Ode to Peanut Butter

While this pregnancy has been more than kind to me, I've found that I've developed quite the insatiable hunger--especially late in the game. I'm in pretty good shape during the day, but in the evenings, I start trolling for anything and everything to eat. A bedtime snack has become mandatory and my snack of choice usually ends up being peanut butter. My body seems to crave the proteiny, nutty, stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth-goodness that is peanut butter. I went through an intense peanut butter and banana, on toasted English muffin phase. Now, I'm on just a plain toast with peanut butter and a little smear of peach preserves kick and can't wait to finish this jar of peach preserves off so that I can move onto a jar of either apricot or strawberry preserves. Decisions, decisions.

For years now, we've been eating all-natural and usually organic peanut butter. If you're unfamiliar, the texture is very different with the "all-natural" stuff. It's less creamy, usually has a layer of oil on top that you have to mix into the rest of the butter and usually demands (per the instructions on the package) to be refrigerated. After years and years of eating this type of peanut butter, I had gotten used to it. Well, last week, we ran out of peanut butter (gasp! panic!). Being that it was the end of the month and our grocery budget was tight, while shopping for a few last-minute-of-the-month necessities to tide us over until February, at the grocery store, I picked up a jar of Jif peanut butter, instead of the all-natural stuff.

Oh. My. Goodness. Yum. How could I have forgotten how stinkin' wonderful this overly-processed, chocked full of high fructose corn syrup, preservatives and artificial colors manna of the Gods could be? The way that it actually SPREADS on hot toast is to die for. The all-natural stuff never really spread. It sort of violently smeared and stabbed, usually tearing the bread in the process, due to the rough texture of the stuff--not to mention the fact that it was usually straight out of the refrigerator, which just defies all sense of what I believe to be right with this world. Cold peanut butter just isn't ideal in my world.

Luckily, the recent salmonella scare associated with peanut butter has not included peanut butter out of a jar. I'm really not sure what I would do if jarred peanut butter ends up getting recalled as well. As of right now though, the intensity of my peanut butter love is so great that I might just brave a little salmonella in order to squelch the cravings. I mean, with the way that this end-stage pregnancy constipation is currently gripping my bowels, I'm beginning to think that a little salmonella might just be the thing to get my tummy out of whack.