It's The Time Of Year For The Butter Lambs

 

It's that time of year where those of certain faiths celebrate rebirth by killing a baby lamb. Somewhere in every single Bible tale is there a mention of slaughtering a lamb. So I concluded that it's bad to be a lamb around religious people. For years I railed against this tradition and especially these symbolic BUTTER LAMBS which are all the rage in the Ukrainian Catholic community. They include them in their Easter baskets with all the other contents to be blessed by the priest. So, yes, in my Mother's religion, the priest blesses two sticks of butter shaped into the image of a cute little lamb. Is so absurd and I do love me some absurdity.

 

Now before you scoff, it's not easy to make a good butter lamb. My Mother asks me to do one every year. I always refuse because I don't have the skills. There is no way that I could create (from two sticks of frozen butter) something that looks even remotely lamb-like. You need the right tool to do the wool just right and to keep it from squishing down. A butter lamb is a delicate thing and a thing of beauty which get's 'silenced' on Easter morning.

 

First, a little more history. Butter lambs, or baranek (baranki is the singular, but who would want to make only one?) are an Easter tradition from a place called Zakopane in the mountainous region of Poland. On holy Saturday, people would take a basket to the church to be blessed, filled with foods to be eaten when the fast was broken on Sunday. Sometimes in Zakopane, the priest would actually travel around from home to home to bless the baskets. The centerpiece of this basket was the butter lamb, and it would be consumed with the Easter meal on Sunday.

 

 

 

The face and feet and antlers make this one a winner.

This butter lamb was made with love.

 

I see how it's done but these look more like dogs than lambs.

 

All I ask is that you TRY!

 

I don't like this pressed into a mold butter lamb. Looks too much like a white chocolate treat and biting a chunk out of this would be a rude taste explosion.

 

Ah, the regal butter lamb as he is meant to be.

 

 

Hate the piping. Takes all the ten seconds to make one of these. How can a craftsman slap two peppercorn and a ribbon on this abomination and dare to call himself a butter artist?

 

Poor little guy. If that bread is hot then his life expectancy just went down to the next five minutes.

 

http://www.eatingfromthegroundup.com/2010/04/the-butter-lamb/