Today I’m grateful for peanut butter. (Sorry, Thom!) I’m not talking about just any old peanut butter– I’m talking about Adams 100% Natural Creamy Peanut Butter.
When I was a wee lad, one of my favorite places to visit was the farm Dad grew up on near Kiel, Wisconsin. As a kid, running around exploring an old farm was truly a treasure. We had so much fun climbing the corn crib, running through fields, sitting on rusted-out equipment, wandering the barn, and chasing the gazillion wild cats. Another thing I distinctly remember was Grandma’s cooking. She’d always lay out an impressive spread of food, all homemade, for lunch and dinner. And at every meal, it seemed, there was a stack of sliced homemade bread in the center of the table, along with a bowl of peanut butter.
I loved that peanut butter. Eating it on fresh homemade bread was absolutely heavenly. Occasionally we’d use Grandma’s toaster as well; that thing probably dated back to the Civil War, but somehow it always made the toast just right. Again, spreading some of her peanut butter on that crispy golden bread was amazing.
Back home, we grew up eating Skippy peanut butter. Skippy is fine. I liked it, and I ate bread and toast at home as well. Yet it wasn’t the same as Grandma’s peanut butter and bread. It was only when I was in my mid-20’s that I realized Grandma had been buying Adams 100% Natural Creamy Peanut Butter. (Or at least something so similar that I couldn’t tell the difference.) When I discovered that stuff in a store, it brought back all those fond memories. And now I’ve been buying that brand for the last thirty years.
Yesteday I polished off a jar of it, so I had to open a new one and run the mixer. Since it’s all natural, the peanut oil tends to separate over time, and it has to be stirred frequently. I always mix it when I open the jar, and then each time I dip into it.
Although it’s awesome on sourdough toast, and just as good with some cheese and crackers, I admit there are times I simply open the cupboard and dip into the jar for a couple mouthfuls of raw peanut butter. Yeah, I like it that much.
As I write this, it occurs to me that being thankful for something like peanut butter– or rather a very specific peanut butter– is kind of a strange thing. Maybe part of the magic in this particular brand is that it reminds me of the good times I had as a kid on the farm. Grandma and Grandpa are long gone, but those visits still evoke vivid memories. So perhaps in a larger sense, I’m grateful for the good things of my childhood, and the happy memories they continue to bring me all these years later.