peanut butter chicken

[metaphortunate]

Peanut butter chicken: the period after you have bought the all-natural peanut butter, but before you can actually eat the all-natural peanut butter, because the all-natural peanut butter is sitting in the kitchen waiting to see who is going to give in and stir it.

I feel for you guys who live alone, I surely do. Life must be so empty without this kind of gamesmanship lending it quotidian color and interest.

Actually it occurs to me that this is a pretty good example of the appeal of traditional gender roles. If it were my job to stir the peanut butter, on account of how I am a woman and it is a kitchen thing, well I would be annoyed at always having to be the one to get peanut butter all over myself and everything and clean it up. BUT it would mean that I could eat the peanut butter right away. Plus I would not have to devote any mental cycles to deciding whether I wanted to be the one to give in and stir the peanut butter. It would just be an automatic thing. So there would be something in it for me. And of course it would be great for Mr. E, automatic pre-stirred peanut butter. >XP

And then of course the mindful alternative would be that we sit down and discuss our peanut butter roles, should we take turns, how would we keep track, should it be the person who bought it, would that just encourage us to never buy any peanut butter, who eats more peanut butter, maybe we should trade it off with another chore so that one person would be the peanut butter stirrer and that person would never have to return the deposit bottles, honestly even thinking about this level of negotiation makes me want to eat my own head.

So peanut butter chicken it is. Maybe I should call it satay.

Comments

[sara]

...you know, what we do is we turn the peanut butter upside-down. Rotate it a couple of times over a couple of days and it pretty much stirs itself, no domestic brinksmanship required.

[metaphortunate]

Really? We always store it upside down, and I feel that gives us better stirring outcomes, but stirring is still necessary.

[sara]

Well, a little stirring, sure, but not, like, spouse-aggravating levels of stirring.

A little old-fashioned rotating of one's canned goods can prevent a lot of household conflict.

[kore]

That's what we do too -- well, did when I lived with my parents, T won't eat natural peanut butter.

[lovepeaceohana]

Oh for the love of - this cracks me right the hell up, because it's something I was convinced only we did, ahahaha. We've negotiated by just buying processed (is that the word?) peanut butter by default, and then if someone wants to buy natural peanut butter, s/he who buys, stirs.

Now if only laundry chicken and cleaning chicken had such easy solutions.

[metaphortunate]

If there's one thing I have learned, it's that the internet means never having to say "I thought I was the only one who..."!

[dancingsinging]

I never realized how lucky I was to have a spouse who would do the damn pb stirring any time I asked. Especially since we've explicitly chosen to do some traditional gender role stuff and the kitchen really is my ball of wax.

FWIW, my mother always took the pb all the way out of the jar, into a small mixing bowl, stirred it, then put it back in the jar. She swears it's way easier to wash the bowl than to dick around with trying to stir it in the jar and splashing yourself with peanut oil. (I was doing it that way one day, when my dear spouse came along and told me it was a ridiculous way to do it and it was easy to stir it in the jar. That's how he ended up becoming the family pb stirrer.)

[metaphortunate]

I tried that a couple of times and still splashed myself with peanut oil but then also had to wash the bowl. :P