Party Trick

I've come up with a new party trick. Well, it's not new, actually quite old and probably thought of as a chore in it's day but I like it. We pull butter from a bottle of cream.

What could be easier? I pour a bottle of cream into a bowl, grab the whisk, hand it all to the person nearest the kitchen and ask them to whisk. The bowl gets passed around.

One friend told a story of making mayonnaise in Africa while she whisked. Which led to someone else's stories of collecting mushrooms in Germany and someone else's memories of mushrooms in Vermont. And then there's the person, this could easily be me, but this time it was the Takeout Queen, who had never seen butter being made.

"Don't you have to add something?" she asked.

That person has the most fun. Because the transition of cream to butter is a small miracle. It's the fuzzy caterpillar to a butterfly metamorphosis. Mothy white cream turns in the blink of an eye, once the turning actually happens, to the color of a yellow daisy, the color of breakfast, the color of all that is good in the world; it turns butter yellow at the same time it leaves behind it's milky beginnings. Butter. Meltingly sweet fresh butter from cream.

I've yet to see someone not smile at the turning, at the lump of gold found in a returnable bottle. And then I serve the bread. Even the most delicate among us takes up the butter knife and with a singular purpose, not one at a time, everyone reaches knives and elbows into the butter balancing huge nuggets back to their bread.

It's there in the breaking of bread, of bread and new butter, the reaching and full mouths that no one feels like a guest any more; it simply feels like everyone is at home. That's my favorite part.