Melted Butter on Toast

There are free days and then there are freeeee days. Today was one of those long, gentle days that seem to stretch on quietly. The kind of an autumn day when the late morning sun still feels hot, yet the hills look friendly, and there is no hurry to do anything at all. The wind was cold but welcome under the bright sun.

A few days ago, a friend had shared a clever idea about how to make butter soft during these cold mountain days. He had seen it on social media. You heat a glass with boiling water, empty it, and then place it upside down over a small dish of butter. The warmth trapped inside the glass is supposed to soften the butter nicely.

Today, the idea came back to me just as some people staying with me mentioned toast with salted Amul butter and jam. Jam is never a problem here. Every summer we make jars of it using fruits from our orchard. The old way of cooking slowly, without any chemicals, keeps the taste of real fruit alive. However, butter, on cold winter days is not so friendly.

So I decided to test the butter trick. I poured some hot water into a glass and some into the French press for my coffee. After a minute, I emptied the glass and placed it over the butter. Then I waited. And waited a little more. Nothing happened. The butter sat there, cold and firm, refusing to change. Maybe the air was already too chilly for such an easy trick to work in our hills.

Not ready to give up, I tried two other methods. One bowl of butter went to rest in the sunny part of the greenhouse. Another went into a smaller bowl floating on hot water, as suggested by one another person here. The greenhouse butter after some minutes softened just enough to spread on hot toast. The one sitting over the hot water melted completely and turned into something that might one day call itself ghee. May be it could be dripped directly over the toast in the way people use honey, but this version of butter was also not for me. So I decided the greenhouse method was the best, at least for my use during this autumn weather.

Someone once told me that instead of spreading butter on toast, one should keep it on the plate and dip the toast into it, like cultured souls picking some chutney with samosas. A rather refined way of eating, I was told. I tried it, but my toast broke in the middle, and the butter won that round. I have never tried it since then. Even dipping a Parle-G in Chai to wet it perfectly is much easier than this method.

These days I try not to eat too much butter. For health reasons, I sometimes use olive oil instead. It took a little time to get used to, but now I quite like the taste. Still, nothing can quite replace the comfort of butter on a good piece of toast.

My favourite way to enjoy butter is with a fried egg. I toast a slice of bread till it turns deep brown, just a little short of burnt. Then I place a half-fried egg on it, and put a couple of small cubes of butter on top of the egg. The butter slowly melts and coats the egg, sometimes soaking parts of toast too, creating a simple yet rich flavour. When the yolk or butter drips on the plate, the corner of the toast is there of course, to scoop up every drop, in the polite manner of civilised people who are secretly trying to lick their plates clean.

Today was indeed a quiet, slow day. I sat back and enjoyed each bite of toast with butter and apple jam. No eggs though. The coffee was warm, the hills were calm, and the world felt at peace. It was a simple moment, yet full of contentment.

It reminded me that joy does not always come from grand moments. Sometimes it comes from something as small as soft delicious butter on crispy brown toast.

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