Midwest Memo
Spreadable
by Alan Shultz

The assignment seemed simple enough. Go to the natural food store and pick up one jar of cashew or almond butter and another of jelly. Got it.

The assignment was occasioned by a consultation with a nutritionist. The expert noted my self-confessed, over indulgence in peanutbutter and jelly sandwiches. She observed that I eat more than my share of this all-American meal and suggested that maybe some variety of nut consumption was in order.

So off I went.

Now I don't like to think of myself as cheap. Instead, when it comes to spending, I like to think of myself as delightfully unpredictable - frugal in some areas, extravagant in others.

A trip to the natural food store always makes me feel cheap.

The automatic doors open for me, revealing the location of all things natural. No pesticide residue can be found here where natural and hand-hewn are the order. Past the perfect produce, past the cases of seafood and barrels of organic this and hand picked that. Off near the smelly cheese, I wander, finding the peanut and other nut butter and jelly department to the left of the natural soaps, off near the 100% cotton t-shirts.

I'm not brand loyal when it comes to peanut butter. I prefer chunky to smooth but a good sale will get me everyday. On this day, nothing is on sale in the nut butter department. Far from it, I might add.

I pick up the almond butter to read the label. The label includes the teeny, tiny price tag. Could it be? No, couldn't be. Get out the reading glasses. Oh my. The price is $6.98 for a 16 oz. container. I gently place the almond butter back on the rack, first wiping my fingerprints off the jar. No need to leave evidence I was ever here, I figure.

The cashew butter will have to do, I guess, except that when I find its price tag, horror goes to disbelief. Now we're talking $8.98 and I've broken into a real sweat.

Ok. There must be an alternative. But at first glance everything is priced over $6. But then I find it. Soy butter. Soy butter is $2.98 and sounds just fine to me. I remember at a Farm Bureau meeting getting a soy key chain. It must be quite flexible in its uses, I think to myself.

Heck, you spread jelly all over it anyway.

So I figure, I better get new jelly for a little "insurance" against the unknown taste of soy butter.

Ok, now wait, I've never priced almond butter, never researched cashew butter, so really, this stuff could be bargain

priced as far I know. But

I know jelly. I price jelly. I buy jelly. And jelly, at the natural food store, is priced like cashew butter.

I root around on the shelves and find something, not sure what, that has a color and comes from some fruit and is priced at $2.98.

I make a bee line to the cashier and settle my account.

Back home I remove my purchases from their organic, recycled paper bag and leave them on the counter next to the bread.

"What in the world is this stuff?"

That's the reaction my wife voiced when she happened upon the fruit of my solo excursion.

I soon learned that no one in our household would be eating soy butter and that the faux jelly I brought home simply would not due.

I took my refund from the natural food store and headed to Kroger. Peanut butter was on sale for $1.59 leaving me lots of cash leftover for a box of Krispy Kremes.

The nutritionist need never know any of this.