My South | Peanut butter and sweet tea ... Mmm, mmm good
March is Peanut Butter Lover’s month. Now there’s a holiday I can sink my teeth into. Jilda and I love peanut butter.
Back during the lean years when we first married and lived in the trailer, we ate peanut butter out of necessity, but that wasn’t really a sacrifice.
Like many of you, we grew up on PB&J sandwiches. Each day when my mom packed our lunches, she’d lay slices of Merita white bread in a row. Then she’d slather on a layer of peanut butter as thick as my hand and add a scoop of jam from the pantry that she’d canned the previous fall. My favorite was blackberry jam, even if it did leave tiny seeds stuck between my teeth.
We really didn’t trade lunches at school back then because everyone had the same thing.
When I unwrapped the wax paper, I left enough at the bottom to hold the sandwich while I ate it. One bite and a rope of peanut butter would ooze out from between the crust. This required that I constantly lick around the edges while I ate.
Sometimes I’d get a thick glob of peanut butter stuck in the roof of my mouth, which caused me to talk funny.
We usually bought our groceries at the Piggly Wiggly or Jitney Jungle in Sumiton, but some of my neighbors received government assistance each month and they got commodity peanut butter. It came in what looked like gallon cans. That peanut butter was thick and rich. It smelled better than our store-bought stuff.
Nothing goes better with peanut butter than sweet tea. A memory that stands out in my mind is one summer afternoon when I visited a neighbor’s house. His mom had just made a gallon jug of sweet tea. She added the sugar and stirred it with an ancient spoon.
She folded a dish towel and placed it over the mouth of the jar to keep the flies out before placing it on the counter to cool.
The afternoon sun coming through the screen door in the kitchen highlighted the twirling sugar in the jar, turning it into an amber-colored snow globe. I stood there watching until the sugar dissolved. That scene stuck in my head.
My friend washed his hands and dried them on his britches before snagging a few biscuits left over from breakfast. He scooped some peanut butter inside and squeezed them closed. His mom set a couple of glasses of ice on the cabinet. The cubes popped and cracked as she poured the glasses full of warm tea.
We sat on their back porch with our legs dangling off the edge and enjoyed our peanut butter biscuit.
In the past, I’ve had peanut butter and banana sandwiches, as well as some peanut butter and dill pickle.
These days, I eat peanut butter and wheat crackers as a snack. When apples are in season, Jilda slices them into wedges and puts them in a bowl with a glob of peanut butter on the side. We then dip the ends of the sweet wedges into the peanut butter. It’s a great snack that is good for you.
As your culinary adviser, I recommend you have a peanut butter sandwich today in honor of Peanut Butter Lover’s Month.
Rick Watson is a columnist and author. His latest book, “Life Changes,” is available on Amazon.com. You can contact him via email at rick@homefolkmedia.com.