If you want me to produce zest on command, don’t hand me a damn microplane grater when the situation clearly calls for at least a dedicated hand zester, if not a full-on stripper! Graters, friends, tend to overgrate; it’s what they do. Don’t blame me for giant piles of bitter pith when you lay out the wrong equipment in front of me!

The states of fat form a Counterwealth.

Another grand experiment begins!

Having recently been told that butter need not be religiously refrigerated, I have migrated a stick from the fridge to the counter housing our other household fats.

Note: don’t miss our groundbreaking, informative earlier post on butter.

Day #1 of Countertop Butter – 3/12/12

• 6:30AM: Put butter on warm When Pigs Fly raisin bread. Room temperature butter goes on warm bread about how you’d imagine soft butter would go on warmed bread. Bread tasted really buttery.
• 6:35AM: Not sick.
• 11:41AM: Still not sick.
• 12:00PM: Now leaning toward the idea that butter, like honey, is magical and takes care of itself… and butter doesn’t need angry bees… just ceramic Buddha… and you can hang out with butter without looking over your shoulder for bears. Grizzly Man is a terrible film, but it did get me thinking about man-eating bears and the need to not let man-eating bears regain a foothold in Boston… if they ever had a foothold in Boston. If the great white sharks are back, can the bears really be all that far behind them?
• 12:45PM: Wondering if countertop butter attracts unwanted ants.
• 12:50PM: Wondering if unwanted ants (who apparently have supernatural strength for their size) can lift Buddha to get at the butter.
• 1:23PM: Confident that Buddha’s too heavy for the ants. Contemplating setting up a Butter-cam, though… just to be safe.
• 2:45PM: Wondering if people would pay to watch a Web feed from my butter cam. This is the type of thing that you’d probably think was stupid (and you’d be correct), but the real question is not “is it stupid,” but rather “are there enough stupid people willing to pay to see something stupid.”
• 3:15PM: Still waiting for my business agent to return my call. *Sigh*
• 11:07PM: I asked ceramic butter-keeper Buddha, “what is butter?” He replied, “forty years and three pounds of flax.” Butter Buddha is wise… or I’m drunk… again.

I'd run... if I thought I had to.

Hogan has never thought much of the idea of him being a canine. He uses pillows like a human, he stretches like a cat, and should he find himself at a dog park, he goes over and stands by the chain link fence with the other owners. He’d smoke if he could… probably menthols.

One of the employees at Paws Here, the doggy daycare that Hogan occasionally visits when his schedule does not mesh with ours, took me aside one day and suggested that Hogan not come on Thursdays, because Thursdays tend to be a busy time for them. She thought he’d enjoy Fridays better, since Fridays apparently offer a lower population of dogs. “He just doesn’t seem to enjoy playing with dogs. He hangs out with us instead of the animals. He sits in our chairs. He eats our bagels. He’s just odd.”

But this week Hogan slipped into complete denial. He agreed to walk around the reservoir on the end of a leash as long as it was agreed that I would feed him immediately upon our return. On our trip, however, he completely refused to chase… or acknowledge for that matter… an incredibly slow, dim-witted deer that waddled across the path in front of us and proceeded to stand staring at us. Hogan stared at the deer, did the math, and then proceeded to walk toward home. “You got a picture? Great, man. Let’s go. It’s a little cold.”

Do not be confused by the blurry photograph. Crappy phone camera, crappy photographer… but perfectly motionless deer that is about 25 yards away at most. Notice the distinct lack of an excited Ridgeback in the picture.