Daily Dose of English 159
Peanut Butter
Daily Dose of English 159
Intermediate
Hey everyone. My name is Ben and you're listening to a Daily Dose of English. This is a short, pretty simple podcast that you can listen to every day to improve your English. You can find the transcripts for all episodes and more on benslanguagelab.com. I'm glad you could make it today. In this episode, we're going to be talking about peanut butter. What a fun topic, huh? Peanut butter. And I want to talk about this because it's something that's kind of fundamental to the United States in a lot of ways and like being from the US and maybe from Canada. I don't know. I've never been there. But it's not that common in a lot of the world. So I wanna talk a bit about it. I mean, you can find it in other parts of the world, but I don't think it's as nearly as fundamental to like a culture as it is in the US. So let me know for sure if you have a lot of peanut butter or your country also consumes a lot of it, but I wanna talk a bit about my experience with it and why I like it and that sort of thing. Also a bit about the history, because it's kind of interesting. So peanut butter is basically just crushed up or ground up peanuts so that it can become a spread. It's not actually like butter, but it becomes a thing that you can put on bread or toast or make a sandwich out of, something like that. A lot, my favorite peanut butter is always just peanuts, roasted peanuts and salt, nothing else. Because peanuts already naturally have a good amount of oils in them so that it becomes creamy and smooth. And I don't like the peanut butters that have a lot of sugar in them. because they are way too sweet and I just don't like them. So those are the ones that you can find in stores, and those are the ones that you can find here. It's actually pretty difficult to find really good, just pure peanut butter. And so peanut butter is from this part of the world, so sort of North America, mostly in the Mexico part, and it's been around for a very long time, because this is where peanuts are from, basically. Um, but modern peanut butter is pretty different because it uses some, some machines and that sort of thing. And it actually looks like it is from Canada in Montreal, where, as I'm looking at the Wikipedia page now. But it's certainly gotten very popular in the U.S. for a specific, I guess, potential reason. I'm not actually sure if this is true. peanut butter became really popular during the, ooh, which war was it? I don't know if it was World War I or World War II, but I think it was, it must have been World War II, I think. But it was when the American soldiers were overseas fighting in the wars, and they had to have a bunch of food sent over to World War II, to the soldiers. Oh yeah, here it is, I see, it's called World War II. It looks like it's actually, it is true. And it was nicknamed monkey butter. But what happens is there were a lot of soldiers eating peanut butter very often since it was a pretty cheap and quick thing to produce that has pretty good nutritional value. There's lots of different nutrients in it. They have protein. They've got several different vitamins. And so it's a pretty good thing to send over as food. And actually that's part of, I'll get to why I like it as well. And so then these soldiers got really used to the flavor and eating peanut butter. And then when they came back from the war, it got super popular. Beforehand, it wasn't, it was just a normal food on the shelf. It was something you could find, right? Nothing special. But when there was so many people that had a lot of peanut butter and got to like it, coming back to the US made it explode in popularity. And which is why it's still very, very common today. Pretty much all households have peanut butter in them in the U.S. if they're like from the U.S. I'm sure there's because there's tons and tons of people from other countries in the U.S. who might have no peanut butter because why would they care? But I think you know what I'm trying to say. And so now peanut butter is an integral part of the kitchen of food. Specifically, the most famous way to eat it is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which is two slices of bread, typically white bread or some kind of fluffy sandwich bread, with peanut butter and then jelly on them. And then you smush them together. and you have a sandwich. This is such a famous sandwich in the US because it's easy, it's quick, it's good, it's sweet, it's got some protein in it. It's an absolute staple for young kids or families that are on a rush or a quick snack to make when you have just five minutes, right? It's so fast because all of these things are usually out on the counter. In the US, you don't put your bread in the fridge, you don't put your peanut butter in the fridge, and you don't usually put your jam or jelly in the fridge unless you want to. Actually, no, you should do that. That one should go in the fridge because it goes bad. But two out of three things aren't even in the fridge. You can just open the cupboards and they're there. And so it's super duper fast to make. It's good. I believe that probably every single child who's gone to elementary school in the U.S. has had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I feel like it's really hard to not have them. There's even a brand called Uncrustables, Uncrustables, which makes these little sandwiches that don't have crust on them. They're like circular. And I remember those being super popular, filled with peanut butter and jelly, and oh hey, there's some videos on here on how to make them at home if you wanna try them and you can't find them. They're definitely a staple American food because they, one, are from a brand, they're easy, they're pretty cheap, and so they're a staple is the best word I can come up with. I grew up eating more peanut butter and honey than peanut butter and jelly because we didn't buy that much jam or jelly. And so we would just do it with honey, which is also a relatively common version. It's not as famous and I definitely had peanut butter and jellies as well, but I always have liked peanut butter and honey. That's sort of my go-to version. But I also specifically have this connection to peanut butter on pancakes because always growing up, my family would have peanut butter on our pancakes to make them a bit more filling, a bit more full, and it's just delicious. It's so good. Try it, especially if you have maple syrup. Oh my God, those are so good. And, but I didn't know that was a weird thing. And pretty much everybody that would have pancakes with our family would be like, why is there, why are you guys putting peanut butter on there? That's so weird. But it is very good. And I think it's a little more popular now. I think it's catching on. I don't know where we got it from, but the only other people that I knew like growing up were related to me. There were some, some cousins who would also do that. and I thought it was really interesting that nobody else had caught on to the peanut butter on pancakes thing, but it's really good. Now, people do like Nutella on pancakes, sort of whatever. So, getting into why I like peanut butter, one of the reasons is that it's so simple. It is just peanuts and usually there's a little oil in there and then salt, but you can also find it of just peanuts and salt. So that simplicity to me adds another level. Because there's plenty of foods that are really good, or whatever, or like a dressing of some kind. What's another spread? I mean, Nutella I mentioned, but that's a lot more complicated. There's hazelnuts, there's chocolate, there's sugar, there's all these different things. But peanut butter is a lot more, I don't want to say pure, but it is sort of one or two things simpler. And then also it tastes really good. I really like the flavor of peanuts and peanut butter. And so that adds another layer. And it's relatively filling. Whenever I was really hungry growing up, I could just have a spoonful of peanut butter and not feel as hungry. I would feel like I had something that was substantial, whereas if you have some chips, you feel just terrible. You're like, okay, I'm still hungry. That didn't help. Um, and so like these different things just feel to me like it's a really good food. It's also really useful for making granola or for making smoothies or I don't know, you can make, put it into brownies. It's just, it's, it's, there's so many things you can do and it's just good. I don't know. Sadly though, I'm really struggling to find good peanut butter here in Mexico because they are always, always like the American brands that have just tons of sugar that I don't like. I don't like the sweet peanut butter, that's what we're calling it. I just don't like that and so it's been hard for me to find a good brand. There was one that I was getting which is pretty expensive. It's called Justin's, but it's really good quality. It ends up being six bucks for a pretty small bucket, but I wasn't eating very much, so it lasts. Yeah, I really wish I could find better peanut butter because I do miss it. I miss having some things every now and then. But yeah, anyways, I think I've talked more than long enough about peanut butter. This is an 11 minute episode about peanut butter. What a weird thing to say. But anyways, I'll see you again tomorrow for another episode. I hope you enjoyed. Have a good one. Bye.
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