Peanut butter
There is nothing more satisfying than a piece of warm full grained toast with a thickish layer of good quality crunchy peanut butter smeared on it. The taste revives childhood memories and satisfies the mouth with a sticky savory slurry. And it has to be crunchy, smooth never really cuts it in the same way.
Father taught me to eat it with added salt and cracked pepper. Today the health regime prohibits the salt, unnecessary as it already was, but the fresh cracked pepper adds a spicy depth to an already almost prefect treat. I confess to slathering butter between my bread and peanut butter in most cases. That is unless I plan on adding honey as well. Peanut butter and honey, the favourite of many a child, turns out to be the most perfect desert-like snack. The warmth of the just toasted bread causes the peanut butter and honey to melt together creating a sticky amalgam of mouth watering delight. Irresistible, even to my more refined adult tastes. Recently Susan has expanded my peanut butter repertoire leading me to accept that peanut butter can be used in salad sandwiches, particularly with rocket (rucola) and tomato… who would have thought?
But why is it peanut butter? Butter it certainly isn’t. The Dutch call it pindakaas (peanut cheese) due to a protectionist law passed to preserve the dairy industry’s desire to keep the word butter to themselves. I wonder why those Dutch farmers so easily let go of the word cheese? Peanut butter was first patented in the US by a certain Canadian called Marcellus Gilmore Edson in 1884. Despite this fact I’ve heard many Dutchmen claim peanut butter as one of their nation’s greatest inventions in much the same way Australians claim the Kiwi’s pavlova as their own.
Our pantry is never without a jar of peanut butter. I eat it less than before simply because each luxuriously lavished toasted spread of it means more time on the cross-trainer to avoid it gathering around my waist. But when no one is looking I have been known to sneak down to the kitchen and grab a tablespoon full to quietly suck on while I’m working away on some project or other. I think I may even get some now.
