A love letter to peanut butter
For six months straight in 2017, I would consume a monstrous chocolate peanut butter and banana smoothie every night to survive. My mother or father every nightfall would tend to the thunderous blender, revving up its clamoring engine to churn ice cubes and frozen bananas, turning crystalline concrete into luscious smooth waves flowing up a straw. Two rounds at 9 p.m. were served to the brim in a Mason jar cup, hitting the table with a clink of its glass. The peanut butter acted as adhesive glue to the other ingredients, thickening the liquid so compactly that I could have tipped the contents upside down like a Dairy Queen Blizzard and it would not plop to the ground. My parents basketball-dunked the scooping of peanut butter, slapping globs and thick blobs from the jar to pack on the calories (something I didn’t know until later because I likely would have not let it touch my lips if I knew how much they put in it). I needed this smoothie. Deliciousness, albeit important to my selective taste buds, was not the purpose of this smoothie. The maintenance of my bodily organs needed this sustenance every night to keep me from perishing in my sleep like a whimper of the wind, bones curled up into a fetal position to generate warmth on my gaunt skin.
This concoction was a homey homage to my childhood favorite at Tropical Smoothie, the kid’s menu option for the tiny tots with an insatiable sweet tooth: The Chocolate Chimp. Perhaps nostalgia was the perfect medicine for my eating disorder. The flavor—not the smell, as banana overpowers every ingredient with its artificial bland smell—was so inviting and addicting that not even anorexia could resist eating just this once… every day. Therefore, I would sit, burrito-bundled in a knit blanket, trying to vacuum up the dense drink, the ice chilling my growling insides with a chill that only a shower can melt away. Imagine if a peanut could produce milk itself from its shell like a cow or goat would; this is what my homemade Reese’s Cup calorie-blast 3000 tasted like. I repeated this pattern like clockwork. I guzzled the smoothie furiously every night, the tingling euphoria of my belly finally receiving enough nutrients for the day rendering the side effects of a stiff ache like a rock hibernating in my stomach worth it.
I have thus recovered from my anorexia nervosa… and surprisingly since I have also developed a severe intolerance to peanuts. This devastating betrayal means I can no longer order a Chunky Monkey brew from my parents ever again and experience the soothing ocean of flavors. However, if sacrificing my favorite childhood food item means that I get to enjoy eating freely again, I happily accept the trade.
Brooke Martin is a Senior at Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Virginia, pursuing a degree in Communication Studies. Although she writes journalistic nonfiction articles for her school paper and HerCampus national magazine, this is her first publication in a literary journal. She is continuing her childhood love of writing and dancing in her last year of undergraduate school. Post-graduation, she is looking forward to working at her alma mater in their renowned Leadership Program.
The Albion Review 