PB &J

I'm a Skippy kind of girl. Spread evenly on white bread. Smooth not chunky.

Lest you take me for a Puritan, I always left the crust on and jazzed up the finished product with a sheen of red raspberry jam. That combo was considered pretty avant-garde in the neighborhood in which I was raised. Most of the other kids' sandwiches boasted a large dollop of Fluffernutter. Or grape jelly. Never jam with seeds.

It's funny how these staples from long ago still appeal, as if something as pedestrian as peanut butter could capture the essence of one's childhood. And yet that's exactly what happens, with just the bite of a peanut butter sandwich, the yank of a yoyo string, or the sight of a lightning bug in the mid-summer dusk....

"I would like a magical palm tree that had a lot of shade, and instead of coconuts, there would just be peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with Cheetos underneath." – Channing Tatum