PB and Fucking J

Every single day for the last thousand years, I have to get up and make two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Wonder bread for my son's lunch at camp. He also enjoys a PB & J as a getting home snack, as lunch on the weekend and sometimes for dinner. I DO NOT GET IT!

The peanut butter in itself is fine; I would enjoy this in a sate sauce, or on a piece of celery, or just by itself on a spoon. Why he (and millions of other American kids) enjoy something that sticks to the roof of your mouth and absorbs every molecule of saliva, spread onto another substance that sticks to the roof of your mouth and is equally absorbent is a mystery to me. It's like eating a maxi pad. If I bake bread, two days later, it's sort of hard and needs resuscitation in order to eat it. Wonder bread however, stays spongy and squishy for days and days and days. Maybe after two weeks, there's the barest hint of some firming in texture but it's subtle, and rapidly undone by wrapping in cling-film for an hour or so.

And don't even get me started on grape jelly. Maybe if I was fed this from an early age I would like it. But to me it tastes like that sensation you get when you eat tinfoil and it hits a filling. Except in jelly form. The only time I liked the taste of Concord grapes was when I was pregnant, and I think that it was some form of pica.

In Scotland, where I grew up, the default kid's purple flavor was blackcurrant. Yummy, yummy blackcurrant. And we ate Nutella (though that may have been my mom trying to be 'Continental', as is her wont).