Life is too short to eat margarine

It's like tasting real farm eggs, or chicken that comes from an actual farm. For people raised on mass-produced food -- which is to say, almost all of us -- it's like tasting the Platonic essence of the thing for the first time.

I had the same reaction to bananas and coconuts in Cambodia. No more can I manage the utterly tasteless bananas here, but it's so difficult to get real ones in Wisconsin. I hold out for the day we stop trying to destroy them with banana growth chemical X.

Yes, life is too short to eat margarine. So don't shorten it even more by eating colored, salted shortening! My guess would be that those hydrogenated margarines would be more deleterious to your lifespan than real butter consumed in moderation.

I wonder what would happen if the price supports for milk were removed? would we see more such type of activities taking place?
Maybe it is time to take a closer look at the government regulations that are currently in place that may be restricting some of the things that Salatin and others are trying to do.

I think what we are starting to see is a desire on the part of the public for things that are unique ie have flavor. I believe this started with home brewing of beer which grew into microbreweries. Shoot even Budweiser has stopped calling itself a beer and rebranded itself as a lager.(technically they're correct but it is still tasteless)
Next up was artisanal breads, now cheeses and eggs. Somewhere in there came teas and coffees.

Next time I'm in Dallas I'll head on down to the farmers market

Maybe it is time to take a closer look at the government regulations that are currently in place that may be restricting some of the things that Salatin and others are trying to do.

That's all Salatin is asking for: the removal of regulations that favor agribusiness, and make it harder for the little guys to compete.

Full Quiver has a booth at the Austin farmer's market, too. Time and again, my family has returned from the market, thrown our other purchases in the fridge, and instantly devoured a tub of their wonderful spread, sometimes, but not always, resisting the temptation to lick the container. FewM pleasures are more sublime.

No real comment, but:

Rod: "...which are so good you just have to stand in the darkened kitchen some nights eating it straight out of the little plastic tub, right there in front of God and everybody."

The man can write. This blog is a joy for this, and many other, reasons.

Just wanted to say that. Carry on...

Just a thought here: Does anyone else find it interesting (perhaps ironic, but I am sure not inconsistent) that the theme of a couple of blog posts back was about saving money, delaying gratification, and the like? I agree about eating good, local foods, but if I spent three dollars for a stick of butter, my late grandmother, Depression survivor that she was, would be spinning in her grave. (Of course, she was raised on a dairy farm, so she probably got all the good butter she wanted.)

Irenaeus:

It's well known that you just have to have one kid, not nine, to "outbreed" me :-)

JSG:

On the other hand, according to at least one inflation calculator (http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl), $3.00 butter today would have cost nineteen to twenty cents during the Depression. (On the other hand, $3 in 1938 dollars would be $44.91 in 2008 dollars.) To relate this back to an earlier post, that can be thought of as two comic books in 1938 money (picking 1938 because that's the year Action Comics #1, Superman's first appearance, debuted); two comic books today would cost roughly $8 (and I'm not even getting into issues of comparing the physical comic book of today with a comic book of 1938). Ten cents in 1938 money would come out to $1.50 in 2008 money, but your typical comic book still has a cover price of around $4 these days.

I buy specialty butter sometimes, too -- but when I buy garden-variety, factory-farmed, salted sweet-cream butter, I usually get 4 sticks (1 lb) for around $4; that would be $1 per stick, or seven cents in 1938 -- thirty percent less than a single comic book. Seventy percent of a comic book in 2008 money, assuming a $4.00 cover price, would be $2.80.

In terms of a percentage of income, somebody making, say, $15.14/hr today (the median hourly wage for the American worker in 2007, per CPS data) would be making $1.01/hr in 1938 dollars (using the same calculator as above); the $3 stick of butter is 19.8% of an hour's pay in both 1938 and 2008 dollars. Two comic books at 1938 prices, however, is 19.8% of an hour's pay in 1938 dollars, and 52.8% of an hour's pay in 2008 dollars.

Still, that's deceiving; assuming I read it correctly (and I acknowledge that's a big "if"), Bureau of Economic Analysis data seems to show that the median hourly wage in 1938 would have actually been something like twenty-six and a half cents an hour ($3.94 in 2008 dollars) -- so, the $3 butter would have been 76% of an hour's pay. Two comic books would have been even more of a percentage of median income back then than they are today. Still, a 9 September 1938 New York times article lists butter at $0.29/lb retail ($4.34 in 2008 dollars), 110% of an hour's pay. 110% of an hour's pay going by the current median hourly wage would be $16.69/lb, and 76% (the percentage of an hour's pay 2 comic books and today's specialty butter would have been in 1938) would be $11.51.

If you aren't thoroughly confused by now (and I know my head's spinning with all this math), the moral seems to be, be glad we don't figure inflation based on comic books!

Richard

Mr. Barrett: Uncle! Uncle! Call off your math! You win!

No, seriously, that's brilliant. If I follow you, you're saying that even at three bucks, artisinal butter is still a better deal compared to regular old run of the mill butter back in the Depression -- which trumps the point I was going to make about the rhythm of feasting and fasting, of affirmation and renunciation, which now sounds like it would have been a bunch of hot air, anyway. Nicely done!

JSG: It wound up being a lot more work comparing apples to apples than I initially anticipated, and I'm still massaging my very tender temples, so I will have to take you at your word that that was my point -- but it sounds about right, yeah. :)

Richard

I just wanted to respond to a couple of the comments that have been made.

The first is that the average number of lactations for a dairy cow raised in modern day confinement dairies is 2.5 lactations. That is to say that the cow would bear 3 calves and would be culled from milking during the time following the birth of the 3rd calf and before the birth of the 4th calf on average. Back in our grandparents day, dairy cows on peoples' small farms were given names and were around for 20 years. Think about that....

The second is that when someone is telling us their grandmother would be rolling over in their grave over $3.00 butter, has anyone stopped to consider that if we actually ate real food (like butter instead of margarine and shortening) that perhaps we wouldn't have astronomical medical costs and huge amounts of chronic illnesses.

We switched to organic and natural foods and cut out most processed foods about 8 years ago. I can count on both hands the number of times that our family of five has been to the doctor and I believe we have only needed one prescription filled in that time. Most of those doctor appointments were for me (annual female appointments) and twice I have had to take children in for stitches.

When you eat real food, you have extremely low healthcare costs. A cheap food policy has taken us down the path of cheap food and high healthcare costs. If you read information from Sally Fallon, you will see that traditional foods are very helpful. We need to get everyone off of the McFoods that they are eating and back to real honest-to-goodness foods.

Getting off my soapbox now. BTW, you haven't really had good popcorn until you've eaten with a stick of organic grass-fed butter and salt drizzled over it!!! Lord have mercy!!! It's that good!