Butter Lamb

Butter Lamb Open Thread

by Betty Cracker| April 4, 202110:01 am| 83 Comments

This post is in: Butter Lamb, Open Threads

This year’s edition:

I dropped it off yesterday for my mother-in-law, who is now fully vaccinated but still being careful about gatherings because she’s a kind person who is not an idiot. She’s having Easter dinner with other fully vaccinated friends in her quarantine pod.

When I stopped by, we talked about how this is our second pandemic Easter. Last year, I wore gloves to pick up the sanitized cooler that contained her butter lamb, and I left it and a Cloroxed package of paper towels at the end of her driveway. We waved and shouted “love you!” from a distance before I drove away.

Yesterday, we had an outdoor conversation, and MIL expressed hope that next Easter, we can have the family all together again. I hope so too. But I think my husband will be nostalgic for pandemic-related restrictions on socializing and get-togethers for the rest of his life. He dreads big holidays.

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it!

PS: If you’re wondering what a butter lamb is, there’s an explanation (and tutorial) here.

Butter Lamb Open ThreadPost + Comments (83)

Silence of the Butter Lambs

by Betty Cracker| April 11, 202011:27 am| 162 Comments

This post is in: Butter Lamb, Food, Open Threads

The mister and I aren’t doing Easter this year since it’s just the two of us quarantined in the swamp compound. It’s not an important holiday to us since we aren’t Christians except in the cultural sense. The family gatherings were the point of the holiday to us, and that’s off for obvious reasons this year.

Neither of us is enthusiastic enough about the foods from our respective family of origins’ traditional Easter feasts to recreate them on a two-person scale. (“Eternity is two people and a ham,” according to Dorothy Parker. Smart lady!) So, we’ll have spaghetti and meatballs instead.

That said, not even a plague can interrupt the Easter butter lamb tradition!* My adorable mother-in-law lives fairly close by, but I haven’t seen her in weeks because I love her and do not want to inadvertently expose her to the virus. She’s having Easter dinner tomorrow with a few friends in her neighborhood who’ve also been carefully locked down.

I don’t approve of that, but it’s not my call. However, I figure since she’s going to have Easter dinner regardless, she should have a butter lamb. So, my mission today is to deliver the above-pictured safely handled butter lamb in a sanitized container.

Open thread!

*If you’re asking yourself WTF is a butter lamb, please see last year’s post on the topic for a link to the backstory, plus a step-by-step tutorial on how to make your own. It’s fun!

Silence of the Butter LambsPost + Comments (162)

Butter Lamb Tutorial

by Betty Cracker| April 20, 20195:04 pm| 170 Comments

This post is in: Butter Lamb, Domestic Politics, Food, Open Threads

What in the hell is a butter lamb? That’s what I asked the first time I heard of it. See this article for details — tl;dr version: it’s a lamb carved out of butter that is an Easter dinner tradition among Polish-American Catholics in Buffalo, New York.

I am neither Polish-American, nor Catholic nor an Empire Stater, but I married into that sort of family. In Buffalo, you can buy butter lambs in stores at Easter time.

My snowbird in-laws used to get family members to bring a butter lamb to Florida in a cooler for the Easter table each year. But one Easter about 10 years ago, there were no Florida-bound Buffalonians to bring a butter lamb, and everyone was sad about confronting a feast table bereft of butter lambs. So, I found a YouTube of a lady making one, and I carved a butter lamb for the family so everyone would be happy again.

Ever since, it has been my yearly job — store bought butter lambs aren’t good enough anymore! Below the fold is an illustrated 12-step process that explains how I make them, though honestly, the ladies in the linked YouTube video are more entertaining, but people have asked, so…

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1. Make an L with very cold half sticks of butter. I usually start with three sticks that have been in the freezer for a while but are not totally frozen. I cut off a little more than half from two sticks to form the L, then I scrape some butter off the spare sticks as “mortar” to join the two halves together.

2. Bevel the edges with a paring knife (except the bottom — you want that flat so it won’t tip), and scrape the scraps into a bowl or plate — you will need them later.

3. Grab about half a teaspoon or so of the aforementioned butter scraps, mold a nose, and attach it to the lamb, smoothing it onto the head with your fingers:

4. Now, take some of the scrap butter (or scrape some off a spare stick if you’re running low) and mold it onto the paring knife blade to make an ear:

5: Carefully remove the ear from the knife and attach it to the head. Repeat process for the other ear:

6. At this point, I usually put the butter lamb in the fridge to cool down because it’s getting melty, and I take a break. You may not have that problem if you’re in a colder climate. However, I keep the spare stick and butter scraps out of the fridge because those are the materials used to make the curly pelt, and I find that warmer butter sticks better.

When you’re ready to resume, take the butter lamb out of the fridge and load a garlic press with a chunk of scrap butter and press lightly:

7. Use a clean skewer or straightened paper clip to scrape the butter strands off the garlic press and apply them to the lamb, starting from the bottom:

8. Keep going! You can do this!

9. Eventually, you’ll end up with something like this:

10. Now, add some curly-cues to the top of the head:

11. Okay, almost done! Now hunt through a jar of cloves or pepper corns and find a matching pair. Make sure the color and size are very similar, or your lamb will look goofy. (Okay, goofiER.) And, voila!

12. I make my lambs on the butter wrapper, then refrigerate them for a while so they’re solid. Then I move them to a fancy plate and garnish them with parsley or something, as pictured at the top of the post.

Happy Easter, y’all!

Butter Lamb TutorialPost + Comments (170)

Baa-Baa, Mofos!

by Betty Cracker| March 31, 20188:28 pm| 209 Comments

This post is in: Butter Lamb, Domestic Politics, Open Threads, General Stupidity

Butter lamb! Here’s the finished product:

Here’s the shorn beast, before I used the garlic press to make the curlicues:

And here are the tools of the trade:

I think 2016 butter lamb was better. But it was a more innocent time.

Anyhoo, open thread!

Baa-Baa, Mofos!Post + Comments (209)

Butter Lamb (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| April 16, 20176:12 pm| 107 Comments

This post is in: Butter Lamb, Domestic Politics, Food, Open Threads

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.

Butter Lamb (Open Thread)Post + Comments (107)

Steeple Sheeple (Open Thread)

by Betty Cracker| March 26, 20164:19 pm| 252 Comments

This post is in: Butter Lamb, Domestic Politics, Food, Open Threads, General Stupidity

Nailed it again:

(Explanation here for anyone who is thinking, “WTF?”)

My only other contribution to tomorrow’s Easter feast is asparagus, which I will cook in the morning before we make the trip to the in-laws’ for dinner. I plan to trim up the stalks, toss them in olive oil, salt and pepper, and then roast them on a sheet pan. Easy peasy.

Tonight we’re just hanging out watching the chickens forage and checking out the occasional wild birds who visit the feeders and bird baths. That’s one thing I love about this time of year — observing the feathered visitors.

Other than that, I got nothing. Open thread!

Steeple Sheeple (Open Thread)Post + Comments (252)

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

Perhaps you mistook them for somebody who gives a damn.

Let’s not be the monsters we hate.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

Republicans in disarray!

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

You cannot shame the shameless.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

This fight is for everything.

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

It’s the corruption, stupid.