Simple Tastes

I am a man of simple tastes. God help me, I love peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches. Gotta be Jif peanut butter, but the jelly can be just about any grape or strawberry. I even put butter on the bread before the PB&J. I don't know why I'm a man of such pedestrian tastes. Gourmet food is wasted on me. Gimme spaghetti with meatballs, pepperoni pizza, burgers, Taco Bell, Shake 'N Bake, and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

I grew up in a pretty isolated smallish town, and until I moved away I didn't realize that the rest of the country didn't have the same foods as my hometown. There was a sub shop on just about every other corner in town - seems like an average of one sub shop for every 10 residents or so. They all use the same ingredients for the most part, so they're all really good. I had no idea how hard it was to get a good sub anywhere else. And pretzels. In the local grocery stores, there are about 50 different varieties of pretzels, most of 'em local or semi-local, and all unique and pretty damn wonderful. Here in the big city out west, we're lucky to get Rold Gold or Snyder's Of Hanover. I may not like sushi, but I know the difference between Extra Dark Splits and Wege's Sourdough, dammit. God, I miss good pretzels.

I used to eat Lebanon bologna a lot, and some of the local butchers used to make their own homemade Lebanon bologna that was just amazing . Nothing like a Lebanon-bologna-and-American-cheese sandwich on white bread. Who knew you couldn't get Lebanon bolonga outside of central Pennsylvania? My dad used to eat this stuff called souse, which is apparently a gelled loaf made with pig's ears, feet and tongues. I think there's a souse made with beef parts, too. He also used to eat scrapple, which is made of hog offal (great word, offal) and cornmeal and other "trimmings." I skipped the souse and scrapple.

Anyway, whenever I go back to the old hometown, I have to load up on Lebanon bologna, subs, and good pretzels. I can still get Jif and jelly here, thank God.