Spreadable Nightmare

I've made many sandwiches in my lifetime.

I can spread peanut butter, jelly, mayonnaise, mustard, ketchup, horseradish and many other primary sandwich ingredients and condiments like nobody's business. I've plated up everything from basic, slapped-together sandwiches, to tremendous Dagwood specials that could choke a horse (but that did not choke me).

What I'm trying to say is, I'm no novice at this task, and neither is My Lovely Wife. We have three kids. We've been making sandwiches for seventeen-plus years without any difficulties. Until recently.

Some months ago, our children discovered the joys of Nutella. If you've never experienced Nutella, please stop reading. Not only can't we be friends, I really don't want to have anything to do with you. Stop reading this post immediately, go to the store, buy some Nutella, and eat an entire jar by the spoonful. Return here only after you've digested the delicious chocolaty hazelnut glory of Nutella and accepted that your parents didn't really love you, because if they had they would have introduced you to Nutella years ago.

As scrumptious as Nutella is, however, if you've ever tried to make a Nutella sandwich, you very likely know that it puts up a serious fight.

The first sign of trouble is when you plunge the knife into the jar and it stops dead in its tracks. If NASA were to measure the force required to drag a butter knife through a jar of Nutella, it probably wouldn't register on any existing equipment. Nutella should come with an elbow brace and a sling, because you're going to need them by the time you extricate knife from jar.

The second sign of trouble is the massive damage caused to the bread when attempting to spread the Nutella. Not only didn't this stuff want to leave the jar, now it clings to the butter knife with a death grip, shredding the slice of white bread like a savage animal in the process. You've got two options at this point:

1. Hold the bread down with your fingers and spread around them. You might not end up covered in Nutella to your third knuckle, but don't count on it. You'll probably need a shower.
2. Press down hard enough with the knife to ensure spread vacates knife. You might not completely destroy the integrity of the bread, but don't count on that, either.

I strongly encourage method number one. It's definitely messier, but the chances of success are far greater. Plus, you get to lick your fingers for the next hour.


And if spreading Nutella weren't already an impossible task to achieve, everyone knows the best accompaniment for Nutella on white bread is marshmallow fluff. Unfortunately, the only substance less easily spreadable than Nutella is marshmallow fluff. It's like an overwhelming, sandwich-themed, cosmic joke.

By the time both ingredients are sufficiently applied, the bread sufficiently mangled, and your nerves sufficiently shot, you might have achieved a final product resembling something close to a sandwich. But trust me, one bite is all it takes to prove the final product is worth the struggle.



© 2014 Mark Feggeler

Honey Roasted Heaven

Have you ever tried eating natural peanut butter?

It's a lot like lining your mouth with day-old wallpaper paste, only less satisfying. And you don't need much more than dab of it to permanently glue your tongue to the roof of your mouth. You can smack, and sneer, and contort your face all you want, but only time and a raging flood of fluids from your salivary glands will make it go away.

Then there's that great natural taste.

All those preservatives and chemicals found in commercially processed peanut butter that tree-hugging, healthy-living people are trying avoid must be delicious, because commercially processed peanut butter is insanely tasty while natural peanut butter tastes like pre-licked stamps, which leads one to conclude that true peanut butter flavor as we've come to know it results from ingredients ending in "dextrose" and "glutimate."

And I'd like to know how anyone can take peanuts, which are supremely delectable, even when not salted, and grind them into a spread with no discernible odor and a flavor profile that matches elementary school art class paste. When the dog gives you that "are you kidding me?" look when you offer it a lick, you know there's a fundamental flaw with the product.

We even tried natural almond butter once. I wouldn't have thought it possible to find anything more bland and unfulfilling than natural peanut butter, but we managed.

It's like the development teams of the two products challenged each other one day to see which could develop the worst spreadable product for general sale. Almond butter takes the prize, but only because natural peanut butter tastes like something. A bad something, but something nonetheless. Natural almond butter's complete lack of flavor is what makes it the more disturbing of the two to eat because, apart from the fact your cheeks have suddenly adhered to the sides of your teeth, you can't be sure you're actually eating anything.

So, when My Lovely Wife entered my office the other day with yet another jar of preservative-free, all-natural, freshly-ground something-or-other, I was leery. A tiny scoop on the end of a spoon was all I took. Then I went back for more and haven't come up for air since.

It had flavor. It was sweet. It had moisture. It was ground honey-roasted peanuts.

Whoever was the man or woman that thought to throw honey-roasted peanuts into a grinder ought to be knighted and given the Pulitzer. It took sheer genius to discover that a little honey and some salt -- and whatever dextroses and glutimates are involved in the honey-roasting process -- could help peanuts grind down into a sweet, salty, slightly crunchy mixture that, so far, has been blue heaven on everything we've chosen to spread it over.

Now the only problem we have is when we open the pantry to find the container empty.




© 2013 Mark Feggeler

The Chocolate Deficit

Stop the presses!

Call nine-one-one!!

Get FEMA on the phone and tell them to alert the nation about the most distressing national disaster of all time!!!

Worse than a tornado! More terrifying than an earthquake! As devastating, if not more so, than the impending zombie apocalypse (scary fast-moving zombies, not the slow "I can't believe I can't outrun them" zombies). What's the dilemma, you ask? The chocolate in our kids' leftover Easter candy bags is disappearing!

Every Easter, when that stupid rabbit breaks-and-enters our house with his paganistic eggs and candy and fills our kids' baskets to the point of bursting, you'll find me lurking in a corner, rubbing my hands together and snickering like Snidely Whiplash. For the next few weeks, I lay in wait, plotting and planning and scheming endless ways to separate foil-wrapped chocolates from their respective rightful owners.

Our Daughter never used to eat any of her candy. Out of sight, out of mind seemed to be her modus operandi. That made her candy easier pickings than a pocket-protector nerd in a dodgeball game.

The Italian never liked peanut butter chocolate eggs, so those were the first to go from his bag, one by one, wrapper by empty wrapper hidden in the kitchen trash can. Like magic the peanut butter chocolate eggs vanished. The German never liked those crunchy chocolate bars with the puffed rice inside of them, so those were next on the hit list. Unwrap it, sweep it through the five-pound container of peanut butter in the pantry, and down they go.

When it comes to chocolate, to call my craving a sweet tooth does not do it justice. Too limiting. Mine is more like a sweet limb, or even an entire quadrant of the body. The fact our kids hardly ever ate their holiday candy simply meant more for me.

Christmas? Stocking candy!

Halloween? Random sampler stranger candy!!

Easter? Holy crap it's time to buy a girdle candy!!!

But this year, something strange happened. I'm suddenly living in some bizarro alternate universe in which children eat candy. And not just the good candy, either. Not only are the Snickers and Milky Ways and Hershey's solid milk chocolate bunnies wrapped to look like Star Wars stormtroopers being eaten, even the jelly beans and faux marshmallows in the shape of cartoon foods that typically spend their days collecting lint and wrapper shrapnel at the bottom of the bag are disappearing. What does that leave for me? Nothing.

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Dude, you're forty-five years old and can go buy all the chocolate and candy you could ever want, eat it 'til you puke, and go back for more."

That's true. I can, and I probably have, but it isn't the same. The expression "easy as taking candy from a baby" came about not only because it satisfactorily expresses the ease of accomplishing a task, but also because taking candy from babies is fun and gratifying, especially when those babies are yours and they don't even realize they're missing out on a good thing when you take their candy.

Maybe, if I'm lucky, this trend will reverse itself before Halloween.



© 2013 Mark Feggeler