The Zen of PB&J

Peanut butter. Not always, not every time, but this week, it was peanut butter that saved me.

Well, using the peanut butter to make PB&J sandwiches for Street Angels bag lunches. It’s my go-to this winter: PBJ sandwiches, chips, string cheese, and Oreos. Five loaves of bread = fifty sandwiches. I can get them all packed into two grocery bags and the box the chips came in. I have a system, as they say, and it is magical and calming and centering.

I’ve said this before when we used to make soup to distribute on Sunday night’s outreach. It was absorbing creating soup for fifty people, seasoning, stirring, tasting, and then finally pouring a ladle or two into each little cardboard container and snapping a lid on top. It took me a while to sort out why making soup was so precious.

It’s that the soup isn’t just for the people who are going to eat it. It’s for the maker, too.

Same with sandwiches.

We came back from being out of town and there was no food in the fridge, suitcases full of dirty clothes, dogs to pick up, a cat to retrieve, and then meetings, obligations, expectations, homework, and, my favorite, dread. I came back from vacation a frazzled person, worried about the things I had to do, and weighed down by the terrible things happening in the country.

Wound tighter than a two-dollar watch, as my mother would say.

The peanut butter evened me out, smoothed me to the edges. Fifty sandwiches, thick with peanut butter like how my brother used to make them, a nice dollop of grape jelly squished about, two slices of fresh bread, tucked in a sandwich bag and stacked. Making them is how I imagine a mason feeling when he lines up perfect bricks into a fireplace. A symphony of symmetry.

So calming and uplifting.

You’ll notice that I buy really big containers of peanut butter.