No lie, one of my all-time favorite snacks is peanut butter, preferably crunchy, straight out the jar. My house has for decades had one jar of peanut butter marked for me (because people will be like, “ooh, that’s nasty, you’re eating out the jar”) plus one for the mouse traps (gotta have a separate one for the traps, because that way you don’t have to use a clean knife between setting each one of 17 traps stacked up like country mouse, city mouse ninja warrior show obstacle course at the back of the cabinets). And as a high-level peanut butter connoisseur, it’s annoying how so many of the high profile brand name peanut butters got all kinds of other shit in them, especially sugar. What the fuck do I need sugar in some peanut butter for?
Well, just over the mountain, there’s a discount grocery store, a regional outfit called Sharp Shopper, which already is a plus-sized business operation. But it being located in Waynesboro – a somewhat bizarre small city itself, full of future ghosts – adds to the psychic draw. Plus, it’s directly beside a giant Amazon warehouse distribution center, which is of course the darkside of rampant capitalism. So I enjoy shopping at the Sharp Shopper, even though for some reason, a couple months back, I made the joke to my girlfriend of pronouncing Sharp Shopper like how Cheech Marin would comedically Hispanicize “shoes”, so I always call Charp Chopper now. I guess that’s not an “even now” phrase, because honestly it adds to the overall aesthetic enjoyment. Anyways, the Charp Chopper has all this about to expire or just expired or vague ass things in giant bulk amounts. The other day they had a whole huge cooler full of that nice ass Talenti Mediterranean Mint Gelato for like $1.50 each. And in this economy, the only way to afford nice treats is to be on the discount hunt, or rob the second homes of people that are down the road from you that have lapsed security systems even though the sign is still out front. But they, from time to time, have these wonderful peanut butter brands that I’ve never heard of, maybe they come from some tourist spot or are packaged for Mennonite stores or I don’t know. But they had one with these cheap ass paper labels that said The Perfect Peanut this past weekend, and it said, “INGREDIENTS: PEANUTS; CONTAINS: PEANUTS” and that was it for the list. That’s the peanut butter I seek in life.
But here’s the great thing about buying up a dozen jars of $1 peanut butter with nothing but peanuts as ingredients. It doesn’t remain congealed, so the cheap ass label tells you to stir it to reconstitute it. Except I instead chose to open all 12 jars, and pour out the peanut oil into a widemouth quart jar, which I can use for cooking now. And now I got 12 jars of concentrated ass crunchy peanut power, that type of shit that kept George Washington Carver up at night. And that’s how I prefer my peanut butter – just a pasty concentrated crunchy version that has trickled down through late stage capitalism, somehow accidentally devoid of the standard additives. And every time I spoon a globby chunk into my mouth, I wonder why we made all this so goddamn complicated and convoluted?
Well, just over the mountain, there’s a discount grocery store, a regional outfit called Sharp Shopper, which already is a plus-sized business operation. But it being located in Waynesboro – a somewhat bizarre small city itself, full of future ghosts – adds to the psychic draw. Plus, it’s directly beside a giant Amazon warehouse distribution center, which is of course the darkside of rampant capitalism. So I enjoy shopping at the Sharp Shopper, even though for some reason, a couple months back, I made the joke to my girlfriend of pronouncing Sharp Shopper like how Cheech Marin would comedically Hispanicize “shoes”, so I always call Charp Chopper now. I guess that’s not an “even now” phrase, because honestly it adds to the overall aesthetic enjoyment. Anyways, the Charp Chopper has all this about to expire or just expired or vague ass things in giant bulk amounts. The other day they had a whole huge cooler full of that nice ass Talenti Mediterranean Mint Gelato for like $1.50 each. And in this economy, the only way to afford nice treats is to be on the discount hunt, or rob the second homes of people that are down the road from you that have lapsed security systems even though the sign is still out front. But they, from time to time, have these wonderful peanut butter brands that I’ve never heard of, maybe they come from some tourist spot or are packaged for Mennonite stores or I don’t know. But they had one with these cheap ass paper labels that said The Perfect Peanut this past weekend, and it said, “INGREDIENTS: PEANUTS; CONTAINS: PEANUTS” and that was it for the list. That’s the peanut butter I seek in life.
But here’s the great thing about buying up a dozen jars of $1 peanut butter with nothing but peanuts as ingredients. It doesn’t remain congealed, so the cheap ass label tells you to stir it to reconstitute it. Except I instead chose to open all 12 jars, and pour out the peanut oil into a widemouth quart jar, which I can use for cooking now. And now I got 12 jars of concentrated ass crunchy peanut power, that type of shit that kept George Washington Carver up at night. And that’s how I prefer my peanut butter – just a pasty concentrated crunchy version that has trickled down through late stage capitalism, somehow accidentally devoid of the standard additives. And every time I spoon a globby chunk into my mouth, I wonder why we made all this so goddamn complicated and convoluted?
