April 2 is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day, one of the tastiest days of the year.
Anyone who knows me knows peanut butter is my favorite food, so I’ll be celebrating by making one of my patented three-tiered gobstopper PB&J sandwiches.
Peanut butter is much older than most people realize, dating back to the Amerindians of South America, who ground peanuts into a paste 3,000 years ago. In the United States, it was considered a delicacy in the early 1900s and was only served in New York City’s finest tea rooms. In a May 1896 article published in Good Housekeeping magazine, a recipe “urged homemakers to use a meat grinder to make peanut butter and spread the result on bread.” That same year, the culinary magazine Table Talk published a “peanut butter sandwich recipe.” Perhaps the earliest mention of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich was in the November 1901 issue of the Boston Cooking-School magazine.
To the folks at A Well-Fed World (AWFW), National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day is an opportunity to turn April 2 into a day of awareness. Through their PB&J Campaign, they’ve found a fun and delicious way to highlight how vegan foods can benefit human health, reduce animal suffering, and help the environment. (The campaign was created in 2007 by Bernard Brown and is now a project of AWFW.)
While we may think of peanut butter and jelly (or jam or marmalade or vegan honey) as going on bread, there are a host of other ways these foods can be enjoyed, such as:
Peanut butter and jelly thumbprint cookies
Peanut butter and jelly pancakes
Peanut butter and jelly muffins
French toast peanut butter and jelly
So what are you waiting for? Get creative and spread some compassion.
While you’re munching on the goodness, be sure to check out the PB&J Campaign page on Facebook!