Skipping Town

Before I left for Eddie Bert, I'd heard tales about the UK and their peanut butter, but I always shrugged those off as just urban myths used to scare people. "Whiney Americans," I thought, "How could peanut butter actually taste so noticeably different?" I was a fool for being such a skeptic, gentle readers, an absolute fool.

Peanut butter can taste very, very different. Here, it's not half as sweet as American ones, and not half as smooth. It's drier and the color much lighter, so the peanut butter looks more like (somewhat) smooth sand and not gobs of brown beauty. The girl who had stayed in my room before me was also from the States and she had left in her cupboard half a jar of English peanut butter, which I've had eaten on occasion. It's worked out fine just because it was free and the lack of sugar wasn't really a problem once I loaded on enough bananas or jelley.

Tonight, however, I needed to make peanut butter cookies and needed good ol' American peanut butter. The most prominent brand here, "Sun Pat" claims that it's "still made today to the original American standards." But let me tell you, folks, those original standards weren't very high. So low, in fact, that you'd accidentally surpass that standard while digging a grave in Death Valley. I knew that Sun Pat just wouldn't do if I wanted to make good cookies (what do they use for their cookies here then? Well, they don't have cookies. They have biscuits.I can skimp when making a sandwich for myself, but when it comes to cookies, and making cookies for Scottish kids, I had to use the best. And so began a trek for non-Sun Pat peanut butter that started four blocks away from my flat (about a mile) and continued up and down the streets. I visited thirteen stores in my search for peanut butter, going into each newsagent, grocery and convenience store. Any idea how hard that is on a Friday night? These stores were not all lined up one next to the other. And ot was 6pm so half the shops on the street were closed already, but there I was, zig zagging through the street searching, and searching, and searching, and at each store, a jar of Sun Pat would be there, with its freaking sun smiling at me, taunting. A couple of stores carried a different brand, but still had that same, tan-colored peanut butter. Oh. I felt like that woman looking for her lost coin,, the shephard for the hundredth sheep, and the father for his prodigal son. I just knew that one of these stores had to carry American peanut butter, and so faithfully, I walked against the howling winds. Twelve stores I'd searched, and left empty handed, glancing through rows of jams and jellies and honey without success. After a dozen stores, in a cramped little corner of a tiny, tiny convenience store, about half a block past my flat (from where I first started), stood short little jars of overpriced Skippy's. Oh, that wondrous thirteenth! What a joy it was, my friends, to be paying more than double the amount I'd in the States for those two little jars of smooth, creamy peanut butter. (They didn't have chunky.) And the cookies? They turned out quite lovely, thank you.