The vagaries of feeding small children....

[brooksmoses]

The five-year-old wanted cheese toast for lunch, since I was having some.

V: I want jam on it!

Me: Jam? On cheese toast? I'm very dubious about this.

V: Yes!

V pokes around in the fridge, pulls out one of the little sample-size jars from last year's advent-calendar of jam.

V: This one! Lemony-limey jam!

Me: Hmm.

V runs off to wait for cheese toast to be done.

I look at the jam, which is in fact "apricot-bergamot", and poke around in the fridge and also fetch out the "mango-peach-lime" and the "lemon-yuzu" jams.

V comes back in when the cheese toast is ready.

V: Why are there three jams out?

Me: Because you said you wanted lemony-limey, and this is apricot bergamot, so I got out the mango-peach-lime and this one is lemon-yuzu.

V: Oh. Can I try a taste?

I get out a dab of the apricot-bergamot, and put it on the corner of the cheese toast.

V: No, I didn't want it on the bread! Just a taste by itself!

V nonetheless eats the corner of the cheese toast.

V: Not that one.

I get out a spoon, and give her a dab of the mango-peach-lime. She dips a finger in it, and tastes it.

V: Yum! That one! But on the back of the bread.

Me: On the back? That will be hard to hold without getting your fingers messy.

V: No it won't. I'll hold the cheese on the bottom. Easy-peasy!

I spread the mango-peach-lime jam on the back of the bread.

V hands me the spoon, and helpfully says, "I didn't lick it."

V takes the double-sided toast, and eats half of it ferociously, and slows down and stops about halfway through.

V, sadly: I actually don't like this very much.

Me: I could peel off the cheese.

I peel off the cheese from a bit, and hand it to her.

V, trying it: I think I just don't like this jam.

Me, thinking to myself: This is why I shouldn't have spread jam on the whole piece of toast at once.

...time passes, inevitable things happen...

Me, thinking to myself: Hm. Actually, this cheese toast with apricot jam is pretty tasty....

Comments

[brooksmoses]

Addendum: Suzanne mentioned a bit later that she had made wheat toast for V for breakfast, and put strawberry jam and cream cheese on it. So that explains where that came from.

[pameladean]

I loved this whole story. A good experiment! Things were learned!

My middle brother hated peanut butter, so my mother made him cheese and jelly sandwiches for years. Given the time and our finances, they were processed American cheese slices and Welch's grape jelly. I asked for one for myself once and it was actually quite good, the cheese standing in pretty well for fatty, salty peanut butter. But I knew American cheese was way, way better melted. This caused me to wonder if peanut butter would melt, but my mother said firmly that it would not, not in a good way.

P.

[brooksmoses]

Indeed! Many things were learned, and no food was wasted, so good all around.

I am amused at your cheese-and-jelly sandwich story. As to the peanut butter: A friend on Discord that I shared this with reports that they've made grilled PB&J before and they're delicious.

My experience with peanut butter is that it does melt but indeed not in a way that changes the flavor; it just melts the parts of the peanut oils that have solidified so that it becomes much more gooey and runny. (This comes from experience microwaving peanut-butter jars with contents that are too solid and firm to spread, which tends to happen to me with the last half of the peanut butter in a jar of the "stir in the separated oil before using" variety. Just enough microwaving to get it a bit warm works wonders.)

[pameladean]

I hoped that you would in fact be amused!

I've made grilled peanut butter and pickle sandwiches, but I just wanted the bread to be crunchy and have a habit of burning toasted sandwiches, so the peanut butter didn't really get more than warm.

I did use your microwave method on the dregs of a jar of peanut butter recently, and am much obliged for the tip. It did work just perfectly.

P.

[brooksmoses]

Oh, yay! I'm glad that turned out to be useful.

[abracanabra]

I am super-impressed by all the tasting of new flavor combinations! (Yes, my kiddos are extremely picky. It is a Whole Thing.)

[brooksmoses]

V. is quite a pleasant surprise in this category. M. at age nine is also very picky; she has maybe gotten a little bit less so recently, but a fair part of that is just that she's become less small-child-vociferous about her pickiness.