In praise of peanut butter

 

Image by Freepik

When I was a kid, peanut butter and mayonnaise sandwich was a staple in our household. I loved it, still do, but to this day when I mention it, it’s like I recommended eating liver for supper (that’s not bad either). Most people seem never to have heard of the sandwich combination although truth is it has been a staple in southern America since the Great Depression. The combination of tangy mayonnaise (I do not think Miracle Whip is an acceptable substitute) with salty peanut butter was a cheap and good source of nourishment. Traditionally, the sandwich, like a tomato or pimiento cheese sandwich, was always made with white bread, what I call “cotton candy bread” because of the way it dissolves in your mouth. I prefer a good rye bread with my peanut butter.

Some weird variations have come to my attention over the years. The “Elvis sandwich” adds crumbled bacon and sliced bananas. Some people add lettuce for a bit of crispness—my mom was of the lettuce school. Others add grated cheese—sharp cheddar adds a distinctive flavor, while the milder cheddar gives the sandwich a creamier texture. When really hungry, I’ve been known to add bacon, cheese, and lettuce to the basic sandwich.

The other day I ran across one of those online glimpses into what we ate in the past. This harked back not to the food of the Fifties which so intrigues me but to the wartime days of the forties, when men were recruited as civilian defense workers and air raid wardens. (I remember walking our neighborhood with my uncle, looking for illegal cracks of light peeking through blackout curtains.) Whoever compiled these sandwich fillings meant them to sustain these men, many working outdoors for the first time in their lives.       

Peanut butter was a staple. With chili sauce. With prunes and pickle relish (an odd combination, to my mind). With green pepper and celery (nice crunch and okay if you like bell pepper, which I don’t). With raisins (maybe, but mayo would help). With chopped ham, vinegar, and salt and pepper (no idea how much vinegar, but I’m skeptical).

Cheese was another staple. Grated, with ketchup, onion, Tabaso, and cream (I’m still trying to figure out what the cream was doing in there). Sliced, with ham, Worcestershire sauce, cream, and mayonnaise.. Cream cheese with ham and mustard. Cream cheese with grated raw carrot, a few drops of lemon juice, and salt and pepper. (A digression: as a child, my Colin loved a cream cheese and mayonnaise sandwich, and I can still hear one of his playmates protesting, “But Colin, it has no flavor!”)

And then there were some surprises: Veal salad made with celery, lemon juice, mustard, salt and pepper, and mayonnaise (veal must have been considerably cheaper in those days). Liver sausage salad with pickle, onion, and mayonnaise (maybe popular during the war but probably wouldn’t get many takers today).  Mashed baked beans with mayonnaise. Or add applesauce to those beans. Crab meat salad had pimiento, cucumber and mayonnaise. And then, of course there were egg salad and ham salad.

I don’t expect many to try these odd combinations, but when was the last time you made peanut butter cookies? In the spirit of leaving you with a usable recipe from this weekly column, here’s my peanut butter cookie recipe. I bet it sounds familiar to you but, like me, you haven’t thought about it in a while.

 

Peanut butter cookies

1 cup dark brown sugar, packed

½ cup white sugar

1 cup butter, softened to room temperature—Mom may have used the new margarine, I’m not sure, but I can imagine her using two sticks of butter. I recommend butter, however.

2 eggs

1 cup smooth peanut butter

2-1/4 cup flour

2 level tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. salt

Cream sugars and butter. Add eggs and peanut butter. Add flour, soda, and salt.

Roll a small amount of dough in the palm of your hand to make a round ball. Place on greased cookie sheet. With a fork,  press down on dough ball, first in one direction and then in the other so that you create a criss-cross pattern. This is the hallmark of peanut butter cookies, and they won’t taste the same without it.

Bake at350^o for 12 – 15 minutes or until edges barely start to brown.

PS: A warning. Do you feed your dog peanut butter? I used to slather it on a cracker to hide a pill, but some peanut butters today have a sugar-free ingredient called xylitol. It can be fatal to a dog within minutes. Read your labels when buying peanut butter—or anything else.

 

Spam—more than you ever wanted to know

I did it! I bought a can of Spam. I’ve been wanting to try it again for some time. Bought a can a while back and ended up putting it in the church canned goods drive. But this time I ate it.

You see, Spam is a childhood memory for me, a good one. I was a kid during WWII and Spam appeared on our table frequently, although I think for breakfast and lunch but rarely if ever dinner. Introduced in 1937, this canned pork product was developed to meet the difficulty of getting fresh meat to servicemen, but it was also served in a lot of households. It was cheap, and it had a long shelf life.

The name? Spam is a Hormel Food, and the company won’t tell, claiming only a handful of executives know the secret. Best guess? It is an abbreviation of spiced ham. Monty Python adapted the name in a skit about unsolicited electronic messages—and it stuck. Hearing the word spam today, most people think first of the email term and not the food product.

Musubi

During WWII, military personnel joking called it mystery meat or meatloaf without basic training or ham that didn’t pass the physical. It was most frequently served in the Pacific theater and remains popular throughout the region, specifically in Hawaii where it is the basis for a treat known as musubi—marinated and fried slices placed on rice and wrapped with dried seaweed.  On Oahu, chefs compete with new and original recipes at an annual Spam Festival. In the Philippines, where it is a sought-after delicacy, Spam is often eaten with garlic fried rice and sunny-side-up eggs—a breakfast dish. Statistics show that the average person in Guam eats sixteen cans a year; it’s even sold at McDonald’s on that island. And surprise! It’s available in England, where they deep fry it or make hash with it for breakfast. Actually, in  2003 Spam was sold in forty-one countries and trademarked in over a hundred.

Spam hasn’t fared so well in this country. By the 1970s consumers were dismissing it because of the high fat content and its tendency to form gelatin during the cooking process. It is also high in cholesterol and sodium and is considered by many a poverty food. Probably more people eat it than you think—they may not all admit it. Spam is produced to this day in Austin, Minnesota, home of the Spam Museum and the National Spam Recipe Competition. (Austin, Texas has a tongue-in-cheek cookoff called Spamorama tied to April Fool’s Day.)

The Web site http://www.spam.com offers an array of flavors—turkey, pumpkin spice (everything is pumpkin spice this time of year!), lite, low sodium, bacon, hickory smoked, jalapeño, chorizo, black pepper, teriyaki, Portuguese sausage, garlic, and torcino (or Spanish bacon). You can

Spam fries

also find recipes on the Web site: mac and cheese, tacos, fried rice, Spam fries, hash, Spam with Ramen noodles, asparagus roll-ups, Spamburgers, a breakfast skillet, a sandwich special, a Hawaiian pizza (with pineapple), and katsu—a Japanese fried version served with mustard, cheese, pickle, and okonomiyaki sauce.

My mom didn’t go in for any such fancy recipes. She often took an unsliced can of Spam, scored it like a ham, topped it with brown sugar and cloves, and baked it. Alternatively, she fried slices.

So what about my taste test? I ate it sliced, at room temperature, and found the texture fine, the flavor vaguely like a mild ham. It was not gelatinous, but it was too salty.

Will I buy it again? Probably not. Would I be polite and eat it, if served to me in someone’s home? Of course. Would I eat it if desperately hungry? You bet!