I love peanut butter.

When I was a kid I used to eat peanut butter and jelly (or applebutter or syrup) sandwiches all the time, open-faced sandwiches, thank you very much.  I would eat peanut butter on crackers.  I would dip pretzels and potato chips and carrots into peanut butter.  I would slather peanut butter onto celery stalks and shmear it onto apples.  I would eat spoonfuls of peanut butter if I was certain neither of my parents would walk into the kitchen to see me do it.  Peanut butter was a mainstay of my diet as a child, and this love continued into adulthood.

So it came as no surprise that I craved peanut butter while pregnant with TB.  During my pregnancy with TG, I craved beef, my favorite meat (if you don’t believe me, just read yesterday’s post about my hankering for dinner last night).  I craved beef so much during my first pregnancy that one day I ordered a double cheeseburger from McDonald’s, which is just all kinds of wrong.  Despite my love for beef, I don’t like ground beef.  I’m not a fan of spaghetti, I don’t like hamburgers, let’s just say when ground turkey became en vogue I jumped on that bandwagon very quickly, and I don’t particularly care for McDonald’s, except the fries – oh I love the fries.  I am a big fan of the potato, especially in its french fried form (again, see yesterday’s post for confirmation).  So one day during my pregnancy with TG, I ate a double cheeseburger, and I still regret that decision 12 years later.  Up to that point, I had never been so sick in my life, and I am still leery of cheeseburgers, especially double ones.  I should have learned from history that pregnancy cravings can lead to disaster, but alas, I did not.  I only learned not to be surprised that I craved one of my favorite foods – peanut butter.

All through my entire pregnancy with TB I ate peanut butter and jelly (or applebutter or syrup) sandwiches all the time, open-faced sandwiches, thank you very much.  I ate peanut butter on crackers.  I dipped pretzels and potato chips and carrots into peanut butter.  I slathered peanut butter onto celery stalks and shmeared it onto apples.  And I stood in the pantry eating spoonfuls of peanut butter right out of the jar, not caring a lick if Chris saw me or not, although I did hide from TG, because I didn’t want to set a bad precedent – that’s why I was in the pantry.  I don’t think she has x-ray vision, but she might; she is pretty spectacular.

So anyway, eventually disaster struck.  When TB was 16 months old and I stopped nursing him, my body revolted.  I had been souped up on hormones for literally four years: the 9 months I was pregnant with TG, the 17 months I nursed her (which overlapped the first trimester of my pregnancy with TB), the 6 remaining months I was pregnant with TB, and then the 16 months I nursed him.  My body didn’t know how to act with only one person to care for plus the radical change in hormone levels.  My body plum freaked out.

Those were dark days, let me tell you.  During that time, I became allergic to so many new things, with the biggest change being I could only wear cotton.  I now have an all-cotton wardrobe, which at times makes life challenging, but I much prefer that to the alternative of breaking out in itchy, weeping sores because I just had to wear something made of a different textile.  In addition to fabrics and chemicals, I gained allergies to many new food items (and I already had a lengthy list of food allergies).  I became allergic to peanuts, which in itself I didn’t find too bothersome; I didn’t even care that much for peanuts.  But the peanut butter went away right along with the peanuts.  Sad day.

For the past 10 years, I’ve coped with my tragic peanut butter loss.  Sure, I’ve tried, and even enjoyed, alternatives such as almond butter, cashew butter, and sunflower butter.  But none of them filled my peanut butter niche, due to texture, taste, consistency, storage drama, or some combination of the aforementioned.  Nothing filled the peanut butter shaped hole in my heart until a few days ago.

The other day, as Chris embarked on a grocery store run, he asked what I needed him to pick up.  I had been jonesing for peanut butter all day, so I asked him to bring home some almond butter.  He walked in with this.

This jar of Jif creamy almond butter that doesn’t need to be stirred or refrigerated revolutionized, revitalized, and reinvigorated my diet.

Every day since this jar of tan-colored creamy goodness came into my house, I have had opened-faced almond butter and jam (raspberry) or almond butter and honey (blackberry honey, because my adult palette has evolved beyond simple syrup, but I’m not too bougie to throw down) sandwiches, and it has been divine.

I suppose I better slow down before I have a backlash and can’t eat almond butter any more.  I don’t know if I’d survive another decade drought.