Muffin Top

I am up late at night with the munchies. I got out a piece of white bread and butter.

No, actually, better than butter: Plugra butter.

Christine and Susan mentioned Plugra to me several months ago. In fact, Christine just plain called it “Plugra” like it was its own species, a different animal, from butter.

As I lick my Plugra-stained fingertips, I must say I now know why.

My mother used to buy margarine. In fact I can almost remember the first time I consciously purchased butter instead of margarine as a young adult. I was so confused as a child; the pictures of corn on the side of margarine tub - margarine which I called butter - made me think corn and butter were related, that one was a product of the other. (I know, I know, once I read Omnivore’s Dilemma, I’ll find out in some cases, they are!) A chemistry teacher explained it to me on a molecular level: margarine was a really a synthetic gray slab, colored yellow in the 50s because no one was buying it, it was chock-full of saturated fats, little v-like hooks that clog your arteries, when butter was actually much better for you and had, with brown bread, been keeping poor people in Europe or somewhere alive for years!

My tongue explained it more simply: butter is yummy. In comparison, margarine is not.

A few weeks’ ago, I noticed PLUGRA on my Traders Joe’s shelf. Here, all along? I’d thought. At only $2.49 for a pound, I didn’t even care it wasn’t cut up in quarters. I decided I’d try it and hack it up myself.

In a word: delish. NO, in two words, because Plugra butter tastes: like…buttah.

And yes, an excess of butter will clog your arteries, too, but if you’re gonna go, go rich and creamy with a side of challah.