Triple Decker

Today

My nephew Jacob was singing the praises of peanut butter this week. "if someone had told me peanut butter was this good, I'd have started eating it before last week" he enthused.

In My Day

Peanut butter was certainly not part of my life as a child. If I'd heard of it at all, it was as an inescapably American foodstuff, like molasses or bagels.

At the end of 1979 my Canadian nephew Mark came to live with us for a few months. In order to fund the rest of his travel plans, it became essential that he get a job. He talked his way into a manager position at Unigate Dairies in Eastbourne. The day started early and ended in time for him to collect Lizzie from school.

Breakfast at five-thirty was not an option for Mark. He scrambled himself off to work with nothing but a gulp of coffee inside him and ate nothing till he returned home. He discovered that he could buy peanut butter at the supermarket and his daily breakfast/lunch, eaten at about three pm, was a triple-decker sandwich constructed thus:

white bread, butter, peanut butter, jam, 
white bread,  butter, peanut butter, jam, 
white bread. 

I guess it looked something like this picture, but I seem to remember it as a toppling pile that took Mark quite an effort to get his teeth around.

He always said that butter was an essential ingredient as it stopped the peanut butter sticking to the roof of his mouth. I can't remember what his favourite jam was. Personally, I thought it looked dreadful and wondered about its nutritional and calorie value. And, even now, I don't much like peanut butter, although I have used it to make biscuits.

But no doubt it's part of what has made Mark the man he is today!