pieces of rye bread anyway, so quit obsessing! (He was right.)

This is our first Easter without the kiddo living at home, but I made an Easter basket anyway, which we delivered to her on the way to the in-laws’ Easter feast. (Poor kiddo had to work, so she couldn’t come with us.)

My husband scoffed at my insistence on doing an Easter basket for an adult child, but as he knows, my mom delivered Easter baskets to her kids until we were well into our 40s.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!

*If you’re wondering what the hell a “butter lamb” is, there’s a good primer here. I had no clue either until I married into a Polish-American family from Buffalo 20 years ago and started spending Easter with my snowbird in-laws.

My sister-in-law used to bring a store-bought butter lamb down to Florida in a cooler for Easter every year. Then one year, she couldn’t make it down, and since they don’t sell butter lambs in Florida, I made one so that year’s feast table wouldn’t be bereft of the traditional symbol. It’s been my job ever since.

Reader Interactions

107Comments

  2. 2.

    Chet Murthy

    BC, next time, I think your readers might be … *fascinated* by a series of shots from the original (uh?) stick of butter, to the finished lamb. Seriously. I find myself wondering “how did she get the wool to stick up like that?”

  3. 3.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Oh, thank you, BettyC! Some of us, me included, had been asking and missing the annual Agnus Dairy sighting. I’m sure that sweet lamb is as tasty as it is attractive.

    Nicely done, as always. Happy Easter to you and yours!

  6. 6.

    Immanentize

    I heart a butter lamb. Thanks, Betty.

    ETA. Upstate NY slovaks all want lamb on the Easter table; butter or meat.

  9. 9.

    Aleta

    I love it. Nice personality. Your inlays must be proud of you. (Spell check is adorable too.)

  12. 12.

    Iowa Old Lady

    That lamb is cute as all get out. We just got back from our son and DIL’s in Chicagoland, where the DIL made a wonderful Easter dinner for us and her parents. We celebrated yesterday.

  14. 14.

    Elie

    Your butter lamb was totally lamby IMHO.

    Best wishes and hugs to all. Here is to a beautiful spring and courage for what is ahead…

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Betty, have you changed what you use for the eyes? The last couple of years, I think you used whole cloves. These are fine, don’t get me wrong, just not quite as starry.

    A FB friend made a lamb cake, all covered in beautifully piped butter-cream fleece. I absolutely couldn’t figure out what she had used for the eyes (and nose) — looked like black olives, but that seemed unlikely to pair with butter cream. Then I guessed maybe chocolate-dipped espresso beans? Nope, turns out she used licorice jelly beans!

  16. 16.

    ThresherK

    Just the neatest thing. And my wife is gaga over it, as a lover of wool, lamb and butter.

    I’ll have to redouble my effort to simply write her name on her next birthday cake. My food and desserts taste fine, but presentation is my downfall.

  17. 17.

    CaseyL

    OK, the face is a little broad – but still totes adorbs.

    Add me to the list of people who’d like to see the process. I figure you rice the butter for the wool, but still can’t figure out how you get it to stick to the body without flattening.

  18. 18.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    I didn’t make one this year, but I have you to thank for the 2 I did make. The first one, Tipsy, was featured in a coffee shop brunch. By the end of the brunch she was fading and tipped forward as if finally unable to hold her Easter Mimosas, hence the name. Thanks for posting your 2017 version.

  19. 19.

    Schlemazel

    We have a very authentic Polish market in NorthEast Minneapolis that sells butter lambs at Easter. Saves us a lot of screwing around though it would be fun to do . . . but mine would be a tribute to Picasso.

  20. 20.

    Ohio Mom

    I spent the afternoon cleaning the room I alternately call “the guest room,” “my office,” and “the girl cave.”

    Sandwiched between the papers waiting to be filed were some leftover chocolate Hanukah gelt (obviously it’s been a long time since I put anything away in there). So I guess I had my own little Easter-basket. And I feel very virtuous for having caught up on my paperwork.

    I think that is Betty’s cutest butter lamb yet. It has a lot of personality, very winsome.

  21. 21.

    Kristine

    My mom’s side of the family was Polish-American from Hamtramck and Buffalo. I wonder if her folks knew your husband’s folks?

    I have no way of answering that. I don’t keep in touch with family and anyone who would know is likely gone.

    Anyway, Happy Easter to Chez Cracker. The lamb’s a cutie, much nicer than the blank-faced ones they sell around here (far NE IL).

  22. 22.

    Schlemazel

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    We make a lamb cake once in a while but I cheat & use toasted coconut for fleece. I find as I get older convenience is topping perfection too often. But then I also have been making the lamb from a coconut cake recipe which is incredibly tasty and sort of hides the fact I am cheating on the frosting!

  24. 24.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Schlemazel:

    I find as I get older convenience is topping perfection too often.

    I understand. In a way, that’s like my philosophy of getting dressed: Comfort is to be preferred to stylishness every time. (I used to say, more succinctly, “Comfort trumps style,” but the shitgibbon has, among other sins, taken that locution from me.)

  27. 27.

    Betty Cracker

    Thanks, all! Next year, I’ll either take photos or make a video of the butter lamb crafting process. It’s not hard to do. I make the curls with a garlic press. A ricer would be quicker, but I don’t have one, and it seems wasteful to acquire one just for this annual task.

    @SiubhanDuinne: I used peppercorns rather than cloves for the eyes this year!

  28. 28.

    Mnemosyne

    Nah, it still looks pretty sheeplike. Maybe a touch of goat, but no cow.

    I had to take G to the airport this morning, so I continued south to do some shopping at the Happiest Place on Earth. My mom’s gift for Mother’s Day is going to be a couple of framed pictures of me and my nieces at Disneyworld. Plus I jumped on a couple of favorite rides, too. I have a new appreciation for how compact and walkable THPOE is now that I’ve been to WDW.

  29. 29.

    Felonius Monk

    It’s been my job ever since.

    Step into the breech and you become the repeating round. :-)

    ETA: Nice lamb. Wish I had some good rye bread.

  30. 30.

    Schlemazel

    @SiubhanDuinne:
    I keep thinking if I ever get to retire I may try to make it up to the grandkids and go whole hog on holiday stuff. OTOH fuckingtrump may end all of that

  31. 31.

    laura

    Me and the Mr. are just finishing a lamb roast, roast potatoes, beets, gingered carrots, asparagus w/Meyer lemon mayo and a bit of champagne.
    I’ll be heading back to the kitchen to finish a walnut butter cake to be filled with local apricot jam, an apricot buttercream and jam-n-walnut topping.

    It is entirely possible that my gallbladder could say no mas, but I’m standing firm on it being a-okay once in a pink moon.

    Channeling my gramma, aunts and mom this Easter.

    Cheers jackals.

  32. 32.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    2015 “Tipsy” and fallen at the end of the day. The 2016 lamb. Both inspired by Betty Cracker’s superior efforts, but I tried. I used peppercorns for the eyes and nose.

  33. 33.

    MazeDancer

    Incredibly cute, Betty. Seriously, if there really is a “store-bought” market for butter-lambs, you could corner it. Adorable.

  37. 37.

    OldDave

    @Mnemosyne:

    I have a new appreciation for how compact and walkable THPOE is now that I’ve been to WDW.

    True story. And the rides aren’t as obviously designed for maximum capacity (compare “Pirates” at the two parks, for example).

  39. 39.

    Suzanne

    That lamb is adorable. I didn’t really know those were a traditional thing. Super cute.

    I am still in allergic hell, but have had a nice day so far. Went to church, but not too early. Mr. Suzanne and I have decided to, well, maybe not JOIN a church, but attend weekly at a local Methodist church. We have been going to this one and a UU church on occasion, but I think we’re gonna go with the Methodist one, despite the fact that we’re both pretty EHHHHHH about Christian theology (neither of us believe in a God that intervenes in human affairs). The reason we like this one is that it is super-liberal, with a gay pastor and a woman pastor, and they are very active in interfaith organizations and hey do a lot of service work. And they’re nearby and have a large contingent of younger families, which is rare in the non-fundigelical contingent.

  41. 41.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    My grandmother taught me how to cook all the traditional Lebanese dishes. I baked a tray of kibbeh (had enough left over for a serving of it raw to me and daughters – wife won’t touch it raw). Did green beans-lamb-tomato-garlic-cinnamon stew over a mixture of rice and browned orzo. Also zater bread rounds (spouse did those), a sauce akin to tzatziki, and a big ass tray of dolmades (grape leaves stuffed with rice, mint and green onion) and a minty salad.

    All are stuffed like piglets.

  43. 43.

    MelissaM

    This athiest-raised-Methodist can’t fathom how regions rationalize eating the lamb, which symbolizes Christ. I always call it a little leg o’ lamb o’ Christ. But your butter prowess is strong and I, too, would love seeing How It’s Made.

  45. 45.

    ?eric

    Today, the great Allan Holdsworth suprisingly passed away. No musician more influenced my life and broadened my harmonic horizons more than Allan. It is a sad day for music.

  47. 47.

    Mnemosyne

    @OldDave:

    I thought 4 full days at WDW would be enough to do everything, but you really need at least 2 days at Magic Kingdom alone. Oh well. We had fun anyway, even if it felt a little rushed.

  48. 48.

    Miss Bianca

    Betty, I think it’s sweet that you deliver Easter baskets to your grown kid. I used to love to get Easter swag from my folks.

    An earlier Easter thread was full of sad family memories My Easter family memories are actually pretty positive – OK, well, there is that snapshot extant somewhere of me and my little brother, both with raging cases of the mumps, posing with bunny ears on our heads, trying to smile bravely with cheeks blown up like chipmunks’. But still…it was a less fraught holiday time for us than Christmas.

  49. 49.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Schlemazel:

    I’m sure it makes a great deal more sense, and is a great deal more fun, with kids/grandkids/great-grandkids. I’m delighted for other people to enjoy, but am personally inclined to be a bit “bah-humbug” myself. Actually not even that much energy — a holiday is mostly just another day to me. Sometimes that saddens me a little, but it’s mostly fine.

    That said, I have a lifelong fascination with comparative religious traditions, special rituals, folkways, the emergence of Christian holidays from pagan festivals, etc.

  54. 54.

    Mnemosyne

    @Schlemazel:

    I only have nieces and nephews, no kids/grandkids, but it can be a hell of a lot of fun to do kid stuff with small people. And they especially love it if you let them help plan and prepare, so you don’t have to do all of the work unless you want to.

  55. 55.

    Svensker

    That butter lamb looks like a butter ram, and he’s fixin’ to come after somebody… Totally fabulous.

    I am still making Easter baskets for my 27 year old son and I’ve added his new wife to the list. Why not — then I get the leftovers. Also, who doesn’t want mom to give you an Easter basket?

    Hub had stomach flu so instead of attending the inlaws’ ham fest (all natural locally raised porker, traditionally cured, sob), he spent the day sleeping, and I spent the day coming up with chicken broth, rice with soy sauce and ginger tea for when he was groggily awake. Oh well, got lots done around the house.

  56. 56.

    danielx

    Those who are more knowledgeable than me: my sister observed that Trump reminds her of Ricky Gervais in the brit version of The Office, in that “he is so obnoxious, and so clueless, and so needy that it’s hard to believe that such a person truly exists.”

    Appropriate comparison, or no?

  57. 57.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @schrodingers_cat:

    I’ve got all of the “time to table” stuff down to a science. The cold stuff that’s supposed to be cold is done the the day before, the hot things always arrive at the right temperature. I think everything was as perfect as could be!

  58. 58.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Svensker:

    The 22 year old insisted on a basket, and as the 26 year old stayed over as well, she got one, too.

    My one complaint was that they are freaks, and like to open peeps so they go stale before eating them…

  60. 60.

    low-tech cyclist

    since they don’t sell butter lambs in Florida

    OTOH, they surely don’t sell Cuban sandwiches and guava-and-cheese tarts in Buffalo.

    Hell, I wish I could get them here in the DC area, where we can eat the cuisine of a hundred countries, but can’t get regional food from other parts of the U.S. that doesn’t taste like a pale imitation.

  61. 61.

    dexwood

    Our son and his wife, both 31, get an Easter basket from us every year. Smaller, yes, but heartfelt from non-believer parents who like rabbits and egg salad.

  62. 62.

    Ohio Mom

    @Suzanne: That church sounds like a real find. Having a community of people who share your outlook and values can be such a morale-booster and who among us does not need that?

    As for not going for the god-intervening-in-human affairs, you know what is said about American Judaism: a religion full of atheists.

  64. 64.

    Kristine

    @Miss Bianca: Yup, that’s where Mom was born. Then her family moved to Buffalo, while assorted uncles and aunts remained in the Detroit area. I still have relatives there.

    Mom rooted for the Tigers unless they played the Cubs in interleague.

  65. 65.

    Miss Bianca

    @danielx: yes. Except Ricky Gervais has charm that oozes thru’ the part. Trump has none.

    Getting nice and toasted with my friend D on Manhattans made with rye and vermouth from local distillery and winery, carving little bits of ham off to snack on and toss to four-foots while waiting for the potatoes to boil to mash. Will we get to peas? Who knows? Who cares? Chocolate rabbit and home-made biscotti with yogurt chips and shaved chocolate on top for afters!

  66. 66.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Baud:

    If Betty had used red eyes, it would have made a great demon sheep.

    Oh yes! Cinnamon red-hots! CARLY!!

  68. 68.

    ruemara

    I had an invite out for dinner, but the lower abs feel like a swollen leather hassock and it’s cold & rainy. Tonight’s dinner is probably the tomato & zoodle soup, an apple and maybe chicken.

  72. 72.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @dexwood: My mom always gave me one, and none of us were believers. But she loved the decorative aspect of all holidays and always put kick ass candy in it. I shared them in the law school lounge.

  75. 75.

    Origuy

    @Felonius Monk:

    Step into the breech and you become the repeating round.

    I like that!. The phrase is “step into the breach”, but then you lose the pun with the second part when it’s written out.

  76. 76.

    madmommy

    @Mnemosyne: Quite late to the game, but I finally got to see Moana when it came out on Redbox. As I no longer have small kids nagging me to go see the latest Disney/Pixar offering, waiting for DVD’s is my lot. At any rate, I quite liked it. I am always amazed at how the animation tech has progressed from one film to the next. Now I’m even more miffed that it didn’t win best song at the Oscars than I was when it happened.

  77. 77.

    Mnemosyne

    @madmommy:

    I loved the music from the movie and was very sad that only the one song got nominated. I get chills every time I see the sequence with “We Know The Way.” Oh well.

  78. 78.

    scav

    @MelissaM: At least some of the devout believe they are eating the very blood and body of their god possibly weekly, so a once yearly symbolic consumption of the god in butter form seems well within the box of local norms and possibly even a stab at a more varied diet.

  79. 79.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Svensker:

    That’s just wrong. They’re made to be eaten fresh and soft.

    Everyone knows this.

    Those who prefer their peeps stale are just wrong.

  80. 80.

    madmommy

    @Mnemosyne:
    That was so well done-the marriage of the kick-ass animation with the great song. Sometimes the songs in Disney musicals don’t quite fit with the story to me, like they had the song so they made the story fit or vice versa, but in this film everything worked so well together. Visually it really was a treat. I rewound it more than once to convince myself that it wasn’t real sand, or tropical landscapes. I bet it was really amazing on a theater screen!

  82. 82.

    Mnemosyne

    @madmommy:

    Also, I feel kind of bad because I got into a giant argument about the movie with The Mighty Trowel after I had seen a preview, but before it was in general release. She linked to some articles that were complaining about things that the writers thought were going to be in the film but that I knew actually weren’t, but I couldn’t say what they were wrong about before the movie was released. It was a little crazy-making.

    At least I can say now that Maui is not the movie’s comic sidekick (he’s a reluctant Mentor) and that the volcano goddess Te Ka is NOT a villain, just really really angry for understandable reasons.

  85. 85.

    madmommy

    @Mnemosyne:
    I vaguely remember that thread. I would have to impose a personal social media exile if I had access to that sort of advance info, I’d end up spilling secrets and get in trouble! As someone who can barely draw stick figures the amount of skill and time that goes into films like this is mind-boggling.

  89. 89.

    debbie

    @Svensker:

    I’m watching a package of Peeps petrify. They just hit the one-year mark. They sit beneath a four-year-old package of cotton candy which is now harder than a rock.

  93. 93.

    efgoldman

    I’m a city boy, but it sure looks like a lamb to me. Definitely DOESN’T look bovine.

    Took mother in law out for Easter dinner. She’s 87, and really, really slowing down – much faster than my mom did. Decent place a couple of towns over from where she lives in middle of nowhere, MA

    Talked to granddaughter right after she came in from her egg hunt. Mom and dad strewed plastic eggs around the building courtyard, filled with jelly beans, gummi worms….. Plenty of sugar for a 3-1/2 year old.

  96. 96.

    efgoldman

    @Miss Bianca:

    Getting nice and toasted with my friend D on Manhattans made with rye and vermouth from local distillery and winery

    mrs efg has had a wicked cold all week. She has found that a (Bourbon) Manhattan is better than any drugstore cough suppressant.

  106. 106.

    Elizabelle

    Respect the Butter Lamb. Well done, Betty. Tres cute.

    @randy khan: WaPost: no peeps contest this year? Bad, bad, bad. Maybe they were afraid of too many Trump peeps. Bring it back next year.

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