Why is there no non-fattening comfort food?
posted in General |A zillion years ago, in a land far far away; ok, I’ll be honest, it was Alaska, my family went camping on the Kenai Peninsula. In all truth, this one camping trip should have prepared me for a lifetime of camping in the Pacific Northwest. As I recall, and I believe I was Miss B’s age at the time, we were out for a week trip, and it was raining. It rained every day, big bucketsized drops of rain that soaked even the wood under the trees.
Mind you, this was before the camp host tooled around the paved circle towing a little wagon with bundles of nice dry wood in it. Back when I was a kid, we had to forage our campwood, and like it.
After four days (or so) of wet, there wasn’t a dry bit of wood anywhere. Even the centers of the logs you could chop into to get bits of wood were soggy. There was going to be no camp fire- we couldn’t get anything lit. So we were faced with a night of something cold, followed by a cold tent on the cold ground. This just wouldn’t do- so my father started up the plymouth and we grilled peanut butter and jelly on the engine (it was that or hamburgers, and I don’t think he wanted the grease in his pistons or wherever it would have gone). The Peanut Butter and the Jam combined into a warm (hot!) sticky mass, the heat brought out the flavors of the peanuts and the jam. And the bread was nice and toasty- toasty and gooey. A winning combination- and the sugar kept it hot.
For the last ten years, I’ve been threatening Ms B with those sandwiches; offering to grill them for her, or suggesting she eat them for supper if we’re our of cheese and she wants something toasty and gooey– heck, she’s halfway there with peanutbutter on toast. Last week, in a black mood, I made one, and crunched enthusiastically into it. About halfway into it, Ms B asked for a taste– and now she’s hooked. Grilled PB&J for all!
Now that I’ve begun this slow descent into Peanut Butter megalomania, I’ve introduced another abomination– dipping Chips Ahoy™ into Peanut Butter. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. 
