If you sift through our recipes, it's most likely that the first thing you notice is that the majority of them are ridiculously simple. Not just simple, but ridiculously simple. Things like peanut butter & jelly sandwiches or just peanut butter on a rice cake. This isn't because we are lazy chefs, it's because we believe in the simplicity of peanut butter. Sure, a spicy Thai peanut sauce with tamarind grilled shrimp and a green papaya salad is delicious. Sure, using peanut butter as an ingredient in a peanut butter and chocolate pie with a perfectly flaky crust so good that it should be served in the final round of The Great British Baking Show (no soggy bottom!) can be inspirational and look delicious on instagram, but are you really going to make it? Maybe a few of you would, but most of you would just salivate and move on.
That's why we love the simple things. We love the things that we make for ourselves on a daily basis. The things that our kids love and our significant others love and our parents love and our school teachers love and our coworkers love and for better or worse that our dogs love. A complex dish can be a revelation given the time and experience in the kitchen, but a simple dish can be just as satisfying if not more-so because of the nostalgia effect.
That's one of the things that we love about HomePlate Peanut Butter. We love the nostalgic quality. Sure, it has a couple grams of cane sugar in it, but that sugar is just enough to give the peanut butter that nostalgic taste. It doesn't have that gritty, bland flavor of many of the hyper-natural brands on the market today. It's meant to be good for you, but good for you doesn't just mean physically. It means mentally. And who can deny the mental effect of a gooey peanut butter and jelly sandwich? It instantly satiates the soul. It gives you the drive that you need to get through the day, go on an adventure, or simply relax. It gives you that extra jolt of joy that you need to feel good and love life.
So, here is how you make this sandwich.
Grab a loaf of freshly baked sourdough bread from the local bakery or grocery store. Slice it thick. Extra thick.
Peel a ripe banana and slice some circles. Get a banana slicer if you need. Or just read one of the nearly 6,000 reviews because they are hilarious.
Toast the bread. The joy of the thick cut is the outsides will get toasty and the inside will stay chewy.
Spread some HomePlate Peanut Butter on the toast. You can use any flavor you want. We don't mind.
Stack some banana slices on the peanut butter smothered bread. Sandwich it up.
Cut it in half.
Stack one slice on top of the other because that's what all the instagram kids are doing these days. Now take a slick photo for the gram so your friends will have extreme FOMO.
Sit down on the couch or your favorite chair or outside on the grass beneath the sun. Take a bite. Smile. Repeat.