Day 21: Tastes Like Home

Prompt: Tastes Like Home

Every few weeks, we drive out to Costco, which is about an hour away. A couple of months ago, something terrible happened. They were out of Skippy peanut butter. Or, rather, they only had crunchy, which, I'm sorry, but crunchy? That's just open mocking. So rude, Costco. It was a dark day.

Generally speaking, I adore the food in Australia. I love the variety and quality, and the fact that most of the stuff in the grocery store is not so loaded with complete crap as our processed food at home. I mean, I don't think my beloved Tim Tam is a health food, but generally speaking. When I look in our pantry, I don't see much in the way of junky processed foods, as I do most of our cooking from scratch. The one big exception is my dear Skippy. 

I tried a lot of peanut butter when I moved here, and all of it made me sad. It just wasn't as sweet and creamy as what I grew up with (read: it's probably a lot healthier). I settled for something as junky as I could find, but my passion for peanut butter had perished. 

So, when Costco Sydney opened, I made a beeline for the industrial sized peanut butter. Skippy tastes like home. It's the brand that I grew up with, so to me, it is what peanut butter should taste like. In the days before every third kid was anaphylaxic from even thinking about peanuts, most of my school lunches were peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And, we had a rule in my house that if you weren't going to eat what was served at the dinner table, you could make yourself a peanut butter sandwich (we weren't very picky eaters, and didn't take that option too often, lest you think our parents were giving us carte blanche on PBJ for dinner).

Not that many of my friends ate Skippy at home, most of them coming from Peter Pan or Jif households, and for some reason, they'd tell me it tasted like it had mayonnaise in it, but then quickly say, "but not in a bad way." This anecdote is appropos of nothing, but just thought I'd pass that along since we're talking Skippy, anyway. 

It's so comforting. First, there's this...

... that perfectly smooth layer in the new jar fills my heart with smiles. Sometimes, my mom would draw a little heart in there, and if that does not say a mother's love is beyond words, I don't know what does. 

Then, there's how beautifully it spreads. It's just pretty. Finally, it tastes sweet, smooth, peanuty. I know it takes a lot of processing and a lot of junk to get it to taste like it does, but that's how we do in America.

Based on exactly not one shred of science, I went wild with my peanut butter intake when I was pregnant, as I was determined to not have a child with a peanut allergy. A house without peanut butter?  I don't even know what that looks like... By the time Hushpuppy was four months old, I was doing skin tests where I'd rub a little PB on her cheek and look for a reaction (that's a real thing, I didn't just make that one up). Thank my lucky stars, she has no problem with peanut butter. She's decidedly a next-generation Skippy kid. And, in case you want to judge me for giving my baby junky spread on her toast, I'd like to mention that the health nurses advocate giving babies Vegemite here, so I'm not going to apologize. 

I opened up this new jar today, good timing for this blog, and put Skippy right on my shopping list. Even though this one will last me awhile, I've learned to always keep one in reserve, lest we ever have to repeat the empty peanut butter shelf episode again.