There’s not much in the flat or fridge after the last week and a half of scurrying around since we last went to Lidl. It’s also pretty freezing, and I’m too scared to put the heating on, so I’ve essentially barricaded myself in bed, attempting (and failing) to balance the bargain of warmth with the increasingly apparent need for sustenance. Again I’ve done that thing where I drink a big coffee early and essentially miss breakfast altogether, which, I realise in putting these dispatches together this week, I actually do a lot more than I’d care to admit. That can’t be good for you.
In any case, cocooned as I am in the abeyance of this long, cold morning which has bled, before I even began to realise, into early afternoon; without access to anything particularly interesting to eat, and without talking about *that* loaf of bread again, I might try something a little different.
Peanut Butter, probably, has saved my life on a couple of different occasions. It’s cheap (though it obviously can be expensive), pretty much ubiquitous, straightforward, instantly satisfying, and richly nutritious (sort of). I was vegan for about six years in the end before sacking it in – or falling off the wagon, depending on how you frame it – sometime in the early months of the first lockdown, in 2020. In all those six years I reckon nut-butters were probably my primary source of protein; at least (and I’m not exaggerating here) a fifth of my food pyramid. I think the first non-vegetative thing I ate during those first, completely unmoored few weeks was canned tuna, which is pretty weird. I don’t even like tuna that much, although tuna steaks are obviously insanely delicious. Over the next couple of weeks, mackerel followed, then cod, and eventually over the next year or so, in dribs and drabs – honey, cheese, eggs and yoghurt too. I still don’t drink milk though. Bun that.
If you’re wondering why those first tentative forays beyond the hallowed halls of hummus supremacy were all so aquatic, the reason is that I’d bolted out of London the day before full lockdown came into effect, and was living back with my mum in Hastings. Looking at it now, that response was pretty extreme but it’s easy to forget how intense, and unknowable, the immediate future looked like at that point. I was completely bricking it after getting sent shaky phone vids in my Whatsapp group chats of tanks on the M1, turtled up on the beds of military transports, hurtling towards London. A lot of us, or at least those in my perhaps particularly wiggy circle of mates, figured there was gonna be some kind of extreme military enforcement, as there already had been in parts of Italy, or even a full junta. The next morning I mechanically slapped together four peanut butter, banana and marmite sandwiches in a cold sweat at 6am, wrapped them in the scraps from the end of a roll of tin foil, and cycled the seventy-something miles to my mums. Following H’s early-warning spider-sense I’d been inside for a week already, the longest period of time I’d been inside in my whole life so far, and desperately needed to burn off the accumulated nervous energy. Problem was I didn’t really look up the route beforehand, just typed ‘hastings’ into Google Maps and hit Go, so for half the journey I ended up hacking down the hard-shoulder of the M25 in the pouring rain. This was on my old work-bike too; from my messenger days. A then-brakeless Condor track bike, made in Gray’s Inn in 1992 and bought off a scrawny geezer/poet from Tottenham with two crossed axes tattooed between his eyebrows. It’s much better suited to weaving through Harley Street rush hour traffic than dodging the aquaplaning spray waves off an eighteen-wheeler Eddie Stobart. Still ambiently shell-shocked and now wet to the bone, mid-way through this impulsive exodus, I pulled my slightly soggy sandwiches apart and ate them in gobs in a layby under a tree.
And yet even then, during what I look back on as a pretty low point in my life, peanut butter was there to renew me. It has always been there. Hopefully, it always will be. I hope I don’t develop an allergy through sheer overproximity. In the untrammelled intimacy of my time and relative devotion to peanut butter, I feel like I’m in a position to chat about it with a slightly haughty degree of authority. Maybe authority is not the right word. I guess that after really, really putting the hours in, (I did work in a cooperative wholefood warehouse for a couple of years at one point; half the stuff in it was, or was a derivation of, peanut butter) and so I feel a little justified in penning something devotional about this buttressing spread; its intricate specificities and trends, textures and packagings, what it’s offered me and what it’s eclipsed, The Old Heads and glib upstarts, the dependable regulars – I’ve seen, and sampled, it all. So this is that text; a document of my loyalty to this lugubrious legume; my paean to peanut butter.
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The main thing about peanut butter is not the taste, it’s the texture. The jar you tentatively hold in your hands in the supermarket could taste absolutely incredible, but if it’s oilily sliding off your toast or gummed up inaccessibly at the bottom of the jar, that taste-bud-busting zing is as good as zilch. For me, Meridian is the godhead. I think it’s the perfect balance between a high-end, silky viscousness and the creamy staunchness of cheaper butters – without, miraculously, including the palm oil which locks in the tenacity of their thickly spreadable swells. Other people pontificate about crunchy or smooth. To those piddling, small-minded nerds I say: get tf out of here! Are you nine? You’re an adult. They’re both delicious. I don’t have time for snivelling tribalism. We’ve got peanut butter to eat! Let’s go through some household names:
- Sun-Pat. Dogshit. Don’t even bother. It’s literally the same as Sainsbury’s basic; a bottom-of-the-barrel peanut butter, dressed up in faintly-American branding but inexplicably costing four times the price. It also has literally the most unintelligent jar design ever, with that bulging reservoir at the bottom which inevitably traps at least a couple of servings behind its cloistered rim. I think it’s supposed to be ergonomic. Why does peanut butter need to be ergonomic. (Also: stupid name.)
- Whole-Earth. Okay, now we’re getting somewhere. I reckon this is a pretty good baseline. It's on the thicker end of the spectrum, which means it misses out on some of that crusty health-food-shop glamour; evoking Sun-Pat more than Pip & Nut, but it redeems itself by tasting slightly salty (a must) and also being, comparatively, cheaper than a lot of other 100% peanut butters if you buy – or raise – the 1kg bulk tubs. They also make the Dark-Roast peanut butter with the mysterious black and silver label that makes you feel like you're spooning out the innards of a steely corporate BlackCard. I’ve only had it once (it costs wayyy too much considering the operative variable is what, more heat? This one was nicked), but it is absolutely insane. Super rich and deeply flavoured.
- Fuel Chocolate Peanut Butter Pouch. Maybe not necessarily a household name this one. Feels like it should be illegal. I have no idea whether it’s still in production. I only ever used to be able to find it in the big Asda on Old Kent rd, and I don’t live near one now, but this stuff is like forbidden ambrosia – not the weird custard. It comes in a 225g flexible pouch with a nozzle on one end, the kind of packaging you’d think of normally being reserved for yoghurt(like a giant square Froob?), maybe cleaning fluids, but it also means that this is 100% the most portable peanut butter on this list. The fact that they made a chocolate version is insane. It’s smooth, beautifully textured and indulgent without – allegedly – containing any more sugar than the regular one. It has a banner on it that says ‘Knead To Mix’ which is a pretty good indicator of quality in and of itself. I used to get through one of these a week when I was a courier, and they’re a quid each – which is unbeatable value for money. I haven’t got many pictures to go alongside this week, so I’ll try and dig out the one photo I have of this beautifully excessive manifestation of late-capitalist, endgame-extravagance, taken after glugging some down, on-hold between jobs in early 2019. (Looking for pics of it online, it’s like it's been eerily scrubbed from Google; suggesting some kind of mass-recall or class-action suit.)
- Meridian. I’ve already touched on this. Top-tier. What a legend. Arguably can’t be beat. Also used to have this cool, slightly textured equinox-at-Stone-Henge-y label; harking back to the old days when it was (probably) pounded into a paste by dutiful Somerset druids, but has since been replaced by some completely asinine, modern flat-silhouette graphic that looks like it was focus-grouped into obliteration. They did the same thing to Naked juice. Bring back pastoral, hand-painted fruit graphics!
- Pip & Nut (with the ampersand, darling). Kinda pretentious. Tastes amazing, and again, with a mild and evenly distributed saltiness, but still slightly too runny for my tastes. I need peanut butter to cling to my toast. It is perfect for smoothies though. H’s favourite.
- Manilife. Insane name, never tried it. Way too expensive.
- Smucker’s Goober Grape. What? No.
- Lidl-own brand peanut butter. Okay, this is actually a contender. If we’re taking price-point into account, this one absolutely unseats Meridian at the top of the mountain. However, Lidl is a beast unto itself, (Lo! The universal bounty of The Chaos Aisle that changes every week) and so there are actually two types of peanut butter that they stock. The more common one is branded ‘Maribel’ – it’s really riffing off the WholeEarth colour palette – and that one is pretty underwhelming. But, very, very occasionally they do stock this one 100% peanut butter which is literally better than everything better on this list. It’s like £2.00 or something. I have no idea what arcane pan-European supply chain has to align to bring this divinely-intervening gift to the shelves, (I don’t even remember what it’s called or what the label looks like; I know that it comes in a glass jar ((instant bonus)), the crunchy lid is primary red and the smooth lid is ultramarine blue) but if you’re ever lucky enough to glimpse it gleaming unassumingly on the bottom shelf, definitely, definitely grab it. It’s life changing. If only it was readily available!
- Skippy. Honestly? Pretty good.
As for the others, the other nut-butters: Almond? Great. Brazil? Bit dry. Pistachio? Arguably the best flavour in the world so wins by default. Pumpkin seed? Stop it. Cashew? In my opinion – and perhaps contentiously – not good. The oil separates from the butter to a colossal degree, (this is why we repeatedly had to write off the big tubs at work; it would always leak out the edges no matter how well-sealed.) and it doesn’t really taste of anything. One time, an entire pallet was mistakenly delivered to the warehouse already out of date – so I was eating the stuff for like six months exclusively. I’ve endured the gauntlet of Cashew Nut butter and can safely conclude that it’s mid.
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Wes Knowler is a writer living in London. @otter_cobra