I love peanut butter. I’ve been known to eat it direct from the jar. Not lately, obviously, I’m much too mature and sensible for that (*cough*) but it’s definitely one of my favourite foods. I particularly love it with jam, like the fake-American I am. Over the years, I think I’ve tried every brand. Some are too oily. Some are too salty. Some aren’t salty enough. Whole Earth peanut butter is, as Goldilocks would say, just right. So when they offered to send me two jars – one crunchy, one smooth – I did a little happy dance.
I would have been perfectly happy keeping it all for myself, but since it was sent to me as a “mummy blogger”, I thought I’d better let my kids eat some. But my 6-year-old wouldn’t even countenance it. This may be because I spent probably the first half of his life yelling at him to keep away from anything with a suggestion of ‘nut’. So I tricked him. I gave him toast with a very thin layer of smooth peanut butter and he ate some happily… before squinting at me and asking if there was peanuts in it. When I told him there was, he refused to touch it again. Foiled.
Fortunately, not everyone in this house is quite so suspicious. But I must admit I was a bit nervous about introducing 20-month-old Joe to peanut butter. What if he had a reaction? We currently have no car – how would I get him to the hospital? When I started thinking that the only safe way to introduce peanuts was to do it standing outside A&E just in case, I got a grip and put a thin layer of smooth peanut butter on some toast. Joe isn’t a big fan of toast so I hoped it might encourage him. And he loved the peanut butter – he licked it all off and threw the soggy toast on the floor.
(And he was fine, of course.)
—
Keris Stainton
Debut novel DELLA SAYS: OMG! out now
“Confidence-boosty sex-positive first love goodness. This could be the Forever of the 21st century, girls…” – Susie Day, author of Big Woo! and Girl Meets Cake
