This post is about peanut butter

Every so often, either Mark or I will accidentally buy the peanut butter from Trader Joe's that says NO STIR in large print, and then adds in the tiny-print ingredients area, powdered sugar, palm oil. We've had just such a jar of peanut butter sitting on our counter with its receipt for a week or two, waiting for one of us to remember to grab it en route to Trader Joe's to exchange it for some actual peanut butter. Made with peanuts.* 

Today I was desperate for peanut butter for some reason, and being one week away from the second colonoscopy of my life (which under normal circumstances would make me approximately 60 years old), I am not supposed to eat nuts or seeds or dried fruits or tomatoes. Or corn. Or popcorn. And the only peanut butter we have that's not tainted with dog saliva or palm oil is crunchy, i.e. full of peanuts.** 

Anyway, so I ate some of the fake peanut butter on a slightly stale graham cracker (the only bread we have is full of seeds), and that taste — graham cracker, sweet, creamy peanut butter — was intensely evocative of...something.*** One of those non-specific and yet so very specific childhood somethings. I need to make a list and include this with the smell in the bread aisle at the grocery store et al.




*To clarify, there are peanuts in the NO STIR peanut butter. We are just trying to be healthy and avoid eating excessive amounts of powdered sugar and palm oil.

**Yeah, I know they're legumes, but still.

***Although we almost always had Skippy brand extra crunchy when I was a kid. I used to get a big spoonful and eat it for a snack.