The best peanut butter-based snack
The people I know who are the best at snacking — the smartest, most successful snackers — are the ones who dig peanut butter. I don’t mean peanut butter flavored things, like granola bars or those little Israeli puffs. I mean those noble souls who take big spoonfuls of PB and devour it intentionally plain. Those who love nothing more than that first curved carving into a serene, virgin jar of Jif.
I have been doing this since I was a boy. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t utterly and eagerly devour the creamy, smooth, rich, brown decadence known as peanut butter. I grew up putting it thickly on a piece of plain white bread and taking healthy bites. Chasing it down with a glass of milk.
The glass of milk may be gone, because milk is disgusting, but the peanut butter is still here. The only difference is now I buy the good stuff. The 365 brand organic, or the big jars of organic Kirkland’s. The kind with the oil, the surface slick and lip-softening. I stir with ecstasy and no small measure of impatience, oil saturating the sides of the jar, the counter, my hands.
My latest peanut butter based obsession
My evolution has also taken me to a new height: dipping a little spoonful in a cup of maple syrup. It’s so unbelievably heavenly. I’ve been doing it most nights for the past month since I had the idea. I just some on a spoon, dip it down in the syrup, and slurp. Wow. Mind you — this only works with pure maple syrup. This is not a Mrs. Butterworth’s joint.
There’s something quaint and nostalgic about a love affair with peanut butter. It reminds me of simpler suburban times, before I had a mortgage and a pain in my left knee that keeps flaring up. When I could chug cow’s milk. When I wore briefs.
I can taste it on my lips now, the maple, the faintest hint of peanut butter. My cheeks are slightly puckered on the inside from relishing each spoonful, rolling it around my tongue. Absorbing the experience into my soul through osmosis of the oral lining.
If nothing else, it requires me to singularly focus. You cannot have this snack easily with one hand if you aren’t willing to get syrup all over the place. So you have to go slow, hold the little cup. Carefully dip, swirl, lift, lean, devour, enjoy. Anyway.
I recommend you try it immediately. You can thank me buy mailing me a jar of peanut butter (or other nut butter).
(yes I know peanuts are not nuts)
(but they are like nuts)
(right?)
