No tomatoes, please

Since I recently bought a loaf of bread for the first time in, oh, 2 months? I’ve been eating a lot of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches lately, and, ya know what? I freakin love and totally enjoy every one of them. The PB&J is such a simple, joyous experience. The easiest of all sandwiches, by far. Just open some jars. No condiments, or meat and cheese, or tomato or lettuce (if you’re into that kind of thing). No heating or anything special, except maybe excising the crusts if you’re feeling particularly motivated. Endless possibilities.

Since, as a general rule, I hate peanut butter (probably stemming from the horrid odor that would emit from my father after he ate it STRAIGHT OUT OF THE JAR. WITH A SPOON. I seriously gag just thinking about it), one would think that the PB&J would be out for me. My grandma used to counteract that by mixing the jelly with the peanut butter in a mug (always a mug, you need some good grip from the handle if you’re going to be stirring all that sticky peanut butter and jam) before spreading it on the bread. Which left a terrible mess for my mother, the dishwasher extraordinaire, later when she had to scrape dried peanut butter and jelly out of all of the mugs. Sorry!

But if you get enough jelly in there to counteract the flavor of the peanut butter, the best kind of alchemy happens. You end up with a really beautiful plum-colored paste that’s sweet and rich, with nary a trace of the too-rich nut flavor that made peanut butter completely unpalatable to me.

Though last year, while buying groceries to accompany the tiny fridge in my dorm room, I decided to buy some crunchy peanut butter. Why it had never even dawned on me as an option before baffled me. It’s not that my mother is unused to my ridiculous condiment demands. I can’t imagine how many discarded jars of mayonnaise have been left in the wake of my continuing search for a mayonnaise that I like that isn’t freakin Miracle Whip. And I totally love crunchy peanut butter any day of the week. It’s got the chunks of the peanuts which somehow counteract the actual peanut butter, and if I put a lot of jam on there, all you can taste is peanut chunks, which is so delicious I always have to make another one.

As far as jam goes, strawberry is good sometimes, but only the jelly. Preserves are terrible for a sandwich. Aside from the fact that they’re terrible to spread on bread, I mean, who wants freakin mushy strawberry bits on their sandwich? Ew. Same reason I hate strawberry ice cream. The minute you do something to try and preserve a strawberry past its lovely freshness it is completely ruined in flavor and texture. But take the juice and jellify it, and it’s delicious. A mystery of the universe. But alas, strawberry is second in my heart to a far more lovely colored and extraordinarily flavored gelled condiment.

Hands down every day forever and always I will always love blackberry jam. Do normal people even eat it ever? I dunno, they sell it, so I’ll take that as a yes. In fact, when it comes to purple jellies, this is what I’ve always eaten and loved. I guess I always thought it was grape, but somehow one day I realised it was not. I’m not sure I’ve ever even had grape jelly. Not that it even matters now. It will just pale horribly in comparison to my lovely blackberry jelly.

Man, I always remember even the tall, hexagonal little jars of Polaner All Fruit with the little gold caps that my British grandpa always had in the fridge. I somehow always thought it was so special. I don’t know if it was his taste for the blackberry jam that determined what we bought or not, but, for some reason, I always chalked it up to him being British and awesome that we were different with the blackberry jelly. It’s such a perfect, beautiful deep purple, especially when you spread it on the brown bread. And so sweet, but a teensy bit tart, and so perfect with butter all melted in the nooks and crannies of a toasted english muffin.

And as far as bread, I recall being enraged more than a few times at the fact that my mom refused to buy us white bread. I always wished for the far cooler crazy beautiful whiteness and lack of substantiality that my friends’ white bread provided. Then I ate it and was just angered that it stuck to the roof of my mouth with the insipid peanut butter. Now I love the wheat bread. Other than that time like, two years ago when I got ridiculous cravings for mayonnaise and ham sandwiches on white bread. I don’t even like ham. I’m still wtf-ing over that one.

Anywho, what are your PB&J preferences? Or has that gone the way of the beefaroni and been out of your food repertoire since you were 6? I’ll know you’re lying if you say that though, because everyone loves PB&J. Even people who hate peanut butter.