. . of how much a (somewhat) large family eats. 

I have never been one for margarine. I’ve always been willing to pay the bigger bucks for real butter, even when I was a bachelor. Better tasting, better for you.

And back in those days, there were times when I would put out a stick of butter and, since I was the only eater, would require so little butter that it would go stale.

That never happened after I got married. My wife, being the daughter of a Home Ec. major, knew how to cook with butter so a stick never was out long enough to go bad.

As we started having more children and required more, we got an extra wide butter dish and started putting out two sticks at a time.

And later we put out a full pound, never risking butter staleness.

Now, as regular R.P. readers know, we have 6 kids under 10. This weekend we went through a pound of butter in 24 hours.

And we did no baking.