Where's the butter?

Oops.

Apparently, I’ve got butter on the brain.

Oh, yeah, I’ve become absolutely nutter over butter. I was not always like this. My butter mania condition started about five months ago on one fateful Friday. As usual I walked to my local Japanese grocery store. As usual, I reached up to pick up a box of butter. However, this time, not as usual, instead of a picking up dairy goodness, I picked up a sign. A white sign with black Japanese writing. I couldn’t read it, but I did not take this to be a good sign at all.

“Didn’t you hear?” a friend said to me later that afternoon. “There’s no butter.”
No butter?
“Well, actually,” she quietly said as she looked around suspiciously. “You may be able to find some butter around town. But, you have to be quick. Bye. Got to go.”

For my family who loves to cook and bake, this dairy deficiency is not just a menu malfunction, it affects our social lives. No butter means no more baked goods to share. No butter means no more birthday cupcakes. And, no more sautéed suppers. And, no more weekend pancakes with friends…

“And no more sleepovers,” I warned my 15-year-old son, “I don’t think I can handle a horde of hungry teenage boys staying over during a butter shortage.”

And, no butter means no butter knives. For now, I guess we have a drawer full of matching letter openers.

And that is the very reason why I became my family’s Dairy Detective—a butter brigadier. I had one job and one job only: to search and seize the buttery sticks.

“Wow,” I said to my friend one afternoon. “This is a great parking spot. How did you find it?”

“My GPS,” she said as she pointed to her car’s navigation system. “It speaks in English and Japanese. It gives me directions. And, it tells me where I can find parking.”
“Do you think…” I carefully whispered to my friend, “Do you think your GPS can tell me where I can find some butter?”

So, this is the very reason why I was so very proud of myself last week. I had found butter. Not just one slab—I had found the mother load. I did it! I did it!

“I did it!” I said to my husband as I showed him my impressive collection. “My hard work finally paid off. I was at the grocery store. I saw a supply of butter. They were in blocks. They were in English. They were mine.”
“How many did you buy?” he asked.
“I bought them all,” I said as I danced a celebratory dance around the counter. “Boxes and boxes of beautiful, spreadable, edible, creamy blocks.”
“Um, Buttercup,” he said to me. “I know why there were so many boxes of butter at the store. I know why the boxes were in English.”
“You do?” I said as I continued to dance.
“It’s because we are in America this week, not Japan. You shopped at an American grocery store. You stocked up on butter in the wrong country!”

Oops.

Oh yeah, apparently, I’ve got butter on my brain. So now that we are back in Tokyo, I’ve decided it may be best if I take a butter break for awhile and just stick to my non-stick pan.