Thinking of going vegetarian...

Margarine does not give the same effect or the same flavor, but use it if you must. You won't get the caramelization at all, most likely. I wouldn't touch that stuff with a ten foot pole.

Do you have a favorite brand of butter?  I don't think I've ever even tasted real butter before.

*THUD*

Somebody come help me off the floor please....

Sorry, I tend to forget that not everyone grew up on real food. GOD BLESS FARMERS AND RANCHERS!!! *ahem*

It kinda depends on what part of the country you're from. Ideally you'd go to your farmers market and get it as fresh and local as possible. What state are you in?

Haha you know what the ironic part is??  I grew up on a farm.  Yup, drove the tractors around and around and around.  We didn't have milk cows tho, just angus for butchering.  I live in ND.

We got rid of the last milk cow when I was a preschooler, roughly coinciding with the last son's departure for college and therefore a big drop in help. Mom made fresh butter only very rarely anyhow.

Try Meadowgold or Dairygold if you have it out there, or Land o Lakes. Or some more local/regional brand. Butter comes salted (normal American style) and unsalted (as it is served in Europe). You're more likely to find the salted stuff. Try a pound from the regular store, and then once you fall in love, you buy it in bulk at Costco.

I pretty much grew up on old fashioned Oleo, which is evil, vile stuff. We went to some local brand tub margarine at some point that was a lot better. Then I acquired a live-in sister in law who insisted that Country Crock crap was the bees' knees. Bleh.

Imagine my glee when I went to Germany and discovered that butter was far more common than margarine. (Margarine became more widely used during the 80's, but I was stubborn and refused to follow the trend lol.)

Mr. EN was brainwashed into believing butter and cream and bacon are evil. But he'll eat peanut butter and Nutella by the pound if I don't supervise his portion sizes.

I buy Land O Lakes milk, so I'm assuming they have that butter here too.  I'll have to check it out next time I'm at the store.  I usually get groceries from Wal Mart, so there's probably a better selection there.  We have Sams Club here, but no Costco.  I'll try it next time I'm there.  Thanks for the education!  ;-)

 You've gotta try real butter.  Oh my...  world of difference!!!  

Also, margarine tends to have partially hydrogenated oils.  Those are super bad for you.

 The crock pot is great.  I've slow roasted chicken, beef, and pork in it.  I try to keep the flavors pretty simple while cooking it so that the meat can be adapted into different types of dishes.  But.. there's just something about the beef and the pork.  I like it much better the first time around.  The leftover dishes I try to make with it seemed to start missing much more than they were hitting.  And, the meat sat so heavy on me.  Do you have any recipe suggestions for ground turkey?  I have found that it sits very nicely on me.  Much better than ground hamburger even.  

Uh, that's why I said to get a one-quart crockpot. Try doing the hunk o critter in MINIATURE. Try it with chicken or a piece of turkey.

Make a meatloaf with ground turkey. Bind it with egg and just a little bit of oatmeal, as little as possible to make it stick together. Grease the pan a LOT with butter, put bacon bits in the turkey and sliced bacon and cheese on top of it.

Better yet, if you can stomach it, use finely grated Parmesan for your binder, wherever you'd use bread crumbs and such.

Oh that's perfect! I hadn't even thought about using parm as a binder. I tried crushed pork rinds once and thought it tasted kind of funky. I did a taco meatloaf once by mixing in lots of cheese and some taco seasoning. (I mix my own taco seasoning instead of using store bought which always seems to have sugar added to it.)