A few weeks ago I received an email from a man with the PB&J Campaign. Yes, there is such a thing, and the campaign’s purpose is to spread the word about healthy and vegetarian options. He had read the City on a Hill Press food blog and told me that I should help spread the word about National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, which was a couple of Saturdays ago, on April 2.
My closest friends know that I’m not the type of person to take these kinds of suggestions in a good way. In fact, it’s just the opposite. It’s like when my parents told me not to speed when I was 16: It took me two tickets and close to $700 before I figured out that I probably had to listen to them. So of course, in light of the PB&J campaign email, I wanted to write about meat or these fried tortilla wraps I’ve been making lately – just because I don’t like being told what to do.
But once I set aside that initial inclination to run in the other direction, I started thinking about how long it’s been since I actually sat down and made a PB&J sandwich. I’m sure that if you’re like me, a PB&J sandwich embodies much of your childhood memories in its delicious simplicity (i.e. eating about a bite of it and then feeding it to the dog). I thought it might be nice to find a way back to those childhood roots by making a PB&J this week, but with a twist.
I immediately went online to the Food Network website, which should just be my homepage, considering how much I look through its recipes these days. I found a great recipe for a PB&J sandwich that was grilled and had bananas inside. Yum! I made it immediately.
But the best thing about this sandwich is not its amazing flavor or the fact that it only took 10 minutes to make. As the PB&J Campaign member and his email reminded me, a PB&J sandwich is completely vegetarian, which means less carbon footprint and no need to worry whether your meal suffered for you to eat it. For me, that hit home. There’s really nothing more important to me than how my food makes it to my plate.
If everyone in the world took just one day to choose PB&J over a turkey sandwich or a BLT, it would mean less torture, less feeding money to a warped factory farm system and less feeling guilty about being human and destroying the planet in which we live.
I know what my go-to meal is for the week!
