I remember lying in bed and hearing my big brother in the kitchen eating Gauchos and milk while he listened to two different basketball games on two radios. Gauchos, in case you`ve forgotten, are chunky peanut butter sandwich cookies filled with peanut butter icing, packaged in stacks wrapped in wax paper.
I can`t recall the last time I tasted one, and I keep forgetting to ask my brother, who still listens to two different games on two radios, if he eats them anymore.
My mouth memory piqued, I recently went in search of Gauchos, but trips through numerous local supermarkets failed to yield any. Oh, the cookie aisle teemed with knockoffs, like Nabisco Nutter Butters (fay little sandwiches in the shape of peanuts with a shell design embossed on each cookie), and Fireside Peanut Butter Cremes and the classic Sunshine Peanut Butter Wafers, which look like miniature ravioli, but no Gauchos.
Finally, a call to General Biscuit Brands in Elizabeth, N.J., revealed that, yes, Burry`s still makes Gauchos, and in fact, if you go to the factory store there, you can buy giant bags of broken Gauchos for a shockingly low price. Well - whew.
What is it about peanut butter that brings out a primal Proustian urge in otherwise normal people? In the past few weeks, I`ve found friends and acquaintances unusually responsive to my questions about their peanut butter habits. In fact, some have been so vociferous I`ve actually had to back out of the room, nodding earnesting, as they rambled on about how peanut butter and hot milk eased them through a measles bout back in 1962, and other remembrances of things past.
My foray through the supermarket, down those center aisles of highly processed foods where I no longer shop, turned up fascinating examples of current trends in peanut butter. (Like many modern purists, I work the rim, stopping at dairy and produce and maybe deli, with a quick run past paper goods.)
I was startled to learn that wayward mothers can jump start their kids with a preschool dose of Cap`n Crunch Crunchy-Sweet Peanut Butter Cereal and that misguided naturalists can tuck a chocolate-covered Quaker Granola Dipps Peanut Butter Bar into the pockets of their Gore-Tex anoraks. For the hopelessly wanton, there is something called Fluffer Nutter, a peanut butter- marshmallow fluff variation on denture cream, and the truly lazy need only dip into Smucker`s Goober Grape for a fast fix of peanut butter and jelly. Entrepreneurs might note that there are still horizons to be explored, for I found no peanut butter soda, pasta or yogurt.
Peanut Butter was invented at the turn of the century by a doctor in St. Louis and was touted as a health food at the 1904 World`s Fair in his hometown. Peanuts, of course, are not nuts at all but legumes, akin to beans and peas, and they grow on low bushes, not on trees. They are native to South America, which answers my questions about why Burry`s chose to name their sandwich cookie after a band of Argentine cowboys.
According to the late Waverly Root, in his redoubtable encyclopedia, Food, peanuts are one of the world`s 15 leading food crops. Their most substantial use in this country is the manufacture of peanut butter, which consumes half of the total crop. Peanut butter is also made in Africa and Indonesia, where it`s used to enrich sauces and soups. It is popular in Australia as a spread for bread, but not in tandem with jelly. That`s red- blooded American innovation, and one that often makes foreigners blanch.
However you choose to eat peanut butter, it`s OK, because the intensely personal nature of the stuff makes private innovation above reproach. I have never met anyone who said they didn`t like it, although some claimed to eat it only once or twice a year, perhaps when they arrive home from an extended business trip and it`s the only thing in the kitchen that`s still edible. It has a long and healthy shelf life, although the kind you buy in health food stores will eventually separate into layers of peanuts and oil, making it difficult to attain the orignial consistency by manual stirring. That`s why Jif contains mono and diglycerides (to improve creaminess, as it says on the label), and other mass-market brands contain dextrose or something else.
Among the faithful, there are myraid methods of consumption. Hard-core users may climb under the covers, turn on a Gidget rerun, and spoon peanut butter slowly out of the jar until sated. This is only for periods of extreme angst, however, since two tablespoons deposit 290 calories where nobody wants or needs them. Introducing a banana into the act slows down the pace somewhat, though even that is subject to variation.
``I peel back the banana skin slowly and dip the banana into the jar after each bite,`` said one person I know.