Please Don’t Mangle the Community Butter
October 21st, 2005
Community butter is a bad idea.
Let me just say that out of the gate. Any food item that allows one person to take their knife, which they’ve already used for a variety of other reasons (including picking crap out of their teeth and slathering olive chutney you-know-what) and then messily drag that knife through a community slab of butter, mangling it and destroying it…isn’t a food item I’m interested in having anywhere near me.
Now this isn’t about butter. I love butter. Butter is the most awesome food complimentor on the face of the Earth. Butter makes dry things moist, makes moist things moister and makes moister things wet. Butter makes dark things lighter, lighter things whiter and whiter things white. And butter gives bland things a taste, gives tasty things a paste and pasty things a waist. (That’s a calorie metaphor, by the way.)
But back to community butter.
Often, and I don’t know why any wedding caterer or dinner partier or butter sculptor would do this, but they make the one community butter plate one piece of butter…just really huge. It’s like, there’s a marmot made of butter. Or there’s a huge rose made of butter. Not, twenty two little squares of butter, no. It’s like art. Well, that’s all fine and good that it’s art, but art isn’t made to be destroyed right? At least not by twelve people with their dirty knives that, even if they weren’t dirty when they first went for butter, the second time they go back to scoop some more butter off the marmot’s nose — well, their knives are gonna be dirty.
And thus, the butter becomes contaminated.
It’s like they said in that famous Seinfeld episode when George takes a chip, dips it in the dip, then takes a bite and goes back for another dip with the chip he already dipped. A character tells George that by “double-dipping the chip” it’s like putting his “entire mouth in the dip.” So goes the same with the community butter.
Here’s a suggestion: If you can’t provide a table with individually wrapped squares of butter and you’re intent on creating the masterpiece butter scuplture you call “Man on Horse” — give everyone a neverending selection of plastic butter spreaders. Or tie everyone’s butter knives to the community butter plate with just enough rope to allow them to get the knife to the butter plate and to their bread plate but not to their main plate. At least that way, that butter knife is on a leash that will prevent people from using the butter spreader for other, uncouth activities.
Of course, even if you limit people’s use of their butter knife, the problem of a community butter plate also brings up additional gluttonous issues. It seems, most people have never been trained in the art of “cutting a reasonable slice of butter out of the community butter sculpture.” Those who have been trained are as skilled as surgeons, easily able to slice out a quick bit of the yellow-goodness and return it to their opened bread rolls without issue. But most people? They dig and slice and usually end up trailing about half the community butter sculpture along with their knife…
They’ll give you a shrug and a sort of “oh man, I don’t need that much butter” kind of look — but they won’t put it back. They won’t even put the excess butter on their plate. They’ll just shove it into the dark alleys of their bread roll, hoping that only a few people witnessed such a horrific act of butter terror or butterror.
Then of course, there’s always my favorite person who likes to keep the community butter plate right next to their dinner plate because they’re planning on going through about 5 rolls over the course of the evening. Eventually, they end up spilling their water glass and ice all over the butter sculpture — rendering it wet in a way that has ruined the entire possibility of any additional butter and bread goodness.
If party planners and caterers were thinking they would come up with an easy solution to the community butter plate. They would give each and every dinner guest a little elastic necklace that had a tiny little pot of butter on the end. The necklace would have enough give so you could pull it to the table, scoop some butter out, and be on your way. And when your butter pot was empty? Well, maybe someone else would give you theirs. And as long as you wore it around your neck, I suspect that all would be good and fair in the world of the no-longer community butter plate.
This is how I see it. This is how I wrote it. This is how I need it to be.
So, please. Stop doing that thing you do.
I vote for just having butter misters mounted in the ceiling. Simple, effective.
Comment by kingbenny — October 21, 2005 @ 8:48 am
Hahaha. Oh, KB. Butter misters. You are funny but so misdirected.
In order for butter misters to work correctly (trust me on this one), the butter cannot be in a cold form. Instead, it must be hot. And unless you want to see what it feels like being a piece of popcorn covered in skin-flaying hot butter, you probably also don’t want to be the guy at the dinner table getting sprayed with hot butter.
It’d be fun to watch, but painful.
Comment by Pauly D — October 21, 2005 @ 8:50 am
Oh man… too bad for the people who didn’t wear their rain gear. I guess I was actually thinking of the runny, gross, ‘fake-butter’ you can get in those squeeze containers. That could be misted.
Comment by kingbenny — October 21, 2005 @ 8:54 am
You THINK it could be misted.
I’ll believe that you can mist this “runny, gross, fake butter” when I see a video clip of it actually happening.
Until then, brand me the nay-sayer.
Comment by Pauly D — October 21, 2005 @ 9:03 am
Don’t you think that in the initial butter sculpting process the community butter loses some of its purity anyway? I mean someone’s hands made that bust-o-butter.
Comment by C Ro — October 21, 2005 @ 9:03 am
They wear butter sculpturer gloves.
Comment by Pauly D — October 21, 2005 @ 9:04 am
Pauly…I prolly shouldn’t go here, but “butterror”?!?!? Conjures up many things, few of which actually have to do with butter.
That said, I am in support of your buttery feelings. I don’t like community food. I am not even a big fan of buffets. I’m not some germophobic freak or anything, but I’ve witnessed grossness in my lifetime that makes me feel that eating should be more…personal.
p.s. BTW, the W4 is fine, but why can’t I have a cute avatar?
Comment by Flower Girl — October 21, 2005 @ 9:14 am
Flower Girl - just click on the “Gravatar” link at the bottom of the comments here and you can get an image for free. You just upload one and within 24 hours you’re good to go.
Comment by Pauly D — October 21, 2005 @ 9:17 am
What if they made it like a mosaic sculpture and everyone could just take one or two “butter-tiles” at a time?
Comment by nic — October 21, 2005 @ 9:24 am
community butter is bad. community anything is bad. I also don’t like finishing someone’s else food, or soup. I’m a total germophobe like that. and silverware must be spotless. and if there’s anything at all sticking to my glass or if find a hair in anything? forget it - my appetite is gone. I really need to consider getting myself a plastic bubble.
Comment by Dawn (webmiztris) — October 21, 2005 @ 9:28 am
Well, the solution is pretty simple–every restaurant needs to start using those little butter pads. They can get them in a variety of shapes–flowers, circles, and every your standard rectangle. Then, each person uses the butter knife, sticks a pad onto their butter plate, and all is good in the world.
The end.
Comment by Hilary — October 21, 2005 @ 9:32 am
At my wedding I’m having packets of butter and telling everyone that they are, in fact, individual butter sculptures. Small rectangles with foil wrappers. Very modern, very Warhol.
Comment by Dan — October 21, 2005 @ 10:48 am
Pauly, I sense an opportunity for you. There is a need for “cutting a reasonable slice of butter out of the community butter sculpture”-training, and you, my friend, are the one to provide it. Think of the children, Pauly, the children going hungry because they can’t butter their bread because they don’t know how to slice the sculpture. Do it for the children.
Comment by annabel lee — October 21, 2005 @ 11:10 am
For the children, huh? Are these the children of our future, or just a bunch of random children?
It makes a difference.
Comment by Pauly D — October 21, 2005 @ 11:20 am
You could solve the problem by just not eating butter at all — it’s gross anyhow, I can’t see why anyone enjoys slathering it over perfectly good food and turning it into a greasy mess!
Comment by Sara White — October 21, 2005 @ 11:59 am
Community Butter should be taken from the Community Butter
dish with a Community Butter Server whereby then placing the
desired butter onto ones own bread/butter plate. Then and only then should one use his/hers own knife to spread the said butter
onto his/her roll. Never should one use his/hers own knife to serve butter from the butter plate. Please get this straight !
Comment by Barney — October 21, 2005 @ 1:30 pm
HOLY SHIT THIS IS FUNNY: Or tie everyone’s butter knives to the community butter plate with just enough rope to allow them to get the knife to the butter plate and to their bread plate but not to their main plate.
See, I think the same thing about buffet food. Like when they have chunks of cheese and cold cuts on a platter and you have to stand in line and try to cut pieces of cheese with the provided knife that everyone has used for other things like cutting butter and slicing meat and such… yuck.
Comment by jenny — October 21, 2005 @ 3:08 pm
butter pot necklaces?!
i would wear one. i love butter that much. and i wholeheartedly agree that community butter just does not work. and how they leave crumbs in the butter! ugh!
thanks for this very important post.
sizz
Comment by ms. sizzle — October 21, 2005 @ 3:44 pm
Pauly, Pauly, you’re missing the point here. Why is it that people feel the need to turn food into a sculpture?!? I mean that butter head is truly disgusting even without the contamination of everybody’s butter knives.
My Mum used to make the world’s greatest chopped liver. She was always being asked to make it for parties. She made it look like a pineapple! With a pineapple crown on top! How sick is that? Who wants chopped liver that looks like a pineapple - especially with all those double dippers?
I vote for little individual butter balls made with a melon baller. Hate the foil-wrapped pats - greasy fingers, yuck!
Comment by anon — October 21, 2005 @ 5:42 pm
I don’t use community butter. Between the dirty knives and the crumbs . . . I’d rather eat my bread dry.
I’m also now afraid of salad bars ever since I saw a guy LICK one of the salad dressing dippers, assess the flavor of the dressing, and return the utensil back into its bowl. Ugh!
Comment by Rabbit — October 23, 2005 @ 9:50 am
just don’t lick your butter knife before you dip it back in!
Comment by C(h)ristine — October 23, 2005 @ 12:14 pm
I admit to being the person who eats about 5 rolls. What you may not notice is that I do not eat anything else, although I do move the food around on the plate. Sorry.
Comment by That Girl — October 24, 2005 @ 6:52 am
Actually, it is best to take the [community] butter KNIFE and use it to place a small amount of butter on your bread plate (or dinner plate, if you have no bread plate). Then you use your own butter SPREADER to apply it to your bread. You never use the community butter knife to place butter on your bread. It is bad manners even if it touches nothing else but your “sterile” un-DNA’s slathered bread.
The butter knife looks similar to a fish knife and has an odd pointed tip–this knife stays with the butter dish. The butter spreaders that should be at your placesetting are rounded at the tip and usually are about 7 to 7 1/8 inches long, smaller than your dinner knife.
Other than I hate when people use their own dinner knife, spreader or use the butter knife to spread butter on their food. It is disgusting. And what the heck is up with being served COLD butter?? Nothing irritates me more than trying to spread an ice cold cube of whipped milk fat on a warm piece of heaven.
And don’t even get me started on clinking glasses!
p.s. Thanks for the great article
Comment by Marianne — November 16, 2005 @ 5:55 pm
Oops! I meant the butter KNIFE is about 7 inches long, the butter spreaders are usually small - about 5 1/2 inches long - and are usually placed horizontally across your bread plate.
My grandmother would play twister in her grave if she knew I said that. lol
Comment by Marianne — November 16, 2005 @ 5:58 pm