The Perfect PB&J

The only problem with going away for the weekend is coming home on a Sunday night, only to be thrown back into the work week with no clean clothes, an overgrown lawn and no food in the house. (As a disclaimer, let me add now that as problems go, I’m aware this is not a big one).

My cupboards were particularly desolate a couple of weeks ago after I’d been out of town two weekends in a row and, on the weeknights in between, seemed to be scheduled down to the minute. When I eventually found myself a block of free time to shop, I instead used it to clear my head by sprawling on the couch and watching bad TV.

All of this resulted in a two-week stint of subsisting on what I could unearth from my freezer and pantry. At times, it wasn’t pretty, which my coworkers affirmed when they saw me lunching on microwave popcorn for the second day in a row. But there was a pleasant oasis in the midst of it as I found a loaf of whole wheat rye in my freezer and some peanut butter and jam to accompany it.

As I stood in the kitchen wolfing down my sandwich (which was infinitely satisfying), it occurred to me that I was – just about, anyway – eating a 100 mile PB&J. A pleasing thought when I otherwise wondered whether I might be developing scurvy.

The bread came from Golden Hearth in Kitchener, whom I’ve written about in this space before. The bakery is committed to using local and organic ingredients and bakes with farm eggs and flour milled in Tavistock.

Then there was the peanut butter, which I’d bought at Picard’s Peanuts in St. Jacob’s, where they let you grind your own according to how smooth or chunky you like it. All the peanuts used in the grind-your-own are Valencias grown near La Salette (north of Delhi) and roasted just east of there in Waterford.

Because you open and dump the bag of peanuts (skins and all) into the machine yourself, it’s easy to be confident about what’s in your PB – just the nuts themselves and the peanut oil they’re roasted in. The result is a strong, earthy flavour that’s quite different from the processed stuff most of us are accustomed to. But it’s delicious. And cheap, too – I paid about $4 for my litre of smooth (always a tough decision – chunky’s so good, too) and could’ve saved 50 cents if I’d brought my own container.

An unopened jar of Glen Farms strawberry rhubarb jam on my counter was the final ingredient for my sandwich, and it proved the perfect partner for my PB.

Having grown up eating only my mom’s homemade jam, I’ve always been a bit of a jam snob, but I’m happy to say that Glen Farms’ tastes just as good as what you’d make yourself.

David and Judie Glen, who operate Glen Farms in Listowel, make seven jams and five marmalades, much of it from fruit they grow themselves (not oranges, obviously, but strawberries, raspberries and red and black currants, for starters). They use old-school recipes that were devised before commercial pectin was on the scene, and, as such, simply cook it longer to thicken it. All their products are preservative-free and have low sugar content. I bought my Glen Farms jam at Golden Hearth, but it’s also available at The Farm Pantry in St. Jacob’s and can be ordered directly from the Glens by phone.

I realize that sugar doesn’t fit the 100 mile bill, and that the squeeze of lemon also added to the jam is not local, either. And I’m not saying there wasn’t anything in my bread that might have come from beyond a 160 kilometre radius.

But there was a high degree of ingredient traceability to my peanut butter and jam sammy that beat anything mass-produced. And in the midst of a decidedly unsavoury week of eating, it tasted like heaven.
-30-