Doorstop Topper

The word nerd in me thinks it’s cool when one can be modified to make four others simply by changing the same vowel. Batter will be in abundance the next several weeks with all of the baking. The holidays are always better when shared with others. Colorado’s bitter cold winters are a thing of our past now that we’ve moved to the South. The chaos of the holiday season doesn’t really “bott_er” me (okay, that one’s reaching). But finally, we have butter. Ah, there’s nothing better than (or bitter about) butter, is there?

The topic of butter is brought to you today by an utterly ridiculous here-today-gone-tomorrow suggestion to make your holiday hosting more glam than your neighbor’s: butter boards.  When I saw this picture I didn’t even understand what I was looking at.  Even more insulting to this word nerd: the opinion piece I found describes a butter board as “charcuterie”.  No, it’s not.  Charcuterie is meats, not dairy.  This unappetizing appetizer is nothing but butter, spread on a board, with toppings designed to take your attention away from the fact that it’s, well, butter on a board.  I mean, if you’re gonna do faux-fancy at least go with peanut butter on a board, right?

Butter boards are an insult to butter.  I think we can all agree, butter stands alone.  You don’t need nuts or roasted garlic or dried fruit to hide dress it up.  As long as your butter comes from fresh, quality ingredients, it makes anything it pairs with better.  Except a board.

Can you tell I’m “bott_ered” by butter boards?  It’s because my wife and I take our butter so seriously.  Ever since a trip to Ireland, we learned the best butter is not only about quality, but quantity.  At dinner in a quaint hotel in the Connemara region north of Galway, the waiter brought us a big serving of bread with an even bigger serving of butter.  Seriously, the butter was more “brick” than “stick” (and certainly not “pat”).  Ever since, our go-to butter is a brick.  It also makes a great doorstop straight from the freezer.

Our butter dish is even designed for a brick, see?  A stick would be lost in this Irish pottery; a pat even more so.

Speaking of butter pats, I must make mention of the device in the photo below.  I wrote a whole post about it once called Sentimental Utensil.  Who knew this petit guillotine was a timesaver to make butter pats?  It showed up mysteriously in one of our kitchen drawers one day and I can only assume I inherited it from my mother.  But inherited it shall stay.  I can never get enough memories of my mother, as I alluded to in this paragraph from the past post:

And thinking about it even more, I can picture my mother using her butter cutter when I was a kid, leaving a perfect little pat beside the crescent roll that was positioned carefully on the bread plate beside each place setting at the dinner table. Because that was my mother. She was all about the dinner table. Everything had its place, even the pats of butter.

If you read the article on butter boards (please don’t) there are several dead giveaways on how forced this holiday trend feels.  The first is right up there in the teaser subtitle: “Butter boards have gone viral…”.  No, they haven’t, else this topic wouldn’t be worth warning you posting about.  “… because of their novelty and shock value.”  Their novelty?  Shock value?  Is one of your guests going to look at your butter board and say, “Well now, isn’t that novel?”  And just what about a butter board causes “shock” other than the writer’s excuse to use (part of) the overused phrase “shock and awe”?  It’s just butter, people.

The article should’ve gone with just the title so we could draw our own conclusions.  Instead, you’ll find phrases like “… how fun the concept is…”, “… what’s fascinating about butter boards…”, and “… extremely versatile as an appetizer…”; none of which are true.  The writing takes itself way too seriously and goes on way too long about something I will way never prepare.  Unless it were frosting, of course.  A “frosting board” would get my attention for sure.  Put out a plate of cookies with a frosting board and I’m all hands.

But enough of the butter boards.  You’d have to be blind as a bat to fall for this faux-fancy offering.  I’ll bet you’ve already stopped reading.  If you did make it this far, thanks for sparing a bit of your time.  Comment so I know you’re not a bot.

Some content sourced from the Food Network article, “How to Make the Perfect Butter Board for the Holidays”.

Author: Dave

Three hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

27 thoughts on “Doorstop Topper”

  1. I’m trying to think under what circumstances a butter board would be appropriate. A feast of baked potatoes or slices of fresh hot bread with a garlic/butter board? Then there is the cleaning aspect – a wood board would be more time consuming to clean up than something you can pop into the dishwasher… Last, but not least, the butter board went viral on TikTok, a Chinese app that many would prefer to distance their data from.

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    1. You’ll find me in a corner, making pats out of sticks; sticks out of bricks. “It’s fun!”, just like the article describes making a butter board. Good grief.

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    1. Serve with crackers on the side (how “novel!”) Just don’t invite me to the party. I won’t partake in any part of a butter board.

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  5. Word nerd is a good term for you haha. I once posted a candy board and called it a charcuterie board and it made someone very mad on Instagram. I have seen a frosting board that is the same concept as the butter board but way more delicious. The frosting was spread like a Christmas tree and cookies surrounded it. I’d gobble that up!

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    1. To your examples, so many other boards beat butter. I mean, we already have “frosting shots” so why not promote frosting boards instead? You’ll always find my butter in a dish, never on a board.

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  6. Butter boards gross me out. I cannot say ICK loud enough. The little butter guillotine you show looks like the cookie making utensil that my mother had. You’d squeeze the handle until the slide part was over by the edge, use the flat spatula part to scoop up some raw cookie dough, then you’d release the slide part and it would move the cookie dough off the flat part plopping it onto the baking sheet. It was supposed to be faster than using two teaspoons to plop the dough onto the baking sheet. Now I wonder if they were the same kitchen utensil used in different ways? 🤔

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    1. Most butter cutters I find online turn the whole stick into pats with a single push. If you only need enough for a family I guess you use this device. You have to admire a past generation where perfect-looking pats were important enough to use a cutter. Today I’d just use a knife.

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  8. I’ve seen that brand of butter before and wanted to try it, but always go back to boring Benecol.
    Then again, I don’t leave the crock out all the time and it would be too cold/hard to cut or take some butter for your bread/toast. Why on earth do people want a butter charcuterie. I may not remember everything from my many years of French, but yes – charcuterie = meat. Your changing around of the letters reminds me a tongue twister I learned long ago and is perfect for this post. I confess I had to Google it as I didn’t remember the exact wording:

    “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter. “But,” she said, “the butter’s bitter. If I put it in my batter, it will make my batter bitter. But, a bit of better butter will make my batter better.” So, she bought a bit of butter, better than her bitter butter.”

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    1. We only buy the Irish butter at Costco, Linda, otherwise those bricks are too expensive to justify. We do think Kerrygold is better than non-organic store brands. I had not heard the Betty Botter tongue twister before – clever!

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      1. That makes sense Dave – those bricks are not that large. Sunday morning rolls will go through that butter bar in no time. I used to know that tongue twister by heart years ago – it fit perfectly for this post!

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  10. I don’t think I’ll be partaking of any trendy butter boards, even though I love butter, esp the salted kind. What a strange concept – but then I don’t care for “charcuterie” boards either. I’ve never heard of a butter cutter, but wonder how fancy restaurants get those chilled curls of butter? A small melon scooper? Those little chilled foil pats of butter are nice too, but you hardly ever see them anymore. Dave, does Kerrygold butter have a different flavour than regular butter? I hated the butter in Ireland as it all tasted strong to me. My dad had a dairy farm when we were kids and when the cows went out to pasture in the spring the milk/butter/cream all tasted funny like alfalfa/grass. Ireland with their mild winters pasture their cows outside all year round. I had quite the discussion about this when I started at a rural B&B! Even the MacDonalds milkshakes tasted different.

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    2. I don’t recall the butter tasting different than what we’re used to in America, Joni. Maybe I need to try a Canadian brand? Kerrygold has a rich flavor you don’t always get with our standard brands. And you’re right, now that I think about it: foil-covered butter is rare in restaurants these days. Maybe it’s a “green” thing.

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