Last week I asked you all what foods define you, what foods speak to you at your core. A reader asked me about food while traveling, and whether I have any favorite go-tos. As a matter of fact, I do. Don’t laugh—it’s peanut butter and jelly.*
No, I don’t live on it; any of you who have read my past posts on Scotland or Tahiti or the Caribbean know I make a point to stuff my pie hole with whatever foods are celebrated wherever I go. Dinners I eat out. But for the occasional breakfast, when I don’t want to spring for an $11 hotel waffle? Lunches, when I’m so far from the nearest village that the only food option is to climb a muddy hill and tackle a Highland cow?
Faster than I look, punk.
No, it’s PBJ, and here’s why.
1) It’s accessible pretty much anywhere.
2) It’s cheap as old chips.
3) It assembles in seconds.**
4) It lives happily in the backpack for a few hours without refrigeration.
5) The protein gets me down the long, empty roads. Or moors. Or jungles.
6) In the sandwich I make a point to use jam or fruits particular to the locale—currant jam in Scotland, guava jelly*** in the Caribbean, papaya jelly in the Tahitian islands, fresh bananas in Hawaii.
Eating PBJ in general defines me as someone who has no interest in pretension. Eating it as a traveler, it shows how much I love local flavors and trying something new. It also says a lot for efficiency: Packing a sandwich before leaving the hotel for the day means I’m not restricted to how far I can go in a morning. I’ve been to many locales that are remote, to say the least. Who wants to fret over whether I’ll be near an eatery come lunchtime? Packing a pbj opens up the world a bit more, lets me travel by the force of my curiosity rather than by the (admittedly formidable) force of my stomach. No worries; come dinnertime, the stomach takes over again. This is me we’re talking about.
And when I’m home? It still makes a good breakfast, it still gets me through the morning, and I still use local jam or fruits whenever I can, which rocks. Yesterday, though, when I was in mourning for the loss of strawberries that WOULD be in season had there not been a double deluge this past week, I used a whole wheat wrap from Trader’s Joe’s, all-natural chunky Crazy Richard’s peanut butter, and local honey.
Sweet.
Just shy of two weeks to submit your recipes to me for my project—your regional, homespun recipes, me cooking and gobbling and writing about them. I’m excited—keep them coming!
*You are SO laughing.
**You don’t even really need a knife to spread the goo. Once I used the handle of my toothbrush as a knife when I didn’t have one. Worked fine.
***And I tried to take the rest of the jelly and peanut butter home with me in my carry-on (I don’t check bags), only to find out the TSA considers them both liquids. I had to chuck them. Jelly I can sort of see. But peanut butter is a liquid?
eve's apple 