Butter. I do love butter. In things, on things. Anything is better with butter and it once seemed impossible for something to have too much butter. Fry or scramble eggs in butter. Buttercream frosting, butter in cookies, butter in oatmeal (just a tiny pat) or spreading soft butter on an already buttery scone or croissant. Butter on toast has always been a reliable comfort food. It just doesn’t get much better than butter.
Here on page one, beside the popcorn, the word CHOCOLATE has no drawing. I played with the letters of the word, building out, scrabble-style, adding Cookies, oreOs, iCing, maLt balls, NutellA and fudgE. All delightful, but I think fudge (another use of butter) may be my number one chocolate choice. Maybe. Chocolate as a hidden treat goes back to childhood. My mom always had a chocolate stash. Always. In a drawer in her bedroom, in the freezer, secreted here and there. We always found it.
When we were little, Mom carried sour balls in her purse. At some point she switched to red and white striped mints. But chocolate was her at-home, reliable treat. And I have embraced that habit for many, many years. Chocolate is handy. A chocolate bar, or a bag of chocolate candies, are easy to tuck away in a drawer and grab when you “need” them.
As I write this, there is chocolate in the drawer to my right: a bar (or two) of dark chocolate with candied ginger. Of course, they say that dark chocolate is healthier, it has good stuff in it. An acquired taste, since the sweeter milk chocolate (and once upon a time, the achingly sweet white chocolate) had been my preference.