Being a proud bachelor/poor/awesome, I have logged many hundreds of hours making and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Not many other cheap foods can consistently deliver the way a solid PBJ can. They've evolved about as much as sharks or AC/DC and are just as much a piece of the very fabric of American life. Thus, I would like to share what I have learned so that you may enjoy your sandwiches as much as I do.
THE INGREDIENTS
Now I could rattle off brand names of specific breads and where you can purchase a certain kind of jelly, and we could argue smooth versus crunchy peanut butter until I punch you in the chest because you say crunchy. Crunchy peanut butter is gross. I win.
But the three ingredients of an enjoyable PBJ all adhere to three guidelines:
First, ingredients to make PBJs for a week should not cost any more than $10. Making an expensive PBJ is like putting peanuts in peanut butter. WHY DO IT. Second, they should be easy to utilize. Now this is where I half break one of my own rules. Obviously jelly in a squeezable container was an international revelation and should have its own commemorative day complete with parades and awkward family gatherings. But peanut butter needs to come in an old-fashioned screw-top jar, and I'll tell you why. Did you ever wake up one picturesque winter morning to a fresh snow so completely brand new and untouched by anything that you had to suit up and get out in it to be the first to upset the pristine white surface with your giddy, excited-for-Christmas-presents energy? Yeah me neither. But that's pretty much what the first stab into a new peanut butter jar is like for me. Perfectly flat smooth brown surface BUTTER KNIFE DESTROY!! It's an important piece of your formative childhood memories that I get to live whenever I feel like it. By stabbing something.
INAPPROPRIATE PARAGRAPH BREAK
And then third and finally, ingredients should be plentiful and easy to find. Half the appeal of the PBJ is that headaches are allergic to it. Nothing about it says "I'm stressful" or "give up." You should never have to drive to a second store to round up ingredients. If you do, you might as well go ahead and buy yourself a turkey to cook in the oven for seven hours or whatever.
A CAUTIONARY TALE
You may make it to the end of a loaf of bread and find that you're left with an odd number of slices. You may be tempted to employ the well-worn sandwich adage "bigger is better" and attempt a double-decker PBJ, peanut butter on one side, jelly on the other side. I'm here to tell you the result will leave you angry, confused, and likely to throw your sandwich off your sixth-floor balcony. The bread buffer between your PB and your J violates the most important PBJ rule: the peanut butter and the jelly MUST be touching. The bond between the two is half science, half magic, and all amazing. Don't disrespect it.
THE FUTURE?
Recently, I've been flirting with the idea of adding another ingredient into the mix. But every time I go to make myself a sandwich, I can't seem to muster up the enthusiasm to desecrate something so holy. And now I'm sad because I'm afraid I've offended mayonnaise by calling it a desecration. But I think the mark of an advanced civilization is that sometimes it's not already extremely hungry when it prepares its food, so it might get adventurous and tamper with the sanctity of jelly and bread and peanut butter. I, however, am not an advanced civilization and I am starving. I think I'd better go make myself a turkey club and apologize to mayo.
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food. Show all posts
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Friday, September 17, 2010
Gather 'round, Nation.
I'm an American. So I get to demand stuff.
1. No more super-loud motorcycles.
I believe the days of the iconic American biker are behind us. The part of our society that idolized the solitary rebel or the Hell's Angel as rugged, idealized individuals no longer includes the smarter or classier part. The only people who like bikers now are either trailer trash or other bikers. I know it's small potatoes for any governing legal body, but I think it should be put to a people's vote whether or not we put a cap on how loud motorcycles can be. They don't have to be any less powerful or dangerous to ride. Limiting the ways I can hurt myself of my own free will is absolutely un-American. But let's limit the power of one asshole to wake up an entire neighborhood at 2am because HE thinks it's cool.
2. Smaller portions. Everywhere.
There was a period of 6 months before I moved where just about every meal I ate was at a restaurant. While I believe this is absolutely the life for which I was intended, I did learn a lot about what the restaurant industry thinks of Americans. It's been in the headlines for probably the last ten years that Americans are disgustingly super-fat. And while I believe it's somewhat American of us to flaunt our nation's wealth by eating however much we want of whatever we want, I think a popular vote would favor smaller portions for a smaller price. Only teenagers need a 1/2 pound burger with a mountain of french fries. For the rest of us, a modestly sized burger and a small order of fries will usually get the job done, if you can eat slowly enough to let your body understand that there's food going into it. Then maybe I'd be able to afford to go out and eat all the time and stimulate the economy, instead of buying one loaf of bread every two weeks.
3. A stricter Truck License.
I'm aware that there is a special license needed to own or operate semi trucks and high powered industrial trucks. But how often do you see these F250 Super Duper Duty monstrosities without a speck of dirt on them. Why do you need a truck that big? Does your entire diet consist of free pizza and beer from helping friends of friends move? Does it make your truck easier to find in parking garages because it sticks halfway out into the lane? This is a tricky one, because I believe a majority of this country still believes that a god put us here to use up this planet's resources because the end-times are near. I don't want to go too far into why that majority of this country is dumber than a brick, but in extreme summary, people have been saying we were on armageddon's doorstep for thousands of years. So in all probability, the world isn't ending. So we might need to think a little bigger than "I wanna big truck, uh huh huh huh" in terms of what we do with this planet. Let's make the idiots drive cars like everyone else and take a step towards the freakin' future.
4. Admit we have no clue what we're doing with the Middle East.
There just is no right answer. Nothing is going to fix it. Life has always sucked over there and it will always suck. Anything we do over there is only always going to make things worse. So I say we just get the hell out and stop poking the entire region with a stick. Just because they're not going to stop being pissed off doesn't mean we can't be the bigger people and let them sort it out themselves (or at least continue doing whatever they're doing instead of sorting it out). I realize it's a smaller and smaller world these days, but they're all the way on the other side of it. So who cares.
5. Legalize pot.
Come on. I don't even smoke pot and I think we should just settle this one already. If there was any shred of scientific integrity to our society and our government, we would have decriminalized marijuana and just started taxing the shit out of it. Money makes the world go 'round, and America is the entire world. So I would have assumed that even maintaining absolute power over a people (even using arbitrary laws, like marijuana laws) would come in a distant second for our money-worshipping government. That and I'm just sick of hearing about it too. I think parents worried about how the legalization of pot would affect their children haven't considered the effect legalization would have on the whole counter-culture anti-establishment image of pot. Once it's legal, it's common and dorky. You can go down to the store and buy it with toilet paper and deodorant. After a few years it'd be less threatening than alcohol, and we'd have paid off the national debt. You're welcome, America.
1. No more super-loud motorcycles.
I believe the days of the iconic American biker are behind us. The part of our society that idolized the solitary rebel or the Hell's Angel as rugged, idealized individuals no longer includes the smarter or classier part. The only people who like bikers now are either trailer trash or other bikers. I know it's small potatoes for any governing legal body, but I think it should be put to a people's vote whether or not we put a cap on how loud motorcycles can be. They don't have to be any less powerful or dangerous to ride. Limiting the ways I can hurt myself of my own free will is absolutely un-American. But let's limit the power of one asshole to wake up an entire neighborhood at 2am because HE thinks it's cool.
2. Smaller portions. Everywhere.
There was a period of 6 months before I moved where just about every meal I ate was at a restaurant. While I believe this is absolutely the life for which I was intended, I did learn a lot about what the restaurant industry thinks of Americans. It's been in the headlines for probably the last ten years that Americans are disgustingly super-fat. And while I believe it's somewhat American of us to flaunt our nation's wealth by eating however much we want of whatever we want, I think a popular vote would favor smaller portions for a smaller price. Only teenagers need a 1/2 pound burger with a mountain of french fries. For the rest of us, a modestly sized burger and a small order of fries will usually get the job done, if you can eat slowly enough to let your body understand that there's food going into it. Then maybe I'd be able to afford to go out and eat all the time and stimulate the economy, instead of buying one loaf of bread every two weeks.
3. A stricter Truck License.
I'm aware that there is a special license needed to own or operate semi trucks and high powered industrial trucks. But how often do you see these F250 Super Duper Duty monstrosities without a speck of dirt on them. Why do you need a truck that big? Does your entire diet consist of free pizza and beer from helping friends of friends move? Does it make your truck easier to find in parking garages because it sticks halfway out into the lane? This is a tricky one, because I believe a majority of this country still believes that a god put us here to use up this planet's resources because the end-times are near. I don't want to go too far into why that majority of this country is dumber than a brick, but in extreme summary, people have been saying we were on armageddon's doorstep for thousands of years. So in all probability, the world isn't ending. So we might need to think a little bigger than "I wanna big truck, uh huh huh huh" in terms of what we do with this planet. Let's make the idiots drive cars like everyone else and take a step towards the freakin' future.
4. Admit we have no clue what we're doing with the Middle East.
There just is no right answer. Nothing is going to fix it. Life has always sucked over there and it will always suck. Anything we do over there is only always going to make things worse. So I say we just get the hell out and stop poking the entire region with a stick. Just because they're not going to stop being pissed off doesn't mean we can't be the bigger people and let them sort it out themselves (or at least continue doing whatever they're doing instead of sorting it out). I realize it's a smaller and smaller world these days, but they're all the way on the other side of it. So who cares.
5. Legalize pot.
Come on. I don't even smoke pot and I think we should just settle this one already. If there was any shred of scientific integrity to our society and our government, we would have decriminalized marijuana and just started taxing the shit out of it. Money makes the world go 'round, and America is the entire world. So I would have assumed that even maintaining absolute power over a people (even using arbitrary laws, like marijuana laws) would come in a distant second for our money-worshipping government. That and I'm just sick of hearing about it too. I think parents worried about how the legalization of pot would affect their children haven't considered the effect legalization would have on the whole counter-culture anti-establishment image of pot. Once it's legal, it's common and dorky. You can go down to the store and buy it with toilet paper and deodorant. After a few years it'd be less threatening than alcohol, and we'd have paid off the national debt. You're welcome, America.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
The Moveys
Welcome to the first, completely-non-annual-but-totally-prestigious-anyway Movey Awards, where we honor the best and worst of the move from Indianapolis to Seattle.
The award for Best Bacon goes to
Stella's Kitchen & Bakery Billings, MT
We ate many $10 breakfasts during the trip at many unknown, local eateries with many different standards for bacon. Stella's bacon is probably the best bacon I've ever eaten. The most accurate way to describe its appearance is to call to mind a dog's thick rubber chew toy. Billings being out in the middle of nowhere (as is everything in Montana) I totally believe the pig that produced the bacon died earlier that morning with the sole purpose of producing those three ecstasy-inducing strips. And for this, I thank the bacon gods, Stella's be thy name.
Moving right along, the award for Worst Shower... and the winner is!
The Ramada Inn Spokane, WA
First off, I hope the Ramada company got a good deal when they bought this rape-hole. In the conversion from "local, charming, only slightly-rapey motel" to "Ramada-owned corporate-funded inexplicably still-rapey hotel," there were light fixtures that weren't plugged in (because there were no outlets near them), free-standing replacement A/C units because apparently repairmen are migratory, and most notably THE WORST shower I've ever taken. Imagine if you will, the annoying dog who wants to go back outside after you just let him in, and then back out, and then in again. Now imagine that you're trusting that dog to splash consistently-temperatured water on your naked body in a strange place while you're traveling with people who might find it odd that you're cursing/yelping in the shower. Couple that with counter-intuitive "backwards-style" hot and cold knobs, and the message is clear: STAY THE HELL OUT OF SPOKANE.
The Movey for Best Driver's Tan came out as a tie this year, let's have both Greg and Sam come to the stage to accept one disproportionately-bronzed left forearm each.
Y'know folks, as the lights dim and some sentimental piano music swells, I'd like to talk about one of the many reasons we left the Midwest. One stands out above the rest, and is exemplified here tonight by the award for Worst Weather. After living in Indiana for almost fifteen years, actually handing out a fake award for especially apocalyptic weather carries a little more weight. This honor tonight goes jointly to Wisconsin and Minnesota for totally independently of each other making me actually think my life was going to end on I-90.
Driving west out of Madison, it started to rain. "Puh!" I thought to myself, rolling my eyes. "That's the best you can do?" Wisconsin took it personally and filled the air with so much water that some of the more faint-of-heart drivers pulled off to the shoulder to wait it out. Now, I don't like to call myself an Indiana Boy, but I'm not scared of rain. Wisconsin retaliated by upgrading the rain to 11, and then went above and beyond, closing I-90 down to one lane. The Cruise Control on my car doesn't activate below 35mph, and I consider it an integral part of my personality that I will not go slower than that on any interstate for any reason. It's part of what makes me a man. So...Sam: 1, Wisconsin: 0.
After the mind-numbing beige that is southeastern Minnesota, I was practically praying for a tornado. Minnesota, apparently, was listening. The only thing scarier than giant buckets of rain dumping smaller buckets of even more rain on you might just be a storm that's every bit as violent but eerily void of rain. After fifteen minutes of watching the trees against the opaque, urine-colored sky to see just how hard the wind was blowing, I noticed that there weren't any other cars on the road. Fearing they knew something I didn't, I turned on the radio. I realized then why more tornado sightings weren't reported every year. There was no way in hell I was going to slow down and pick up my phone and then try and figure out who the hell I'm supposed to report a tornado to while I'm ANYWHERE NEAR A GOD DAMN TORNADO, where I just so happened to be at that time. And when you consider how many people actually live in rural Minnesota as opposed to how many of us are just passing through, it's a wonder they even know tornadoes exist. Here's to never going to Minnesota again!
Most Unnecessary Photo this year goes to my picture of Mount Rushmore, taken with my the camera on my phone.
After driving through the Black Hills for half an hour (from our hotel which was IN the Black Hills), paying ten dollars for a parking pass, walking past a bunch of tacky gift shops and cafés that weren't open at 10:30am (even though the target market for Mount Rushmore is patriotic early-bird old people) and wading through a sea of tourists from places like Mooseknuckle Ohio, I felt like this mountain with heads blasted into it owed me something. The best I could think of was to snap a picture. So I wasted 3 seconds of my life creating something that I could find on any postcard or even with a simple Google search. [APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE]
This year's Lifetime Achievement Award for Still Most Prevalent Anti-Drug Billboards goes to...
METH! Yaaaaay!! Feels just like home!
I had always somehow fooled myself into thinking that since Indiana was so far towards the eastern side of what is considered the Midwest, that we had our own brand of back-woods redneck ridiculous that was totally different from what you'd find in the actual Midwest (i.e. Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma) and that perhaps Indiana's perennial love-affair with meth wouldn't translate farther out west. WRONG. If anti-meth billboard-density were any indication to how much the locals still love their meth, Missoula is officially the meth-capital of the universe. In their defense, ya know, it's not like they got a whole lot else goin' on.
And the award for City I Now Live In goes to Seattle, WA, BITCHES.
That's right, me living in you is an award. I win.
The award for Best Bacon goes to
Stella's Kitchen & Bakery Billings, MT
We ate many $10 breakfasts during the trip at many unknown, local eateries with many different standards for bacon. Stella's bacon is probably the best bacon I've ever eaten. The most accurate way to describe its appearance is to call to mind a dog's thick rubber chew toy. Billings being out in the middle of nowhere (as is everything in Montana) I totally believe the pig that produced the bacon died earlier that morning with the sole purpose of producing those three ecstasy-inducing strips. And for this, I thank the bacon gods, Stella's be thy name.
Moving right along, the award for Worst Shower... and the winner is!
The Ramada Inn Spokane, WA
First off, I hope the Ramada company got a good deal when they bought this rape-hole. In the conversion from "local, charming, only slightly-rapey motel" to "Ramada-owned corporate-funded inexplicably still-rapey hotel," there were light fixtures that weren't plugged in (because there were no outlets near them), free-standing replacement A/C units because apparently repairmen are migratory, and most notably THE WORST shower I've ever taken. Imagine if you will, the annoying dog who wants to go back outside after you just let him in, and then back out, and then in again. Now imagine that you're trusting that dog to splash consistently-temperatured water on your naked body in a strange place while you're traveling with people who might find it odd that you're cursing/yelping in the shower. Couple that with counter-intuitive "backwards-style" hot and cold knobs, and the message is clear: STAY THE HELL OUT OF SPOKANE.
The Movey for Best Driver's Tan came out as a tie this year, let's have both Greg and Sam come to the stage to accept one disproportionately-bronzed left forearm each.
Y'know folks, as the lights dim and some sentimental piano music swells, I'd like to talk about one of the many reasons we left the Midwest. One stands out above the rest, and is exemplified here tonight by the award for Worst Weather. After living in Indiana for almost fifteen years, actually handing out a fake award for especially apocalyptic weather carries a little more weight. This honor tonight goes jointly to Wisconsin and Minnesota for totally independently of each other making me actually think my life was going to end on I-90.
Driving west out of Madison, it started to rain. "Puh!" I thought to myself, rolling my eyes. "That's the best you can do?" Wisconsin took it personally and filled the air with so much water that some of the more faint-of-heart drivers pulled off to the shoulder to wait it out. Now, I don't like to call myself an Indiana Boy, but I'm not scared of rain. Wisconsin retaliated by upgrading the rain to 11, and then went above and beyond, closing I-90 down to one lane. The Cruise Control on my car doesn't activate below 35mph, and I consider it an integral part of my personality that I will not go slower than that on any interstate for any reason. It's part of what makes me a man. So...Sam: 1, Wisconsin: 0.
After the mind-numbing beige that is southeastern Minnesota, I was practically praying for a tornado. Minnesota, apparently, was listening. The only thing scarier than giant buckets of rain dumping smaller buckets of even more rain on you might just be a storm that's every bit as violent but eerily void of rain. After fifteen minutes of watching the trees against the opaque, urine-colored sky to see just how hard the wind was blowing, I noticed that there weren't any other cars on the road. Fearing they knew something I didn't, I turned on the radio. I realized then why more tornado sightings weren't reported every year. There was no way in hell I was going to slow down and pick up my phone and then try and figure out who the hell I'm supposed to report a tornado to while I'm ANYWHERE NEAR A GOD DAMN TORNADO, where I just so happened to be at that time. And when you consider how many people actually live in rural Minnesota as opposed to how many of us are just passing through, it's a wonder they even know tornadoes exist. Here's to never going to Minnesota again!
Most Unnecessary Photo this year goes to my picture of Mount Rushmore, taken with my the camera on my phone.
After driving through the Black Hills for half an hour (from our hotel which was IN the Black Hills), paying ten dollars for a parking pass, walking past a bunch of tacky gift shops and cafés that weren't open at 10:30am (even though the target market for Mount Rushmore is patriotic early-bird old people) and wading through a sea of tourists from places like Mooseknuckle Ohio, I felt like this mountain with heads blasted into it owed me something. The best I could think of was to snap a picture. So I wasted 3 seconds of my life creating something that I could find on any postcard or even with a simple Google search. [APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE] [APPLAUSE]
This year's Lifetime Achievement Award for Still Most Prevalent Anti-Drug Billboards goes to...
METH! Yaaaaay!! Feels just like home!
I had always somehow fooled myself into thinking that since Indiana was so far towards the eastern side of what is considered the Midwest, that we had our own brand of back-woods redneck ridiculous that was totally different from what you'd find in the actual Midwest (i.e. Nebraska, South Dakota, Oklahoma) and that perhaps Indiana's perennial love-affair with meth wouldn't translate farther out west. WRONG. If anti-meth billboard-density were any indication to how much the locals still love their meth, Missoula is officially the meth-capital of the universe. In their defense, ya know, it's not like they got a whole lot else goin' on.
And the award for City I Now Live In goes to Seattle, WA, BITCHES.
That's right, me living in you is an award. I win.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)