Lotta Ways to Make PB & J's

In this recent post, I shared one way not to make a peanut butter-and-jelly sandwich. In yesterday's Washington Post, columnist John Kelly revealed that there are a lot of different ways to make PB & J's. He writes:

Smooth versus chunky. Skippy versus Jif. Grape versus strawberry versus raspberry versus peach. (Peach!) White versus wheat versus pita. (Pita!) Crust on versus crust off. And let's not get started on diagonal slicing versus horizontal.

You might not have known this, but walking among us are people who eat what might be called a PBB&J: The first thing they spread on their bread is a layer of butter. Some of these people claim to have grown up on dairy farms, where, apparently, you put butter on everything, just to keep from being suffocated by the stuff.

Of course, these are all but variations on the original holy trinity: bread, peanut butter, jelly. My question was whether to plunge the knife into the peanut butter first or the jelly.

"I spread the jelly first, lavishly (because I like the jelly more); rinse the knife, then dip into the peanut butter," wrote Ann Van Aken of Gaithersburg.

Some people think a little too hard about PB & J. But I'm with Kelly -- PB & J on pita bread? You gotta be kidding me. And peach jam? I'd love it on toast, but not with PB. I'm just too much of a traditionalist.