Some things can’t be explained – My Kitchen Aid was butterfied!

Kitchen Aid mixer was butter-fied!

Sometimes, accidents happen.

Sometimes, I drop boxes of groceries everywhere.

Sometimes, the spaghetti goes flying. Or cookie cutters.

Sometimes, lids mysteriously fall off. Actually, more than “sometimes.”

Sometimes, glasses break and cups get stuck in garbage disposals.

This is not one of those times, though.

That is a pat of butter on my mixer. At this point in time, I hadn’t actually used my mixer in a couple months because I misplaced my paddle (yeah, THAT happens, too).

And because I was living in Canada, butter wasn’t exactly cheap….nor was any other type of dairy, for that matter. Don’t even get me started on cheese prices! But it meant that I very rarely used butter and when I did, it was in the tiniest quantities. My Southern roots were clearly disturbed by this and I put on 10 pounds in the first 2 months of being back in the States, just to make up for it, hehe.

Anyway…. the point is…. I don’t know where that butter came from. The mixer was untouched and my butter was rationed like crazy, so there’s no way I would’ve had out a pat of butter -that- size at any point. I especially wouldn’t have carelessly tossed it on the back of my mixer either! Butter was too precious for that kind of silliness!

So I left this mystery butter on my mixer for a couple days. I was curious if maybe it would slide off. Or more importantly, I was hoping that it might attract more random butter. Maybe my mysterious butter was merely a scout, checking out the area, and when the coast was clear, he’d tell his other butter pat friends that it was safe to come on down. My Kitchen mixer would become their new home planet and, after enough time, I could slowly pick off loner butter pats when they weren’t looking….

Clearly, I was going a little crazy without enough butter in my life, and unfortunately, this didn’t happen. I did, however, use said butter to fry some eggs a couple days later.

Hey, random butter is still fair game to use….

Margarine used to be pink! (Facts about Food Friday)

Blue and pink Parkay Fun Squeeze margarine. In the 1880s, margarine was pink to discourage people from buying it instead of butter.

Facts about Food Friday

Here’s a fun “did you know?” and no, I’m not talking about the pink Parkay in the picture above!

Back in the 1870s and 1880s, in an attempt to restrict the sale of margarine even more than their taxes and labeling laws, they forced manufactures to add pink coloring to margarine. The idea was that the pink would make it unpalatable and less desirable, and therefore, discourage people from buying margarine instead of butter.

The color bans started in big dairy states like New York and New Jersey (no surprise, right?) and even created an entire underground market for bootleg colored margarine (yes, that was a real thing) and food coloring capsules so that consumers could need in the yellow color into their margarine to make it look more like butter again.

Between the color rules and the taxes, it cut margarine sales down immensely (to about 40% of their previous sales). Eventually the Supreme Court jumped in and overturned the laws, but as many as 80% of Americans didn’t have access to yellow margarine (oh noes!).

Fast forward a little more than a century and Parkay actually intentionally released the colored Fun Squeeze versions of margarine above in hopes of making it MORE desirable and fun, so that people would be more likely to buy it. Everything cycles back around eventually, huh?

~Edit~ Oh, and I don’t think Fun Squeeze is still sold in stores, but you can get it on Ebay! http://www.ebay.com/itm/PARKAY-FUN-SQUEEZE-SHOCKING-PINK-MARGARINE-BOTTLE-/190155035809

Maxim names Butter Queen Paula Deen s*xiest female chef- Wait, what?

Paula Deen riding a butter bull

Nablopomo – TV Show

Really? More favorites tv-related stuff? Meh. I’m not a big tv viewer, but a recent article did catch my attention. It’s not something that I would normally post, but come on….is this quirky or not? ha

Check out the article here for the full, somewhat graphic, not safe for work or kids, description of why Paula took top spot.

“Just imagining the slippery, sloppy butter….. hungry for a bacon-wrapped, beer batter-fried stick of butter ….”

Okay Maxim, time to turn off the Food Network and walk away…