Christopher M. wrote:
>
> Thanks to everybody in this thread. I'm just fascinated about
> peanutbutter. Very interesting.

http://blog.buzzflash.com/contributors/1552

[from above:]

As for the peanut butter, the night before the shows, we had a meeting with
the production team at the Mayflower Hotel. Leaving, I walked down a
corridor past Buckley's room. Taped to the door was the hotel room service
menu with his breakfast order. I stopped to see what he had ordered. Pretty
standard: juice, coffee, eggs, bacon, whole-wheat toast. But at the bottom,
he had written a note.

"Peanut butter for the toast, please. SKIPPY Peanut Butter." The word SKIPPY
was underlined twice. "And not that damned Jif. I can tell the difference!"

http://old.nationalreview.com/flashb...0406301006.asp

[from above:]

I was hardened very young to the skeptics. When I was twelve I was packed
off to a British boarding school by my father, who dispatched every
fortnight a survival package comprising a case of grapefruit and a large jar
of peanut butter. I offered to share my tuck with the other boys at my
table. They grabbed instinctively for the grapefruit - but one after another
actually spit out the peanut butter, which they had never before seen and
which only that very year (1938) had become available for sale in London. No
wonder they needed American help to win the war.

You can find it now in specialty shops in Europe, but I have yet to see it
in anyone's home. And it is outrageously difficult to get even in the
typical American hotel. My profession requires me to spend forty or fifty
nights on the road every year, and when it comes time to order breakfast
over the telephone I summon my resolution - it helps to think about peanut
butter when you need moral strength - and add, after the orange juice,
coffee, skim milk, and whole-wheat toast, "Do you have any peanut butter?"

Sometimes the room service operator will actually break out laughing when
the request is put in, at which point my voice becomes stern and unsmiling.
Often the operator will say, "Just a minute," and then she will turn, I
suppose to the chef, but I can hear right through the hand she has put over
the receiver - "Hey Jack. We got any peanut butter? Room 322 wants some
peanut butter!" This furtive philistinism is then regularly followed by
giggles all around. One lady recently asked, "How old is your little boy and
does he want a peanut butter sandwich? To which I replied, "My little boy is
twenty-eight and is never without peanut butter, because he phones ahead
before he confirms hotel reservations."

I introduced Auberon Waugh to cashew butter ten years ago when he first
visited America, and although I think it inferior to peanut butter Auberon
was quite simply overwhelmed. You can't find it in Great Britain so I sent
him a case from the Farmer's Market. It quite changed his writing style: for
about ten months he was at peace with the world. I think that was the time
he said something pleasant about Harold Wilson. In the eleventh month, it
was easy to tell that he had run out. It quite changes your disposition and
your view of the world if you cannot have peanut butter every day.


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