Buttered Bread Boarding School Food

Online pic.

I don’t think about butter anymore. The height of poverty where I grew up was having dry bread with no butter and wash it down with water doctored with sugar. It was also standard breakfast, served with tea in boarding schools. I haven’t seen butter in years. I’m used to low fat margarine, now.

Bread has been lonely since we declared butter person non grata, pardon my Latin. All that fat is bad for the heart, causes traffic congestion which prevents blood delivery to all parts of the body. Maybe it’s not butter per se, but how we spread layers on a slice of bread, sometimes so thick, you could see your reflection.

Butter is still there in supermarkets although you hardly see anybody around the refrigerator. What is the difference between salted and unsalted butter? Salt. I don’t think it’s easy as it seems, but we don’t hover around that part of the refrigerator long enough, to get the right answer.

This blog was prompted by online videos. They use a lot of butter in mash potatoes and pasta recipes. A stick of butter is bad enough, but a quarter of a butter block is definitely anti-heart. Can you really add rust to your heart in the name of ‘this creamy recipe?’ In one video they added fresh cream, not a tablespoon but poured it straight from a container. Do they still sell fresh cream? Not around here.

Butter makes me nostalgic. We, the cousins, did not like visiting grandmother (Khulu) because she did not have bread and butter for breakfast or as a snack. She sent us to her sweet potato field with hoes. We’ll dig out the vegetable, wash off the sand and cook it. That’s it, no butter on bread, salted or otherwise.

Nonqaba waka Msimang

Blogger Without Borders