Through my experiments in historic gastronomy, I have come to appreciate the beauties of butter, particularly when it’s fresh from the churn.

Apparently, I share this dairy fetish with installation artist Tim Eads, who “…Aims to reinvigorate our appetite for the long-standing table staple by crafting a pedal-operated machine that churns butter while simultaneously operating a toaster…”

“About a year ago I was thumbing through a 1905 Sears catalog I found in a used book store. It was humorous to see how everything was so bulky and strange looking and only performed simple tasks. It occurred to me that in 100 years our machines will look silly and inefficient.

…The reason I chose butter was it seemed like one of the most basic ways to connect to people. Because much of our brain activity is dedicated to finding and eating food we all connect with it on some level.”

If you’d like to support Eads in his butter dreams, then stop by his Kickstarter page, where he’s raising funds to make the butter bike a reality.  I wish him all the best.

And on a similar note, a novel gift idea: handmade butter, presented in a decked-out mason jar.  Visit slowchristmas.org  for the recipe.