I Lean Towards Butter

 .... is what my son said in answer to a question asked at our cousins' home over lunch recently.  The question was, "Would you prefer oil or butter on your potatoes?"  He was given the only vote and made the right choice.

I've liked olive oil since I met it as an adult, but butter has been with me from the beginning. Butter. Butter melting into mashed potatoes with a twist of black pepper.

Butter. Is there anything like it? I've never been convinced by the alternatives.

"Why," a friend commented once in relation to another question, this time a butter or a yellowish olive-by-name-but-not-by-nature-spread question, "would anyone put emulsified engine oil on her bread?"

Butter. I lean towards it like I lean towards blue skies, meadows, mountain air and clean streams.  I lean towards it as I did to the Little House on the Prairie books, where I first read about how it is made. I lean towards my son making butter like it's a lost art, whisking cream till it separates, straining out the buttermilk for pancakes, paddling and patting the solids into shape.

I lean towards the cool smooth straightforwardly rich taste - towards French butter, slightly salted, twenty minutes out of the fridge, spread carelessly on a torn piece of fresh baguette, or still-warm scones, or cut into a baked potato with a dark, crisp skin. I lean towards it in cakes: I lean towards it in curries.

I lean towards butter, but I try not to fall into it. I attempt moderation. I understand the pitfalls - the valid arguments against: arguments about cholesterol and intensive farming.

Some of these have lodged themselves as reminders around my waist.