Butter

[mattl]

I only use butter, normally get it at Krogers or Aldi. Stock up when it's on sale. Generally quality varies only a little. A few weeks ago I was at Kroger and the had a stack of Horizon Organic butter for $1.99 on clearance, picked up a couple.  Decided to try it today and was surprised that it was significantly better.  In my 63 degree home it stays moderately soft in the dish, the thing I hate about winter is hard butter.  Taste is a bit creamier.  I've had some specialty butters that were very good, they they were very expensive.

 

Not sure I'm willing to pay the full price but learned butter is not butter.   May buy it for spreading but cook and bake with the regular stuff.

 

[eronie]

I only use Land O Lakes.
The indian girl is no longer on the box.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I remember the Land 'O Lakes box from my youth. My mother only used butter. I could not tell the difference.

 

[ea56]

I buy whatever is the cheapest, butter is butter for the most part.  But I don’t like unsalted butter for anything but baking.  On toast it has no flavor to me.  

 

I generally buy the Target Good and Gather brand, the only thing I don’t like about it is that they now pack in the longer, narrower sticks, like on the East Coast, I prefer the shorter West Coast style sticks, or cubes as I was brought up to call them.  They fit in the butter dish better when there is still a partial cube left in the butter dish and I want to put a fresh cube out to get soft.

 

And I always keep at least 3 lbs. of butter in the freezer, and I was glad for this when the COVID-19 shortages set in a few weeks ago.   You can’t find margarine around here in anything but those tubs of whipped crap.  Even though I don’t like margarine and it isn’t as good for you health wise as butter, I would have bought a pound or two of Imperial if I could have found it when there was no butter to be had.  During a couple of poor years for my family in the mid 60’s we used Imperial and it tasted the most like butter of any of the other margarines available then. 

 

BTW, during WWII when everything was rationed, you could buy more margarine than butter with your fat coupons.  But the dairy industry had a law in place then that prohibited the sale of margarine that was colored yellow to resemble butter.  It came in 1 lb. rectangular plastic bags, with a capsule of carotene coloring in the block of white margarine.  You then had to massage the bag to break the capsule and continue to knead the bag until the margarine was a uniform yellow in color.  

 

My Mom was the youngest girl and this was her chore, which she hated doing.  Therefore, margarine always had a negative connotation  for her.  Those couple or years we used Imperial were a real come down for her.  When things got better financially she went back to butter and never used margarine again.

 

Eddie

 

 

[sudsmaster]

I remember Julia Child dissing margarine back in the 1970's. Her words were to the effect that it was fake stuff and she never uses it, just butter, lard, or olive oil instead. I concur. It's the partially hydrogenated fats in margarine that are the culprit: full of artery clogging trans fats. Even lard is healthier.

I remember growing up with margarine, though. It was thought to be healthier than butter. Turns out the opposite is true.

 

[sudsmaster]

PS-The melting/softening point of butter is probably dependent on what the cows are fed. If they are given a diet rich in polyunsaturated fats, then they probably will yield softer butter. I am going on what I learned in a 1970's nutrition class: that hogs fed a unsaturated fat rich diet would yield lard that would basically be liquid at slaughter time. Although milk fat and body fat are obviously different, I don't see why the same or very similar dietary effect would not occur.

 

[norgeway]

I only use

Land O Lakes Margarine, I have much better results with it than butter, and to me it tastes much better .

 

[polkanut]

Kwik Trip/Kwik Star is running their $1.99/lb butter promo until 4/30.  I've found it to be comparable in quality to Land O' Lakes.  They source all their milk from within 100 miles of their corporate headquarters in LaCrosse, WI.  Whenever they run this special, we stock up so that we have about 10lbs in the freezer.  

 

https://www.kwiktrip.com/Savings

 

[whirlykenmore78]

Kirkland butter:

from Costco Is what I usually buy.  Quality is very good and price is excellent.  

 

Polkanut:  I agree on the KT butter.  I also buy all my milk there, excellent quality and taste.  Guess I'll be headed to KT for some butter while the price is so low. 

WK78

 

[petek]

I remember those bags of margarine with the orange tab inside . We never had it but my aunt next door used it and if I was there at the right time she'd let me squish the bag to mix in the coloring. The stuff here was almost orange looking.. Ontario apparently was the last place in N.America to keep that law on the books where margarine could not look like real butter, into the early 70s iirc , it was lighter and not orangey but you could tell which was which.

 

[kb0nes]

Kwik Trip Milk

I have been religiously buying my milk at Kwik Trip in the 1/2 Gallon bags. I'm not sure if it is due to the bag or the quality of the milk or ultra-pasteurization but it lasts and lasts. I don't go through a lot of milk so the typical half gallon jug has gone off for me when I have only used about 1/2 of it. With the bags I usually get to use it all, the milk is still fine at 2 weeks past the Sell By date!

 

[perc-o-prince]

typical half gallon jug has gone off for me

Hey Phil,

Same problem here, so I broke down and bought a quart. That worked well, but the price differential gnawed at me. Then the light bulb went on... save the quart container. Next time, buy the 1/2 gallon, fill the quart from it and freeze the quart! Use what's in the 1/2 gallon first, take the quart out when needed, then when the quart's empty, repeat the process. Should I be that anal over, what, maybe $0.60 - 0.70? Probably not, but I hate waste.

Chuck

 

[petek]

Most milk here in Ontario is sold in litre size bags, a litre being slightly more than a US quart. You buy 3 bags in a bag, not individually. You put the bag into a plastic pitcher designed for them, then cut the corner off to pour.. They're good for freezing, but I find they can be messy. THere are still the traditional milk cartons but they only come in 2 qt and smaller sizes and I don't think there are any of the gallon size jugs here anymore. I think Ontario is the only province to use bagged milk,, could be wrong but they werent in Alberta

 

[nmassman44]

I use Challenge Buttah that is only sold here at Shaw’s/ Star Market...I have seen it at Winn Dixie in Florida as well. I only buy this buttah when it’s on sale and inside the box is a lovely 55 cent coupon and Shaw’s will double said coupon to $1.10 ...this has been sale at $1.99 and with coupon it comes down to a cool .89 cents...so I stock up and freeze some....

 

[ea56]

Holy Cow

Challenge Butter for $1.99 on sale!  Here in Calif. it’s usually about $5.49 to 5.99 at reg price, on sale the lowest I’ve ever seen is $2.99.  It’s the butter we always had at home, except for those few years in the mid 60’s when times were tight.

 

My cousins and I always called it “Deer Butter” when we were kids, because our grandparents used margarine, and thats what the called the “70 cents spread”, (remember that TV ad gimmick)  of our mothers choice, which was of course Challenge. 

 

You guys in the East seem to have much cheaper everything than we do on the West Coast.

 

Eddie

 

 

 

[robbinsandmyers]

I used to use Land O Lakes for years until I found Kerrygold. So worth the extra price.

 

[foraloysius]

Funny thing about Kerrygold is that overhere the salted butter comes in a silver foil, the unsalted in gold. In the USA it's the other way around I noticed.

 

[nmassman44]

KerryGold is good too but I use that only to spread on toast or in mashed taters. Yes it’s a tad pricey but I agree, oh so good!

On the Challenge Buttah it normally sells here for $4.99 a pound. It’s funny how the same butter is much higher priced in CA and that’s where it comes from. Shaw’s/ Star Market is part of Safeway Albertsons and when they merged we got a lot of goodies here in New England that was available only at Safeway. They got rid of the Safeway Select label for Signature Select because of all the other chains that they have. I also buy the Lucerne buttah as well. I do like the Land O Lakes premium butter to make cookies with but comes in at a cool $6 a box at Stop and Shop here.

 

[labboy]

Unhealthy?

@sudsmaster. I grew up in San Francisco in the 70s and 80s and remember my extended family being anti-butter because it was “not healthy”. I wonder if it was a regional thing? Everyone pretty much used margarine for everything. Now I won’t touch margarine.

Bob