Cats don't know it's not butter

One of the small number of reasons I have not gone vegan is that I love butter. Good, creamy European butter most of all. But I am getting old and my metabolism is slowing, so it's time to wean myself from the butter.

And my cat. The cat loves butter, too. Just like his mom, he loves butter and cheese. He also like caramel cake. I know all of this because for some reason, I have always found it amusing to give Eddie first refusal on everything I eat. Dog owners can't relate because dogs will eat anything, but it can be fun to see what a cat will and will not eat. Unless it's 14 years later, you're no longer single and you'd like to get through a meal without your cat begging for a sniff of what you're eating.

But this was about butter. And my need to remove it from my life. So I was eating some toast the other day and put some Earth Balance on it. It's been years since I've eaten margarine, but the EB is fairly palatable. I still enjoyed my toast. And as usual, the cat wanted to sniff out what I was eating. So I wiped up some EB onto my fingertip and held it down for him, expecting him to turn away in disgust. But he didn't. He ate it! Earth Balance is apparently so butter-like that it fooled my butter-loving cat. I'm still very surprised.

So I've been using it more. For Thursday's Thanksgiving dinner at the SO's grandmother's house, I whipped up some sweet potato casserole. I baked the potatoes in the skins, scooped them out and added brown sugar and orange juice and stirred. I topped them with something akin to a praline crust--I dumped out some brown sugar, whole wheat flour and cinnamon and cut in chunks of Earth Balance and chopped pecans. Then I sprinkled it over the sweet potatoes and stuck the dish back in the oven until the topping melted together. Vegan sweet potato casserole! It turned out to be a pretty big hit (or a bunch of people lied to me--you never know). I didn't bother to mention it was vegan...no reason to give anyone an excuse not to like it!