DEAR DAME EVELYN , My boyfriend says he wants to slather my body with crème fraîche and then ... and then ... well, you can imagine. Maybe you can't imagine – not really the point. The point is I am not sure about this. What is crème fraîche, exactly, and where would we get it, and is it safe to slather it all over your body? And isn't it fattening? My boyfriend has cute little love handles right now, but I don't want him turning into a big blob like his father. Is there some kind of low-fat version? I am full of doubt. Please advise.

Slatherette

Freshness,

So many questions! Crème fraîche is, basically, heavy cream thickened by a bacterial culture. In that sense it resembles buttermilk (a favorite of Sir Evelyn, who used to gulp the stuff with great gusto every morning while the rest of the breakfast table looked on in horror) and yogurt. You can find it in the better sort of dairy case, but it's more fun to make it yourself. Just take a carton of heavy cream, pour it into a bowl, add a tablespoon or two of buttermilk, or yogurt with an "active" or "live" culture – check the carton carefully – and let it stand in a warm place for a day. It should thicken up nicely to the consistency of pancake batter, at which point you should probably refrigerate it. Crème fraîche has a rich, mildly sour flavor, but you can add other flavors to it – vanilla, mint, brown sugar, to name a few sweet, dessertish possibilities. You can also whip it. (Whip it good!) Whipped crème fraîche, with its expanded volume, might be preferable for body slathering, as it would have fewer calories per square inch of flesh so slathered. Low-fat crème fraîche strikes me as a non sequitur; if you're that concerned about your boyfriend's incipient tubbiness, you might thin some nonfat yogurt with some nonfat milk and see if he is sufficiently besotted with your charms to slather that about and lap it up. Better yet, put him on a treadmill.

Actively,

E. G.-S.