He's An I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butterton, Through And Through

The Pony loves butter. He's a Butterton. He's even an I-Can't-Believe-It's-Not-Butterton. In fact, he volunteered to help me prepare yesterday's feast after reading the recipe for the hash brown potato casserole, and seeing that a half cup of melted butter was required, followed by a fourth cup of melted butter at the end.

I put The Pony in charge of the butter. We used the I Can't Believe kind today. He stuck in a serving spoon, and was perplexed that the butter would not come off in the glass measuring cup.

"Just push it off with your finger, and get more. It won't slide off by itself."

"Okay. But I am SO licking my finger when the last spoonful goes in!"

The Pony melted that butter down, and it was EXACTLY a half cup.

"See? I AM good for something in the kitchen."

I let him pour in that ingredient when I was ready. He wanted no part of dumping in the sour cream, for which I used the butter spoon. HEY! It's not like I have a dishwasher, you know. Just before the pouring of the butter, I told The Pony to stir it up, because it looked like some was trying to solidify again.

"There. You can pour it in. Get rid of that spoon. Do you want to lick it?"

"No. It still has some sour cream on it. I don't like the taste of sour cream. Especially on a baked potato, when I think I am getting the butter part, and there's some sour cream."

I don't know where that boy has been eating baked potatoes without me! Because here at the Mansion, I only put butter on his baked potato. And in a restaurant, I'm pretty sure they ask you what you want on your potato. This is something I'll need to investigate further.

Let the record show that when I needed the fourth-cup melted butter, The Pony accidentally melted a little too much. Between one-third and one-half cup total, by the looks of the measuring cup.

"If you don't mind, I'm going to drink what's left of that butter."

"No. That's not good for you. You're going to have a bunch of it on rolls later. Too much butter." He looked so dejected that I gave in. "I know you haven't had lunch yet. It's after 2:00. Maybe you want to put it on something. Some bread, maybe? A potato?"

"No. That's okay. I won't have it."

"How about that individual bag of white cheddar popcorn that's been laying there for a couple weeks? You could put your butter over that."

"Hmm...I'll give it a try."

Let the record show that a single layer of popcorn was used, a single layer on the bottom of a small Styrofoam bowl.

Along with his love for butter, The Pony is addicted to bread. Rolls, mainly. And his yearned-for delicacy is the yeast rolls served by his grandma on the major holidays. Oh, not the ones she used to make, which I'm hoping to discover the recipe for, tucked into the pages of her red-and-white plaid Betty Crocker cookbook, the crescent rolls which used to sit in dough form on the tile-and-brick ledge in front of the fireplace, rising to incredible proportions, baked to perfection, their tops slathered with a coating of butter upon removal from the oven. No. These recent rolls that The Pony remembers are store-bought. They're in the freezer case, in a little foil pie pan, in a plastic bag, labeled Sister Schubert's Parker House Style Rolls. We get them at The Devil's Playground.

Mom usually had two pans of Sister Schubert's, along with some wheat rolls and potato rolls. She often sent home at least half a pan of Sister Schubert's with us, since my sister the ex-mayor's wife and her family preferred the potato rolls. I had two pans of Sister Schubert's thawed and ready to go, so they would be done just as the #1 son planned to arrive.

Later in the afternoon, I called The Pony up from the basement to toss some excess green beans to the chickens. They go wild for that kind of stuff. It's good peckin', I imagine.

"Hey. It's time to cover Sister Schubert with foil and put her in the oven."

"For someone who doesn't know what Sister Schubert is, that sounds SO WRONG."

Mrs. Hillbilly Mom is nothing if not controversial.