She Thinks In Mysterious Ways

[ladysprite]

How the heck is it that I have no problem making complex and adorable bento lunches for myself and my husband 3-4 times a week, usually requiring moderate prep-cooking the night before and anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour of cooking and assembly time in the morning while I'm getting ready for work, but on days that I'm not doing that for one reason or another, making a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich seems like an annoying and insurmountable feat?

I mean, the peanut butter is in the cabinet but the jelly is in the fridge, so I have to open both, and it means getting a knife dirty, and then the ziploc bags are All The Way Back In The Pantry and that's so far to go, and really, do I have to do all this, and maybe I can just skip lunch, or toss together a quick bento anyway - just make some ramen, and there are frozen meatballs in the fridge that I could put together a little homemade teriyaki sauce for and I think there's some leftover broccoli that could fill it out.....

Also, my PB&J never tastes quite as good as umbran's. I find it fascinating that I could probably make the individual components of the sandwich with more ease than the darn sandwich itself....

Comments

[gmkieran.livejournal.com]

:) Gonna guess that there is satisfaction in making the bentos that simply isn't there for the sandwich. And, really, there's nothing quite like a PB&J made for you by someone who loves you. Jus' sayin'!

[metaphysick.livejournal.com]

I believe this probably goes back to your stance on "creating versus modifying."

[ladymondegreen.livejournal.com]

Have you tried the 'cut a cool shape in the center of the sandwich with a cookie cutter and leaving that shape inside the sandwich like an outline' thing? I find it livens up standard sandwich making.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Worse, it means dirtying two knives, unless you want to end up contaminating the jelly with the peanut butter or vice versa and that will never do at all.

Seriously, I am not a particularly tidy sort of person - you've seen several of my dwellings, you know this - but there are certain small things that just set off whatever latent capacity for OCD I might have, and that is one of them. I can't stand to see the little streaks of peanut butter in the marshmallow fluff. And it's all very well to say "oh, just start with the PB and then wipe the knife on the other piece of bread," but that's as maddeningly useless a bit of advice as "oh, just pick them off" when you get green peppers on a pizza and you didn't want them. That doesn't actually work, and then you've got green pepper residue on your fingers! Oh, the hatred just seethes throughout my body at moments like that.

... sorry, what were we - oh, right, sandwiches. I tend to agree with metaphysick. Making a PBJ is just assembly. Your making-stuff cortex is insufficiently stimulated by it. :)

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

"Also, my PB&J never tastes quite as good as umbran's"

That's probably the source of the problem right there.