Real butter. Salted for table use and unsalted for baking.

Butter, always butter.

Butter for baking; other stuff for using on food (potatoes, toast). I read the label and compare.

Butter only, always.

If you're a food label reader, and everyone should be, you'll find there are ingredients in most margarines you may want to avoid.

Taste -wise, no comparison.

Real butter.

Butter but I do like Brummel and brown which is made with yogurt. That's all I have bought in years.

Butter, always butter. I used to use margarine for baking, but now use butter and cakes, cookies, etc. taste much better.

butter only

Butter is much healthier. I grew up on oleo (we did call it that) which was then considered healthier than butter. So glad butter is back--I used Kerrygold.

I think it was in the sixties when people believed in better living through chemistry that the idea that margarine is better for you than butter came up. In the past ten years the scientific consensus seems to have changed and butter is back. Also nowadays the science news again and again says that the low-fat advice of the 70s was not based on any real evidence, just hunches, and may have in fact contributed to the obesity epidemic. Butter is back in fashion!

Butter only for us, too. Kerrygold, unsalted for cooking and baking and salted for spreading. What a big taste difference compared to American brands.

My mother used sticks and then tubs of icky yellow stuff, but we got the real stuff when we visited her parents in Ohio once a year.

Oleo, haven't heard that word in over fifty years.

Growing up, we used oleo for every day, butter (and Crisco) for baking. My dad watched his pennies, butter on a regular basis was verboten.

Today I use corn oil margarine, I prefer the taste of 'the high priced spread' (remember that commercial?), got to watch that cholesterol.

Butter

Real butter. My Dh eats Smart Balance.

Butter

Real butter, but we used the whipped version, not only does it have lass calories but the unwhipped is too strong or heavy so I only use it for cooking and to mix in mashed potatoes.

I remember that "lard" with the color capsule, too, Rusty. IMO...horrible stuff! It was my chore to mix it and that's about as close as I got to it. After WWII...butter became the household norm and stayed with me until about 15 years ago when I discovered a soy based vegan butter marked as Earth Balance....original. I can't tell the difference between it and real butter.

But...I recommended it to a friend who returned telling me it was the worst stuff she'd ever tasted. Soon after, I discovered that it came in several varieties...mimicking butter as well as margarine and other spreads. The varieties were available first in the West...then migrated here to the East. The variety I've always used is the Original...and it was the only variety available when I recommended it. In hind sight...I think she probably used one of the other varieties. I, myself, tasted one of the other Earth Balance varieties...and she way right. It tasted terrible. But the original still tastes like creamery butter...to me.

Real butter, both for eating and baking. Margarine behaves differently to butter in baking and you get a different result.

Butter, although I grew up on the cheapest margarine available. Must have been Julia Child's cooking show that inspired me to try real butter, once I was on my own. I try to use it in moderation ... mostly.

I've bought one national brand for as long as I can remember. Is it worth trying some of the new imported butters?

Another real butter user here...

Lately, I've been using a home made blend of organic or local biodynamic butter, roughly 1/2 and 1/2 with local extra virgin olive oil, plus salt, that I mix up with a fork after leaving the butter out overnight to soften. It's delicious, and, hopefully, nutritionally and environmentally pretty good too. (I need salt in my diet to counteract low blood pressure issues, and I read something quite convincing somewhere that for the fats in butter to be good for you, they need to be from grass/pasture-fed animals, which at least I know the local and organically produced kinds are.)

Sometimes I'll use XV olive oil alone, eg on a thick slice of sourdough for a bruschetta type of toast. Sprinkle on the o/o, then under the grill on a piece of foil. Mmm... :-)

NEVER margarine! Well, maybe a "good" quality in cookies, but not for much else. Someone, on anther board was talking about making her own butter "spread"... close to 50/50 butter and olive oil. Whipped up in mixer and into a container for fridge. She said it stays spreadable. I may just experiment with a stick to try it out.

Yes, Kiselverd - I forgot to mention that - it does indeed make it totally spreadable... :-) I just do it with a fork so I don't have that extra stuff to wash up afterwards. It's easy if the butter's really soft. No doubt a beater would give a smoother and fluffier mixture, but I just go for ease and quickness.

You can buy butter/oil spreadable blends here, but when you check out the ingredients they invariably turn out to have all sorts of unnecessary other stuff and cheaper oils, with just a bit of olive oil so they can call it Healthy Olive Oil Whatnot and cover the carton with idyllic pictures of olive groves, etc.. LOL

I remember eating real butter when I was very little. Then the margarine thing came around. I still remember my mom mixing the yellow powder into the margarine so it wouldn't be white. That was a LONG time ago....

I pretty much grew up eating margarine. It was the least expensive way to "butter" your toast. As an adult, the smell of butter melting in a frying pan turned my stomach. It stunk to high heaven. BUT: since starting the Ketogenic way of eating, margarine is a big NO NO. BIG NO NO. So, I had to learn to like butter. I usually fry meat in bacon grease, but there are times I'm too lazy to find the bacon grease jar in my fridge and I'll use butter instead. It still stinks, but I can finally eat foods fried in it. I can put a little butter on some vegetables. And I put it in my coffee (I get people who cross into the US to bring me back Kerrygold butter, it's the best). I don't use the Kerrygold for cooking, only coffee. :)

The title of this thread made me laugh. In the 1970's, when I was newly married, but a fairly accomplished cook, one of my friends called me about a recipe she wanted to make. She told me the recipe was from one of those community/church type cookbooks and it called for oleo. She said she'd been to 3 different stores (not an easy task in our very rural community - but we were both transplants there) looking for oleo and couldn't find it anywhere. She wasn't sure what it was, just that it wasn't in any of the stores. Even though it wasn't a term I or my family ever used, I did happen to know that it was "code" for margarine. We had a great laugh over it; she bought butter and made her dish.

I only use butter and have for years, since I learned about hydrogenated fats and their dangers.

Real butter. Real milk. Real half & half or cream. Real cheese. Real olive oil from olives grown, pressed and packaged in one place (usually Italy).

Decades ago there were signs along the road between Illinois and Wisconsin that said, "Last chance to buy colored oleo!" I think Wisconsin bans the sale of imported butters today.

Butter. No chemical $H1+ storms in this house! We keep a stick of butter at room temp (trust me - it's FINE) for easy spreading.

Real butter, unsalted. I understand the ingredients.

Another butter here. Salted for the table, unsalted for cooking and baking. I too keep an unrefrigerated stick in a covered butter dish. We have maybe three days a year where it becomes too soft at room temp, threatening to lose its shape if not tucked into the fridge.

I was raised on a farm and we churned (made) our butter once per week. This was not by choice but by necessity of being self-sufficient and not spending money (post depression economy). The advantage was we knew the source of our butter, and we learned which cattle feeds lent good taste and which ones did not. Since we did not have refrigeration, butter was always made in small batches and used before it had time to spoil.

We used butter for table use and baking. Frying and corn popping was done in collected bacon fat. Mom kept a can of Cisco as a backup if we ran short of animal fats.

Today, I am an oleo junkie and my favorite brand is "I can't believe its not butter".

I was raised with butter for baking, but olive oil for all other cooking and have continued that throughout my life. I much prefer to dip bread in olive oil, than to use butter.

Only butter.

I was raised on margarine, and followed my mother's example for years. Then I dated a man who was seriously into health, and he wouldn't eat margarine. So I had butter around. I liked the taste, and have never gone back to margarine.

Another Brummel and Brown user for spreading and lightly salted butter for baking, sauteing, seasoning. Hubby likes spreadable button with olive oil for his toast.

You can leave real butter out of the refrigerator for up to 30 days. I don't use it often, so I only cut off a half stick and put it in a covered butter dish on the counter. It's fairly cool always in our house. It does not go rancid and I always have soft butter to spread on toast when I need it.

Debby_ab, I love the smell of melting butter :-)

Only had "oleo" growing up. Once I was on my own, I was so excited to buy my own groceries, lol!~ No more Corn Flakes, Ivory soap, Tide (for a short time) , Miracle Whip and oleo!! I bought sooo much sugary cereal for the first few years and experimented with different laundry soaps (only to return to Tide) & have never once bought oleo nor Ivory soap as an adult! ok....maybe margarine every once in a great while when I was feeling cheap.

Thank you for all the responses. Looks like butter wins hands down...Move over Oleo....

I think I call it Oleo because that's what my mom called it. My husband only eats I can't believe its not butter..foul stuff to my mouth. Hes always asking who ate his butter and I'm always saying**Old man there's no one in this house that would touch your fake butter look in your arteries and you' ll find it**....he doesn't realize how much of this stuff he eats, heck he puts it on everything. really irritates me when I make him homemade cinnamon rolls and he puts a big dollop of fake butter on it.

Anyway. I Thank all you good folks for sharing.

Only butter. I think years ago it was called oleomargarine. We used it growing up as well as butter when we had it.

Sue

Yup, "oleo" is short for oleomargarine and my dad and a couple of my aunts always called it oleo. I too haven't heard the term in a while and I enjoy hearing it. Brings back good memories.

I grew up with margarine. I'd eat it on toast because that's all that was there. Dad bought margarine because it was cheaper and it's ironic to me since he was raised on a farm, but then again he never had a very good taste palate. Everyone considered me the odd one for not wanting "butter" on my bread, but it wasn't butter. It was margarine. My roommate insisted on real butter and after tasting it a few times, I was sold and never looked back. It never sank in why I was so fussy until I was on my own and buying butter, that it wasn't an objection to having the fat on bread, it's that I just couldn't stomach margarine! I would buy margarine occasionally for certain things. I made my own cookie recipe that needed Country Crock to come out the way I wanted it. But for cooking eggs, toast, vegetables and most anything else, it's butter. I have recently been buying the butter and olive oil mix and that's not bad. I often buy whipped butter for easier spreading. But oleo is mostly a forbidden fare in my household. A friend of mine had a sign made and put it up in front of his house saying "Oleo Acres - The lower priced spread"

Butter for bread, toast, potatoes, and baking. olive oil for sautéing, frying and browning.

I was born in 1943, during WWII. Butter was heavily rationed when I was a child, and was saved for baking. For everyday, we had that awful block of oleomargarine (it looked like lard!) and a packet of orange powder. One had to mix the orange powder into the white oleo to make it yellow like butter. It tasted awful, but that may be the memory of a child who found the white stuff disgusting.

When I got married 50 yrs ago, husband and I agreed there would never be anything but butter in our house, and there never has been (even though husband only lasted 9 years!).

When I was pregnant with my 2nd child, I needed to watch my calories as I was gaining too much weight. That was when I discovered whipped butter! It not only has fewer calories and fat, it can sit out on the kitchen counter (if one has AC in the summer) and is very easy to spread, meaning I use less. First husband taught me to eat unsalted butter and that's all I've used these past 50+ years

So, Land 'o Lakes whipped, unsalted butter it is, unless I'm lucky enough to fine whipped, unsalted Breakstone, sometimes available locally during Passover. It has the most heavenly aroma!

real butter and ghee

Grew up on home churned butter. Now use both, but very little of either.

Moo. Anyone remember the years were "oleo" was not sold in Wisconsin, the dairy state? And still today, imported butter is not allowed in the state. Wisconsin people cross over to buy Pulgia and Kerrygold.

Margarine never turns bad. That scares me.

When I was a kid mom bought some kind of margarin in cereal bowls, large heavy plastic and bright colors..anyone remember those bowls? We used real table butter so I don't know why she occasionally bought these bowls of margarin. Knowing my mom it was sneaking it into cooking and for the bowl. Lol

I grew up with margarine only and was led to believe it was healthier than butter. Hubby grew up with butter only (when they had it as ghee,) so I quickly got used to eating butter. I also now feel margarine is rather evil.

Butter for everything

Butter makes it better