Should I Buy a Cow?
As a single person, I’ve never understood the appeal of Costco. I live in a one-bedroom, storage is tight — why would I want a store where you can only shop in quantities best described as “monster truck-esque”?
This project is beginning to teach me. Flour, luckily, comes in pretty large quantities in normal stores. Sugar can last a while, too. But, friends, I could buy a two-ton sculpture from the Wisconsin State Fair and still not have enough butter.
100 Cookies’ fifth recipe is for Peanut Butter Cookies. This project so far has had me going through Kerrygold a 3/4-block or so at a time — that’s a stick and a half, for those of you not acquainted with Earth’s best solid dairy — and I figured that these cookies might finally go easy on me. They called for a cup of peanut butter! Surely I might finally get a respite from the dairy drain, right?
Wrong.
For about 30 cookies, this recipe required not just a cup of peanut butter but a cup of butter-butter too. (Blah blah health, blah blah concern about my arteries, whatever. I’m sharing.) I handed over my last block of KG to the mixing bowl, and I’ll admit, the end result was good! My boyfriend and the friend I donated some to declared these cookies “really great” and “f*cking bomb” respectively, and, like, sure. You add some Jif to some pantry staples, you press a fork into ‘em, and you pretty much know what you’re gonna get.
But I just can’t get over the butter. It’s not that I’m worried about how much these recipes use, or searching for some low-cal equivalent that would go easier on the stuff — I just genuinely don’t know how people who bake all the time have so much on hand.
There are various ways I could solve this, of course. A Costco or Sam’s membership would do, considering the two-pound barges of Kerrygold I’ve heard that they sell. Dropping my iron-fisted brand allegiance to the Irish would help too, since most other butters come in four-stick boxes instead of KG’s two-stick bricks. But I think I know the real solution. The missing piece — that bottomless well of butter that all frequent bakers must clearly have — is a cow.
Whole Foods refuses to let me buy more than two units of butter at one time (thanks, Panic! at the Disco), but that would mean practically limitless dairy if those units were cows.
Yes, I know that I just said I have no room for bulk grocery, so cattle husbandry is perhaps a bit of an imaginative leap. But I see no other way forward. You’ll see me again on the blog once I’ve masked up and gone shopping for my weekly rations, but if you need me in the meantime, rest assured: I’ll be home, eating peanut butter cookies and Googling “how to turn urban balcony into home for cow.”