"It was the best butter." ~ Lewis Carroll

This post is about one of the many items on the Rogue Chef’s Kitchen Essentials list.

You want to know my number one reason for not being a vegan? Butter.
I have slated into my ideal body weight a few pounds simply devoted to butter.  I love butter. Julia Child would be happy with my enthusiasm for this food. It has never let me down especially when I’ve needed it the most.  Butter seems to make everything better. It melts in your mouth and accents that morning breakfast item perfectly every time. It is a true friend that gives and gives more, in every which way.
So, what is butter? Cream and fat: two ingredients, that’s it, at least that what it is supposed to be. Lets clear something else up right now. Repeat after me: “Margarine is NOT butter, it is an IMITATION” (and no I Can’t Believe Its Not Butter” doesn’t count either, and no it is not “healthier”). 
When I was younger, less than ten lets say, I had my own special saying each time I sat at the table to eat. “Butter, Butter, Butter, a whole stick of Butter” and then would cut a huge hunk of butter and eat it to gross out my family and friends, and secretly loved the eating part every time.  I stopped doing it when I became socially aware of the word “fat”. I was never worried about my physical appearance until people started telling me I would get fat by eating my favorite food. I couldn’t help it. We as humans have a natural predisposition to loving oil, sugar, and fat. No wonder it is so tasty.  Now, since I have just allotted butter into my main diet, I have not ever worried about eating the real thing. This fat is just that; fat. Not replacements for, just fat.
Salted vs. Unsalted: each has their purpose.  Just remember when you are using salted butter you are adding extra salt to the recipe you are using. So if your recipe calls for salt, using the unsalted butter would not jeopardize the taste. Most people have crossed that line of too much salt before. Say this with me; "I will only buy real butter".

Here are a few interesting facts about butter, and then two more rules from Michael Pollan author of Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual that directly relates to this post.
1. Butter can be made from not just cows’ milk, but from other animals such as goats, buffalo, sheep, and yaks.
2. The shape of you butter stick will change by crossing the Rocky Mountains.
3. Here is a website if you want to make your own butter
How To Make Butter
4. There are at least five different types of butter: Cultured, sweet cream, raw cream, spreadable, and whipped.

Michael Pollan's Food Rules

#9: Avoid food products with the wordiod “lite” or the terms “low-fat” or “nonfat” in their names.
The forty-year-old campaign to create low- and nonfat versions of traditional foods has been a failure: We’ve gotten fat on low-fat projects. Why? Because removing the fat from foods doesn’t necessarily make them nonfattening. Carbohydrates can also make you fat, and many low- and nonfat foods boost the sugars to make up for the loss of flavor. Also, by demonizing one nutrient -fat- we inevitably give a free pass to another, supposedly “good,” nutrient – carbohydrates in this case – and then proceed to eat too much of that instead. Since the low-fat campaign began in the late 1970s, Americans actually have been eating more than 500 additional calories per fay, most of them in the form of refined carbohydrates like sugar. The result: The average male is seventeen pounds heavier and the average female nineteen pounds heavier than in the late 1970s. You’re better off eating the real thing in moderation than bingeing on “lite” food projects packed with sugars and salt.

# 10: Avoid foods that are pretending to be something they are not.
Imitation butter – aka margarine – is the classic example. To make something life nonfat cream cheese that contains neither cream nor cheese requires an extreme degree of processing; such projects should be labeled as imitations and avoided.