Nut butter city limits

THIS WEEK: Peanut butter, wasps

THING: Peanut butter

Nuts are a contradictory foodstuff, aren’t they? They’re really good for you, and they can also kill some people stone dead. They’re full of fat and calories, and they’re also great for your heart. But what currently makes them more powerful than a jumbotron operator at a Coldplay gig is that they’re a source of protein, and these days people can’t get enough of protein. In fact, you could say they were nuts about it! Amrite? *taps mic*

Anyway, this also means that peanut butter has been upgraded from a crappy kid’s junk food to a vital, life-giving ingredient, present in every breakfast smoothie and trendy bircher bowl in town.

But before you go randomly launching spoonfuls of it into your Ninja bullet blender, remember: not all peanut butters are created equal. Some are full of delicious salt and sugar, and others are tasteless claggy mud from the devil’s bottom.

Let us investigate…

NUTINI PEANUT BUTTER

I live up the road from Scottish heart-throb singer songwriter Paolo Nutini, so when I saw this I wondered whether he’d branched out into peanut butter production. I mean, it’s a bit on the nose, Paolo, but if Lewis Capaldi can have his own range of pizzas, then why not? Sadly, this is just a cheapo brand that also makes fake Kinder Buenos called ‘Happy Time’ bars. I will say, though, that opening this tub did not constitute a ‘happy time.’ The combination of the neon banana yellow plastic and brown, unctuous muck made me think of a welly covered in cowpats, and the taste was also rather alarming. It was horribly oily, salty, sweet and acrid - like a squirrel’s breath after a five-day bender.

VERDICT: Bananaphylatic shock

PIP & NUT SMOOTH PEANUT BUTTER

I came across this in my own kitchen cupboard, so either someone has won the lottery and isn’t telling me, or it was on special offer. I definitely didn’t buy it, because I have a terrible aversion to any brand that looks like it might have been founded by someone called Ollie. They also use ‘hi-oleic’ peanuts which means absolutely arse all to me, mate, but I’m sure Ollie, Pip or Nut will be able to tell you at great length in a video on their website that nobody watches. You can tell I’m lashing out because I’m scared of opening it, can’t you? What if I like it and then have to go on the game to fund my new hi-oleic lifestyle?

VERDICT: Recommended by Jamie Oleic-ver

MERIDIAN PEANUT BUTTER

God, I hate this stuff. There’s always a reservoir of oil on top that you are encouraged to think is natural, but that doesn’t stop it from looking like a toilet on Day 3 of Glastonbury. If this peanut butter was a person it would be an annoying climate change protester called Florence who throws mustard on the Arc de Triomphe. It’s tiresome, but you can’t argue with it, because this peanut butter is on the right side of history. It has no palm oil, EVER! It’s 100% nuts! It’s organic! So you must put up with it until it’s finished its dreary old sit-in inside your cupboard, leaking down the sides and ironically leaving behind a big greasy brown ring the size of the Exxon Valdez oil slick.

VERDICT: ‘Florence! What will your father (the CEO of Shell) think?’

WHOLE EARTH CRUNCHY

Before Florence was even a twinkle in her oil baron daddy’s eye, Whole Earth was camping out at Greenham Common and soaking mung beans in a bucket under the sink. This peanut butter is so worthy, it cycles to work and shares its bathwater with the people next door. It doesn’t believe in deodorant, and it will not compromise for anyone. Are you finding it difficult to get it out of the jar? Oh boo hoo. Is your knife about to snap in half? Well, you should have voted for Jeremy Corbyn, shouldn’t you? Fun fact: you can also use this stuff to resole your Birkenstocks.

VERDICT: Nut impressed

SUNPAT SMOOTH

And finally, let us worship the God of Sunpat, the truest manifestation of peanut butter on the market. SunPat is fun! It’s everything peanut butter should be - salty, creamy, riddled with rainforest-busting palm oil and designed to be spread thickly on a doorstop of white bread. You wouldn’t be able to get this stuff off the roof of your mouth if you had a flamethrower and a can of WD40. And if you dare to try and eat it with a spoon, prepare to walk around the kitchen for hours, sucking on a piece of cutlery until you lose consciousness. PERFECT.

VERDICT: Sunpatico

THING: Wasps

Wasps are one of my many greatest fears. I can’t even look at a picture of a wasp without screaming. So when I looked up at the guttering the other day and saw a nest above my head, I screamed. A lot.

The nest was in an obscure crack in the wall exactly between my house and next door, unreachable by humans unless you had a curved ladder. Who could take on this challenge? I looked online for a wasp hitman and found a guy called Davie, or to give him his full birth name, Davie Wasps Destroyed £35. I WhatsApped him a photo, with apologies about my obscure crack, and he replied immediately, said he’d sort it out tomorrow evening and give me a call an hour before he arrived.

Now I know the bar is low these days, but wow. A guy who replies straight away? A guy who will come round the next day to kill an army of wasps AND let you know an hour before he arrives?? These are levels of attentiveness and consideration only seen in romantic novels.

What did he look like, I wondered? Well, his profile picture was of a wasp. I screamed, involuntarily. Did he, after many years of killing wasps, look like a wasp? Surely not. Despite the photo, though, he seemed very sure of himself, very capable, unlike the last wasp man I called years ago, who was very strange and had a wall eye. Compared to him, Davie was already the Mr Darcy of pest control. Maybe one day, I found myself thinking, I could be MRS WASPS DESTROYED £35?

Anyway, true to his word, he called me before he arrived, and turned up at my front door carrying a massive pole. ‘He’s got a massive pole,’ I told my neighbour, to which Davie jauntily replied (through a gas mask) ‘FLATTERY’LL GET YE EVERYWHERE, HEN!’ He then proceeded to gun down the wasps like Rambo while I hid in the living room. ‘Why are you afraid of them?’ he asked me, searchingly, after he showed me the results of his labour - a cloud of frankly pissed off insects. I stopped myself from shouting ‘why wouldn’t I be afraid of a swarm of wasps?’ and just mumbled something about my childhood fears.

Davie nodded as if he understood completely, reassured me that they would soon all be ex-wasps, and as he left with his massive pole, he gave me a token of his love.

A small card. WITH A PICTURE OF A MASSIVE FUCKING WASP ON IT.

VERDICT: 😱