My brother Knocker taught me to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while I was in single digits, and I'm here to announce the following: he did not teach me the proper way.
I'm sorry, Knocker, but it had to be said.
I was taught to put peanut butter on both slices of bread. Then you pick one side, put some jelly on it (preferably my mother's strawberry freezer jam), put the sides together and you've got a sandwich. The first clue that my way was unconventional was when my roommate shrieked, shrieked, when she saw me putting peanut butter on the second slice of bread. She and I are both a bit on the anal-retentive side, and so it's not surprising that we have very firm opinions on things like proper peanut butter and jelly sandwich assembly.
Proper PBJ construction continued to be a sore point between us, particularly when we would have to pack snacks for long shifts working in the computer lab. I would sometimes have to bring her sandwiches. While Knocker's way allows more peanut butter, well, it's just not practical for packing vertically. You see, all the jelly slides across the slippery, peanutty interior of the sandwich out to the bottom and pools in a sweetened, gelatinous puddle in the sandwich baggie. I held up one of these puddle sandwiches after it had ridden in my bookbag, and I confess, I began to doubt my own method.
Now, if you're not making sandwiches for travel, then the double peanut butter method is fine, no problem. The trouble is, I've never noticed much improvement in the taste of the sandwich with the extra peanut butter, plus the fact that the spreading of additional peanut product was an additional step in the sandwich-making process. But I did not want to lose face in front of my roommate after we'd had this elaborate argument about the simplest sandwich since, well, sliced bread. So when I made sandwiches for us, I would make hers her way and mine Knocker's way. I knew most of the jelly was getting lost in the baggie, so I was really having a peanut butter sandwich with jelly on the side, but I ate it without complaint. Eating a weird sandwich was a lot better than eating crow.
But now I live alone and so I can make my sandwiches in private. No one judges me as I put jelly only on the second slice of bread. At the same time, I feel a pang of guilt, of family betrayal, because this is the first time that I've ever noticed my family to be wrong about food. I think if ever I find strawberry jam better than my mother's, I may just lose the will to live.
2 comments:
I understand. I had a similar struggle recently in regard to tube socks.
I needed to buy some new socks a few months ago. Here I was, 37 years old, and the thought hit me for the first time: There really is no reason for socks to go all the way up onto the calf. It's not like my calf ever gets cold. And because the calf is fatter than the ankle, the socks always, always slide down to the ankle anyway. So for the first time in my life, I bought ankle length socks.
I love my ankle socks. I will never go back. Old habits die hard, but the truth will set you free! :)
Nobody seems to put butter on their peanut butter sandwiches. I always put butter (actually margarine) on each slice before putting peanut butter on one slice and Mom's famous strawberry jam on the other. I notice when I ask others if they want butter, they do not. This is when I am making one for a grandchild. Knocker just must like peanut butter, I never taught him to do that.
When I was a kid at home, we seldom or never had jelly or jam in the house. We always used honey. Jam had that dreaded sugar in it.
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