Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Trump should be leading, not lying.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. do not touch it.”

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

No one could have predicted…

Prediction: the gop will rethink its strategy of boycotting future committees.

If you voted for Trump, you don’t get to speak about ethics, morals, or rule of law.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

We know you aren’t a Democrat but since you seem confused let me help you.

If you don’t believe freedom is for everybody, then the thing you love isn’t freedom, it is privilege.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

When you’re in more danger from the IDF than from Russian shelling, that’s really bad.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

You are here: Home / Food & Recipes / Food / Butter Lamb!

Butter Lamb!

by | 99 Comments

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Here’s this year’s edition of my locally famous butter lamb:

Lamb made of butter for Easter table

As usual, I see only the flaws. For one thing, this one looks a bit haughty, perhaps owing to the camera angle. (Our kid has a saying: The higher the camera angle, the lower the self-esteem…)

Here’s a Wikipedia explainer for anyone who’s wondering what a butter lamb is. And here’s an illustrated tutorial I did in a blog post several years back.

I’ve been making butter lambs ever since one long-ago year my snowbird in-laws found themselves without southbound relatives visiting for Easter who could bring a store-bought version from a Buffalo supermarket and were unable to locate one for sale in Florida. So, probably for 15 or 20 years now. The lambs are simple to make if you’re determined and patient, and I look forward to doing it every year.

Since Easter 2020, we’ve dropped off the lamb for a feast we did not attend, but tomorrow we are dining with family again. We’ll get to enjoy the buttery sculpture on Easter rolls firsthand!

That’s all I got. Open thread!

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  6. 6.

    Scout211

    Nice, Betty!  Your butter lamb is wonderful this year.  It looks regal to me, not haughty.

    And the view out your window is just gorgeous.

  7. 7.

    citizen dave

    A haughty lamb is a confident lamb!  May your family wingnuts be loose and soft-spoken.

    One of our favorite local restaurants has brought back their Easter buffet, so that’s what my spousal unit and myself are doing.  We’re going to party like it’s pre-covid times!

  8. 8.

    Kay

    He’s cute! Winsome.

    I’m not a butter sculpter but I am making lamb chops for six.I don’t love lamb but the people I’m having over do so I’ll just not eat the meat and no one will even notice!

    I’ll have the sort of sad, frost-burned tulips that I’ll cut as a centerpiece.

  10. 10.

    TBone

    I am hoping to finally tackle the NotMax-provided recipe for pickle soup (made with potatoes) that has been delayed due to circumstances beyond my control. It’s like vichyssoise, but it’s served hot and has lots of yummy flavors (dill, leeks, sour cream, etc.) perking up the taters.  It’s gonna be cold and rainy here all week, perfect for this soup.  I’ll dress it up differently on different serving days, with croutons, or mild cheddar, or sliced fresh scallions, bacon crumbles, etc.  I’m optimistic, don’t wanna serve the usual ham this year until I can get a good sale price.

  11. 11.

    Anonymous at Work

    You have to post it here.  Not the “right color” to post about it on “certain social media sites”.

    *waves at Elmo and TFG

  13. 13.

    Harrison Wesley

    Lovely lamb, and beautifully buttery.  I’m going out with some folks for Easter dinner at a Greek restaurant.  Although, since Greek Orthodox Easter isn’t until May 5, we may be waiting a long time to get served.

  16. 16.

    Barbara

    @Kay: It’s more for them if you don’t partake. That’s what I tell people when they express amazement that my son doesn’t like ice cream.

  19. 19.

    TBone

    Someone made a full sized statue of butter Gritty (antifa hero of PA) at the State Fair a while back. Senator Fetterman posing with it for selfies was 😍

  20. 20.

    Redshift

    Yay, butter lamb! I saw my local grocery store has butter bunnies, maybe for those (like my family) who celebrate the more secular version of the holiday?

    My mom is having us over for dessert (blueberry crisp, yum!) because various family members are traveling this week. We have new rabbits in our house, so we’re all ready for Easter.

  25. 25.

    David_C

    Testing – my comment might have been eaten. Like the lamb.

     

    Anyhoo, this lamb would be worthy of a display at Broadway Market or as a lawn ornament in Cheektowaga. Bought a butter lamb at Wegmans. Yeah, wimp that I am. Taking to my daughter’s place – she’s 50% child of Binghamton Polonia.

  27. 27.

    stinger

    See, I admire that proud ovine carriage. She knows her self-worth. Looking gooood, girlfriend! And there’s a bit of twinkle in her eye.

    Just don’t tell her what’s about to happen….

  28. 28.

    Kay

    @Barbara:

    We had mutton growing up. Yuck. Has to be stew because it’s tough so the scent just permeates- it’s gamy and musky. I can still smell it. Lamb at least isn’t stinky but I can’t eat it.

  29. 29.

    FastEdD

    Oh joy! Butter lamb makes this weekend worth looking forward to! Found a small ham (for one) since no fam left to share it with. De Dawg likes it though. Raining so much here in SoCal that Dawg gets soaked. He doesn’t like to get his piggies wet.

  31. 31.

    Drunkenhausfrau

    To me, this lamb seems to be thinking “serenity now!”  I can relate.  Enjoy!

  33. 33.

    Doc Sardonic

    I enjoy lamb, can tolerate mutton when done in stew form only. My only requirement for either is that I cook it outside. Much like cooking fish or fried food, the smell can linger for days and that I just can’t abide.

    Betty, the lamb looks great, has kind of a regal bearing to him.

  34. 34.

    Eyeroller

    @Tim in SF: Yeah, I was going to comment myself that Betty C’s at least looks like a lamb.  The Wikipedia picture (as I’m typing this, as we know, they can change) is a butter chicken.

  36. 36.

    narya

    The puff pastry feels nice . . . we’ll see how it bakes up. I haven’t made it in a long damn time–once you get the butter in for the first turn, it determines how the rest of it will go, pretty much. I can’t readily describe what that feeling is, though; it’s truly embodied knowledge. That might have been another subject I would have written about, had I continued in academia

    ETA: love the lamb, and love that you do this every year and share with us!

  37. 37.

    JPL

    The clerk at Walgreen’s asked me if I was going to church tomorrow, HON!   Not sure what offended me most, the HON or the church question.   I simply said that I planned on attending the great Easter Egg Hunt.

    bah humbug

  38. 38.

    SiubhanDuinne

    This just might be your finest lamb yet, BC!

    Somewhere in my overflowing and disorganized photos, there’s an image of about a dozen butter lamb fails (probably saw it on FB and saved it). It makes me laugh whenever I come across it.. If I ever find it again, I’ll send it along; it’s a great tutorial of what not to do!

  41. 41.

    CaseyL

    That is a lamb on a mountaintop, who climbers toil to see and ask questions about the Meaning of Life.

    Gnomic lamb.

  44. 44.

    trollhattan

    Life got better (butter-better). Now, I expect the sun to come out, as California law and common decency dictate. Enough with the wet stuff, already.

  50. 50.

    eclare

    Yay, Butter Lamb!  Thank you for the annual photo treat, Ms. Cracker.  I am meeting relatives tomorrow for lunch at a nice restaurant, and I am hoping that, as usual, we talk about tv shows and not politics.  I finished the latest GBBS a few days ago, so I am good to go.

  51. 51.

    JPL

    @rikyrah: I saw that and it doesn’t make sense.   It wouldn’t take that long to redraw the map.  Why reward Nancy Mace because of their incompetance.

  52. 52.

    mrmoshpotato

    Here’s this year’s edition of my locally famous butter lamb:

    Also Internetally famous.

  53. 53.

    eclare

    @JPL:

    That is an awfully intrusive question from a clerk at Walgreens.  I was at Walgreens myself this morning, and all I got was a “‘welcome to Walgreens” and “how ya doin’ today?”

    Do I look like a heathen?

  56. 56.

    JPL

    😂😂

    I don’t think that I look angelic, so probably not.    The first thing that I thought of is trump.   I bet she’s a supporter.

  57. 57.

    glc

    Re Maersk’s Baltimore Baltimore disaster:

    Regulators criticized Maersk’s policy blocking reports of safety concerns.

    The particular ship in question damaged a berth in Antwerp in 2016, but presumably there was nothing exceptional about the ship as such, and one should look at the management and the regulatory environment.  We’ve seen how this goes … planes, trains, ships. What we call “accidents” are really choices made about risk management and profitability in heavily monopolized industries.

  58. 58.

    Spanky

    @JPL:

    The clerk at Walgreen’s asked me if I was going to church tomorrow, HON!

    You should have ignored the question and asked her what part of Baltimore she came from. The “HON” is a marker.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    @HinTN: ​
    Great question. Since spring has only teased, with these extra blasts of winter through much of March, SWAG is we will have our first week+ of warm and sunny and it will happen very quickly.

    Drove to the Bay Area yesterday and the hills are fantastically green. During the drought they remained brown-gray all winter.

  62. 62.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Spanky:

    You should have ignored the question and asked her what part of Baltimore she came from. The “HON” is a marker.

    I was 5 minutes ago years old when I learned that every waitress in every Waffle House 🧇🏠 in the country is from Baltimore.

  64. 64.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: Watching a tennis match on the TV, I’m seeing a logo that finally enabled me – in a flash! – to figure out who you are!

    Bauducco!!

    Am I right??!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  66. 66.

    HinTN

    @trollhattan: I’ll be in Mountain View with a free day later in April. I look forward to seeing the green, although it’s a good haul to get to the grassy hills from there.

  72. 72.

    Another Scott

    Great lamb.

    Can I also say that I’m really enjoying your growth as a photographer in stuff you share with us.  There might be hope for me, eventually, as well on that front.

    Maybe, someday…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  73. 73.

    Gvg

    @rikyrah: I don’t think he created it. I think it wasn’t being done. There has been a public service loan forgiveness since at least the 90’s. It’s just the applicants weren’t being approved by the government under Republican President appointed department of education people.

    it’s in the loan orientation and exit interviews schools are supposed to give students. It used to be quite commonly done. My cousin benefitted by it for teaching, but that was under Clinton.

  74. 74.

    evodevo

    @JPL: ​
    Well, sometimes it’s just that they can’t conceive of anyone who WOULDN’T be going – call it naivete or whatever, just does not occur to them. Others are being brow-beaten 24/7 by their talibangelical pastor/media that they need to “spread the word” or they are falling down on the job of being a Xtian. Even nowadays when it should be apparent that most of the population in this country couldn’t care less (according to the polls that alarm the evangelicals the most lol), they are oblivious … I just say have a nice day, and leave…my co-workers, however, after long exposure to my bringing up awkward Bible passages when they start that shit, don’t say a word when I’m around lol

  77. 77.

    Jeffg166

    @JPL: I was having a nice childhood until I ran into those milk bottles. Then the catholic indoctrination wreck a good deal of my young life.

  84. 84.

    RevRick

    As silly as a butter lamb might be to represent Easter, Christianity is littered with weird, absurd symbolism that seeks to explain what it means.

    Jesus is represented by both a lion and a lamb. So, is he a lionish lamb, or a lambish lion? The cross, which James Cone rightly identified as a lynching tree, becomes the instrument of liberation? That’s crazy. The tomb, the end of the line, becomes a place of hope? Ridiculous!

    It’s all part of the inverted values which opposes all imperialism. When Jesus exhorted others to repent, he wasn’t telling us to behave, but to change our minds, which is what the Greek word metanoia actually means. He understood how thoroughly our minds and hearts are captive to imperialist ideology, since it always surrounds us. It is the conventional wisdom of how the world works. It manifests itself in all the divisions of race, class and gender, in all the ways we judge others or berate ourselves as less than.

    Evangelicals believe that the claim that “he takes away the sins of the world,” means God was out for blood, Jesus gave it to him, and therefore we get a ticket to an otherworldly place. But the biblical story begins in a garden -here – and ends in a city -here. The sins of the world are all the ways imperialistic thinking breaks us, turning us against ourselves and others.
    I’ve listened to several public atheists critique religions, and Christianity specifically, and they all seem to start with the premise that we have this construct of God, and then try to explain everything accordingly, but that’s really the Platonist view. The reality is all religions begin with an experience, which may be uncanny or frightening, and then try to grapple with it. Theology has been described as faith seeking understanding. The multiplicity of theologies ought to clue us in that we’re all groping in the dark trying to understand the uncanny experience of life.
    What Good Friday and Easter declare is that there is a God who loves us who does not seek to imperialistically impose God’s will, but instead empties the divine self of all power. God is not the crucified crucifier, but the crucified, who desires to break imperialism’s terrible hold on us, by offering us a new way to live.
    I love the creativity of the butter lamb, but, as we know, it will be carved up and melt away. And in that it challenges me with the question, “What in me, what in this world, needs to be carved up and melted away?”

  86. 86.

    NotMax

    Had to get my hybrid vehicle inspected this month. First inspection here when buying a new vehicle is good for two years; after that it is every year. Place I prefer to go does nothing else other than inspections, No appointment necessary (cash only, no credit cards).

    Guy took the paperwork and had a scowl of disbelief when he asked how many miles on it (I don’t drive all that much anymore). Insisted I lean over so he could stick his head into the cabin to check for himself. 963 miles in two years.
    ;)

  88. 88.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @RevRick: nice — but I still can’t shake the feeling that when humanity was down to only a few thousand people some 70,000 years ago when Toba erupted they killed all the unbelievers to stop the “witchcraft” that was wrecking the weather so we’re all genetically inclined to be believers.  There’s no evidence that any supernatural faith is true.

    So, happy change of seasons, equinox, long weekend, what have you.  But we can rely upon reason to get ourselves out of bad patterns of thinking instead of faith or emotion.

  89. 89.

    zhena gogolia

    @RevRick:

    Very nice message. I think instead of

    God is not the crucified, but the crucified

    the first phrase should be “God is not the crucifier”
    Nice to read this in preparation for Easter.

  90. 90.

    zhena gogolia

    @Chacal Charles Calthrop: I believe a large part of RevRick’s comment addresses the “there is no evidence” issue. Of course there is no evidence. If there were evidence, faith wouldn’t amount to much.

  91. 91.

    Chacal Charles Calthrop

    @zhena gogolia: then that itself is more proof that “faith” is just a variety of conspiracy theory, where the lack of evidence is itself just more evidence.

    However, I appreciate what RevRik wrote, and agree that it’s a lovely way to look at the world.

  94. 94.

    sab

    My Catholic husband hates actual lamb, which my Episcopalian family always used to eat on Easter. Maybe this year I’ll try make a butter lamb.

    I canvassed for McGovern in Buffalo suburbs back when I was in high school. We won that city but of course got clobbered in the rest of the country. As I remember we spent a lot of time in Cheektowaga.

  96. 96.

    Chigail

    I am always happy to see the annual appearance of your butter lamb, Betty! May is melt in your mouth.

  97. 97.

    Jackie

    Blessed be the butter lamb whom you are about to partake…

    BC, I think she’s the prettiest one you’ve made – so far!♥️

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