BUTTER YOU UP

If you think this is a post about me, some guy and butter during sex, your going to be disappointed. Mind ypu, it's giving me some wonderful thoughts.Thanksgiving is getting closer and while the menu is set, your table setup is still open for discussion.  This year you too can add a little pizazz with butter that is shaped like a turkey.  Rich, creamy butter shaped into a glory of a tom turkey can be the talk of the table! You know I think this turkey shaped butter is just adorable.

 I picked up two. One for myself and one for my aunt's dinner. She will most likely think I'm nuts. Keller's Butter Sculptures has been butter sculpting for some time,  but this year the turkey-shaped stick is a hot commodity with many markets selling out.  Fortunately there is still some time to find them at many grocery stores. So if your looking for a way to spruce up your holiday table this Thanksgiving, this is it people.  Use the butter as a tasty, creamy accompaniment on bread rolls and many other Thanksgiving dishes.  For those interested in replacing the boring stick of butter with this cute bird, it’ll cost you.  

Butter sculptures often depict animals, people, and other objects. They are best known as attractions at state fairs in the United States as lifesize cows and people, but can also be found on banquet tables and even small decorative butter dishes going back far in time.

The earliest documented butter sculptures date from Europe in 1536, where they were used on banquet and feasting tables. The earliest pieces in the modern sense as public art date from1870s America, created by Caroline Shawk Brooks, a farm woman from Helena, Arkansas. The heyday of butter sculpturing was about 1890-1930 . The earliest butter sculpture  can be traced to the 1876 Centennial Exhibition where Caroline Shawk Brooks, displayed her Dreaming Iolanthe, a base relief bust of a woman modeled in butter. It was kept cold with a system of layered bowls and frequent ice changes. Brooks had no formal art training, but as a farmer she spent years making butter and in 1867, to make the work more interesting, she began sculpting it, eventually using it as a selling point. As her skills progressed she began to see it as more than marketing butter, indeed as an art form unto itself. In 1873 she made her masterpiece Dreaming Iolanthe, which she would re-do over the years at regional exhibitions around the US. Thus she was invited to bring a replica to the Centennial Exhibition in 1876 where it drew so much attention and praise she was invited to sculpt live for the crowds. Afterwards she studied in Paris and Florence and eventually became a professional sculptor who worked in marble, but occasionally continued to make butter art. She returned for the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition and made busts of Queen Isabella and Christopher Columbus. By then, however, there were other butter sculptors: the art form had come into its own. The heyday of butter sculpting was from about 1890 to 1930. During this period refrigeration became widely available, and the American dairy industry began promoting butter sculpture as a way to compete against synthetic butter substitute like ,margarine. Butter sculpting decreased during the Great Depression and WWII due to shortages but picked up again after the war.

But worry not children, if you didn't get a butter turkey, Keller's also makes a Christmas tree and a Easter Bunny