Rant #1,717: Peanut Butter's Better

Heck, the Republican National Convention is going on, and according to Yahoo, many millennial women are deciding to go braless.

Yes, we are in the middle of summer, and nothing much is happening.

And when nothing much is happening, I like to talk about food.

I like to talk about it more than eat it, because I am on a self-imposed diet of my own creation.

I have lost about 17 pounds, but I still have a bit of a bulge in the stomach area which is not going to go away anytime soon, if at all.

But as a nice segueway, I also adore peanut butter, and that obsession isn't going to go away anytime soon, either.

Perhaps the braless and the brainless should all sit down and have peanut butter sandwiches themselves.

I bet they would all be better for having one. I know that when I have one, I am better myself.

I just love peanut butter, always have, always will.

Like I spoke about yesterday related to tuna fish, I have loved peanut butter since I was a kid, and if you put all the jars of peanut butter I have eaten--the contents of these jars, not the jars themselves, of course--it would probably stretch from New York to California, or so I would like to think it would, because I really have no accurate measurement of this.

I think I began eating peanut butter in the second or third grade of school. It was a convenient way for my mother to make me lunch in a jiffy. Just spread it on two pieces of bread, slap them together, and there you have it.

The funny thing is that like tomatoes and ketchup, I don't like peanuts but I love peanut butter. I know this doesn't make sense, but I just don't like peanuts in that form, but I love peanut butter.

As to what type of peanut butter I prefer, I think Skippy is the best. It is the smoothest of the peanut butters, and to me, it really is the Cadillac of peanut butters, the one that all others aspire to be, but just aren't.

When I was a kid, there was basically the smooth peanut butter, and that is it. I think in the late 1970s or early 1980s, peanut butter makers started to come out with variations of the original, and today, we have chunky, low-fat, organic, and probably some other varieties I am leaving out.

So today, we have a cornucopia of choices when it comes to peanut butter, and I kind of prefer the chunky variety myself.

If you notice, I haven't mentioned jelly with my peanut butter, as in peanut butter and jelly. I know millions of people love this, a concoction that reminds them of their youth, but I hate jelly, and I absolutely hate peanut butter and jelly.

I like peanut butter alone, and not with other things added to it.

As a kid, I must have had peanut butter for lunch probably at least once or twice a week. I brought it to school, ate it during the summer at day camp, and ate it while at home.

But in today's world, peanut butter has become something of a non-entity for school-age kids, and it is banned in many school districts because of peanut allergies that many kids have.

I don't understand the methodology of peanut allergies--I think it probably has to do with the pollution in our environment, although I wouldn't even say that that was an educated guess--but during my childhood, no one had peanut allergies.

So kids today really can't enjoy the wonders of peanut butter, because they can't eat it during lunch at school.

And that really is a shame, because the wonders of peanut butter are really experienced the greatest when you are young.

Kids today are missing out on one of the simplest and best lunches they could have, and that is a true shame.

I often say that I am glad that I was born when I was, because I experienced things that kids in other generations could not have witnessed or been a part of.

I feel the same way about "the peanut butter experience." If you don't get peanut butter as a kid, you will never "get" it, if you know what I mean.

I got it, and will always get it, and for that, I have to thank my mom, who weaned me on this stuff, like most mothers of the time did.

Good for her, good for me, and good for peanut butter!