Thursday, August 27, 2009

For the Love of Butter

My love affair with butter started at a young age. It's wonderful on everything! Corn on the cob, mashed potatoes, chocolate chip cookies, and even plain 'ol bread and butter. (Though, truthfully, it was more butter than bread.) My father actually used margarine when I was a kid and real butter was a treat! Once I met my husband and his family I never went back to margarine and I became quite the butter snob.

Then tragedy struck. My beautiful daughter, Chloe, had a dairy allergy. I was in denial for so long that I will forever feel guilty that I didn't really stick to a dairy free diet till her allergy was actually confirmed at 12 months old. I told myself it was teething, or a reaction to the cloth diapers we were using, anything but my precious butter! Once we had the allergy testing done I couldn't deny it any longer and the butter had to go. Luckily there are plenty of dairy free butter substitutes that are made with soy instead. The best of those is the Earth Balance vegan buttery spread. It is great for baking, cooking, and even on bread. I hardly missed butter at all.

Enter Evan with his soy allergy on top of the dairy allergy. There's no way I can hang out in my little bubble of denial with him. So there goes my soy butter. (Which means no more cookies, brownies, mashed potatoes, corn on the cob...etc.) I suppose I could have use lard to butter my toast, but I just can't get past the mental hang-up of eating lard. Though a friend of mine says it's a good substitute.Thankfully Earth Balance knew just what I needed and came out with a soy and dairy free butter this past May. I never imagined how improved my quality of life would be by something so simple as butter! It's not a perfect substitute. It doesn't do well in baking and it's more oily than the original soy based butter, but the taste is fabulous and I can put it in my potatoes.

The only problem left is that the only stores that carry this life giving deliciousness is an hour and a half away. So I can't just run out to the store to pick it up. My local stores don't feel that it would sell very well so they aren't stocking them...yet. (Maybe I should make up names on the request form.) Though I would glady drive hours to be able to butter my toast. In fact, the first taste of this butter was while we were on vacation in Massachusettes.

So, in closing, thank you Earth Balance. You have saved me from a dark, depressing life without butter.

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