Meet Barbie

This is Barbie:

Barbie is an English Mastiff, whom I believe is about 4 months old.  She is expected to be at least 180 pounds when she is full grown.  She spent the day with us on Sunday, while her owners were out of town.  Now, we are part owners of Barbie, too, I believe, so we got to watch her.  I was thinking that there has to be something to do with her and decided to make her something.  I made her cookies.

They were really simple and were made with 1 cup of peanut butter, 1 cup of milk, 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1/4th cup of carob chips and 3/4cup of oats.  All was mixed and then set to cook for 15 minutes.

Are they good?  Well, I wouldn't eat them all myself.  They are very dry and full of fiber.  But they last about 3 seconds each when given to this puppy.  If you are interested in the recipe, it is here:
http://www.dogtreatkitchen.com/dog-cookie-recipe-with-peanut-butter.html

A Man's topic...

Peanut butter and jelly, whether you like them fried or fresh, the PB&J seems to have become a staple for any male's diet.  It could be a tie in with some feeling of a comfort food or a piece of nostalgia, but this sandwich seems to show up in almost every setting and I almost always have seen men enjoy this over women.

 

While the first recorded mention of this sandwich was in the 1940's, we have a couple of facts that can be seen and laid out here for everyone's view:

1.  We know that George Washington Carver created a peanut butter for culinary uses in 1880, but did not patent it because he thought that anything from nature was a gift from God and allowed to everyone.  But this is the first recorded listing of peanut butter.  The peanut probably was first seen around 950BC in South America.  From there it was sent to places like Africa where it is believed that the Africans did grind it up into a paste.

2. Jelly can likely be traced back to the Middle East, where sugar cane grew naturally.  Mixing some macerated fruit with the ground sugar cane and cooking it down, reducing it, could have produced a very simple jelly if not a fruit spread.  Scientists believe that this happened before the Crusades, as it was likely Crusaders who brought the idea of jelly in to Europe.  Modern jelly probably did not exist until much later, around the 16th century when the Spanish used sugar cane syrup to preserve fruit. Pectin was not extracted from apples to make jelly until the late 17th century.

3. While some could point out that South America had peanuts and the India actually had the first sugar cane, then  could the two have collided at some point and created the sandwich?  I guess this comes down to the bread.While the Middle East and India may have had sugar cane or sugar first, their bread has been a thin bread not made with any yeast, so it would have resembled a rolled or very skinny and flat sandwich. While the more leavened bread would have required grains and yeast to rise and would likely have originated in the Scandinavian countries, it could be noted that Spain did have a grain bread like what we are familiar with now, in America.

This being said, thanks to help with wikipedia, by looking up different histories, it could be seen that the Spanish may have invented more closely what we refer to as peanut butter and jelly. The Spanish Conquistadors brought peanuts over to Spain and if Spain already used honey and sugar by then in their fruit preserving, then the love of the peanut and jelly could have kindled. If Spain had access to honey or sugar around the 16th century and had access to peanuts or ground peanuts and bread, then they could have sliced it in two and created the first peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Now, whether you prefer grape, strawberry or another flavor of jelly, wheat, white or another kind of bread and chunky or smooth peanut butter, that is another story.

You are now in the presence of royalty....

Like many other culinary inventions, no one can be 100% certain as to where it was first invented or who invented it.  Take for instance the "Buffalo Wings".  Some say that they invented it by mocking chicken wings and calling them buffalo wings, some say that they made a sauce that was so hot that it could give buffalo wings and others say that they were named such because the creator has his restaurant in Buffalo, NY.  Now, most likely, many different people could have invented it at the same time.  There is no way that one person, on the whole planet, could have had the idea of frying chicken wings and then coating them in hot sauce, before everyone else had.

The sandwich has no definite origins.  You would think that it is a no-brainer to take some sort of food and place it between two pieces of bread. How else would eat peanut butter and jelly, if you had nothing to smear it on and eat together?  Since the invention of bread people have been using it as we use it today. The first written use of the word 'sandwich' came from the English in the 1700's, when the 4th Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu ordered a dish of meats prepared and served between two slices of bread.  The legend is that so many others liked the idea that they called it the "food of Sandwich" or "the same as sandwich".  Like any restaurant that has a food item named after a person, soon people just start to order the item using that famous person's name.  So, people started to order and make "sandwiches".   The Royal Earl did this because the two slices of bread on either end protected and kept his hands clean, so he could play cards without getting food and filth on the playing cards.

Whether the Earl invented it or not, still doesn't dispute the fact that we all have some favorite sandwiches.  I had one today, where I took some home-made turkey meatloaf, placed it on some freshly home-made rosemary bread, threw a spoonful of sauerkraut on top of that and then a nice sprinkle of ground black pepper with some squirts of ketchup and mustard.  That sandwich was only able to be consumed and eaten with a knife and fork so it fulfilled the purpose of the Earl's original sandwich creation.

Famous people do make other sandwiches and I think that if asked, more people would be familiar with Elvis and his peanut butter and banana sandwich habit than the Earl.  On top of that, Elvis was a king, which makes him a higher class of royalty, than the Earl.

Because it is 9:29pm on a Thursday night and I am in the mood and hungry, I think a fried peanut butter and jelly sandwich should be in order.  Just like the Earl or Elvis, my father invented this sandwich.  I am sure that someone else had the idea at cooking their peanut butter and jelly, but with no recorded history of it, I trust my dad.  So, this 20 year old recipe involves nothing more than a hot pan, butter and an already made sandwich.

Now, the jelly was one of my home-made strawberry and rhubarb jellies.  You will likely not find any like it, until next year when I start selling my jams across the world.

I love this sight.  When butter is in a pan, that means that something good is going to come about.  So, you melt the butter in the pan while smearing some butter on the top of the sandwich.  When the butter is melted place the sandwich, un-buttered side down.  Cook the sandwich on high heat for a minute, or until it is browned. Then flip it over and cook the other side.  What comes out of this is this:

Each bite produces a flavor of that moist butter toasted bread, with molten hot liquefied jelly and hot peanut butter. A complex symphony of flavors even for something as simple as PB&J. What could be better than this?