Snacks

The other day my wife was talking with her mother or father (I don't know which) during her weekly ritual of phone chats. I was in the kitchen and I overheard her detailing her disgust with an eating habit of mine. Unbeknownst to me until then, she apparently finds my love of peanut butter, and more particularly my habit of applying it to other foodstuffs, rather off-putting.

I snack. I snack most of the day. I am raising two children under the age of three and proper meals, other than dinner, are rare as a result. So I have turned to PB to satisfy my hunger and nutritional needs. I slap it on apples. I smear it on tortillas. I lather it on the old stand-by, toast. I enjoy it straight out of the jar. But most of all, I like it on crackers.

I grab the Laura Scudders Smooth, tear off the plastic safety wrap, open the lid, pour off the oil and stir that mess around. Then come the fat-free saltines, plucked from their milky opaque wrapper one-by-one, to be dressed up with a dollop of that nutty goodness. Sometimes I make a sandwich with two crackers. It gets me through my day and clean up is a breeze.

I bring this up only because, at this moment, as a cracker crumb settles onto my desk, my wife is leaving the room.