“Things I’m Not Eating Anymore” is a photography project I hope will also serve as motivation to continue improving my overall health and eating habits. You can read the first post in this series that does a much better job of explaining all that, here.
For a brief period during elementary school, I attended after-school care at Mrs. Murray’s house on the Main Street of my hometown. She watched a gaggle of schoolkids during the gap between when school let out until their parents were able to pick them up. I don’t remember much about my time at Mrs. Murray’s other than our after-school snacks. Every day, we were given the choice between one half of a freshly baked grilled cheese or one half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I have a strong core memory of those crispy yet gooey grilled cheese sandwiches coming out of the oven and filling the house with the smell of warm butter and toasted white bread. Back then, like now, I was a “savory guy” and always selected the grilled cheese, providing clear evidence I wasn’t always in the bag for big peanut butter.
Somewhere along the line, things changed.
PEANUT BUTTER
I think if someone ran the numbers, I probably had less peanut butter and jellies than the average American child raised during the 70s and 80s, although I did eat a fair amount of them in my elementary school cafeteria. Back then, if you didn’t like what was being offered as the school lunch that day you could order “the alternate.” 100% of the time “the alternate” was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich served with an unnaturally orange-colored cheese wedge. I was a BIG alternate guy, mostly because of the cheese wedge. Of course, this lunch option would be a literal impossibility in today’s allergy-aware academic environment but, as the historical docu-drama Stranger Things clearly illustrates, the 80’s were a different time.
Despite the amount of PB&J’s I consumed in Sugarloaf Elementary’s All-Purpose-Room (it was a combination cafeteria/gymnasium/library), I didn’t really seek out peanut butter much outside the confines of academia. I did occasionally have a peanut butter ripple ice cream at Stewart’s Drive-In, and at some point I started receiving a sizeable number of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup related gifts at the major candy-centric holidays (which I suppose is all of them,) but those seemed like minor blips on the food preference radar. Certainly nothing that would send up red flags. However, there was turning point where peanut butter and jelly sandwiches transitioned from being an occasional treat to a full-on problem.
My last two years of college I lived in an on-campus apartment without a university meal plan. Because of my restaurant experience growing up, I was more adept than most of my peers at meal planning, but even with that advantage, I was still first and foremost a cash-strapped student trying to overcome real financial hurdles in an effort to feed myself.
Enter the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Cheap, calorie dense, easy to prepare, and damn tasty, the PB&J filled just about every square on the “meals for poor college students” bingo card. And boy did I eat a lot of them. Unlike ramen noodles, I never grew to despise the taste and smell of them over time. In fact, the sandwiches I ate earlier this year tasted just as good as the ones I woofed down listening to the new Pearl Jam album on my ratty third-hand couch in Montgomery apartments. That’s a lie. I never listened to Pearl Jam. I just had to pick a common cultural touchstone. Honestly, it was probably the Indigo Girls, but I digress.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t all good news on the PB&J front. Going into adulthood, those fond memories of feeding myself during college morphed into a hot mess of false psychological comforts associated with sweet and savory sandwich consumption. Had a rough day? A late night PB&J will smooth out that rough spot on your brain. Can’t sleep? A filling peanut butter sandwich with a glass of milk might help. Feeling empty? I know just the thing to fill that bottomless hole. As Chicago once wisely imparted, peanut butter, You’re a Hard Habit to Break.
I’m working on it.
Peanut butter is still awesome though. For those of you who can enjoy its sweet and salty goodness responsibly, let me leave you with the definitive Peanut Butter Buying Guide for the discerning snacker:
Acceptable Major Brands of Sugary Peanut Butter
- Jif
- End of list
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