Wistful Gypsy: Alfajores + I ♥ Butter

You're thinking, is she really writing a post about butter, of all things?

Yes, I am. If you are new here then you haven't yet gotten to know that I'm a little bit left of center. I write about whatever I want, especially stories/anecdotes from my life, thoughts in my weird head, and I really like adding a bit of my mediocre art for emphasis.

But let's talk about butter...

For the past two weekends we have been going to the farmer's market in Berlin, Maryland - one of my most favorite places. I was particularly excited to go there because I had recently discovered a business based out of Rehoboth Beach, DE - gather Alfajordes - and they are a vendor at the Berlin market (and several others in this area). I had never heard of alfajordes but based on the pictures and descriptions I knew I had to try these things.

The best way I can describe the alfajordes (traditional) that I purchase(d) from gather Alfajordes is to think of the the best possible shortbread cookies you could ever want to eat in your entire life. Now take two of them and put some dulce con leche inside and some finely powdered sugar on top so that you now have the best filled shortbread-type cookie you will ever eat in your entire life. Yes, they are that good.

There were two in this box but I ate the other one.

gather Alfajordes has a website that will make you want to hightail to the Delaware/Maryland shore areas to buy pretty much everything they sell. That's how I felt as I took in all that I saw on their website (and lucky for me, I live in their area) but there was one other thing on their website that jumped off the page and got my heart pounding: French butter.

That's right, they sell French butter. But not just any French butter! Oh no, the butter they sell is La Conviette and it comes in sweet little rolls that are rolled up Tootsie Roll style. Sweet little French butter rolls, can you imagine anything better?!

Do you know about French butter? Do you know that if you try French butter you will question what in the heck kind of subpar butter have you been eating all your life? Maybe you've picked up some Irish or European butter that's in all the supermarkets now and you're thinking that you know what good butter is. You are wrong. You are so wrong in your wrongness! My apologies to Irish butter - and I'm an O'Brien - but it is nothing like the ethereal experience of French butter. This particular butter, La Conviette, is delicate and creamy and there is something magical about its salt, which is like nothing I've ever tasted before.

...

I found this description of La Conviette on the internet: A premium French butter made from high-quality milk sourced from the Charentes-Poitou region of western France. This region is renowned for its rich and creamy milk, which is perfect for producing high-quality butter.

The butter is made using traditional methods, with the cream being churned in wooden barrels, which gives the butter its unique texture and flavor.

...

The only problem is that French butter is not so easy to come by and if you try to order it online you will find that it's probably sold out and that when it is available you are going to pay through the teeth to have it shipped to you.

You know what I say about that? So what. Order it anyway because it is 1000% worth it.

gather Alfajordes was out of the the butter initially but they told me they were awaiting a shipment that was coming from France and that I should watch their website where they would post that it was available for ordering once they received it. I did exactly that and picked up my order in Berlin this past weekend. The butter is now safely in my freezer where it will remain until I have some for my birthday in October. I'm going to order some more so that I have it on hand for the holidays.

Anyway, this whole recent butter buying thing got me thinking about where this butter love of mine came from and I was delightfully reminded of an event from my very early childhood...

When It Began: I have a very clear memory - age 3 or 4? - of laying eyes on the container of Breakstone's Whipped Butter that was a staple in our house and whisking (no pun intended) it away to my secret lair under the tablecloth-covered kitchen table where I happily indulged in eating it straight out of the container until I was eventually stone cold busted. I'm sure it was my sibling who ratted me out as my sibling looked for any opportunity to get me in trouble.

"Mom, Sharon's eating butter under the kitchen table"

Where It Continued: Fast forward to spending my summer and Christmas vacations at my father's house in North Carolina (ages 7-15), where he lived in long-term sin with his girlfriend Alice, who had attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and who decided to teach me French cooking whenever I was in residence.

This was the 70s and it was in Pilot Mountain, NC (Mount Pilor on the Andy Griffith show) and French butter was not something that could be purchased anywhere unless you hopped on the Concorde and did a quick round trip to France. So lacking the money for Concorde airfare and a local source for many of the called-for ingredients in our French recipes, we made do with what we had.

But Alice would regale me with stories about Paris and the Seine, about romance and exquisite meals and wine, and about baguettes and croissants and, of course, French butter in their humble little house with a perfect view of Pilot Mountain.

Alice (& Dad, too, who just kind of went along with whatever she wanted) gave me French story books and French dictionaries and French language books and I fell in love with all things French in the very tiny town of Pilot Mountain, North Carolina, population 1,300. It was Alice who introduced me to foods I'd never heard of in my other life at my mother's house in Elizabeth, NJ.

My mother, who had zero interest in cooking, ate to live. Alice and my father lived to eat and it was because of them that I became a lifelong "foodie" - for lack of a better term - and a lover of high quality ingredients.